vBulletin SEO Setup

I spotted a new site on the wire today, Cross Browser Testing; it is a site that helps you test your website across a variety of different operating systems and browsers.

Whilst there are services like Browsershots that let you take screenshots of your site in different browsers, Cross Browser Testing provides you with full interactivity, allowing you to test things like AJAX and JavaScript that you can’t do with a screenshot.

Cross Browser Testing provides a very wide variety of servers to choose from, from Windows 98(!) to Vista and Linux; and many browsers including Internet Explorer, Opera and Netscape.

I played around with the free 5 minute trial session available, and it seems like a really good option for those who need to test their sites in many different environments.

Here’s a screenshot of the vBS blog in Opera:

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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.

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