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VBSEO 3.0.0 Features Guide
VBSEO 3.0.0 Feature Guide
VBSEO is the leading solution to optimize your vBulletin forum for Search Engines. With the user in mind, many of VBSEO's features are customizable by the customer so that he/she can mold VBSEO to fit his/her needs for their site. With that being said I'd like to give you a break down of the many VBSEO features offers you. I will throw my opinion in where I feel certain things should be noted about a feature or setting. My opinion is just that. Please do not rely just on my thoughts when making a decision for your forum. Take what I say and ask around and get others views on the feature or setting in question so that you can get many different takes on whether or not it will work for you.
Installation of VBSEO
This is a very easy program to install. The hardest part of the install is making sure that you are capable of running encoded software on your web server. You have two options, Zend and Ioncube. I use Ioncube myself. There is no particular reason it is just what I have always ran and have had no problems so far. They are always quick to update their runtime libraries when PHP releases a new version. VBSEO has a script in their members download area that allows you to test to see if either version exists on your server.
After you have confirmed which encoding software you are going to use you then need to download the appropriate files from the members area. There are two packages, one for each encoded software. Pick the one you have installed on your server and download it to your computer and unzip it.
Next you will want to open your FTP client and connect to your FTP server. Browse to your forum directory and then upload the files to their respective folders in binary mode! It is very important that you make sure binary mode is selected for the file transfer. If you do not the files will be corrupted and you will receive errors.
After the files are uploaded you simply upload the product file and viola! VBSEO is installed on your forum.
Customizing VBSEO
Now the fun begins. Open up the VBSEO control panel by going to forumroot/vbseocp.php. Once the page loads you will then need to select a password to login to the control panel with in the future. Select the password and proceed.
Now you are presented with the VBSEO control panel and its plethora of options to choose from. This is where you need to make the crucial decisions for your forum. You want to be very consistent and not change any of the url structures after you decide what you want.
You have the ability to choose from the default install urls, a predefined set of url rewrites provided by VBSEO or you can customize your own urls to your needs. If you customize them yourself you must remain consistent. For help customizing your URLs you can check out vBSEO SEO Plugin - URL Rewrite Settings at vBSEO.com and the VBSEO staff will be more than happy to assist you. If you like vBulletinZone's url structure I will be glad to send you the xml file that you can simply upload via the VBSEO control panel and it will update your urls to look exactly like vBulletinZone's.
Please note that if you choose to use a url structure like this: you will loose all links to your forum (they will be sent a 404 error) if you change the name of your forum. The only way to prevent this is to use the forum slugs feature of VBSEO (editable via the config file only) in which you will be able to change the name of the forum but the url will stay the same. This may be ok for some but if you completely change the name of the forum you don't want the url to be completely different than the forum name. Just keep this in mind. Also it is of my opinion that the shorter the url the better, which is why I use the url format on vBulletinZone (and all my other vBulletin Forums) as it looks much cleaner. Whether or not keywords in the url help is very much in the air. I do not think they help enough to warrant using them myself. With the setup I have it allows me to change thread title around without forcing a 301 redirect on the old url.
After you pick out the appropriate url structure for your forum you can now browse around to the other cool features that VBSEO offers you. One of my favorite features introduced into VBSEO 3.0.0 is the Linkback feature. What this feature does is it makes your forum act just like a blog. It allows trackbacks, pingbacks and a new kind of tracking, refbacks, to be sent and received on your forum. For more information on how these work you can check out the FAQ here: http://www.vbulletinzone.com/misc.php?do=linkbacks
The Linkbacks give you the ability to track other sites that are linking to your site in near real time. If someone posts a link to a thread on your site and clicks the link VBSEO will identify this as a refback and alert you to the new link. You can the approve or deny it from appearing in that thread in the linkback section which lists all the sites that are linking to that thread. This helps in SEO as you are linking back to relevant content on trusted sites. Google encourages doing this.
VBSEO gives you the option of turning your archive into a sitemap, which I love. It will rewrite your archive urls to point to the actual thread instead of the vanilla archive version of the thread and then 301 redirect all your old archive links to the new thread. This helps transfer all the Pagerank or link weight to the actual thread itself. It also helps reduce duplicate content and concentrates on the best part of your site, the actual showthread page. Spiders spend less time indexing your archive and more time indexing your showthread pages! This is something that VBSEO helps you do very will which is concentrate the search engine spiders on the most important pages.
The setting I recommend for the archive is Rewrite + 301 Redirect Archive Pages as I feel this will give the best results!
VBSEO also allows you to work closer with another VBSEO plugin, the VBSEO Sitemap Generator. You can actually monitor how many pages the search engines spider each day. This allows you to track trends in search engine indexing and possibly spot an upcoming update before it happens
VBSEO gives you the ability to replace your meta description and meta keyword tags on forumdisplay, showthread and memberinfo with content relevant information for the page. VBSEO will add the forum description to the meta description on forumdisplay, the first xxx characters (you define) of the first post on showthread, and a customizable description of members profiles.
VBSEO allows you to replace urls with keyword rich anchor text on internal and external pages. If you post a url in this format: it will grab the title of the page from the <title> tags on the page and use that as the anchor text for that link. Many of you will notice this in action on vBulletinZone when you post a link to another thread on here or another site
VBSEO also gives you the option to add rel=nofollow to links based on many variables including, all internal links, all external links, member urls on forumhome, and member urls on showthread.
VBSEO allows you to add links to your footer that will point to the mainpages of your archive further transfering PR to those pages which is then passed on to the actual thread. I don't think this works like the theory says. The links look bad imo and take up a lot of space. Plus if you have a lot of forums and a lot of threads in those forums you will generate many links in your footer.
Another one of my favorite features of VBSEO is the use of anchors in urls for showpost pages and for category pages. Instead of taking you to the category or individual post in a seperate page VBSEO uses anchor text instead. Google strips this anchor text from the url when indexing which results in Pagerank being passed to the whole thread or whole forum instead! An example: will take you to http://www.vbulletinzone.com/#managing-vbulletin and will take you to http://www.vbulletinzone.com/t9#post9 Again this is VBSEO taking unnecessary pages out of the equation so search engines do not spend the time indexing them.
Other note worthy features of VBSEO:
- Adsense Section Targeting - Add Google AdSense section tags to relevant parts of your forum pages within forumhome, forumdisplay and showthread.
- Custom Rewrite Rules - You can apply vBSEO's Rewrite Engine to URLs not modified by the default feature set.
- Custom Redirects - You can setup the 301 redirection rules here. This can be used if you moved the location of certain document at your server. 301 redirects for your forum without touching the .htaccess file!
- Relevant Replacements - Build dynamic phrases that get replaced by entering simple comments (up to three) in your forum templates.
As you can see VBSEO is an amazing product with much time put into its development. It is a program I can say I will never start another forum without. It allows me to take time to build links to my forum instead of spending my time fixing the many flaws of vBulletin that I have noted here to an extent: http://www.vbulletinzone.com/t9
If you have any questions feel free to ask away. I will do my best to answer. I didn't want to get to overwhelming with this so I am sure there are a few things I left out. If you feel so let me know and I will edit it to explain those better. If you disagree with me explain why! I'd love to get your input.
If you haven't purchased yet and would like to you may do so here: vBulletin SEO by vBSEO or if you would like to use my affiliate id to order it you may click here: vBulletin SEO by vBSEO
Hope this helped those interested in VBSEO
VBSEO is the leading solution to optimize your vBulletin forum for Search Engines. With the user in mind, many of VBSEO's features are customizable by the customer so that he/she can mold VBSEO to fit his/her needs for their site. With that being said I'd like to give you a break down of the many VBSEO features offers you. I will throw my opinion in where I feel certain things should be noted about a feature or setting. My opinion is just that. Please do not rely just on my thoughts when making a decision for your forum. Take what I say and ask around and get others views on the feature or setting in question so that you can get many different takes on whether or not it will work for you.
Installation of VBSEO
This is a very easy program to install. The hardest part of the install is making sure that you are capable of running encoded software on your web server. You have two options, Zend and Ioncube. I use Ioncube myself. There is no particular reason it is just what I have always ran and have had no problems so far. They are always quick to update their runtime libraries when PHP releases a new version. VBSEO has a script in their members download area that allows you to test to see if either version exists on your server.
After you have confirmed which encoding software you are going to use you then need to download the appropriate files from the members area. There are two packages, one for each encoded software. Pick the one you have installed on your server and download it to your computer and unzip it.
Next you will want to open your FTP client and connect to your FTP server. Browse to your forum directory and then upload the files to their respective folders in binary mode! It is very important that you make sure binary mode is selected for the file transfer. If you do not the files will be corrupted and you will receive errors.
After the files are uploaded you simply upload the product file and viola! VBSEO is installed on your forum.
Customizing VBSEO
Now the fun begins. Open up the VBSEO control panel by going to forumroot/vbseocp.php. Once the page loads you will then need to select a password to login to the control panel with in the future. Select the password and proceed.
Now you are presented with the VBSEO control panel and its plethora of options to choose from. This is where you need to make the crucial decisions for your forum. You want to be very consistent and not change any of the url structures after you decide what you want.
You have the ability to choose from the default install urls, a predefined set of url rewrites provided by VBSEO or you can customize your own urls to your needs. If you customize them yourself you must remain consistent. For help customizing your URLs you can check out vBSEO SEO Plugin - URL Rewrite Settings at vBSEO.com and the VBSEO staff will be more than happy to assist you. If you like vBulletinZone's url structure I will be glad to send you the xml file that you can simply upload via the VBSEO control panel and it will update your urls to look exactly like vBulletinZone's.
Please note that if you choose to use a url structure like this:
Code:
http://hondaswap.com/civic-crx-ew/
After you pick out the appropriate url structure for your forum you can now browse around to the other cool features that VBSEO offers you. One of my favorite features introduced into VBSEO 3.0.0 is the Linkback feature. What this feature does is it makes your forum act just like a blog. It allows trackbacks, pingbacks and a new kind of tracking, refbacks, to be sent and received on your forum. For more information on how these work you can check out the FAQ here: http://www.vbulletinzone.com/misc.php?do=linkbacks
The Linkbacks give you the ability to track other sites that are linking to your site in near real time. If someone posts a link to a thread on your site and clicks the link VBSEO will identify this as a refback and alert you to the new link. You can the approve or deny it from appearing in that thread in the linkback section which lists all the sites that are linking to that thread. This helps in SEO as you are linking back to relevant content on trusted sites. Google encourages doing this.
VBSEO gives you the option of turning your archive into a sitemap, which I love. It will rewrite your archive urls to point to the actual thread instead of the vanilla archive version of the thread and then 301 redirect all your old archive links to the new thread. This helps transfer all the Pagerank or link weight to the actual thread itself. It also helps reduce duplicate content and concentrates on the best part of your site, the actual showthread page. Spiders spend less time indexing your archive and more time indexing your showthread pages! This is something that VBSEO helps you do very will which is concentrate the search engine spiders on the most important pages.
The setting I recommend for the archive is Rewrite + 301 Redirect Archive Pages as I feel this will give the best results!
VBSEO also allows you to work closer with another VBSEO plugin, the VBSEO Sitemap Generator. You can actually monitor how many pages the search engines spider each day. This allows you to track trends in search engine indexing and possibly spot an upcoming update before it happens
VBSEO gives you the ability to replace your meta description and meta keyword tags on forumdisplay, showthread and memberinfo with content relevant information for the page. VBSEO will add the forum description to the meta description on forumdisplay, the first xxx characters (you define) of the first post on showthread, and a customizable description of members profiles.
VBSEO allows you to replace urls with keyword rich anchor text on internal and external pages. If you post a url in this format:
Code:
http://www.yourdomain.com/this-is-cool.html
VBSEO also gives you the option to add rel=nofollow to links based on many variables including, all internal links, all external links, member urls on forumhome, and member urls on showthread.
VBSEO allows you to add links to your footer that will point to the mainpages of your archive further transfering PR to those pages which is then passed on to the actual thread. I don't think this works like the theory says. The links look bad imo and take up a lot of space. Plus if you have a lot of forums and a lot of threads in those forums you will generate many links in your footer.
Another one of my favorite features of VBSEO is the use of anchors in urls for showpost pages and for category pages. Instead of taking you to the category or individual post in a seperate page VBSEO uses anchor text instead. Google strips this anchor text from the url when indexing which results in Pagerank being passed to the whole thread or whole forum instead! An example:
Code:
http://www.vbulletinzone.com/#managing-vbulletin
Code:
http://www.vbulletinzone.com/t9#post9
Other note worthy features of VBSEO:
- Adsense Section Targeting - Add Google AdSense section tags to relevant parts of your forum pages within forumhome, forumdisplay and showthread.
- Custom Rewrite Rules - You can apply vBSEO's Rewrite Engine to URLs not modified by the default feature set.
- Custom Redirects - You can setup the 301 redirection rules here. This can be used if you moved the location of certain document at your server. 301 redirects for your forum without touching the .htaccess file!
- Relevant Replacements - Build dynamic phrases that get replaced by entering simple comments (up to three) in your forum templates.
As you can see VBSEO is an amazing product with much time put into its development. It is a program I can say I will never start another forum without. It allows me to take time to build links to my forum instead of spending my time fixing the many flaws of vBulletin that I have noted here to an extent: http://www.vbulletinzone.com/t9
If you have any questions feel free to ask away. I will do my best to answer. I didn't want to get to overwhelming with this so I am sure there are a few things I left out. If you feel so let me know and I will edit it to explain those better. If you disagree with me explain why! I'd love to get your input.
If you haven't purchased yet and would like to you may do so here: vBulletin SEO by vBSEO or if you would like to use my affiliate id to order it you may click here: vBulletin SEO by vBSEO
Hope this helped those interested in VBSEO
, I'm posting it becouse when I was searching for how do that, I didn't find it anywhere! I decided so to take a look to vB.com's docs (online manual) [
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