Hi there, I was just wondering, is there one forum style which is much better at achieving higher search engine ranking than the other? I would be guessing that VBulletin would be much better for SEO, just because it isn't available for free. Would this guess be correct? If so, is there much of a difference between the two? Thanks for any help.
vBulletin is a very SEO friendly forum platform, wouldn't be surprised if it actually was the SE friendliest forum platform at the moment, it comes very SE friendly and with minor modifications made you can get it very SE friendly. phpBB on the other hand isin't as SEO friendly as vBulletin; however can be modificated and the SEO can be increased, but I would always recommend vBulletin in front of phpBB, I've managed both phpBB forums and vB forums, so my words described above are based on my own experience. Also, not sure about phpBB3 though, haven't really checked if its SE friendly, but somehow I believe it is much SE friendlier than phpBB2. Regards, Meti
I have had every mybb site I run successfully indexed and rank well in SERPs with little to no difficulty. http://www.mybboard.net <- FREE You can search how many pages of talkvideogames.com are indexed..well over 100k.
Well IMO, PHPBB isn't all that SEO anymore... but you can google PHPBB SEO Checklist, and in about 10 minutes make it fairly so.
I was told SMF was very good, its free and supposed to be seo friendly, but i have not had the chance to try it myself yet.
Vbulletin is best. They also have a built in SEO system in the general options. You could even go all the way and buy vbSEO if your planning on search engines becoming your main traffic source to the forum.
You guys forgot IPB(Invision Power Board) I owned a IPB forum and I've lot of backlinks + indexed pages. - Imran
I don't agree with you, whilst I prefer vB in front of IPB, I still IPB boards are very modern, SE friendly and great for both users/administration. - Meti
Exactly, In IPB you have lots of feature, Lot of mods/skins and great support aswell, but not cheap - Imran
I agree with this. I have used myBB and been able to rank very highly in the SERPs in competitive fields without paying a penny for SEO add-ons. I found it a little less straighforward with phpBB and vBulletin.
And a BMW is better than a dodge neon...you can't compare a paid solution to a free one. Claiming that VB is better is just defacto response for many people but is it reality?
Ok its just rumors spreading aroudn on which is better than which. You can't really tell for sure. I'd say they pretty much equal. Believe it or not the Open Source forums are pretty good. And lots of people just automatically associate price with quailty but htats not true.
There might be some rumour and uninformed comment, but there are also reflections based on personal experience. It is an exercise for the reader to extract what he/she feels is appropriate or valuable information.
Ya relections based on personal expierences. But there are lots of people who hear, vB is the best for seo and then they just automatically think that and continue to spread the word. I'm not saying it isn't but in terms of software for forums right now, paid is not always best. There's a lot more developers working on the open source softwares right now. And vB you it doesn't say it comes SEO friendly you need to get vbseo. SMF on the other had is seo friendly. Again I'm not saying vB is not the best, but its debatable and probably slightly different in different situations. There's just too many people simply screaming out vB is the best whereever they get the chance if you know what I mean.
Not Really Union. If vB was really that much apparently better, lots of large forums would just pay for it and switch to it. Yet you still see lots of Phpbb big boards running.