SEO Help!

[Joe_Be]

Hi,

I've recently created my own forum but after a lot of time and effort I have not been indexed by google.

I thought it was a little strange after 3 weeks so I invested in godaddy's SEO help tool, and discovered the pages I have with 'problems' with are in their hundreds!

These are the sort of things I am being told:

1. Some pages have invalid title tag characters.

2. Some pages have stop words in the title.

3. Some pages have non-alpha characters in the description meta tag.

4. Some pages have no description tags.

5. Some pages have no keywords meta tag.

6. Almost all pages have no heading tags.

7. I don't have a proper site map.

8. A lot of pages are using the same description tag.

9.Tons of pages are using the same title tag.

I was just wondering what extra measures (if any) more experienced vBulletin owners took to help with SEO?

Could anybody point me in the direction of 'free' mods to help with SEO?

Thanks if anybody can help me out! I should probably mention that I am a complete novice, so any input would be appreciated

Joe

[Brandon_R]

As far as free mods go you should check out zoints SEO. If you want a premium mod try vBseo.

[kevcj]

If your site has not been indexed by google, chances are you have something in the robots.txt file, or in the header that is telling the search engine not to index the site.

As for all of the error, that might be related to your theme. Are you using the default theme or a custom theme? If you are using a custom theme you might want to set the forum back to default and see what happens.

Usually, it takes just a few links and google will have your site indexed within hours.

If you have not done so, sign up for a google webmaster tools account. That right there will tell you just about everything that you need to know about your site.

[infnity8x3]

VBSOE's google site map mod seems to have helped me a lot. All so create a google webmaster tools account if you haven't already Usually as soon as you do that a google spider will be on your site within the hour.

[Joe_Be]

Thanks Thats some really good advice!

I actually am using a custom theme, so I will try the default theme and see what happens. Those mods sound pretty useful aswel so I will def check them out.

Cheers. Joe.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Also submitting your site to google might speed up getting indexed.