Migrating site using vBSEO to Xenforo URLs?

[cmeinck]

From what I've been reading, vBSEO will not support XenForo -- at least initially. If this is true, how would a site migrate to XenForo without losing SERPs of current URL's. Would there be redirects? Not sure if/how this would work?

I do know that I would not want to have to wait for Google to completely reindex my forums.

 

[Puntocom]

I find xF to be pretty SEO out of the box.

 

[Erik]

I would say that is actually bad Brandon from an SEO viewpoint. A 301 is optimal in one step, search engine engineers such as Matt Cutts has stated over the years that multiple 301's to arrive at the correct URL is extremely bad, and Google don't like it at all as spammers use these exact techniques to manipulate other tactics, by redirecting a bot and trying to capture them in endless loops, spoof content and all sorts of nonsense that goes on.

I would always recommend one clean 301, not redirects upon redirects.

This is what I would be worried about if I were you. It's going to need a solution that is just 1 redirect, otherwise you pretty much lose the SEO benefits.

 

[Carlos]

I will wait on easy transition of url's from my vb site [that has vbseo installed] to xenforo before purchasing....[it for that instance].

But it is 'assuring' to hear proof that it can be done. I will be watching this topic.

 

[John L.]

Sorry, first post and I felt the need to chime in. I have a few vBSEO licenses myself so this would be an issue for me as well. While I made the choice to go with their software, I also made the choice to buy vBulletin as well. My problem here is that I don't want to start fresh with what Google has already indexed from my site. My only hope is that a redirect of some kind would be implemented for those with the software. Would anyone from the development team care to expand on how feasible it is to provide such a solution?

 

[John L.]

Cool, I will give that a shot when I have the chance, if it's really that simple than no problem at all .

 

[Mike]

Rules need to be developed that are specific to your configuration. Those can then redirect to the correct pages like showthread.php?t=123.

 

[Luke F]

Rules need to be developed that are specific to your configuration. Those can then redirect to the correct pages like showthread.php?t=123.

Looks like I'm going to have to sacrifice all but my thread URLs then :/

 

[Mike]

Looks like I'm going to have to sacrifice all but my thread URLs then :/

Why do you say that? Unless they conflict with one of XF's rules, it should be possible to generate rules to use. (Member pages without IDs may be a challenge.)

 

[Luke F]

Thread URLs are pretty much the only ones I have with IDs

 

[Markos]

The problem is to redirect the old vbseo-urls to the new xenforo-url for "save" the positions in google serp...

 

[Ingenious]

I don't think you'll lose much if the member pages cannot be redirected. Surely it's the threads that matter, on mine these do have a thread number in them. So I am hopeful they can be saved. Looks like I will lose the forums themselves (which have no ID) but there's not many and I guess I can manually write rules for each one?

 

[cmeinck]

They don't need to be.

RRs were used to place relevant content higher up in the html source code. This could have been helpful for vB if you were running a graphic heavy website or had messy html. But since xF is highly optimized out of the box, thankfully, we would no longer need to rely on such template modifications. The html code is semantic and the actual content is already placed before the forum header in the source code!

This is real interesting. When I first migrated to vB4, I saw a substantial dip in Adsense, since I had not set up my RRs. I had no idea RR's would have such an impact. Once implemented, the numbers spiked. From what you are saying, moving the proper HTML (content) to the top, Adsense *might* match or exceed my existing numbers attained by vB4 with RRs.

 

[dutchbb]

This is a huge one indeed. Both XF and vBSEO could benefit from providing a decent tool to redirect the existing URLs in a Google-friendly way. A re-index would be pretty bad, and let's not forget all posted internal URL's that stop working without a redirect in place.

 

[Parminder Singh Chahal]

I don't think you'll lose much if the member pages cannot be redirected. Surely it's the threads that matter, on mine these do have a thread number in them. So I am hopeful they can be saved. Looks like I will lose the forums themselves (which have no ID) but there's not many and I guess I can manually write rules for each one?

You wont loose your forums either.. You probabbly use vbseo or some other script to rewrite your urls but vb urls for forums have ids in them so there is no chance of loosing anything... even if there were no ids you could still write redirects for each forum... I am waiting for the script to be available ... will post the rules for all the different vbseo url settings as I have been using every setting vbseo has for urls on atleast one of my forums

@Dutchbb Redirecting urls is a peice of cake... You dont need vbseo's help for that... This script has got everything it takes to rank well and all you need to do is make sure you do your redirects right.

I will purchase a lot of copies once XF becomes available... I have been stuck with vb 3.xxx because vb4 has been such a disappointment and XF is just what I was looking for Bring it on XF

 

[motowebmaster]

I'm sure there will be plenty of experienced feedback on this issue after XF is released. One of my site's URLs won't represent a significant issue if Google has to re-index, but the other will need to retain as much as possible if it were migrated.

My experience with IPB has shown that integrated SEO features is a benefit, but regardless VBSEO is a great piece of software that provides tools to make the most of your community's content. One of my vb3 sites continues to out-rank more popular competing communities running phpBB3, vb4, and Joomla/SMF. If a biker can more easily find my content, they are more likely to post something useful to others.

 

[Carlos]

Hahaha....I was going to come into this thread saying "Its been discussed before." Or something of that line.. *slaps head repeatively* wake up, wake up.

I meant, I thought this was a new thread, until I realized I had posted in here. lol.

 

[dutchbb]

@Dutchbb Redirecting urls is a peice of cake... You dont need vbseo's help for that... This script has got everything it takes to rank well and all you need to do is make sure you do your redirects right.

Are you talking about non-vbseo users who switch to XF?

Because I don't think it's that easy to switch from vBSEO to XF without help from either vbseo or XF. vBSEO uses their own proprietary system with decoded files. It would be best if vBSEO started support for XF (XFSEO, and allow vBSEO owners to change their license with them). vBSEO offers a lot more than just basic URL rewrites (like vB or XF) it's a complete SEO system, you seem to ignore that.

 

[Kier]

I'm curious to know what you think that vBSEO offers that XenForo does not, in the way of optimisation for search engines.

 

[dutchbb]

I'm curious to know what you think that vBSEO offers that XenForo does not, in the way of optimisation for search engines.

I have not seen the XF ACP, but to give one example; I do not assume it has the ability of adding custom rewrites in the ACP like so:

'^sponsors\.php$' => 'sponsors/'
'^links\.php$' => 'links/'
'^showgroups\.php$' => 'forumleaders/'
'^search\.php$' => 'search/'

There is other functionality other than basic URL rewriting in their ACP, I can provide you with a login to take a look if you'd like.

 

[Ingenious]

You wont loose your forums either.. You probabbly use vbseo or some other script to rewrite your urls but vb urls for forums have ids in them so there is no chance of loosing anything... even if there were no ids you could still write redirects for each forum... I am waiting for the script to be available ... will post the rules for all the different vbseo url settings as I have been using every setting vbseo has for urls on atleast one of my forums

Thanks - on mine there are no IDs, (eg. it's url/forum/general-discussion) so I'll need to write specific redirects for each forum, but it shouldn't take long.

I've decided I'm not going to let the worry of losing search engine placement stop me changing over. In some ways the perceived threat of this effectively holds you to ransom and locks you into a product. You have to consider that even in a worst case scenario, you still have your existing users and Google will, in time, re-index you even with no redirects.

@ Kier - I think a lot of this stems from people coming into vBSEO when they had vB3.x and nice urls were all the rage. Personally I can't see any reason why xF wouldn't be miles better than my vB3.x + vBSEO. Why? Because the code is better, quicker, and you don't have the complication of a critical add-on that needs constant updating and security patches.