vbSEO happiness? Should I buy it for my forum?

[estibot.com]

Opinion seems to be divided on this one. Some say it's great, others say there are no benefits.

I have a forum with about 800 members and it seems to be growing at a decent rate. It's got some really useful content plus great, high PPC keywords for Adsense in the posts.

Should I buy vbSEO or not? As far as I understand it's a mod_rewrite hack, and an expensive one at that. What's the advantage of vBSEO compared to e.g. vRewrite, which does the same thing for free.

Does vBSEO come with additional features / vb modification tools that might justify the price?

I see Namepros is using vBSEO. That's as good a recommendation as any, because I'm sure you know what you're doing, but still, I'd like to hear about your experience

Thanks-
Josh

 

[slipondajimmy]

I have been asking myself the same question for a few days. I just started using VB and I decided against it. I have not been able to find any concrete info that supports the claims of vbSEO .

There are a few free seo tools for vb and I went with one of them. There are so many other things I could spend the money on.

 

[flashwebhost]

vRewrite seems very good. Anyone know advantage of paying for vbSEO ?

 

[Richieboy67]

It is good but I have had much success installing the zoints seo stuff including thread tags and all the other mods. Install those and do a few minor code changes and I bet you will have a better seo'd site than vbseo can provide and it would be free....

If you need any advice or anything let me know. I seo vb sites almost every day.....

The zoints package includes seo friendly url rewrites among many other helpful additions. Meta tags for each forum, customized guest messages and tons of help for getting the archive working better....

 

[estibot.com]

Thanks for the comments.

I installed vRewrite, then I installed vBadvanced to get some content management on front page, but as a result my forum stopped working properly.

I had to re-install all original vb files and then a vb staff member had to log in and fix a template for me even after that.

Needless to say, I'm wary about installing any more plugins, now that my boards are working fine.

Zoints looks good but daunting as I'm no coder...

However I would like to see SEO friendly urls, archive and other basic seo on the boards. Also would be nice to install some sidebars and things like that...kind of like here on Namepros.

vBSEO is attractive I guess because it's supported and it promises to be an easy install.

Josh

 

[AMDWarrior]

VBseo is much better than zoints, I have run both and can tell you as of now vbseo is the best seo software for forums, but it's an opinion but I have tried both zoints and vbseo, currently running vbseo on one and zoints on the other, if you wanna see a stat difference pm me Ill send ya over the data..

 

[Richieboy67]

I have to dissagree... First off vbseo is more expensive than the actual vbulletin script? Isn't it? That is crazy if you ask me...

As far as zoints go you are so wrong...

I said that if you install a combination of the zoints mods offered. There are 3 or 4 great mods that will help seo and traffic. Install these free mods with the sitemap generation mod and a few minor code changes and you will have a site that is way more seo than vbseo'd site...

I have done both installs many times for clients in the past and I think vbseo is a good product but there are other options that are way more cost effective..

With zoints you get a great tag system and you can get some integration with the zoints forum too iof you want. Some of your tags will end up on other forums! How can you beat that? There is also that whole synergy integration now too which is guarenteed to get you some traffic...

I am kind of combining seo with the need for more traffic also because after all, in a way that is what seo is all about. Of course it is for search engines but it all comes back to getting more traffic and I believe that the zoints mods do that better...
Oh well, I have no desire to argue with anyone but I really, really disgree and actually a few months ago I would not have disgreed...

Best of luck either way...

 

[AMDWarrior]

No Im not wrong, like i said i started em both on new forums, I see the difference and know the difference..Believe what you like, im not here to argue, but I have seen the difference first hand, and like they say you get what you pay for..

 

[Richieboy67]

Just wondering..

Which Zoints products have you used? I believe there are 4 of them that are good for traffic.......

You really think you will get better search ratings with vbseo than with Zoints including integration? With the integration many posts from your forum are likely to be placed on other forums all over the world... VBSeo cannot do that..

It doesn't matter... We choose to disagree....

I also have installed, tweaked and set up both on many different sites. I have actually done comparison testing using server stats etc and in the sites I have researched Zoints with the other modifications have won out..

Also, I did say that with some minor code modifications which you have no idea what I am even talking about.. Some of these code changes are the same exact thing that vbseo has...

The biggest factor here is that I believe with a little time and effort installing these zoints mods, the sitemap generation script and about a halfhour of coding I can make any vb site just as seo worthy if not better and do it without having to pay for script that costs more than the script it supports....

I would love to do some sort of competion with these two forms of seo.......lol

Just the same I would like to know which mods from Zoints you have worked with because I honestly think you may have missed a couple of them. There are some new mods out there... What about the sitemap generation script? Have you used that too?

 

[estibot.com]

Thanks for your comments. The community traffic exchange aspect of zoints is surely interesting. As the OP what I'm looking for is a SEO solution for vbulletin that doesn't involve code modification, at least not so much that a non-coder such as myself couldn't do it. vbSEO is more attractive in this respect - I am quite willing to pay money to have a complete solution that comes with support... Have you found the vbSEO support to be good? Zoints is definitely also interesting but seems a bit daunting to install, given the grief I've gotten in the past from installing add-ons to vb.

Thanks-
Josh

 

[Amnezia]

vbSeo is a waste of money and completely unecessary

 

[estibot.com]

Anything to back that up? I'm listening

 

[Amnezia]

Well I had to spend several days correcting the duplicate content issues that it created on a clients forum. Something like 90% of the forums pages went into googles supplemental index.

 

[Notorious]

Well I had to spend several days correcting the duplicate content issues that it created on a clients forum. Something like 90% of the forums pages went into googles supplemental index.

And how was vbseo responsible for that ? may I please know.