Vbulletin Seo

[Umit]

Do you think static looking URLs are better for vbullletin?

( /t2014-thread-title.html instead of /showthread.php?t=2014 )

i liked vbseo.com but i am not sure how beneficial this is...

[md_doc]

Over at forums.opensourcetutorials.com I have made my urls so they are not query strings urls.

Back when I set it up everyone said you had to do it. I am not sure if that is true anymore or not. BUT if you are planning on actually putting the name of the thread and the name of the forum in the url I think it would have to help in terms of seo.

I am not sure how difficult it would be for you to program though that is what I would be worried about. More in terms of the load on the server than in the actual programming.

The other thing you have to remember with vBulletin is that it is set, by default, to only show the last 30 days. This is why the archive is super important, if not more important than the actual forum itself.

If you do spend the time to make your urls more seo friendly you will want to and you can change the forums 1 by 1 (or if you know sql you can do them all at once with a simple sql statement) to default to show ALL threads not just the last 30 days.

[Neteffects]

Static gets more traffic and easier to link too, but I dont like it if you cant jump to last post and such anymore.

[Oliver]

Static gets more traffic and easier to link too, but I dont like it if you cant jump to last post and such anymore.I would love to see you post some stats that actually show an increase in traffic after using the static-urls hack...

vB *Doesn't* need any work done to it out of the box in order for it to be Search Engine Friendly.

[sufyaaan]

In terms of site saturation, static URLs play a vital role as per my experience and knowledge. But it won't benefit if your site is full of crap and has a small # of backlinks.

[Oliver]

Have you got any proof that using static URL's actually has any benefit in terms of your site getting crawled?

I've got forums that use both static, and dynamic URL's - there is absoutley no noticable difference in the speed it takes these sites to get crawled and indexed.

[Umit]

Oliver, i am using static-urls ( thread-number.html ) and i belive increase on traffic but there is no way to serve you some stats and prove it.

i think, the #1 benefit is
Static urls easier to link

Hey Sufyaan;

In terms of site saturation, static URLs play a vital role as per my experience and knowledge. But it won't benefit if your site is full of crap and has a small # of backlinks.

what if the dynamic forum urls have enough amount of back link?

[sufyaaan]

Oliver, i am using static-urls ( thread-number.html ) and i belive increase on traffic but there is no way to serve you some stats and prove it.

i think, the #1 benefit is

Hey Sufyaan;


what if the dynamic forum urls have enough amount of back link?
If your site has got dynamic URLs with shorter and fewer parameters, then you shouldn't loose sleep over it. IMHO, the problem would be when you have many lengthy parameters in the URLs.

[rustybrick]

Guys,

It is all about the number of variables in the URLs. vBulletin forums are fine out of the box, the URLs at most contain 2 parameters for all the good content.

But when building your own solution, you need to be aware that going beyond two parameters will cause indexing issues at the search engines.

[sufyaaan]

Straight from Google Guidelines for Webmasters at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html


If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

[Oliver]

That doesn't show anything.

If google ignored any URL containing variables, Google's index would be tiny.

Really - URL's with querystrings are fine.

[Umit]

That doesn't show anything.

If google ignored any URL containing variables, Google's index would be tiny.

Really - URL's with querystrings are fine.
but webmasters (at least me) prefer to link static urls IMHO...

http://forums.seroundtable.com/ thread62-p2.html
instead of this;
http://forums.seroundtable.com/showthread.php?t=62&page=2

[Oliver]

I couldn't care less whether the URL is static or not - It's the content on the page I care about - not how pretty the URL is.

I'd venture to say that 99% of webmasters out there feel the same too.

[Umit]

I couldn't care less whether the URL is static or not - It's the content on the page I care about - not how pretty the URL is.

I'd venture to say that 99% of webmasters out there feel the same too.
OKey, lets change the subject: "why blogs are very good at SERPs"

-they get lot BLs +1
-clean html code +1
-nice content +1
-human friendly URLs ???

[Oliver]

Start a new thread - this one is about vB SEO :)

[rustybrick]

Guys, this forum will get indexed fine with the URLs they have. Or go to other vb forums and try searching on the page's title.

[Umit]

:) Okey OKey...

but last question, sub domain or sub folder?
http://forums.seroundtable.com vs http://www.seroundtable.com/ forums/

[rustybrick]

:) Okey OKey...

but last question, sub domain or sub folder?
http://forums.seroundtable.com vs http://www.seroundtable.com/ forums/
Matter of preference.

[a389951l]

Guys, this forum will get indexed fine with the URLs they have. Or go to other vb forums and try searching on the page's title.

There are plenty of cases of high index & traffic sites that use the urls out of the box from vB.

Digitalpoint (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2005-09,GGGL:en&q=site%3Aforums.digitalpoint.com)
vBulletin (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2005-09,GGGL:en&q=site%3Awww.vbulletin.com%2Fforum%2F)

[md_doc]

There are plenty of cases of high index & traffic sites that use the urls out of the box from vB.

Digitalpoint (site:forums.digitalpoint.com)
vBulletin (site:www.vbulletin.com/forum/)

I 100% agree...

However, you will notice, that the high indexed/high traffic sites do the two following things.

1. By default all threads are shown "From The Beginning" this means every single thread is shown. This is now the default for vB 3.5 but was not the case if you were using earlier versions of 3.0.

2. They modify their archive script such that the title of the thread is in the url of the archive page...

example

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/archive/index.php/what-happens-if-i-change-my-url/t-712.html

which links back to the main thread. The title in the thread is not a default you have to modify the archive script.

You will notice this is done all over the place at devhsed's sites as well. When we came up with this idea and adding, almost to the point of spamming, links back to the regular forum the traffic on the site increased a lot along with increased indexes.

[a389951l]

2. They modify their archive script such that the title of the thread is in the url of the archive page...


Yeah I have seen several sites change the archive script. vB certainly doesn't and does fine with its archive but then again they are such a huge site with tons of backlinks.

I wonder if one could test the effectiveness of making all of these changes and the effect on the number of pages indexed and/or ranking.

[RankManDude]

Building your PageRank can be a little tricky and
expensive. I build my PageRank purely using grace domains & seeking
software. There is a newsletter out for it that might help and I think
it comes with the software too.

[Joeychgo]

There are plenty of cases of high index & traffic sites that use the urls out of the box from vB.

Digitalpoint (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2005-09,GGGL:en&q=site%3Aforums.digitalpoint.com)
vBulletin (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2005-09,GGGL:en&q=site%3Awww.vbulletin.com%2Fforum%2F)


This is very true. In general, vBSEO is not needed to have a well spidered and well ranking forum. Bu there is an article im working on that will give you a few ideas as to how to enhance the vBulletin SEO (http://www.vbulletin-faq.com/vbulletin-seo.htm) -

What vBSEO gives you is static looking URLS, with the thread name in the url..SO there is a keyword advantage. IMO this is really only useful as 'icing on the cake' -

[Joe Ward]

There is really no need to debate the effectiveness of static URLs. Depending on the system in place, they can have minor to major SEO impact. Here are some Google snippets on the topic (http://www.vbseo.com/f2/google-com-dynamic-vs-static-urls-2466/). In the case of vBulletin, it turns out to be very significant due to the many duplicate URLs to non-unique content, resulting in a massive loss of link authority/consensus.

We've also received some info regarding input about vBSEO from Google reps (http://www.vbseo.com/f2/copyright-info-7040/#post41542):


I had the chance to sit with Vanessa Fox & Amanda Teal of Google not long after I had installed vbseo. Just me & 2 very nice members of the the Google Webmaster Central (formerly Google Sitemaps) team for about an hour.

We talked extensively about vbseo & vBulletin related stuff. Both of them had the same reaction to my description of what vbseo does. They both thought it sounded like a great thing for someone to do with their vBulletin forum.

I also had a similar (but much shorter) chat with Matt Cutts who had the same opinion.
Remember, that vBSEO is far more than just a CRU (Content Relevant URL) rewriting package. It's a full vBulletin SEO solution (http://www.vbseo.com/purchase/). You can check out our vBSEO demo (http://www.vbseo.com/demo/) to get a sense of what else is included.

We're particularly excited about our new linkback (http://www.vbseo.com/ping-trackback/) & social networking features. In fact, if you click any of the links to our site, you'll generate what we call a RefBack and start some automatic link building! :)