[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by futureye

Zoints SEO has three primary options for URL rewriting:

1. No URL rewriting
2. URL rewriting without mod_rewrite. Why use this? If you want to insert keywords in the url but don't have mod_rewrite available or don't want to expend the resources (using mod_rewrite is server intensive and slows page generation) then this is a viable solution.
3. The mod_rewrite everyone knows and prefers.

I would recommend option 1. The available evidence indicates that keywords in a domain name help but that keywords in the page URL have little or no impact on SE ranking. By enabling any form of URL rewrite, you are adding to server load with little or no return.

And the reality is that vBulletin is SE friendly out of the box. Pick any area and do a search for forums in that area. To narrow it down, tack vBulletin on to the end of the search query. Then look at the URL structure for the forums in the search results. How many of the top forums are using URL rewrite?

That said, there are several other reasons why I think Zoints SEO is helpful and it's for those features that I have it installed.