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Originally Posted by sdphoto  I should have saved my money and bought the VB Branding Removal instead. I honestly haven't seen any improvement and going on 1 year. |
In all fairness (and I do mean this to be constructive), I think yours is an excellent example of a site that really doesn't stand to benefit much from vBSEO. Let's look at your site from a guest's point of view.
First off, your vBa page isn't doing much for you at all. Is there a photo gallery on the site that guests cannot view? If that is the case, then why are you displaying the photo gallery module to guests? That empty module is like a hook without bait. I've never had much luck catching fish with a bare hook.
I'm completely lost using PhotoShop, so that first tutorial (How to build a Studio Portrait) looked interesting to me. No dice, you aren't going to let guests visit that page either.
View the source information on your vBa page and you'll understand why I am recommending you move those left-column modules to the other side of the page. And limit that search module to registered members only. Put some keyword-rich content on that page and get rid of fluff that is just taking up space. And bear in mind that keyword links that lead to a vB no permission message aren't worth a hoot for your optimization efforts.
So I peeked into your forums for a quick look-see. It looks as if the forum is approximately 24 months old and there are 5 forums that have 0 posts. That can be a turn-off for visitors and guests, or as I prefer to call them, potential members. Hide those empty forums until you find you actually have need for them. There are 15 other forums that have <10 posts. This is making your forum look dead, so merge those forums with some others, and things won't look so quiet.
This next one is a personal pet peeve - 5 private forums, sticking out there in the midst of your site, like sore thumbs. Why are you showing guests those forums, when they cannot access them? I always see that as a sign of some perceived exclusivity. You've got information on your site that you want me to notice, even though I can't view it without registering. Hide those forums from guests.
But before you hide them, look at how you've provided descriptions for them, whereas 10 forums directly above them have absolutely no descriptions at all. ??? This is where you want to dive in there and provide some really good descriptions with lots of targeted keywords.
I clicked on a thread in your Misc... forum, titled Mataguay. It's a thread with 10 replies. Only I can't see any of those replies, because you're only allowing guests to view the first post of each thread. How can the search engines effectively spider your threads, when you've got them locked out?
Why aren't you taking advantage of vBSEO's relevant replacements? You're paying for the right to stretch your forums with all of vBSEO's features, but you're not using all of the tools you've paid for. If you need some help configuring vBSEO, holler at one of us.
Why are you running a dated version of vBSEO? Upgrade to the latest and greatest. Take advantage of the new code, a lot of effort was put into writing it for some reason or another, right? vBSEO upgrades are dead-simple, so take advantage of everything available to you.
Look into making your welcome message an image.
With so many forums, I would eliminate all those archive links. And since your archive isn't taking advantage of vBSEO at all, why not ditch the archive completely? Have you taken time to actually click on one of the links in your archive? I'm betting not.
To me, good photographers are artists that are interested in the visual impact of their work. I don't think I'm wrong in saying good photographers are all about the 'wow factor'. Based on that creative streak in your members, why don't you look into adding some 'wow' to your forums with a new style? Give the site some zip, to make it more visually appealing.
See what I mean, saying you don't stand to benefit from everything vBSEO has to offer? You don't let guests (think spiders, here) see all of your content, so it's pretty difficult to get anything indexed. And when you get organic visits, you turn those guests away at nearly every turn. Frankly (and I seriously doubt I am in a minority here), I'm not going to register for a forum that I can't get to know a bit, beforehand.
The bottom line here is that you're trying to develop a forum site for a limited group of people in a limited geographical region, so you are limiting the number of members you are ultimately going to have.
Again, I mean all this to be constructive criticism. But I do feel if you take the time to look into some of this, you will improve things on your site.
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Originally Posted by columbo Well, its only been about 2 months for me now but so far nothing has been happening. The only thing that seems to be attracted to my site is spammers. |
I'm thinking you've positioned yourself in a pretty tough row to hoe, first of all. There are some well-established vB admin forums out there, so you've got to come up with a better mousetrap, if you hope to lure people to your site.
If it's been about 2 months and you've only accumulated 34 posts, then you're not working your site like you should. Create another account and use it to talk to yourself, if nothing else. How many times have you seen the phrase 'content is king' around here? Let's be honest with one another, ~.5 posts/day isn't a lot of content.
vBSEO is not a magic wand. It's a heckuva good partner, if you want to get in there and work alongside it, but it's not going to perform any miracles on its own. Ask people like Brandon or Caddyman how many hours of SEO optimization they have invested in their sites. Sit down before they answer, you're likely going to be stunned.
There are plenty of us around that are working our vBSEO-optimized forums hard and we've found methods that work and methods that don't. So don't be shy about asking for some help, if you want it. You both might be quite pleasantly surprised at what a minimal amount of effort can do to improve these two sites.
i have many times. 
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