Double traffic drop after moving from vB 3.8
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CTXMedia
Well-known member
My personal experience - and I suppose, why I'm so focused on your style - was moving from vB3 to IP.Board. I commissioned one of the best IP style designers to create a nice new bold style for CycleChat, previewed it with my moderator team, tweaked it until I thought it was spot on and then released it as the default style once the migration was complete. What I wasn't prepared for was the almost universal rejection of the style from the membership. They hated it - with a passion. It became such an issue that I quickly spent further money, with the same "good - but expensive" designer to ... wait for it ... create an IP style that looked like my previous vB one!!
When I migrated from IP.Board to XF I made sure that the layout was plain and simple, easy to use, and didn't stray too far from what they were used to. Sure, there were some technical differences, and I couldn't do much about those, but the colour scheme remained the same (so it was familiar) and I spent a good deal of time (and even put a video together) to introduce people to the change so that it wasn't such a wrench. It went much more smoothly than the vB > IPB migration.
I haven't had any real issues with SEO since moving to XF and my biggest site seems to be more popular than ever - but useability can make a good bit of difference to how often people visit; how much time they spend hanging around on your site when they do visit; how much they contribute; and how often guests come back for more - so if you can make your site easy to access and use then it should help.
That being said - your site description might benefit from having a few more key words or phrases in it:
Current: Triumph Motorcycle Forums with all the best Triumph Information
Suggestion: Triumph motorcycle forum for every Triumph motor cycle owner and enthusiast. Classic Triumphs, technical and mechanical help, motorcycles gallery, and more.
Obviously tweak it to suit or change it altogether, but it contains singular and plural words to potentially be more relevant to different styles of search, e.g.; motorcycle - motor cycle - motorcycles.
Cheers,
Shaun
DaveM
Well-known member
Well when I moved from VB to XF the styles we were using were available for both. So I purchased a set for XF and it worked to a point. However we started having comparability issues so we then purchased these. I also tweaked the default one a bit to get it as close to what we had and for the most part the members are all happy.
Ridemonkey
Well-known member
Do you vet your new users? That is, are you sure your new user registrations at 1-5 per day were actual humans and not spam?
I ask because if your forum change managed to drop spam registrations, it might look like new user registrations dropped when you're really just seeing that spam users aren't registering.
I ask because if your forum change managed to drop spam registrations, it might look like new user registrations dropped when you're really just seeing that spam users aren't registering.
craigiri
Well-known member
Remember that goog has changed things in the past year also, so new visits may be way down if they depreciated something.
It's hard to imagine how "real" forum users could decline because of a change to XF. In the end, it's just words and data and unless google messes you up (can happen anytime)....things usually don't change much (except, as Brogan noted, page views)...
It's hard to imagine how "real" forum users could decline because of a change to XF. In the end, it's just words and data and unless google messes you up (can happen anytime)....things usually don't change much (except, as Brogan noted, page views)...
DaveM
Well-known member
Yes this would be something I would always check and the registration questions would tell me they know about the product
@craigiri Do you admit that software change could cause a double drop in search only because Google do not tolerate it? I have to say in may case that more than 55% of traffic goes from Yandex, not from Google and this fall could be more dramatic if Google had it's usual part.
To present my statistics better I attach Yandex.metrika (it's just looks more clearly than GA):
If you can see drop of traffic after 31.07 it is just the time of import. After this there was a temporary grow and then stable fall.
To present my statistics better I attach Yandex.metrika (it's just looks more clearly than GA):
If you can see drop of traffic after 31.07 it is just the time of import. After this there was a temporary grow and then stable fall.
It was shortly after, because most users didn't like Soft Responsive that I used firstly. I've started using UI.X on 22 oct 2013.
CTXMedia
Well-known member
I'm not sure, but it is a similarity between your migrations so may be worth investigating - even if only to rule it out; it may be worth asking for other people's experiences on the style resource thread. I do know it is a popular style and Audentio is a respected designer within the XF community.
Generally speaking you can expect the major search engines to completely reindex your site when you change forum software - that's normal and the process can take many months, during which time you may experience fewer referrals. I've experienced it, as have many others, but generally it comes back up and either levels out or, in my case (and a few others) actually improves. As such, I'm not convinced that what you're seeing is a core XF SEO issue - there must be something else that is leading to the reduction.
Things that can affect your search engine referrals (and can come up when you move platform) include:
- Archiving old forums / threads
- Renaming forums
- Rearranging forums and sub-forums
- Deleting forums / threads
- Hiding forums (that everyone could previously see)
- Opening forums (that were previously invisible to guests)
- Changing site title / description / keywords & phrases
- Applying a new style
- Losing key (large volume posting) members
- Changes to robots.txt
- Usergroup permissions changes (which impact on who can see what)
DaveM
Well-known member
Well yes I can see some of them having been an issue on my site. The style I am not sure as we only started running Audentio styles much later after the migration. The once thing that has improved since the migration is we seem to be on the first page of Google when doing the following search "Triumph Motorcycle Forum" and this would be the most common search for our target group. We have a question how did you find us in the registration and most times it come up Google.
@Clickfinity
I'm not believe that UI.X can cause such problems. Also I can't confirm neither case you've noted, except style change. I assume that this also could be something with redirection scripts. I've looked at some of my search requests with which I was on top and some of them seems to be out of Google index at all.
I'm not believe that UI.X can cause such problems. Also I can't confirm neither case you've noted, except style change. I assume that this also could be something with redirection scripts. I've looked at some of my search requests with which I was on top and some of them seems to be out of Google index at all.
Moshe1010
Well-known member
Have you done redirection scripts to youforumdomain.com/archive? if not, then this is your main problem. Google like to index the /archive links more than the regular links.
Anyway, it takes about 6 months for Google to pick up your site as it was before. In the long run, XF is way better than vB 3 or 4 since most of us had a grow of 20-50% in a year since our import, myself included.
Anyway, it takes about 6 months for Google to pick up your site as it was before. In the long run, XF is way better than vB 3 or 4 since most of us had a grow of 20-50% in a year since our import, myself included.
@Moshe1010 Hmm, I guess not. I'll try do it and look for any changes. It seems that Google haven't done this or something prevented to do it.
AzzidReign
Well-known member
I looked through a page and a half and didn't see this anywhere. Any time there is a conversion and you have your 301's in place, I've always seen a drop. I didn't see much when moving from IPB to xF, but after a month or two, my uniques came back up.
Just note, pageviews and time on site will likely decrease, especially if you are coming from the 3.x series. There is a lot of extra pageviews in that series than what xf has, thus creating a longer stay on the site due to the extra views. The good stats to look at are the bounce rates and uniques.
I think it has now been 2-3 years since I converted and my stats have doubled. When I went from vb to ipb for 2-3 years, my stats finally reached what they were on vb after being on it for over a year and then kind of plateau'd. It's been better than I could have dreamed by moving to xf. Give it some time and you'll see the site's stats improving.
Just note, pageviews and time on site will likely decrease, especially if you are coming from the 3.x series. There is a lot of extra pageviews in that series than what xf has, thus creating a longer stay on the site due to the extra views. The good stats to look at are the bounce rates and uniques.
I think it has now been 2-3 years since I converted and my stats have doubled. When I went from vb to ipb for 2-3 years, my stats finally reached what they were on vb after being on it for over a year and then kind of plateau'd. It's been better than I could have dreamed by moving to xf. Give it some time and you'll see the site's stats improving.
petertdavis
Well-known member
There is a problem with the default registration process in Xenforo, and I believe that may be in part why some people see lower registrations after moving to XF. This couldn't explain loss of traffic, of course. I am regularly getting complaints from my new members about how confusing the registration process is, and several times a week I have to manually fix people's accounts because of it. First of all, there's a button on the index page that says "Sign up now" which is great, I like that button. Problem is, that button doesn't link to the sign up page. If someone clicks it, the page drops down and they see a login form. This is a terrible user experience, and of course you're going to lose some new registrations right there. Next, if someone isn't put off by that and still wants to register they see the first field on the form asking them to put in their name or email address. Does anyone else get a steady stream of people who end up registered with their real name or email address sending you a message later saying they didn't know the name/email address would end up being their public username? I do. All the time. It's frustrating. From there, if they haven't given up yet, they might notice that they have to click on the No, create an account now button and then click sign up which FINALLY will lead them to where they should have been by simply clicking that Sign up now button in the first place. And even then, the signup form is too inflexible, really why do I need to know their birth date? I know I can make it optional, but how about just making it not be on the registration form. Username, email, and password, that's all I really want.
0ptima
Well-known member
I found that annoying and changed the signup button to link to the sign up form directly with a template modification. I also changed the "name" phrase text to User Name
![[The Piper]](/community/data/avatars/m/65/65585.jpg?1701363283){kind=avatar}
[The Piper]
Member
Would you please share your template modification? I'm looking forward to doing that on my website too... Many thanks in advance!
