How important is it to you that vBseo makes its way to xenForo?

[Diablotic]

Vbseo is good for vb for a very simple reason: vb is not good enough out of box. Xf is good out of box as it is (remember we are still in beta stage) hence there is no need for vBseo.

 

[David McHenry]

I use VBSEO on two largish forums, 30,000 threads and 300,000 posts and whilst I cannot contemplate moving them yet as I need to have quite a few mods converted/written for xF. I will as soon as I can. My biggest worry would be messing up all those urls, and getting a massive serps hit. Hopefully by the time I am ready to jump with these forums some kind person will have written an auto script for dummies like me, so that the url structure is automatically ported. :fingers crossed smiley here:

I do believe there is already one written in the modification area here at Xenforo.

 

[AnthonyCea]

You all worry way too much about URL's, even if you change them Google will re-index your site within a week and will have the new URL's in the index if they have trust in your domain.

 

[-GR-]

You all worry way too much about URL's, even if you change them Google will re-index your site within a week and will have the new URL's in the index if they have trust in your domain.

I agree completely. I had purchased vbseo for my vb4 site and feel it is kind of a waste when I see all sorts of regular vb urls ranking just as high or higher. The spiders do just fine crawling without the friendly urls.

I do however like friendly urls because they are nicer to look at. XF does just fine.

 

[AnthonyCea]

Correct, DP has more indexed pages in Google than 98% of webmaster forums without vB SEO and has for years with stock vB URL's which have always ranked fine in G.

XF (this forum) is ranking high in Google with forums that have been around for 5-8 years and this forum is new, so there goes the SEO theory some hold, indexed pages are what counts in the end, not URL's, Google has to trust the publisher first before they will index threads, this has a lot to do with outgoing links (not a lot of link spamming with followed links), just ask Matt Cutts about that.

 

[-GR-]

Content and keywords are the most important. Urls just make it nice for the viewer. Yes they may help to some extent as far as having keywords in the link but like you have stated with DP there is more to worry about then just urls.

 

[Dragapult]

It's not important to me at all.

 

[dutchbb]

Correct, DP has more indexed pages in Google than 98% of webmaster forums without vB SEO and has for years with stock vB URL's which have always ranked fine in G.

I do not find them high in the SERPs very often.

It seems DP has a lot of visitors because many people just know of their name.

 

[AnthonyCea]

Google might not be ranking the forum like they use to, due to some of the factors that have led to the decline in quality there as we all know about, they also are showing you different results in Europe versus the US searchers.

Look at the indexed pages on any site and that will tell you a story.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=995&bih=618&q=site:forums.digitalpoint.com/*&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&....com/*&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&....com/*&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

 

[dutchbb]

Of course the number of indexed pages is not the only thing that matters in SEO. I rather have 1,000 pages that rank on the first page for important keywords than 100,000 pages that do not make it into the first two pages. I just do not find DP that much in the first pages.

I personally think vBSEO would get them higher in the SERPs, but the admin probably is so short-sighted about it that he doesn't even want to give it a try.

I can only speak for our forums, but I have seen clear evidence that vBSEO has brought our site higher up in the SERPs.

 

[AnthonyCea]

With no URL's in Google's main index or few, you have a snowball chance in hell at garnering search engine traffic.

If you feel vB SEO is good for you, that is great, but DP has a lot more indexed pages than a lot of forums running vB SEO, check V7N out versus DP and you will see.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&....com/*&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

 

[dutchbb]

With no URL's in Google's main index or few, you have a snowball chance in hell at garnering search engine traffic.

If you feel vB SEO is good for you, that is great, but DP has a lot more indexed pages than a lot of forums running vB SEO.

I do not even think vBSEO increases the number of indexed pages actually. If they claim that, then I think they are wrong. The main benefit for us was better ranking.

DP is so popular that it really doesn't matter much. I bet that most of their traffic doesn't even come from people discovering their site through Google.

 

[AnthonyCea]

Yes it is, Shawn stated that Google is the largest source of traffic for DP over the years many times, so indexed pages do matter, they determine the amount of traffic Google can send you.

 

[dutchbb]

Yes, but are those people discovering the site by typing a popular keyword, or by typing in the website name?

 

[AnthonyCea]

Just like anyone hits a site, based on search terms entered in Google.

 

[dutchbb]

Hm. Did you read my reply? I repeat: do they find the site by typing "Digital point" or by typing a popular keyword like "admin forum".

In fact, "admin forum" ranks "theadminzone.com" on #1 and forums.digitalpoint.com only at #5...

And for "administrator(s) forum" they aren't even on the first pages that I checked.

 

[AnthonyCea]

Digital Point has a webmaster and SEO related keyword profile, in addition we did build a great General Chat and political forum, at least it was great until the place imploded by bad management, it is not the same forum it once was when I was there.

 

[digitalpoint]

Yes, but are those people discovering the site by typing a popular keyword, or by typing in the website name?

For those curious...

For the last 12 months for digitalpoint.com...

• 72.56% of all traffic is from search engines (this number is actually rising... it was 74.87% for the last 30 days)
• 16.68% is direct traffic
• 10.75% is from referring sites

Top 10 keywords used to come to site via search engines...

• adsense
• gooogle
• hotfile premium link generator
• keyword tracker
• keyword suggestion tool
• digital point
• vbulletin 4
• hottest girl in the world
• digitalpoint
• digital point forum

Random notes...

• Overall traffic steadily increases month to month.
• 10s of millions of visitors in the last year are from search engines.
• Less than 0.1% of search engine traffic are from branded keywords (digitalpoint, digital point, dp, etc.)
• The top non-branded keyword phrases (non digitalpoint related keywords) bring in over 100,000 visitors per year each.
• Google is by FAR the #1 search engine referrer, with Bing #2 and Yahoo #3.
• Search engine traffic came via 956,560 unique keyword phrases.

The best things vBSEO does are things we already do internally. Is vBSEO worth the price for most forums? Yes. Is it something that is a good fit for us? No.

BTW - "admin forum" is not a terribly popular keyword phrase (about 12,000 global searches per month). I can't recall any phrase with the word "forum" in it that actually garnered enough traffic to make going after those phrases worth the time. If you are going to spend the time chasing keywords, you would be better off going after "system administration" (301,000 global searches in the last month vs. 12,100 for "admin forum").

 

[Marc]

Voted not very important. Back when I was using vbulletin I would have comsidered it to be important, however then I bought an invision licence and found that if the software is built right in the firstplace you can do without the overhead of things like this. Much more can be done by your own intervention rather than relying on scripts and tends to ensure you monitor your forum a lot better IMO

 

[Floris]

Not important to me at all.

I completely agree. vBSEO should stick what they do best, be the Norton Slug to vBulletin the OS.
I rather have it done right, and done well.