XF 1.5 xenForo Google results fall behind vBulletin

[ekool]

We run a very large number of community sites (upwards of 200). We started moving a few sites over to the xenForo platform over the past few years and we do prefer this product over vBulletin.

However, Google prefers vBulletin. What can we do about this?

Here are a few examples to illustrate:
*) in google webmaster tools we receive notices about vBulletin patches that are available, we have not received any concerning xenForo
*) Google search results for a vBulletin forum landing page will have it's title prepended with the brand tag "Forums: ", xenForo titles are not.
*) We have started up sites in xenForo with SEO in mind, at the same time as a competitor starting up a vBulletin version. Our site shows more activity (traffic and posts), however the vBulletin competition's site still ranks higher in Google results. To be fair, in Bing we rank higher but the vast majority of our search traffic comes from Google.

The conclusion seems to be that Google is aware of vBulletin and not xenForo. Is there anything being done about this, or is there any interest in doing anything about this?

We prefer the xenForo product, but at the end of the day we are a business specializing in forum communities, so if our main source of traffic will always recognize vBulletin over xenForo then to remain competitive we will be forced to stop investing in xenForo licenses and continue with vBulletin. At this point any new sites we build are being done in vBulletin 4 for this very reason.

 

[Fred.]

What do you mean by "SEO built inside adminCP?"

He probable means the standard SEO features in Xenforo like Full friendly url's, Convert URLs to Page Titles in the Options menu.

 

[sross]

Here is a screenshot of my stats before and after migrating, for those interested. The before was fairly stable idea of my site traffic (we're not in a growth phase or anything). I left out Feb as this was our transition time to xF and the dust was still settling.

 

[Fred.]

I think SEO is difficult these days, before we knew kind of how we could influence the google results. Now Google is changing the algorithm and ranking factors continually.
I know Content, links and Rankbrain are the 3 most important factors. And Rankbrain is smarter than me.
Now you really have to have all the best to get great results. (That's good) But it's hard for the Small ones.

I know my problem is probably thin content, I'm trying to do something about it. But it comes with a cost. Someone has to write it, and good writers are not cheap. $$$

 

[erich37]

I know that everyone including Google itself is saying that "Meta Keywords" are not relevant anymore.
Still many top-ranking websites are using "Meta Keywords".

<meta name="keywords" content="iphone, forum, smartphone, apple, blablabla" />

Did anyone of you guys check whether adding "Meta Keywords" to your XF-Forum will increase your position in search-results ?
Just do a test and verify....

I am wondering:

everybody here is saying that "Google" does not care about "META Keywords" anymore..... and therefore XenForo is not using "META Keywords".
There is not even a field available, at which "META Keywords" could be entered, if a Forum-webmaster wants to do so.


I just checked www.youtube.com (which is owned by Google) and each and every YouTube-page is using "META Keywords".........

 

[Mr Lucky]

maybe they use them for internal searches or some other reason, but not for search results:

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