I run a forum using vb 3.8, well two forums. Would purchasing VBSEO be a good idea or would it just be a waste of money? Also, I read on the VBSEO site that by having their mod installed, you can gain more revenue and I wonder how?

Shawn, I used vBSEO on four sites and had positive results with it.

 

That being said, if you are considering an expense of that amount, I would recommend you spend the extra 99¢ and purchase IP.Board.

 

Whilst my experiences with vBSEO were all good, I have been seeing better numbers since converting the sites to IPB. My keywords are ranking higher, my traffic numbers have all increased and so has my revenue.

 

How's that for coming out of left field at you? ;)

I used it on my vbulletin sites. The first site I installed it on was already doing well before I installed it. I didn't notice any more or less traffic as a result of having it installed. Just before I converted my first site to IPB I noticed I was starting to lose pages in Google and pageview stats were declining. This was also noticed by a few big board owners in a forum for big board owners. The thread was huge and the consensus seemed to be that rewritten urls were somehow being penalized by Google.

 

Like Mike since I switched to IPB I have seen a steady increase in traffic as well as revenue. There was a time when SE's couldn't index dynamic urls. I was one of the first to ever use mod rewrite to make my forum search engine friendly. There is a thread at vbulletin.com about how it was done. vbSEO came out during this time. Then it had a benefit. Now that SE's can index anything vbSEO is irrelevant. Save your money.

I'm not a fan of vBSEO myself, all their marketing and SEO myths have been debunked directly by google as to being non-beneficial any more. 3-5 years ago, I would have said sure it might help some, but no way I can recommend someone pay that much money, and not get guaranteed results.