What I have found so far. vBulletin is a far inferior product. There is just so much wrong with it compared to IPB I don’t know where to start.

First lets look at the style editor and the vbulletin stylevars. The vbulletin style editor is old, very old in fact. When you edit a template the complete page refreshes and you are brought back to the template editor main page. If you make a mistake and the site doesn’t render correctly you have to find your spot to correct the problem. Not any easy task.

Now lets look at IPB template editor. You want to change the width of the site you open the main css file in the editor. Find the place to change, change it and commit the change. Notice how you get an ajax refresh and you stayed on the exact area of the edit. So when you check the site in a new windows if it doesn’t look right you can easily and quickly undo the edit.

Win for IPB.

Now lets look at SEO. Both vbulletin and IPB have SE friendly url’s. The vbulletin url’s take more to get working correctly and do not 301 same content. IPB url’s 301 exact content so you won’t be penalized for duplicate content. Unless you use vbseo vbulletin can not compare with IPB out of the box as far as SEO goes.

Without vbseo win for IPB.
With vbseo win for vBulletin.

There are other things that make IPB hands down the winner over vbulletin and it would take me a long time to point them out. Let me just say that I gave vbulletin another chance and after 2 years of development for the 4.0 branch it is still going backwards. In the same time IPB has set the bar extremely high by improving at every turn.

Now I have to convert the new site to IPB and this is the last time I will speak on vbulletin unless they absolutely blow my socks off in the future which is highly unlikely.

I’m 95% certain I can get a vb+vbseo board to out rank an IPB forum with the same content & links.

I was going to write an article about this very topic. I had gathered the data and taken screenshots to do this and until Brandon posted on Twitter I didn’t have the urge. I have converted 3 of my communities to IPB from vBulletin. The sites all had vbSEO installed. I gathered the data from  Computer Help Forums from the last week I had vBulletin with vbSEO installed and then each week after the conversion to IPB. What I did was look at stats for each week after after I converted. Initially pageviews dropped, but, site visits and visitors stayed constant. Then about 2 weeks  in I noticed an increase in pageviews, visits and visitors. I also noticed that the search engines seemed to visit more often.

First a little information about the before and after. I had vBuletin installed with vbSEO. I used the vbSEO replacement feature which adds the first x words from each post to the header. I used the custom meta tags for each page and keyword thread titles.

When I converted to IPB I set up htaccess friendly url’s. I redirected the old vbSEO url’s to the default vBulletin url’s. Then used the tools IPB gives you to redirect the old url’s to the new IPB search engine friendly url’s. I have done nothing extra to the stock install of IPB to make it more SE friendly. The site doesn’t even have meta tags. I don’t know if adding them would help, but, it sure hasn’t hurt as the stats below will tell you.

Take a look at the last week I had vBulletin installed with vbSEO.

Now look at the stats from the site 2 weeks after converting to IPB.

IPB one week stats

As you can see since the switch from vBulletin with vbSEO to IPB with no extra SEO being done the site gets more traffic, more visitors and more pageviews.

Now lets look at the SE activity on the site. One would expect this to increase anyway since the search engines had to re-index all the content. That is why I went a little farther ahead with this data. I wanted to let things calm down and in order to do that I waited until a month passed.

Search engine activity from the last week vBulletin and vbSEO were installed.

Now lets look at the first week a month after the install of IPB.

As you can see the search engines seem to like the site. They visit with more frequency.

Clearly a stock install of IPB with no special SEO done to it will not hurt your site in the search engines. In fact in my case the results with a stock IPB install performed better than the install of vBulletin with vbSEO.

So getting back to Brandon’s tweet. I would bet that anything that he can do with vbSEO wouldn’t matter at all. An equal IPB forum with same content would perform as well or better. That’s my opinion anyway.

If you get your site listed in Dmoz you’ll get a back link on all those sites. Last estimate was over 100,000 sites use the data. That can be a good thing to have your link on 100,000 sites.
That is where Dmoz Resurce Zone comes into play. Dmoz Resurce Zone is a forum run by the editors of Dmoz.

The editors that frequent Dmoz Resource Zone are there to guide through the process of getting your site in the directory.

There are many forums dedicated to SEO, but, Dmoz Resource Zone is the only one dedicated to only Dmoz. It really should be the one place to visit to get tips to help you get your site listed. The editors are hard working and dedicated to making Dmoz a spam free resource and want to make sure it is the best resource on the web. Only the highest quality sites get listed. No cookie cutters allowed.
Since the editors of Dmoz own and operate Dmoz Resource Zone the advice you get will be the best.
So if you’re interested in making all that hard work configuring your server and building you site payoff stop by Dmoz Resource Zone. The editors are friendly and will be more than willing to help you get your site up to Dmoz standards so it can be listed in the best resource index.

PageRank, in a nutshell, is determined by an algorithm loosely explained as follows: the more sites which link to any given site (site A), the higher the PageRank of site A. This does come with a couple of caveats, however:

1) The PageRank of the sites which link to site A determines the importance of their link – in other words, sites with higher PageRanks cast votes with more weight than sites with lower PageRanks

2) Regardless of the PageRank of the external site linking to site A, a one-way, inbound link will carry more weight than a reciprocal link.

3) PageRank is only one of over 100 factors used to determine a site’s organic search ranking – so, while a high page rank is desirable, it is not the determining factor in achieving top rankings – which can only be achieved by a quality, thorough search optimization performed by a trained professional.

The first caveat above is relatively straightforward: if you look at a link to a site as a “vote” for that site, greater credence is given to sites which Google considers more important (higher PageRank). So, it is always best to seek links from sites with a relatively high PageRank. Of course, these links are harder to obtain, because sites with high PageRanks are less likely to want to “bleed” PageRank to lesser important sites.

The second caveat may come as a bit of a surprise to you – reciprocal linking does little, if anything, anymore, in determining the PageRank of a site. While at one time any link to a site was considered a “vote” for that site, Google soon realized that in the case of reciprocal linking (where two sites link to one another), the existence of the link was not so much a vote for that site as it was indicative of an agreement between two web site owners to exchange links for the purposes of artificially inflating their PageRank. The omnipresence of link exchange schemes is evidence of the flawed thinking that any links, no matter what, are valuable.

Reciprocal linking is wrought with perils, not the least of which is that while you cannot control who links to you, and are not punished for it, if you link to an external site which engages in known search engine spamming techniques (such as link farming), you will be penalized for linking to a “bad neighborhood”. Google especially does not like attempts to manipulate its ranking algorithms, and it deals harshly with sites which engage in practices which are a violation of its Terms of Inclusion, or sites which link to these sites. I have seen many, many well intentioned individuals end up greylisted or blacklisted by Google because of innocent efforts to improve their PageRank through link exchanges or other schemes. It is important to remember that, 9 times out of 10, you are not smarter than Google. Therefore, anything you do to try to artificially increase your ranking will likely get you penalized – because they know all of the tricks in the book, and even some that aren’t in the book.

This is why one way, inbound links are so important. You are not at risk of linking to a bad neighborhood, and your links are not discounted due to reciprocity. But, how can we obtain one way, inbound links? Well, the answer, in the abstract, is fairly simple – give people something to which they will want to link. This is known as content.

Rich, quality, unique content not only makes search engines very happy, but it generates interest in your site, which generates the ever so valuable one way, inbound links. The most ethical, effective and quick way to obtain these quality inbound links is through the use of a weblog coupled with an outbound Atom XML or RSS site feed.

A weblog is simply a means by which you can add fresh content to your site on a regular basis, say once per week, by spending thirty minutes or so writing a brief article about what it is you know about – it can be your product, your industry, whatever. The important thing is that you are providing fresh, rich, unique content on a regular basis. This is powerful, as Google also has implemented a new “freshness” algorithm, by which sites with regularly updated, fresh content rank higher than stale, static sites. Additionally, when you implement an outbound XML or RSS feed, coupled with content syndication, your content then automatically appears on third party web sites who subscribe to your feed. Each time you update your site, their site is automatically updated as well with your new content. The most amazing thing about this technology is that, by default, when your content appears on a third party site, it automatically generates an anchor text link back to your site, for which you do not reciprocate. That is your benefit as the content provider – you get the one way, inbound link, and the third party site gets to use your content! You can quickly build hundreds or thousands of one way, inbound links by using this technology, and under the guiding hand of a trained search engine optimization professional, who will perform the necessary installations and site optimization, then train you on how to write your articles and syndicate your content.

I know this all sounds confusing — but it is really quite simple, and takes less than thirty minutes per week! Many people say, “I am not a writer,” or “I don’t have thirty minutes a week”. Well, how much are you already paying for your pay per click or other marketing campaigns? Would thirty minutes per week be worth your while if it would eliminate the costly, recurring fees of paid inclusion and other marketing schemes, by allowing you to appear in the organic search results for your relevant keyphrases? Most certainly, it usually is worth it!

As to the third caveat above, by all means, do seek to improve your PageRank. However, perform any search on Google and take a look at the sites listed in the top ten or twenty results, and you will see that they are not ranked according to their PageRank. So, to insist on increased PageRank as the defining factor of a quality search engine optimization is missing the point. Search engine optimization should only be measured by increased traffic over time – not the performance of any one particular keyphrase or PageRank.

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About the Author:
Matt Foster is the President of ArteWorks Business Class, http://www.arteworks.biz, and is an expert in search engine optimization, regularly achieving top rankings for his clients. Mr. Foster has been active in the industry since 1995. For further information, or to begin the process of optimizing your site for search engines, please contact Mr. Foster toll free at 877-812-2217, or by email to matt@arteworks.biz.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com

Search engine optimization requires a careful keyword analysis and placing these keywords at proper places in the website. I am a professional SEO and in this article I will highlight few important SEO tips that you should follow in order to secure good search engine rankings.

(1) Page design: Don’t design a ‘frame based’ website.

(2) Targeted keyword research and selection: Go to the Overture tool and select the right keywords. Instead of using single words, try using keywords phrases. Focus on niche market. For instance, if you sell ‘antiques’, then instead of using ‘antiques’ as your keyword, use something like ‘ Italian antiques’ ‘brass antiques’ etc.

(3) Keywords density and placements: It is usually agreed that keywords must be placed at the top more than the bottom of the page. You can check the density of keywords using keyword density tool available online.

(4) Web log analysis: A very important parameter. Analyze your web logs carefully, know what pages are most read, which pages on your site have maximum exit, how much time visitors spent on your site and so on. This will help you understand importance of each page of your website. In turn, this will give you an idea as to which pages need development.

(5)Meta tags- h1 to h7, title, description etc: If you are not good at html, don’t worry too much. Fortunately there are many automatic Meta tag creator tools. Use one of these and put on your web pages.

(6) Image Optimization: Heard of “alt” tags ever? The alt tag is used to assign title and description for each image that is used on the website. Alt tag looks something like this: alt=” keywords of the webpage” title=”title of your site”

(7) Directory submissions: As soon as you have booked the domain, submit your site to as many online directories and SEs as possible.

(8) Viral Marketing: Don’t forget to tell your friends, family and relatives about your recent achievement!

(9) Link popularity: Link popularity is a measure of how famous your site is on the Internet. Think of inbound links as references to your site. The more the inbound links, higher your website’s page rank is. Try building links from high PR sites. You can either exchange links or build one way only. Either way it helps.

Primrose Gandhi is a Website Designer and SEO, helping businesses create an online presence.

Author: Primrose Gandhi
Home page: http://www.koogra.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Primrose_Gandhi

Due to a large number of competing pages for generic terms, optimisers should focus on selecting keywords that have a reasonable amount of searches and a minimal amount of competing pages. The key is to focus on a small list of keywords, say 20 to 30, and then once a strong presence has been made for those keywords the list can be expanded to include slightly more generic terms.

Having said that, selecting keywords with less search numbers doesn’t necessarily result in less visitors to your website. Search engine users these days tend to refine their searches to more specific keywords since they are given a broad range of websites when they use the generic terms. For example, if you have people wanting to buy a car, most search engine users will enter the phrase “buy car”. Once they are given a wide range of websites to choose from, they will in most cases change their search to include a car model type. For those who have optimised for the more refined phrases, the more likely they are going to get an interested buyer.

For those of you who are looking for a good keyword tool, Wordtracker and Overture is a good place to start. To determine the number of competing pages for a keyword phrase, enter that phrase into a search engine and look at the number of pages indexed. As a rule of thumb, I always tend to select keyword phrases that have less than a million pages indexed in Google or Yahoo.

With all that in mind, provided you target selected keywords that have a reasonable amount of search numbers and a minimal amount of competing pages along with proper optimisation practices, you should be able to achieve a strong presences in search engines over a period of time.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com

About The Author:
David Touri is a search engine optimisation specialist working for SEO Sydney. He has worked on many projects and offers ethical search engine optimisation services to companies in Australia. For further information, please visit http://www.seosydney.com.au.