vbseo - is it worth it?

**Masetek** · 02-23-2006, 11:10 PM

I've got myself a copy of vBulletin and have got it running fine, made my template, customised etc. Now it's time to get the SEO side of it underway. I have been reading about vbseo and am after some feedback from other people about it. I know Cutter just bought it. Does anyone else run it, and what do you think? Are there any other competitors products that I should be considering?

cheers

**Cutter** · 02-23-2006, 11:14 PM

there are some free plug-ins on vbulletin.org that you can try. If the money is more important than time, then go that way. Thats really your only other option, that I'm aware of.

**Chris** · 02-24-2006, 07:51 AM

I wouldn't worry about it for the reasons stated in my VB optimization article.

**Masetek** · 02-24-2006, 04:21 PM

I forgot about that article. Thanks.

**Masetek** · 02-24-2006, 06:27 PM

Good article, pretty much followed it word for word. It seems they've disabled url string sessions by defualt in 3.5 because when viewing the forum as a guest I didnt get them.

I am a bit confused about this hack though. I see that it displays last posts on your forumhome, but I want to display them on my main pages (not a part of forum). Basically like you have done with this site and 4LHR. I also want to display specific latest threads of specific pages. How to I do this?

**paul** · 02-24-2006, 09:14 PM

I had also missed that article and found it really useful now that I am seriously considering adding a forum to an existing site.

**Chris** · 02-25-2006, 01:02 PM

I think this is the hack I use:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showt...ghlight=last10

Originally for VB 2.x, but is so basic it still works.

**Masetek** · 02-25-2006, 07:58 PM

Thanks

**Masetek** · 02-26-2006, 12:22 AM

One more thing

I read the easiest way to disable the vb archive is to simply delete the archive dir, which I did. Is the the only/best way to go about it?

**Chris** · 02-26-2006, 06:52 AM

You can easily turn it off in the admin area.

**MrGeeK** · 03-01-2006, 02:25 AM

Chris,

Your article made a lot of sense, but one thing you didn't cover (I think) was the keyword in url features of vbseo, how important do you think that is, if at all?

**Chris** · 03-01-2006, 07:13 AM

I don't think it is that important.

Really, I consider the URL to be treated roughly as important as the rest of the page as far as keyword weight. This opinion is actually pretty liberal as many think the URL doesn't matter at all.

So basically you're missing the equivalent of one keyword instance in your content.

Also, if someone links to a thread using the anchor text as the URL then you'd get it in your anchor text, which is good. However I feel that forum urls are usually so long that people tend to truncate them and just use things like "This thread" as the anchor text when linking.

OVerall though, I just don't see the benefit being worth it considering it could mess up your URL integrity at a future date.

**Cutter** · 03-01-2006, 11:36 AM

One of the benefits to the keywords isn't seo, but reading your stats. Depending on how you run and promote your site, this can be very important to know.