Sometimes I think I was way better with vB 3x + vBSEO

D.O.A. said:
I have the same setup as you, for years, except my traffic has gone literally through the roof, 10,000 people on the forums at once is my record now, from maybe 150-200 people two years ago. I don't attribute more than 2% of our success to the new tools we use (xenforo). Sorry to hear things are rough for you though. I suffered slightly in the move from vbseo at the very beginning (aka the day this was released :p) but nothing that impacted on us like your situation. Why would your members up and leave? or are they just lurkers? those are my first thoughts.
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The traffic that is decreased is all the 'referrals' from Google. Our direct traffic and all the members who have been with us for long are still with us. The Google traffic constitutes a large part of the website (which isn't Good) and it got affected because of whatever reasons.

Members still sign-up but since the overall traffic is low; the sign-up rate has gone down as well.
 
TheBigK said:
The traffic that is decreased is all the 'referrals' from Google. Our direct traffic and all the members who have been with us for long are still with us. The Google traffic constitutes a large part of the website (which isn't Good) and it got affected because of whatever reasons.

Members still sign-up but since the overall traffic is low; the sign-up rate has gone down as well.
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I see, this kinda happened to me as well, but in time we bounced back... I put it down to the members and staff more then my SEO skills (none) that we continued to grow despite the changeover (we're all ex-vb so with most members xenforo went down like a lead balloon at first)... anyway the people on the forums posted great content > attracted more visitors who signed up and posted more content > snowball effect. I don't know what my page rank is and I don't really care :p ... but that's my idea of great SEO... great (original) content.
 
D.O.A. said:
I see, this kinda happened to me as well, but in time we bounced back... I put it down to the members and staff more then my SEO skills (none) that we continued to grow despite the changeover (we're all ex-vb so with most members xenforo went down like a lead balloon at first)... anyway the people on the forums posted great content > attracted more visitors who signed up and posted more content > snowball effect. I don't know what my page rank is and I don't really care :p ... but that's my idea of great SEO... great (original) content.
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How long did you take to recover after conversion from vB to XF?
 
TheBigK said:
How long did you take to recover after conversion from vB to XF?
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2 months, tops. Back then we had numbers on our forums like I'd never imagined (over 500 with 2/3rd logged in). But I'd like to stress the point it was the people posting on the forums that 'brought us back' from our ****ty google results when we canned vbulletin with no replacement vbseo rules used. I've never really tried to funnel people (for a better word) into the site, rather the crew we started with just kept the place active, and it grows from that. I can't say I have many competitors at what we do, it's 100% NSFW but it's not porn either, so I have a wide range of people from irl cops to 40 year old soccer moms, neckbeards, trolls, and 20 year olds who look like vanilla ice, posting there. I think content was a big part of our success basically, the forum is just a tool.
 
TheBigK we converted a month earlier than your board. Also previously on vBully with vBSeo and now on WP and XF and I experienced the same drops as you did.

However we didn't do any redirects at all and decided to just start clean and let google reindex the entire site in the months to come which it did.

After a steep decline after converting it has been very stable since. However we do depend much on race game releases and the running motorsport seasons for top activity.

I think you suffer from the same decease as I do: instantly trying to fix things when they are "broken". Just do what you did before you saw the decline as you did a great job before, you haven't lost the magic for sure. It will all come back at some point, don't worry.

However one point of concern. Add "forum or forums" back in the title of the board. You don't want to know how many people search for "content + forum" in Google and you miss out on that easy traffic.

Don't worry too much and just continue as before. Good luck man.
 
One thing I see that was wrong is you went from /forum to /community, all your old vb stuff and the new xf stuff was mixed so google literally de-indexed and reindexed your forum. Your forum titles were letting you rank in higher positions for keywords. Then you changed the domains. In a small sense your went from using your old domain name, like E.g OldDomain.com to using a new domains like NewDomain.com. Of course your going to see a drop in traffic.
 
eagle eyes said:
@TheBigK hey, how are you doing now?

Did you have 300x250 bar back then? It creates a noise ratio.
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Traffic's remained constant and it's grown slightly since posting this thread. We're a news blog and that brings us loads of traffic intermittently. But we haven't gone nearer to where we were, still half-way through the journey.

Regarding 300x250 bar - it was introduced a few months ago and has stayed there since long. It does add to the noise - but we now display 20 posts per page, which I believe takes care of the content to ad ratio. We haven't seen any negative impact on the search results. We are working towards going totally ad-free in coming months; hopefully we'll realise our goal.

I've stopped bothering about SEO. With Google being the top search engine; you never know what tomorrow will look like.
 
Are you planning to disable that sidebar for thread pages? Ad free by how much?


TheBigK said:
Traffic's remained constant and it's grown slightly since posting this thread. We're a news blog and that brings us loads of traffic intermittently. But we haven't gone nearer to where we were, still half-way through the journey.

Regarding 300x250 bar - it was introduced a few months ago and has stayed there since long. It does add to the noise - but we now display 20 posts per page, which I believe takes care of the content to ad ratio. We haven't seen any negative impact on the search results. We are working towards going totally ad-free in coming months; hopefully we'll realise our goal.

I've stopped bothering about SEO. With Google being the top search engine; you never know what tomorrow will look like.
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eagle eyes said:
Are you planning to disable that sidebar for thread pages? Ad free by how much?
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No, the sidebar has been found very useful by the members. We'll serve our existing commitments while we redo our business model and then look at going ad-free. It will take about a year, I believe. But 2015 should see the transition.
 
TheBigK said:
No, the sidebar has been found very useful by the members. We'll serve our existing commitments while we redo our business model and then look at going ad-free. It will take about a year, I believe. But 2015 should see the transition.
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Do you use Xenporta or Simple Portal for front page? How do you generate traffic with news?
Thanks!
 
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