Even though my forum makes up an overwhelming portion of my site (1,500 topics compared to about 100 articles), my logs seam to illustrate that the only portion of my forum getting in traffic from search engines is the index page. (I'm using SMF but considering a switch to vBulletin). A big part of really pushing a forum on my site was being able to rank a little bit for posts that I didn't write. (The whole "free content" idea). It just seams to me that if I can not rank well for individual topics (even if they are small in traffic) there isn't much point to posting all the time. Anyway, I'm curious if you guys are getting traffic to your specific posts in forums, even if it is small. Is so, what forum software are you using? I see that big sites like digitalpoint and sitepoint rank well for individual topics. I wonder if they would rank this well if they were using SMF. I wonder if they rank that well with forum posts simply because they are established powerhouse sites with high PR. Brandon
I've used VB on a few different forums and I get a TON of traffic to all my individual threads. I also use VBSEO on-top of VB. Another good forum software I've been using lately (with a couple mods) is www.seo-board.com . Good, easy to install, and SEO friendly. Do a site search in Google and see if you have pages showing up. You might not have any pages indexed.
Is is not that if you use VB u get more traffic from search engines if your pages are indexed all are same , just try to mod_rewrite and make static links and sitemap if possiable.
I get a LOT of traffic to my forums...even 3 times more than my actual site. And I'm using vB but...I do not use the SEO hacks at all..vB is the best board SEO wise without any hacks
I'm glad that you guys (girls too) have this thread going. I'm looking to fill a domain that I have with a forum, and am looking for ease of use, security, and still be able to modify the appearance. There is another forum that I post on which is SMF, and I've noticed too that not as many of their posts are as indexed... but, their forum is much smaller. This seems like a tough little subject, because each forum type has their diehard followers. From what I've read, SMF is a little easier to start with, but doesn't seem as SEO friendly as indicated here... If you were to do the Hacks, and the mod rewrites... would any of you choose SMF over vBulletin? Thanks... Starke (I'm totally confused on the subject) ____________________________ This is the forum that I started using, which is SMF. This is the link to the number of pages they have indexed with google: http://www.google.com/search?source...LD:2004-03,GGLD:en&q=site:www.lunarforums.com
Well, I'm no programmer and to my knowledge there are no SEO hacks that have been officially released. I've tried a few mods still in beta mode but they always had trouble. I bet SMF will get this worked out in the next year or so. However, I wasn't willing to wait that long. SMF is a great piece of forum software. However, I feel better about vBulletin overall. As I said before, if the forum is just an "extra" part of your site for discussion, I'd go with SMF. However, if you are really trying to build an enormous community, I think vBulletin is the way to go. Brandon
I appreciate it Brandon. With all the talk about G sandbox and domain ages... I figured that I could use a broader domain that I want to get going in the future as a forum early on. I ran a search for powered by vBulletin vs powered by SMF (or whatever the tag is) and there were 10X as many vBulletin forums out there. Even that fact alone, that there are so many more vB forums might justify a switch because users would be more familiar... Thanks for the reply.
I'm using SMF for a forum as well, I'm pulling some search traffic to individual posts but have not done any seo hacks or mod-rewrite. I've been contemplating switching to VB. Not for the SEO benefits, but after reading this thread I think it has finally tipped the scales for me. Been having problems installing the advertising mod. Also some issues with other things have been making me think about VB.
My forum is getting traffic for individual posts. But it took sometime. (10 months) To get some pages properly indexed in the search engine.