Before I jump into vBulletin

Actually, No. I dont.


Again - we can debate and debate this. BUT lets look at some facts.

vBulletin Webmaster is ranked #3 on google for the term vBulletin

vbseo.com is not on the first 100 listings.

Same with Yahoo.

How about the term "vbulletin seo"..... vBulletin Webmaster is number 1 in google. Digital Point is 6 and 7. vbseo doesnt show up until page 3.

vBulletin Webmaster has 4-5 times as many pages indexed as vbseo.com according to Google. According to Yahoo, its even more ominous. vBulletin Webmaster has 25 times as many pages indexed in yahoo as does vbseo.com

vBulletin Webmaster does not use this hack.

All I am saying, is that this hack does not get you indexed or ranked. It may help slightly, but I dont believe its much help. Everyone is worried about how the url looks and duplicate content. I believe its all unecessary concern, and so far the proof is backing me up. Search engines are smarter and more capable then most of us give them credit for.

However, I will say this. I dont believe the hack will harm your SEO in any way.

Its just my opininon, that many entry level forum owners are being drawn into believing that this hack will get them ranked and indexed well. It wont. IMO this hack is, at best, the icing on your Forum SEO cake. More likely, the cherry on top of the icing.

 

For those of you who are new to SEO, I encourage you to look at joeychgo's post. He is demonstrating an important aspect of SEO that is valuable to point out.

Although his website is vbwebmaster.com, you will notice his consistent use of the anchor text "vBulletin" when linking back to his site throughout the post. He is even consistent enough to do this in his signature.

This inbound link anchor text helps to indicate to the search engines that his site is relevant for that term.

Thank-you for the feedback joeychgo. We appreciate hearing everyone's viewpoint. And the links in your post made it a great example of how to effectively use anchor text.

 

Exactly, and linking stratiegies is part of the 'flour' of that cake.

 

Actually that brings up an interesting idea. Part of the vBSEO process of eliminating duplicate content results in our inner forum and thread pages having higher PageRank than a typical vBulletin forum with dynamic URLs. Because alot of our customers have benefited by this boost in Google PageRank - this makes them a target for people who want to post solely for the purpose of developing a linkback from a high PageRank page (with or without anchor text).

To see an example, check out our website www.vbseo.com. We are a relatively new site so our main page PR is only 4 right now. But click on some of our forums. You'll notice they have PR. Take the announcements forum for example:

PR3 http://www.vbseo.com/f5/

Now click through into some of the threads and notice that those previous to the October 21st post (which occurred after the last visible PR update) have a typical PageRank of 3.

PR3 http://www.vbseo.com/f5/update-german-forums-1170/
PR3 http://www.vbseo.com/f5/vbseo-2-0-gold-build-2-released-1128/
PR3 http://www.vbseo.com/f5/vbseo-2-0-gold-now-available-purchase-938/

etc.

Try some of our other forums, and you will see the same effect to varying degrees.

Now try clicking some of the forums here at DigitalPoint. Although DP has an excellent PR of 7 for http://forums.digitalpoint.com/ and has been around for quite some time, you will not see Google PageRank spread through the forum display and thread pages as much.

If it were, it would pass even more PR to the pages linked to in joeychgo's anchor text loaded link backs.

It is good in one way, because it encourages people to contribute to your forum. But you want to make sure that the messages are actually meaningful. Case in point: While both joeychgo and I both include links in our posts and/or signatures, our messages are relevant contributions to the topic. You will find many others that spam forums and blogs in order to get linkbacks.

We have a couple of ways of helping to prevent that type of abuse:

1. We released a free plugin for vBulletin 3.5 called vBSEO Conditional Signatures. It allows you remove signatures and/or add rel=nofollow attributes to the links contained within them when the poster: (a) has not reach a certain # of posts (like here at DigitalPoint) and/or (b) has not posted a minimum word count in the post.

2. We have a feature for vBSEO users that automatically adds rel=nofollow attributes to all external links. It also supports a link whitelist so that certain links are allowed to go out without a rel=nofollow.

vBSEO Conditional Signatures - vBulletin Search Engine Optimization Plugin

Note: The above plugin was produced by the vBSEO team, but vBSEO is not required in order to install it.

 

Thats part of the flaw in your threoies though. You give too much value to PR. Ive actually been running around removing many of the rel=nofollow tags from vb 3.5. (by the way, I was one of the first to start pulling signatures out of visitor/search engine view. But that is more for saving of bandwidth then PR)

Strangely enough, people like me, Shawn (digitalpoint) and others, have managed to do quite well for several years as far as search engine ranking placement without mod rewrite or rel=nofollow. So explain to me why youre hack is necessary or important? If we can do well without it, then what does it really do? Once again -- where does your site rank for arguably its morst important keyword phrase - "vBulletin" ?

 

Really? I would definitely be interested in hearing more about your strategy in this regard.

I can understand that vBulletin.com, vBulletin Fans, DigitalPoint, SitePoint, and you, all rank first page. The vBulletin sites are obvious - DigitalPoint and SitePoint are great sites with lots of content including vBulletin stuff - and your site even has "vbulletin" right in the domain name.

But, I would be extremely curious to hear more about your stance on PageRank. I noticed that sites such as Tivo (PR6), Musician Forums (PR5), and WinAmp (PR8) are in the top 2 pages with little other than "Powered by vBulletin" in the page title (<TITLE>) and with the vBulletin copyright notice at the bottom. I see most of the results in the top 2 pages are predominantly PR5s or higher and quite a few of them have the vBulletin keyword occurring only in the title and copyright like the aforementioned.

I would like your input on how these sites ranked so highly for the term obviously without being very relevant to the term at all.

Since Google is based on the PageRank algorithm developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, I would also be interested in hearing your thoughts on what are the most important SEO factors for Google ranking since you apparently discount the value of PR?

 

You may be right when you say that some people may think the price of your product is worth the convenience of having forum SEO in a package when they don't know enough to make minor changes to the PHP files themselves.

My bias about that is if you are launching a forum without the necessary knowledge to do a little editing and customizing yourself, you have a lot more to worry about than the finer points of forum SEO. I've been through that recently trying to help someone who insisted on being a forum owner without the requisite knowledge to launch, promote, or maintain it - never again - it was a nightmare.

As for PR on internal pages, it's pretty much irrelevant other than the green bar in the toolbar. Mod_rewrite will get you that green bar but not much else.

 

Think about what you just said - and consider the answer. I know your smart enough to figure it out. IM not being a smart ass - just trying you to think outside of the box a bit.

Notice- 3 of the sites listed on page one below me, have a higher PR then I do. Notice 1 has lower PR then I do.

Think about it.

 

@joeychgo:

Thank-you for engaging me in this discussion. It really helps to get info regarding different perspectives.

Clearly SEO includes many different factors such as onpage optimization, linkbuilding (PageRank), anchor text, etc. Certainly one would not expect to see Google list websites in SERPs for a particular term in descending order of PageRank.

For the sites I mentioned above, I am sure you will agree that the term "vBulletin" is not very relevant at all. The SERPs I am seeing now show you as being 1 position lower than "Musicians Forums" and your site is "vBulletin Webmasters". Other than the "Powered by vBulletin" notice in the title of the Musicians forum along with the vBulletin copyright in the footer, there is nothing in particular about this site to make it reside higher in the SERPs than your site which is all about vBulletin apparently (or really why it is on page 1 at all for "vBulletin").

I would like your input on how these sites (Tivo, Musicians, WinAmp) ranked so highly for the term obviously without being very relevant to the term at all. Which SEO characteristics do you attribute to their high positioning for "vBulletin"?

 

Actually - im seeing www.vbwebmaster in 3rd place - after www.vBulletin.com and www.vbulletin-fans.com and followed by www.vbstyles.com - so the first 4 are relevant. THe last 6 are not.

Since those other sites are not about vBulletin, and surely dont have any anchor text such as vBulletin linking to them, and have various pageranks, what conclusions do you draw?

.

 

@joeychgo:

I was hopeful that you would provide a brief explanation of these "vBulletin" SERPs based on your SEO assumptions, in particular, your hypothesis that PageRank does not play a factor...

The reality is that a balanced, whitehat approach to SEO that takes into consideration all known positive SEO factors is the best strategy. Each of the factors has varying levels of significance - and an optimized site should take all of them into consideration when upgrading for SEO purposes. Any factor that can provide an improvement should be applied.

vBSEO takes such a balanced approach - each day more and more vBulletin forum admins choose to vBSEO-enable their forums and begin to achieve results like the following:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=430627&postcount=13

 

Where did he say that?

 

He didnt.

 

@joeychgo: So it does then?

 

Of course PR is a factor. It's just not the only or even the most important factor.

 

@minstrel:

And in SEO, *all factors* should be taken into consideration, otherwise "optimization" is a misused word.

Re: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=441753&postcount=24

 

Okay. Did I say anywhere that one should ignore PR entirely?

But when you are talking about PR, you are talking about public or toolbar PR.

Do you think that creating static URLs that display Toolbar PR gives that page any advantage in SE rankings over the same page as a dynamic URL, simply because the dynamic URL is less likely to show Toolbar PR?

 

Mod rewrite can be a double edge sword. If it in fact works and you build a huge forum in the serps, later your resourse usage could be unjustifiable. Then where are you?

 

Absolutely. The mod rewrite can give you a performance hit, especially for a larger forum.

Ive asked the same question several times - My site, vBulletin Webmaster, ranks 3rd for the search term vBulletin and doesnt use this mod rewrite..... Where is vbseo in the serps? If this is so helpful getting your pages in the serps - why doesnt your site rank highly?

Kinda makes me think about the SEO Companies who proclaim to be able to rank my sites 1st page, but cant get their own past page 10. Those who can, do, those who cant, teach?

 

My son recently told me about a variation on this:

"Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach. Those that can't teach, teach gym."