Zoints SEO, vBSEO or this?
 

Hi, what should I buy into this mod:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...ght=zoints+seo

Zoints SEO or vBSEO

Everyone says VBSEO is great, however can the mod above do just a good a job? vBSEO does sound good but it should for the price. Please could I have some unbiased advice here ;)

Zoints SEO is total crap and no longer supported, and probably doesnt even work.

tFSEO looks like it only rewrites 3 sections of URL's, which doesnt even compare to what all vBSEO can rewrite.

For a complete SEO package, i'd serisously suggest vBSEO over any free one. I'd either go with vBSEO or the ole fashioned manual template edits (no URL rewritting what so ever), and SEO things you can do to optimize the pages.

vBSEO has lots and lots of snake oil marketing, the sort of junk you get when you receive those unsolicited offers of SEO optimization. That and the ultra-high price causes concern. In a practical sense, what it does can be replaced by free products, including one that does meta-tag modification.

If vBSEO cost, say, $59 per license, I would not not have a problem. I do at $149, and it would take a lot -- without the snake oil -- to convince me to move to it.

Peace,
Gene

Noone seems to realize that vBSEO also allows its customers to make money off the mod. They do referral deals. I think it is for each sale they make from your referral you get like 5% of the sale. So if you refer enough people, then the mod pays off. Plus the fact that it raises your traffic, so if you have ads, then you can make alot more money from that. That and the fact that its one mod that does everything. No need for multiple mods that do different things. And it is easy to upgrade when one is released.

Sounds like a multilevel marketing scheme.

Peace,
Gene

So they arnt supposed to market the mod?
I know that it works. I have seen it work.

They are, but you don't buy a product in order to be able to sell it to others to make the money back that you paid for it. You buy it for what it does, and most or all of what it does can be accommodated by free products. Yes, I'm sure it works, but $149 per license isn't justified. You only pay slightly more for the entire vBulletin license.

Peace,.
Gene

There aren't free modifications available that can do anything near everything vBSEO does though. Even if there are, you'd have to install many modifications that would be a huge pain to upgrade and no gaurentee that they'll work in future versions.

You know, I have looked at the source code of two vBSEO-enabled forums, one of which is their own. I see nothing in that source to demonstrate special SEO-style meta tags or keywords or other content that would enhance SEO placement. Nothing. In fact, since I'm an Admin on an SEO-enabled forum (not my own), I tested the voluminous settings, and found that some don't appear to even function. Snake oil!

I use four mods for SEO on http://forum.theparacast.com: Automatic Thread Tagger, TfSEO (URL rewrites), vBSEO :: Sitemap Generator (it works and it's free -- but again a couple of the options are simply placeholders and non-functional) and ZH - Meta Tags. Original installation may have taken a few more steps, but the upgrades are easy, and the end results are, I think, equal or superior. And they're free!

Peace,
Gene

Meta keywords and description aren't even used by major search engines any longer as ranking factors. (major as in Google, yahoo and MSN)

What settings did you test that don't work?

Automatic thread tagging isn't an SEO mod. Just about any one will tell you that thread tag pages, are junk pages and should be blocked with a robots.txt file to keep your SERPS clean and relevant.

I'm not saying vBSEO is like the install and forget SEO mod either, if you do that of course you wont get the results. You still need to get link backs and build content. Their marketing is rather slick and semi-misleading i will agree with you there as well. I'm only saying if I had to choose, I'd either use vBSEO or no SEO modifications what so ever, other than manual template edits.

The settings I tried are the 404 redirect ones, which didn't work. Those are the most obvious ones.

I'm online with the guy who runs that forum and we're doing some other stuff to upgrade his forums, and then we'll try again.

As I said, I can duplicate its functionality with free stuff, and even do better. Why pay for their BS marketing?

Peace,
Gene

One more update: My friend has since updated his two forums to vBulletin 3.7.3 and vBSEO 3.2. In each case, I found that changing some basic configurations in vBSEO, including how it handles meta tags, makes no difference whatever in the actual source of these forums. It appears to be placebo, and, after checking the source of other vBSEO-enabled forums, I'm doubly suspicious about all the voluminous settings that seem to have little if any effect.

Peace,
Gene

I also see that nobody has responded to my post, particularly the folks who created vBSEO to defend themselves. Or maybe I shouldn't be surprised. :D

Peace,
Gene

No its already been covered thousands of times, no sense in flogging a dead horse.

Also, again, meta description and meta keywords isn't even very much part of any of the major search engines ranking factors any longer

In other words, that vBSEO doesn't do much of what it claims to do? Well, for those considering spending $149, I think that's something that should be mentioned again and again.

It has nothing to do with whether meta description and keywords are required anymore. It's whether an expensive product has snake oil promotion and placebo functionality.

Peace,
Gene

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One more thing: I signed up for your SEO Tips Forum, and the icons at the bottom of the screen show all generic? Does that happen for you too?

Peace,
Gene