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Change forum-script, URLs will change... (SEO)

by WillBeRich
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a forum that did really take off in the beginning of this year. It's just growing like crazy and it's very active.

I run SimpleMachinesForum (SMF) as forum-script but there's something about it that I dont like so I'm going to buy vBulletin Suite 4 for the site.
(Plugins are only written in English and will not work for my forum for example...)

Here's the problem: Google did bless me and give me 500% more traffic now for some reason and I'm a bit worried that if I change forum-script and all URLs are changing, what will happen with the traffic? Of course it will go down in the beginning... But what will happen after a couple of days? Do you think Google would have re-spidered the site and everything will be fine?

Of course this is a very hard question to answer(how long if a piece of string) but there must be people that have changed forum-scripts and know something about this.
#change #forumscript #seo #urls
  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    Question is, are you running on a shared server? This will effect it more than you think. Are you wanting to migrate everything over, or just start over? I recommend installing at a different location if you are /forum do /board and keep the old board as well as migrating everything over, so it will actually give you a pretty big boost.
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  • Profile picture of the author cagliostro
    Well, one year ago i was running a classified ads website with good traffic (after 2 years of work).

    At some point the software developper came out with a new version that had keywords in the URLs. Meaning totally different urls.

    I switched to the new version and after 2 months my traffic was lost. It came back almost the same after six month.

    good luck
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  • Profile picture of the author shulink
    I would recommend you not doing that unless you really have to. I believe there are many MOD that you can find for simple machine forum, what feature that you don't like about it? If you really need to migrate, then I recommend you make a backup of everything and keep the old site in a different directory so you can switch back as soon as if the new forum doesn't work out.
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    • Profile picture of the author WillBeRich
      I got my own server and a dedicated IP just for the forum. The forum is still growing and I really regret that I didn't install vBulletin earlier as I was thinking to do.

      Originally Posted by shulink View Post

      I believe there are many MOD that you can find for simple machine forum, what feature that you don't like about it?
      I dont like that I have to edit a lot of files manually when installing plugins since I dont use English as the default language.
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  • Profile picture of the author JaspervBulletin
    Hi WillBeRich,

    Although you will lose search engine traffic during the first few weeks of restructuring your urls, it will pick up again. As long as you have unique content, you will always be in good standings with search engines.
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  • Profile picture of the author WillBeRich
    I was thinking about Google webmaster tools, is there any way to tell Google that the sites structure have changed?
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