I’ve finally reached the one month mark with vBSEO installed on HaloBoards.com! Because it is the one month mark I will be providing graphs from Google analytics highlighting where the traffic for the site comes from, but first lets get to this week’s numbers:

site:haloboards.com (Google) up 3,300 to 11,300!

site:haloboards.com (Yahoo) down 51 to 12,543

site:haloboards.com (MSN) up 11 to 126

The numbers were great this week, but what’s equally important is vBSEO’s affect on traffic driven to my site. Below are two Google Analytics graphs depicting HaloBoards ‘visits by source’ the first graph shows the pre vBSEO numbers:

pre vBSEO April 12th, 2007 to May 12th, 2007:

1 month after vBSEO May 13th, 2007 to June 13th, 2007:

Suprisingly, there was a drop in traffic from Google after the first month’s installation; however, I believe that because there was a large increase in the “other” category that it’s possible “google.com” and the other search engines could make up a sizeable portion of the traffic there. I am still using the older version of Google Analytics to do my graphs but I will do more exploring using their new tools to see if I can decifer the data easier. I will edit this post after I have done this tomorrow.

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This week brings another record breaking performance with vBSEO for GamingVidz.com. This is further evidence in my now 9 week long case study that vBSEO has a great affect on increasing search engine indexing and sending search engine traffic to forums using the plugin. Here are this week’s search engine results:

site:gamingvidz.com (Google) up 73,000 to 170,000!

site:gamingvidz.com (Yahoo) down 83 to 25,581

site:gamingvidz.com (MSN) up 11 to 123

Google pulled in another record breaking week of an extra 73,000 results when doing a site:gamingvidz.com search on Google. It surpassed the previous record of an extra 67,000 results set in week 7 of the case study.

GamingVidz now touts a total of 170,000 results doing a site:gamingvidz.com search on Google after starting with only 34,300 results. I recommend you use vBSEO on your forums to help gain search engine traffic and improve search engine indexing.

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I first wrote about text-link-ads a little over three weeks ago in a post about how I didn’t give up when I was first denied approval into the program. Well, it’s safe to say I’m glad I didn’t give up as I recently received my first TLA sale. Someone purchased the link in late May, but because it was the end of the month the link was pro-rated and didn’t pay too much. The link is still active and I decided to hold off a little before blogging about it since I’m new to TLA and not certain about their policies for canceling links etc.

This again is proof that you should never give up on anything when you’re at first shot down. As I continue to run TLA on GamingVidz.com and more links are purchased (I can have up to 8), it will become a nice additional revenue stream. I will be applying for TLA on most of my other large sites soon. Overall, I’ve enjoyed what little time I have spent with TLA and also like the fact that they pay via paypal.

Text-Link-Ads is a great way to further monetize your sites and I highly recommend trying them out. Besides, you should never have all of your eggs in the Adsense basket anyways.

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It’s time for the third week’s results from the vBSEO case study on HaloBoards.com:

site:haloboards.com (Google) up 1,120 to 8,000!

site:haloboards.com (Yahoo) up 2,055 to 12,594!

site:haloboards.com (MSN) down 14 to 115

The numbers were huge this week with four digit gains from both Google and Yahoo! Looking in the results pages, not all of the URL’s have been replaced with the SEO friendly URL’s that vBSEO brings to the table, but a good portion of the links on the results pages are SEO friendly now. Overall, vBSEO has really been helping out with indexing my site in the search engines as you can see from my pre-vBSEO numbers for HaloBoards.com. And if the numbers I’ve been pulling in on GamingVidz.com are any indication of things to come, I should be seeing even larger gains in the coming weeks for HaloBoards.com.

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Well, we’ve reached another month since the installation of vBSEO and although there was no change in Google’s numbers this week, I’m perfectly fine with that considering last week’s 67,000 jump! Yahoo did pull out a huge 4 digit gain though, check out the numbers:

site:gamingvidz.com (Google) no change 97,000

site:gamingvidz.com (Yahoo) up 7,217 to 25,664!

site:gamingvidz.com (MSN) up 28 to 112

Now that I’ve seen substantial gains from both Google and Yahoo after starting this case study, it’s safe to say that vBSEO is helping out a lot. Also, because this update comes two months after the my installation of vBSEO I included graphs from this month’s ‘visits by source’ from Google Analytics as well as last month’s data. What I’m looking for is an increase in traffic from Google and other search engines in the ‘visits by source’ graph. First I’ll show you the graph the week 4 update last month followed by the update from this month’s graph:

April 10th to May 7th (1 month after vBSEO installation)

May 8th to June 4th (2 months after vBSEO installation)

As you can see from the graphs, I got what I wanted with an increase in traffic from Google as indicated by the much larger chunk of the pie. Because of this increase in traffic from search engines, I saw a near four percent drop in my direct traffic, which shows that a good portion of my traffic is coming from other sources. Overall, I think vBSEO is doing it’s job by sending me more traffic from the search engines and I look forward to continuing this case study.

What do you think?

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In the first three parts of my start a forum series I covered picking a topic, buying a domain name, choosing a forum software and choosing a webhost. Today I’m going to cover the pre-launch step of creating the look for your forum.

Before you can officially launch a forum, begin advertising it and getting new members you must first tailor the look of the site to the topic you’ve chosen to do a forum on. If you decided to go with vBulletin as your forum software, something I’ve already highly recommended in my previous posts, your next step is to find a skin for your forum. Now the type of skin you choose should be determined by the topic your forum will be about. If you’re going to make a forum about a video game then find a skin that uses colors that are also used in the art of that video game. You’d also want to create a custom header and include some video game characters as well. As another example, perhaps you want to start a forum about skydiving? Then it’d be best if you found a skin that contained various shades of blue. It doesn’t matter what topic you choose to start a forum on (other than that it’s easier to not get burnt out on something you’re interested in), as long as you tailor the look of your site to the topic of your forum.

 If you’re using vBulletin, there are plenty of websites that provide free forum skins although you need to be comfortable with the fact that hundreds of other forums on the web will have the same look as your forum. If that doesn’t matter to you, then go with a free forum skin and one of the best sites to find free forum skins at is vBulletin.org. As I’ve mentioned before, vBulletin.org is the number one spot to get support for vBulletin customizations. If you can’t find a free template you like and have about $30 to spare you can try out one of the following sites to buy a forum skin:

eXtremepixels.com

vBSkinWorks.com

I’ve purchased skins from both of these sites and have no complaints. The first skin I ever used on a forum was purchased from eXtremepixels.com. For nearly two years I kept that same skin, albeit highly customized, for use on GamingVidz.com. I just recently upgraded to a $500 custom skin, but more on that later. Although going through a premium forum skin website will often get you a better looking skin than a free one from vBulletin.org you still can’t escape the fact that again, other forums will have the same look that your forum has. Because you are selecting skins that other forums are using it’s important to try and move away from the standard default look and one of the best ways to do that is by creating a custom header. For every forum that I run that isn’t already using a custom skin, I have gotten a custom header made for free by one of my members. If you have a friend or a member on your forum that is good with photoshop ask them if they’re interested in making you a header for your forum, often times I’ve found they’re glad to help.

Another big advantage of going with a premium skin template over a free one is the support you’ll receive. Both eXtremepixels.com and vBSkinWorks.com offer one year of free skin updates. What this means to you is that as vBulletin upgrades their forum software occasionally the templates that are used to affect the look of your forums will be changed in these updates. So if you want to upgrade to the latest version of vBulletin you’ll have to make the changes in the appropriate templates, or stick with the current version you’re running. This is something that extremepixels and vBSkinWorks will do within a couple days of a new vBulletin release. If you’re using a free template, I’ve found that the creators of these templates are often much slower at updating their skin than the premium skin template companies are. 

Although a custom header will help to change the look of your free or premium skin template nothing can substitute the appeal of a completely custom forum skin. But a unique custom forum skin doesn’t come without a substantial price tag. I just recently paid $1,000 dollars for two custom skins for GamingVidz.com and my latest forum, XboxLiveArcade.com from BlindChild. With a completely custom design, it’s much easier to attract new members and I’ve found advertisers will take your forum more seriously. A custom skin doesn’t come without it’s downfalls though, other than the price, most designers don’t offer to upgrade the skin after each subsequent release of vBulletin without being compensated each time. So while you can get a forum up and running for the cost of the forum software by taking advantage of a free skin, you’ll have to pay more money if you want a better look and several hundred dollars for a unique forum skin.

I highly recommend using vBulletin as your forum software. I’ve used it for nearly two years now and have loved every minute of it. If however, you plan to use a different forum software like phpbb or IPB eXtremepixels also offer skins for those forum types as well.

In the next step on my “Start a Forum” series, I’ll be covering more pre-launch forum steps you should take before promoting your forum.

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