vBSEO Converts

lazer

Well-known member
Hi all :)

This is a question to those large board ex-vB3.8 + vBSEO users that have switched over to xF.

Have you seen a decline in hits, visitors, pageviews or (more importantly) income since you made the switch?

Thanks.
 
Snake Oil.

A smart doctor once said, "The difference between humans and animals is humans want to take pills".
A smart admin once said, "The difference between good admins and bad admins is bad admins want vBSEO".
I think when vBSEO came out ... it probably was helpful. Now it probably isnt at all.
 
Income tanked, everything else went up.. strange i know but XF is so well thought out it left little room for the normal premium perks.. So i believe the income portion was simply because at this early stage vB has more to offer in the incentive area.. and also it took awhile for me to figure out how to get quality clicks and good ad placement.. It wasnt until XF added a few of those ad templates that things started to look up again.
 
Income tanked, everything else went up.. strange i know but XF is so well thought out it left little room for the normal premium perks.. So i believe the income portion was simply because at this early stage vB has more to offer in the incentive area.. and also it took awhile for me to figure out how to get quality clicks and good ad placement.. It wasnt until XF added a few of those ad templates that things started to look up again.
I'd be curious to hear more about the "income tanked" bit. As I consider moving my larger sites over to XF, maintaining my revenue will be the top concern right up there with member satisfaction. I don't really want to bankrupt myself to keep the members happy, but I'd like to think that the two would be compatible, but it seems like you're saying that your income went down as your member satisfaction went up.
 
I'd be curious to hear more about the "income tanked" bit. As I consider moving my larger sites over to XF, maintaining my revenue will be the top concern right up there with member satisfaction. I don't really want to bankrupt myself to keep the members happy, but I'd like to think that the two would be compatible, but it seems like you're saying that your income went down as your member satisfaction went up.
I moved over from vB 4.0.3 to XF Beta2 the The donations Plugin at the time was very inferior to what i had with vB.. also i had really good Adsense placement and the ability to show certain ads to certain user groups something i didnt know how to do with XF in those early days.. Since then alot of ad hooks have been added and some very good advertising plugins have been created.. I highly doubt my revenue would have decreased back then if i had the same options available that i do today..
 
I'm glad this thread has come alive, as I'm sure it will help other big board owners make the difficult decision about when to switch. Personally, I have to wait for v1.1 (pre-fixes) before I can do anything.

My advertising setup is fairly simple but with good returns - that's something I cannot afford to risk.
 
My concern is that the redirects, will not satisfy google.
Being that 85% of my traffic is from google, I can not afford a 50% reduction in ad revenue.

Subscriptions can hold off as they are not the cornerstone of my income.
 
What's the forum you're going to convert lazer?
I own a large "Tech Support" forum. If you would like to know the name, PC me Peter.
My concern is that the redirects, will not satisfy google.
Being that 85% of my traffic is from google, I can not afford a 50% reduction in ad revenue.

Subscriptions can hold off as they are not the cornerstone of my income.
My EXACT thoughts TCG....
 
I'm sorry to say but this doesn't make any sense. vBSEO has been very good to us, but I agree that XF doesn't need it.
Analogy problems acknowledged.

Updated:
"The difference between good admins and bad admins is bad admins want vBSEO for Xenforo".

FWIW, Most people are unconvinced the vBSEO approach will add much to Xenforo.
 
I used vBSEO back in the 3.x days but the egos and attitudes of the developers drove me off pretty quickly.
 
There is no doubting the power of vBSEO in the early days and now, to some extent.

I think that anyone serious about switching to xF needs to plan for a life without it...and that's it.

What I'm looking for is experiences from big board owners that used vBSEO in 3.8.x and have now been using xF for a period of time.
 
But see, the thing with vBSEO is what does it actually do that XenForo, vBulletin (standared), IPB, etc. doesn't do? When no one cared about adding header tags, rel="canonical", and whatnot, it would make a difference, but now, everyone does what they've done previously at this point.
 
I'm not sure if that is even at all possible given the situation that you currently have..
Why not just start from scratch?

What do you mean? The vBulletin 3.8 converter is very stable, and there's vBulletin 3.x redirects (there are versions as well for 4.x), and then there's also a 3rd party plugin that redirects vBSEO URLs to the vBulletin 3.x/4.x equivalent, so then he'd be set.
 
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