Like the new forum title

[Ravenous Bugblatter Beast]

but it's missing a t to greatest.

Shot Talk, the world's greates little golf forum

[Slingblade61]

Boy, I can't get anything by you guys.....

This is what happens when I try to do six things at once.

[VtDivot]

A nitpicky thing but I don't like it since it makes the title too long in the explorer bar, so when you have multiple windows open or if you click on the down arrow (on the back button) to go back multiple pages all of the titles look the same since the title of the pages are so long now.

Not a huge deal, but as a web programmer these things jump out at me.

[Slingblade61]

ok, mr. web programmer, as soon as you get me on google, page one, I'll shorten the title.

The fact of the matter is that this is an SE experiment as nothing else I have tried (except for adwords) has worked.

suggestions are always welcome.

[VtDivot]

It works fine now

[EDSGolf]

Originally Posted by Slingblade61

The fact of the matter is that this is an SE experiment as nothing else I have tried (except for adwords) has worked.

suggestions are always welcome.

This site may help you out: http://www.seochat.com/

Ever consider exchanging links, some "nerds" say it's an effective easy free way to move up on search engines.

[David B]

Slingblade61,

There's a plugin for vBulletin that generates google and yahoo sitemaps, which are then submitted to google and yahoo, and they use the generated sitemap to do their indexing on the site, intelligently.

I must say that it works awesome too... the site I used to administer went from about the middle of page 4 on a google search to #1 in a week's time after generating and submitting the sitemaps.

You can find it at vbulletin.org. It's not really too hard to set up, and it works great. The google one is nice too because you can set it up on a weekly schedule so that it'll generate a new sitemap weekly (to capture the new content) and notify google that the new sitemap is ready to index.

All you have to do is sign up for a vbulletin.org account (like any normal forum) and enter your vbulletin license code to prove you're a licensed user (IIRC).

Once you have access, you can find the plugin here: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=100435

Cheers.

One other thing too... you might want to check the robots.txt file that's in the root web folder on your server to make sure that it isn't blocking access to any of the parts of the site you want indexed... I was having a heck of a time at one point getting the site indexed until I discovered that the robots.txt file was blocking 95% of the site.

[edit] I just did a search on the old site I worked on and it's now down to #4 on the first page... though I don't think the site has been reindexed by google since I left in January... I imagine if it were still being indexed regularly it would probably be at #1

[Slingblade61]

Haha!

You think I'm a noob, huh?

Been running it for well over a month, txt file is aok and yet, unless I pay for adwords.....I get shoved to the back of the pack.

google golf forum(s) and see if you can find ST.....I gave up after page 14.

[David B]

LOL... I wasn't trying to insinuate anything...

Well, you're #1 on a search for 'Shot Talk', and #2 is a PDF file for vaccinations...

Doesn't vBulletin have a 'meta' field somewhere in the setup that allows you to type in a description of the website? A lot of search engines use the meta keywords too.

Of course you probably already know this.

[SiberianDVM]

#2 is a PDF file for vaccinations...

It's not mine!

I have only the vaguest idea what you guys are jibber-jabbering about anyway.

[David B]

LOL... we're talking about Google searches. If you type 'Shot Talk' into the search field, this site is the #1 listing, and #2 is a PDF file discussing immunizations and other topics having to do with 'Shots'.

Slingblade61 was lamenting that even after page 14 on Google, Shot Talk wasn't showing up on a search for 'Golf Forum'.

See... I taught an old dog a new trick.

(LOL... just kidding SDVM).

[Scotty01292]

I'm confused... There's no way i'd search 14 pages on Google for this forum. I'd never heard of it before I joined. I don't know how I came across it then...

[David B]

Originally Posted by Scotty01292

I'm confused... There's no way i'd search 14 pages on Google for this forum. I'd never heard of it before I joined. I don't know how I came across it then...

Well, that's really the point Slingblade61 is trying to make, and is why he's trying to figure out how to boost the pagerank for Shot Talk so that it shows up on the first couple of pages for 'Golf Forum' on Google.

To tell you the truth, I also don't remember how I found this place... I may have to do a few searches on Google and see if I can come up with some word combinations that give this site a good ranking.