vBSEO - anyone use?

[kuyenmotdivad]

I just started my board and i bought it. I thought it was a cool addition to add to my vbulletin and i really like it alot.

Just been reading the reviews about it and it looks really good.

Question: Did you have to edit any of your vBulletin files to install vbSEO?

[xjuliox]

No file edits. I just uploaded the vbseo files installed a product file and that was it.

[MRGTB]

Well I guess using it from the start is as good as using it later on, at least you don't have loads of URL's indexed in Google already that are going to have to be re-indexed when vBSEO is installed. Which is better really, I'd say from a fresh install is the best option myself.

[jeffinj]

I just bought it for my forum.
I'll post Google analytics report on my forum after a few weeks.

Hopefully it should work.

[diosrl]

I don't think a few weeks will be enough. I am not sure about buying it for my forum, at least not yet. I'd better go for the project tools and the blogs, instead of vbseo.

I really don't like some things i've read here, especially the lack of uninstalling options, and the encryption. And ofcourse, it's price.

Also, I don't understand why Jelsoft do not put some kind of friendly-url's in the future vbulletin releases. It's not such a big deal, and it looks nice. Or maybe they already have the vbseo company, and it's only some different way to make some more money

[xjuliox]

I only had vbseo for 3 weeks and i can already see it working for me.

[mihai11]

From my experience with Google.... it is not reccomended to buy SEO tools. Google hates almost all things about SEO because SEO means to cheat on its results. From my experience, good content is the way to go. If you aim for a quality web site you should not be very concerned with SEO. Some things .... like URL rewriting can be good but that's about it.

[Dean C]

From my experience with Google.... it is not reccomended to buy SEO tools. Google hates almost all things about SEO because SEO means to cheat on its results. From my experience, good content is the way to go. If you aim for a quality web site you should not be very concerned with SEO. Some things .... like URL rewriting can be good but that's about it.

That's not true at all. There's nothing wrong with optimizing your pages to enhance your search engine presence.

I don't think a few weeks will be enough. I am not sure about buying it for my forum, at least not yet. I'd better go for the project tools and the blogs, instead of vbseo.

I really don't like some things i've read here, especially the lack of uninstalling options, and the encryption. And ofcourse, it's price.

Also, I don't understand why Jelsoft do not put some kind of friendly-url's in the future vbulletin releases. It's not such a big deal, and it looks nice. Or maybe they already have the vbseo company, and it's only some different way to make some more money

vBSEO is not encrypted anymore FYI

[mihai11]

That's not true at all. There's nothing wrong with optimizing your pages to enhance your search engine presence.

Vbulletin is quite search engine friendly as it is. Over-optimization as I've seen done on some websites:

http://site.com/keyword/keyword/keyword.php

does a lot of harm to your position in Google.

Also, contrary to popular belief, the META keywords are not used in Google for years. There was a spam-boom of the META keywords some 5-6 years ago. This is not true for all engines... for example more primitive engines like MSN (Microsoft) still seems to use the META keywords in their algorithm but for this reason they are more vulnerable to SPAM.

What can be done with good results is this:
1) URL rewriting
2) Using your keywords in key-positions (like titles, bold or italic text)


Like I said ... the list is short. Maybe you could come up with more SEO 'goodies'.


Of course, here we are speaking about ON-PAGE SEO, which is what VBSEO does. OFF-PAGE SEO is another discussion .... and a more interesting one in my opinion.

[MRGTB]

I do think Mihai11 has a good point though when he says your main goal should be on good quality content. But in the same breath, I don't really see how you can do that with forum software when you just get members making short replies etc. And starting threads about off topic stuff, that can't really be classed as quality content as such!

To do that you really should be using alternative software like a Blog system, or Website HTML pages instead. Where you didcate the total content posted by creating long orginal articles etc yourself all the time, rather than havng to rely on members to post content for you.

Forums are just chit chat sites really. And if you main goal is to create a site with top quality content, your using the wrong software with a forum. Because you can never second guess what your members will post - and in most cases it's just small talk replies.

[mihai11]

I do think Mihai11 has a good point though when he says your main goal should be on good quality content. But in the same breath, I don't really see how you can do that with forum software when you just get members making short replies etc. And starting threads about off topic stuff, that can't really be classed as quality content as such!

To do that you really should be using alternative software like a Blog system, or Website HTML pages instead. Where you didcate the total content posted by creating long orginal articles etc yourself all the time, rather than havng to rely on members to post content for you.

Forums are just chit chat sites really. And if you main goal is to create a site with top quality content, your using the wrong software with a forum. Because you can never second guess what your members will post - and in most cases it's just small talk replies.

It is true, that you cannot control what your members are saying, but what I have in mind right now is a technical forum. One good way to boost a technical forum is to write interesting articles (like it is done on vb.org). Several times when I was having discussion on other forums I created links to some pages from vb.org because they where highly relevant.

I think that writing such articles for a technical forum definitively has benefits. And if it works for technical forums ... then maybe it can be expanded to other areas as well.

[bboy]

My only interest in vBSEO is purely for the friendly URL's. I don't expect any advantage in terms of search engine rankings but the human friendly URL's does have an impact to users IMO. I sincerely hope we will see this brought to vB4.0.

[Mazinger]

I like the way vBSEO make keywords for thread also. For example, if the thread name is 'Get vBulletin license now'... vBulletin default will make the keywords 'Get vBulletin license now, (vb global kewords)'. While in vBSEO, it will be 'Get, vBulletin, license, now, Get vBulletin license now, (vb global kewords)'.

[VinceFreeman]

OK, so just to clarify, does vbseo simply do on-site optimization? With the competitive nature of SEO and relatively low power of "meta" and other overused ons-site tactics, it seems like it wouldn't help all that much.......?

[Dean C]

OK, so just to clarify, does vbseo simply do on-site optimization? With the competitive nature of SEO and relatively low power of "meta" and other overused ons-site tactics, it seems like it wouldn't help all that much.......?

Pretty much.