So if you bypassed all of this conversion complexity, with an established (authority) forum with decent serps, and just let Google reindex the new structure - what would happen? how long would it take to get your rankings back?
I don't want to blow all my traffic (revenue) but all of this seems like it may be complicated and unnecessary. It only took me a few weeks to get my traffic back when I changed from stock vB 3.8 to vBSEO'd urls...
Has anyone tried it?