Wanted: Domain Appraisal farmingtalk.co.uk

smokin · Oct 5, 2008

Critical appraisal of my forum please (FarmingTalk.co.uk - Powered by vBulletin) and perhaps suggestions on what to add/change?

I have my first advertiser too as you will see

Thankyou

retired_member32 · Oct 5, 2008

nice looking site,nice header and with farming back on the up again it will be worth a few quid when populated,how long has it been up?

good luck

mark

smokin · Oct 8, 2008

deliajen said:
nice looking site,nice header and with farming back on the up again it will be worth a few quid when populated,how long has it been up?

good luck

mark

Well the basic vbulletin page was put up beginning of the year but not really fully functional until perhaps May, its had an RSS feeding into it to create some content until i get more users, ive started getting a few links from other sites too so hopefully it will grow more over the winter..

mat · Oct 8, 2008

Just need to find some farmers with the internet now :mrgreen:

bensd · Oct 8, 2008

One thing i noticed is your title tag. In terms of seo i would definitely remove "powered by vbulletin".

mat said:
Just need to find some farmers with the internet now :mrgreen:

lmao

dragon · Oct 8, 2008

Your title tag is one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimisation. It tells a Search Engine exactly what the page contains, so you obviously want to target that to your most important search keywords. Here are three things you can do to maximise your title tag with vBulletin.

1. Remove “powered by vBulletin” from your titles

This one’s an oldie but a goodie, who wants to give vBulletin some of your precious title tag juice? Not me! Don’t worry, this is perfectly in line with the vBulletin TOS.

1. Open up your forum’s control panel.
2. Go to Language & Phrases > Search in Phrases
3. In the search box, enter x_powered_by_vbulletin, and make sure “Search in…” is set to Phrase Text and Phrase Variable Name.
4. Edit the phrase, and change it from {1} - Powered by vBulletin to just simply {1}
5. Save the phrase!

2. Change your FORUMHOME title tag.

On my blogging forum, I managed to get to #11 on Google by simply editing the <title> tag in my FORUMHOME to better represent the search terms I wanted to target for.

1. Open the Style Manager in your Control Panel.
2. Expand the Style you want to work with, and then expand the “Forum Home Templates”, finally choosing to edit the FORUMHOME template.
3. Find the <title> tag and edit the text inside of it to better reflect the tags you want to target for.

3. Remove the forum name from thread pages.

The shorter and more succinct your page title is, the easier it is to rank in Search Engines. This third modification is not essential (some people prefer to have the forum title in their) but it can provide some benefits.

1. Go back into your Style Manager and edit the SHOWTHREAD template (in the “Show Thread templates” category)
2. Change the title tag from:

<title>$thread[prefix_plain_html] $thread[title]<if condition=”$pagenumber>1″> - <phrase 1=”$pagenumber”>$vbphrase[page_x]</phrase></if> - $vboptions[bbtitle]</title>

to:

<title>$thread[prefix_plain_html] $thread[title]<if condition=”$pagenumber>1″> - <phrase 1=”$pagenumber”>$vbphrase[page_x]</phrase></if></title>

So there you have it, three simple ways to get maximum SEO benefit from your title tag.