SE Optimisation of VBulletin

[Steve_gts]

Hi All,

I am running a forum at the moment using PHPBB, I have been messing around with it for almost a year and all pages are still suplemental in Google. I have tried several Mods, none of which seem to work.

I am seriously thinking of changing it to a VBulletin as I have been told I would not have problems with SEO, and to be honest I tend to see a lot more of topics from VBulletin in the serps than from PHPBB forums.

Would I have to add mods to VBulletin to optimise it for the SE's or is it OK vanilla? (all I really want to do is skin it)
How easy is it to transfer my existing data across? please bear in mind I'm no programmer!

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

[Ntfu2]

Moving your data is simple as can be, there is the import script with it.

vBulletin gets crawled just fine, but there are some awesome options and information for vBulletin SEO over at vBSEO

[Steve_gts]

Ok thanks, but would you say I need to shell out for the SEO package on top of VB? if it gets crawled anyway is there much point? I'm guessing there is probably a free mod for the URL rewrite which would help but my main issue is just that it's not being crawled.

[jward]

If you do not have the budget available for vBSEO, you should still install our Google/Yahoo Sitemap plugin.

However, if you are considering vBSEO I would recommend installing both vBSEO and our sitemap at the same time.

FYI vBSEO 3.0 GOLD will be released soon. 3.0 RC6 is publically available and has no reported bugs.

[Ntfu2]

Originally Posted by Steve_gts

Ok thanks, but would you say I need to shell out for the SEO package on top of VB? if it gets crawled anyway is there much point? I'm guessing there is probably a free mod for the URL rewrite which would help but my main issue is just that it's not being crawled.

So far these "free rewrite" mods have been a disaster compared to vBSEO.

[Unexplained.tv]

The only free SEO alternative that even comes close to what VBSEO does is Zoint SEO.