We use vBSEO, and yes it works well. It's a-ma-zing. It's a very useful and helpful product. A bit expensive, but it's worth it. Moved to Forum Software.
No, I know of no free solutions, but you can probably post an advertisement on webmaster/administrator forums to see if any are willing to sell their product for a decent price.
Although neither are supported, there is: TfSEO 2: the free vBulletin url rewrite - vBulletin.org Forum and Zoints SEO 2.3.2 - vBulletin.org Forum Although vBSEO really is the best. It does so much more than just URL rewriting. And you can often find people reselling their license for a great deal. I paid only $80 for ours because somebody no longer wanted the license. They even renewed it immediately prior to transferring it, so I practically got a brand-new license for half the price.
Personally, I wouldn't recommend using either of the two I mentioned, mainly because they aren't supported. And even if they were supported, I would be hesitant, because you never know when/if the creator is going to give up and disappear.
Thanks I am not making any money on the site yet, so just can't afford to put any more into it at the moment.
Yeah, but not really anything else. I think we all know that vBSEO does so much more than URL re-writing; like canonicalization and such.
I would say vBSEO is the way to go if you want the most complete SEO solution. However, $150 dollars is quite steep for such a product--maybe too much. I ended up beta testing vBSEO when it was first released, so I received a free license. So I do use it, and it has been awesome.
Yeah, I don't think I would ever pay the full price for it. I almost always by second-hand licenses (except for core products like vBulletin itself).
Hmm, I don't use vB, but for SMF, Pretty URLs is the way to go. Much better than any of the other alternatives out there. I am looking for a good one for MyBB, though. I'm new to it, but I haven't found a really good one to use, and it seems that MyBB is somewhat limited in the plugins department.
In regard to the used licenses: is there anything to "look out" for in terms of buying one? I'm sure people are trying to screw people somehow with fake licenses...where should I go to purchase a used license? Thanks!
MyBB's default URLs are fairly search engine-friendly to begin with, but I can understand the desire to go further. I've never used it (as I don't use MyBB anymore) but this seems to be the way to go: MyBB SEO 1.0 Beta! See this thread: http://www.adminaddict.net/forum/vbulletin/legal-used-licenses-1906/