[joeychgo]

Boofoo thanks for being tolerant. Your right, there is no reason for cursing.


Folks - buy it if you want. I dont think it will hurt you to have it (as far as SEO). I just do not believe it does what it promises.

Most people I have talked to believe that vBSEO wll make their pages 'Search Engine Friendly" and Get them indexed by search engines and get them ranked higher in the google search engine results.

vBSEO's own site says:

By installing vBSEO for your vBulletin forums you should expect to:

• Get more of your forum pages indexed in the major search engines
• Get your pages indexed faster
• Improve your keyword relevancy for all pages
• Prevent possible duplicate content penalties

Yet - in a PM to me at VBW jWard (vBseo) said:

Originally Posted by vBSEO

I have to say I agree with you %100 in the fact that mod_rewrite is not necessary to get pages indexed.

SO the question becomes... Why would he advertise one thing on his site, and then say something completely contridictory in private?



Look - I stand to gain nothing either way. Actually, thats not true. I could support and recommend this hack and be an affilliate and make a commission from the sales. vBseo would probably promote vBulletin Webmaster in return too.

I simply do not believe in this product. I think its overpriced and I think it plays on people's misunderstanding or lack of understanding of Search Engines. Basically, I think the product @ $149 is taking advantage of vBulletin owners who have only a desire for their forums to do better and grow larger, but dont understand search engines.

vBulletin, is just fine out of the box as far as SEO. There are some tweaks that can be made to improve things and further make your site unique, but overall its pretty good out of the box. This product wont enhance your ability to get indexed faster or indexed more. Nobody has provided any proof that it does. I on the other hand have provided alot of evidence to demonstrate that non-vbseo'd can be and are indexed and ranked just fine.

I ask again - someone give me PROOF. Is there anyone here who was poorly ranked on google who is now page 1?

Believe me folks, there is no magic pill. There is not SEO HACK that you can simply plug in and - BAM - your at the top of the search engine results. It just doesnt work that way. SEO isnt an exact science and is ever changing. Now, vBSEO does do some things that are helpful, such as the Google Sitemap, (btw, that hack is why your being indexed more I believe, not the mod rewrite portion) but those are hacks that are free anyway. The mod_rewrite, if your insistant on having it, is available free (Dean C did a good job coding that one)

If you want to know what kinds of things you can do to improve SEO, im more then willing to help people, for free. (Although your welcome to toss $150 at me if you like )

However, I am only going to point you in the right direction, most of the things you need to do to be ranked well in Google and other search engines has more to do with what you do off site or things vBSEO cant do for you, like having good content on your site and an active membership. Brent als made another good point. SEO can only help bring people to your site. If you dont keep them thats on you.