In my previous post, I mentioned that I was going to look into the new Google Analytics site to try and come up with more detailed graphs and figures for my vBSEO case studies and I’m happy to say I just did that. The new Google Analytics has been out for a while, but I wanted to continue using the old version so that the graphs I posted would have the same look and follow the same formatting of my previous updates. This however will not be possible because on July 18th, 2007 it will be discontinued. Fortunately, the new version of Google Analytics is much better than the old one. It is packed full of more detailed information, statistics and an easy way to compare data from two different periods of time. I will go back and update the vBSEO case study posts with new graphs and more detailed information this weekend. My goal has always been to control as many variables as possible while trying to run a case study on vBSEO’s impact on increasing traffic for a forum.

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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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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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It’s time for the second week;s results from the vBSEO case study on HaloBoards.com, and as you’ll see the gains were minor. I wonder if I’ll see a sudden huge jump in the Google results around week 7 like I saw GamingVidz.com? It pulled in an extra 67,000 Google results. I think something similiar will happen with HaloBoards as time goes on, but for now here are the numbers for week 2:

site:haloboards.com (Google) up 20 to 6,880

site:haloboards.com (Yahoo) down 66 to 10,539

site:haloboards.com (MSN) up 7 to 129

Nothing major this week. I expect to see more movement as time goes on like how it worked with GamingVidz.

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It’s that time again - or it least it was that time again yesterday - for an update on vBSEO for GamingVidz.com. I’m a day late because I forgot to write it. I think that’s because Monday was a holiday. Anyway, what makes doing these weekly updates difficult is that I can’t write the update until Monday for GamingVidz and Wednesday for HaloBoards because I’m using data from online searches that day and posting them as I get the results. On my other posts, I can write them and simply use Wordpresses timestamp feature to make the posts go live at a time I specify. I don’t think missing one day will have skewed my results too much though. So without further ado, here are this weeks outstanding numbers:

site:gamingvidz.com (Google) up 67,000 to 97,000!

site:gamingvidz.com (Yahoo) down 285 to 18,447

site:gamingvidz.com (MSN) down 7 to 84

 One of the first things you’ll notice by following the site:gamingvidz.com search for Google are the look of the links in the results pages. Every link besides those found in the “vidz” database have been updated to the new search engine friendly static .html links. GamingVidz must be really loved by Google now, as the results more than doubled this week for a site:gamingvidz.com search! Next week I’ll be posting more graphs from Google analytics to show any updates on where the traffic is coming from, but as you can already see, vBSEO is helping out GamingVidz in the SERPS a lot.

Update: A few minutes after writing this post results at Google for a site:gamingvidz.com search shot up 67,000 more results to 97,000! I waited for a few hours to change the post, but it appears to be holding steady at 97,000!

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It’s time for the first week’s results from the vBSEO case study on HaloBoards.com and here are the numbers:

site:haloboards.com (Google) up 684 to 6,860

site:haloboards.com (Yahoo) up 96 to 10,605

site:haloboards.com (MSN) up 4 to 122

The first week in the study showed all three search engines getting positive numbers with Google coming up with the largest gain at an extra 684 results found on a site:haloboards.com search. I expect to see Google to move past Yahoo in the coming weeks, but for now Yahoo still holds the crown for the most results found. MSN (or Window’s Live) moved up only 4 results, but as I’ve seen in the other vBSEO case study on GamingVidz.com they still haven’t gotten out of the triple digits, so I don’t expect to see a lot happening with MSN if at all.

vBSEO is a plugin for vBulletin forums that dramatically helps to improve search engine indexing and ranking for a wide variety of keywords on your site, which will in turn improve traffic to your website which will ultimately help you get more members and more revenue from your forum.

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