SEO - Site Visitors

[gregory1989]

Hi Guys,

Some of you may know, but I used to run VB for my wrestling forum but switched it over to Xenforo about 8 weeks ago. I have noticed that my visitors have been slashed in half since the switch which is granted as most of our indexed pages from google are gone and the current forum hasnt been properly indexed yet I dont think.

I was wondering though, how good is Xenfor for SEO? When I use VB I have SEO hacks/mods and my pages get indexed and become searchable within 2-3 weeks, yet for some reason I cant see any of my pages with Xenforo on google? Am I doing something wrong? (excuse the noobishness). Normally with VB I can just input my title/meta tags/description ect and eventually it gets picked up by google.

Is there also any plugins here for SEO? Ive had a look around but having found anything concrete.

Cheers and look forward to your responses.

Regards
Greg

 

[Divvens]

As per personal experience, XenForo's SEO has worked charms for me, the only additional addon I use is AzuCloud - http://xenforo.com/community/resources/azucloud-search-keyword-cloud.113/

At first it took time for our community threads/pages to get indexed, but google sends us a lot of visits for general query's for our subject of community.

 

[D.O.A.]

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/vbseo-redirects.27971/ perhaps?

 

[CTXMedia]

Try turning on Friendly URLs

Also, post a copy of your .htaccess file from the root of your site so that we can make sure the rewriting instructions are there to make friendly URLs work for you.

 

[gregory1989]

I mean its just weird, we have been on for almost 7 weeks now and I cant find any threads/posts on google what so ever.

As per personal experience, XenForo's SEO has worked charms for me, the only additional addon I use is AzuCloud - http://xenforo.com/community/resources/azucloud-search-keyword-cloud.113/

At first it took time for our community threads/pages to get indexed, but google sends us a lot of visits for general query's for our subject of community.

I also use that addon.

 

[gregory1989]

I have turned on friendly URL's. What difference should I notice if any??

 

[CTXMedia]

Your links will change from looking like this: http://www.wwehq.com/index.php?threads/job-1-news-reporter.308/
To this: http://www.wwehq.com/threads/job-1-news-reporter.308/

I've done a search for "site:www.wwehq.com/index.php?" and it's only really bringing back user profiles.

When I search for "site:www.wwehq.com/forum/" I get lots of links to your old vB based threads but none of them are working (they produce and XF error page) - which means you haven't got redirects in place. These are important and should have been in place from the very start, so I'd get those sorted ASAP.

The files and instructions are in the XF download package, but if you need a hand just ask.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[gregory1989]

This is my htaccess file:

Action application/x-httpd-php5 /cgi-bin/php
AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .php
Action phpini-cgi /cgi-bin/php.ini
#Mod_security can interfere with uploading of content such as attachments. If you
#cannot attach files, remove the "#" from the lines below.
#<IfModule mod_security.c>
#SecFilterEngine Off
#SecFilterScanPOST Off
#</IfModule>

ErrorDocument 401 default
ErrorDocument 403 default
ErrorDocument 404 default
ErrorDocument 500 default

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On

#If you are having problems with the rewrite rules, remove the "#" from the
#line that begins "RewriteBase" below. You will also have to change the path
#of the rewrite to reflect the path to your XenForo installation.
#RewriteBase /xenforo

#This line may be needed to enable WebDAV editing with PHP as a CGI.
#RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^(data/|js/|styles/|install/|favicon\.ico|crossdomain\.xml|robots\.txt) - [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L]
</IfModule>
<Files 403.shtml>
order allow,deny
allow from all
</Files>

Also with VBulletin we didnt copy the database over, we decided to do a fresh installation as we had a problem with spam registratios and posts ect o as a community we decided to start from fresh, so I am not sure how we would set up are direct from those pages to the front of wwehq.com

 

[CTXMedia]

Ah, okay, I'd assumed you'd migrated your database over to XF. Obviously in deciding to drop all of your previous content in favour of starting from scratch, you've effectively wiped the slate clean as far as Google is concerned too - so a big drop in traffic is to be expected.

There are over a thousand linked pages in Google but they're all pointing at your old vB threads and it will take a while for Google to drop those from the listings and replace them with your new XF content.

Unfortunately it is going to take a while - could be months - so just focus on building the content and the rest will come back up as more content is indexed.

One tip though - add this to the top of your .htaccess file:

Options -Indexes

This will tell Apache not to list the content of directories that don't have a HTML index file - such as your "/images" sub-directory and stop Google (and humans) being able to see the content of those directories.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[gregory1989]

Awesome thanks for your help buddy! Much appreciated!!