vBSEO - an independent case study

Hi

Because there is much discussion about vBSEO and there are about 50% haters and 50% lovers I decided to make a case study.

I run two german forums, one for patients with medical questions (www.patientenfragen.net) and a forum for parents with (medical) questions (www.elternfragen.net).

Both forums together generate a low 3 digit revenue.

Google seems to love my patient forum cause I get "huge" traffic (for a forum of my size) already.
On 2007/21/07 I decided to spend some money I earned and reinvest it into the forum.

I was a vBSEO skeptic as well, especially because of the encrypted code.
But I waved my concerns and gave it a try.
I bought a vBSEO license for my patients forum and 2 weeks later for my parents forum.

I don't want to convince anyone to buy vBSEO or not.
With this case study I want to give you an objective view on what is happening to my forum regarding Search Engines listings and organic traffic.

I started this thread despite all other available threads because most of them really lag the interesting statistic parts.
They concentrate on how many members they gained or how many threads have been started, but this is not the interesting point for a pro or con decision on vBSEO.

I have collected statistics for 7 weeks now and I will update this thread from time to time for you to monitor my progress or defeat

20.07.07: Installation and activation of vBSEO and vBSEO Sitemap on www.patientenfragen.net

Links used to determine site indexing stats:

Google.com: siteatientenfragen.net and +vbseo
Yahoo.com: siteatientenfragen.net and +vbseo
msn.com: siteatientenfragen.net and +vbseo

Program used for determine organic traffic from search engines: google analytics.

Indexing stats (Indexed pages in search engines)

20.07.2007 (before vBSEO) Week 0:

Google: 12.000
Yahoo: 12.790
MSN: 127

27.07.2007 - Week 1:

Google: 11.800
Yahoo: 12.556
MSN: 114

04.08.07 - Week 2:

Google: 15.000 +vbseo: 9.570
Yahoo: 12.522 +vbseo: 791
MSN: 80 +vbseo: 2

10.08.07 - Week 3:

Google: 8.600 +vbseo: 6.120
Yahoo: 12.546 +vbseo: 1.650
MSN: 119 +vbseo: 39

17.08.07 - Week 4:

Google: 9.460 +vbseo: 6.940
Yahoo: 12.539 +vbseo: 2.400
MSN: 94 +vbseo: 41
Adsense: Adsense earnings are climbing nicely. They did before as well, but I am very satisfied.

27.08.07 - Week 5:

Google: 8.150 +vbseo: 6.970
Yahoo: 19.084 +vbseo: 8.440 (nice jump)
MSN: 90 +vbseo: 43

31.08.07 - Week 6:

Google: 9.780 +vbseo: 7.210
Yahoo: 17.452 +vbseo: 7.990
MSN: 79 +vbseo: 47
Adsense: Adsense earnings are still climbing nicely

07.09.07 - Week 7:

Google: 10.600 +vbseo: 7.970
Yahoo: 17.571 +vbseo: 7.650
MSN: 95 +vbseo: 71

Search enginge Listings of siteatientenfragen.net


Search enginge Listings of siteatientenfragen.net +vbseo



Traffic stats (organic traffic from search engines)

20.05.-20.06. (two month before vBSEO was installed)

google: 10,601
yahoo: 225
msn: 9

20.06.-20.07. (month before vBSEO was installed)

google: 13,312
yahoo: 115
msn: 4

21.07.-21.08. (first month with vBSEO installed)

google: 18,154
yahoo: 133
msn: 6

The organic search engine traffic as graphical representation:

Y-axis normal scale


Y-axis logarithmic scale

If you have more ideas about interesting statistics that could be used to fine tune the case study let me know and I will try to implement them if I can.

Feedback is welcome

StarBuG

 

So, would you say the investment into vBSEO was worth it? I'm also eying vBSEo, but I'm not sure yet.

 

I personally think it was worth for me.
I really like the url rewriting with all its customization options.
You decide how your urls will look.

I also like the section targeting for google adsense that is implemented very nicely.
My earnings were always rising and they still do.
I have a 20-40$ earnings jump each month, so far it is still the same trend but the jumps get a little bigger.
It is to early to tell if this is a vbseo result or just my forum getting more popular, but what the heck, as long as it does not hurt

If you decide to buy by using my case study as a decision maker, feel free to contact me for my affiliation ID. I would appreciate it

Good luck whatever you decide

StarBuG

 

What do you mean by section targeting?

 

You can wrap content between <!-- google_ad_section_start --> and <!-- google_ad_section_end --> to tell the adsense spider, which part of your content you consider relevant.
vBSEO does this with all the content in your forum and leaves out all the unimportant parts like button codes etc.

This makes adsense ads much more relevant to your content.

Also vBSEO optimizes the code to content ratio by removing all unnecessary code in your page and therefor makes your pages more easy to spider and index for search engines as well as optimizing the relevancy for search results.

(sounds a little like a sales letter but it is what vBSEO does )

 

Your numbers seem like they were on the way UP before you installed vbseo. How long did you have the vB forum before it's install?

 

Since 05/05/2006
I know that my forum got a lot of traffic before and the trend is currently the same.
That is why I do this case study, to see if there is an impact that vBSEO has.

Currently there are only minor changes.

But it is much to early to make a statement about vBSEO yet from this data

 

I have installed VBSEO Yesterday over my forum and iam now waiting for its results to come out

 

Good to see the positive results StarBug
How are your keyword phrases ? are you able to see what ppl are searching to come to your site ?

 

Yes I can.

Top 15 Keywords from Google Analytics:
01. riechfäden
02. patientenfragen
03. www.patientenfragen.net
04. ich liebe schnee
05. patientenfragen.net
06. gleitwirbel
07. globussyndrom
08. klinikbewertungen
09. praktisches jahr bezahlt
10. petechien
11. aggrenox
12. paradonthose
13. patientenforum
14. röschenflechte
15. krankenhausvirus

Top 15 Keywords from Google Sitemaps:
01. osteoperose
02. novafeel
03. ärztekammer hessen
04. quaks
05. aggrenox
06. paradonthose
07. hashimoto forum
08. landesärztekammer hessen
09. chanell
10. gleitwirbel
11. funnygames nl
12. gemzar
13. kv "baden württemberg"
14. patientenfragen
15. klinikbewertungen

Top 15 Search Query Clicks from Google Sitemaps:
01. theomedizin
02. patientenfragen
03. beinhautentzündung
04. gleitwirbel
05. osteoperose
06. riechfäden
07. globussyndrom
08. klinikbewertungen
09. gemzar
10. polyneuropatie
11. coblation
12. heller stuhlgang
13. röschenflechte
14. keton im urin
15. lucentis

Greetings

StarBuG

 

Are there anymore updates on this? If so, how is it going?

 

Yes, there is...

14.09.07 - Week 8:

Google: 10.200 +vbseo: 8.800
Yahoo: 15.000 +vbseo: 8.260
MSN: 91 +vbseo: 72

 

Great job mate. How are your earnings? Have they gone up as well?

 

How I have found the findings is that the traffic from Google was on a steady increase before the SEO product was bought. Once it was bought, the rate of the traffic increase didn't change and stayed steady. So basically you could have received that traffic without that SEO product most probably.

 

Yes, my adsense earnings increase around 30-50$ each month.
It is nice to wacht

Yes, you are right. But I think that it is to early to judge yet.
The main reason for me was, that I really liked the way you could format your urls.
I earned the money for vBSEO easily with my forums so I thought why not invest it. As long as it does not decrease my results and I get something that I like to have where is the downside?
I tried free mod rewrite hacks for vB and they all had their problems.
I never really got what I wanted, but with vBSEO that is not.
The only downside is the encrypted code, which I still don't like, but I said, what the heck.

But I think that a judgment on if vBSEO works is only worth after about 3-6 month after installing. So I will continue this case study to give you guys an objective base to judge on if it is worth for you or not and if it works in the way you want it to work.
For me, it does, even right now I am totally satisfied.

StarBuG

ps: My case study in one post... maybe it is easier to to get an overlook then reading through multiple pages here (no editing allowed). Bookmark it if you are interested:
http://www.vbseo.com/f84/patientenfragen-net-vbseo-case-study-15198/
pps: I will still continue posting my results here too, so don't worry

 

StarBUg when i verify my paypal (in 3 days) and purchanse the vbulletin licence i will set my ads to my vbulletin soccer forum exactly like u did :}

 

I have published most of my adsense modifications on vBulletin.org.

Check my Profile (StarBuG) on vB.org for the links.
Then you don't have to figure it out on your own

I am glad you like it.
Took me a year to refine them to the point at which they are now

StarBuG

 

Good mate. Is it because of your niche though? Do you have any of the urls to your adsense modifications?

 

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/member.php?u=3512

at the bottom of my profile.

Yes, my niche is paying well, but still it increases every month

 

How old is your domain name?