Bearcat Talk

Forum URL: Bearcat Talk - Cincinnati Bearcat Basketball, Football and Recruiting Discussion

Forum Name: Bearcat Talk

Launch Date: 11/25/2009 (Nooooooooooooobs!)

Posts/Threads/Members: 96/79/6

Forum Software: vBulletin

Description: Hope to become the premiere community for Bearcat athletics discussion.

Competitors: http://www.bearcatnews.com, http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=341 (Subscription based), http://cincinnati.rivals.com/forum.asp (Subscription based)

Other: Just opened this site yesterday for a friend of mine. He's a huge Cincy fan and hated his options, so I'm helping someone passionate find his own little home on the web. Should be interesting, it's the first time I've had a hands-off approach when it comes to content.

 

Hi.

I'll give this one a go.

Design/Layout:-

It looks brilliant and definitely feels 'bearcat' themed and orientated. The custom icons throughout the website are a must (and I'm lacking these on my own and it's been pointed out before on this very forum - so I spotted that right away) and really do customise it somewhat whilst keeping the main VB theme in tact which is clearly usually beneficial other than the fact that your next main upgrade will be to VB4 and therefore if that is the case you'll loose that style. I'm sure you'll be able to reapply it in the new VB layout though just as easy as you did in 3.x.

Not being too familiar with the team colours I could see that the shirts in the main header had the colours of the website but I just had to check and you got that right. Perhaps that's really obvious to you guys over there though. :shrug:

Modifications:-

vBadvanced is a brilliant mod and I can see you're using it well so far. I understand on a smaller forum you can't unleash it's full potential but you're making good use of the sidebar using the polls and recent topics. The recent topics bit I imagine not only beneficial for human navigation but also for search engines which brings me onto the next point; search engines. I would strongly recommend installing vBseo as I'm sure you'll be aware already that it can really help with vb forum rankings. You're already ranking #1 for bearcat talk, the obvious one you'd rank for. And I'm pleased to say google has noted right next to the listing that the forum homepage was updated just 10 hours ago which suggest good use of google webmaster tools and a sitemap.

Code:

The premiere spot to discuss Cincinnati Bearcat football and basketball. Intelligent talk about Cincinnati football, Cincinnati football recruiting, ...
www.bearcattalk.com/ - United States - 10 hours ago 

. Though I'm pretty sure with vBseo and some small tweaks ytou'd be able to rank for "Bearcat Basketball" amongst other forum category names you have, which can really drive that member base up somewhat, therefore activity, therefore posts being ranked in the search engines, therefore more traffic, and then back to more activity, and that's on-going with a well optimised and well managed forum.

Forum Categories:-

Certainly appear to be plentiful though ordered well and easy on the eye. I'd stay put at what you have though and when a forum gets busier and certain topics get covered often, then introduce a sub-forum for those topics to sit in rather than creating too many sub-forums from the outset which makes all of them look less busy, and perhaps therefore less active and less attractive. I've started forums off that didn't work out as they were huge and I had a big vision for them, though as I aimed too high too soon they lacked what a forum should be, and means by definition, which is, open discussion. So encourage more of that by sticking lots of activity in one area in one forum, and when it has too much activity, only then start splitting the category into subs of the same sort-of topic.

An example of that is the 2010, 2011, 2012 recruiting profiles sub forums which perhaps for the time being could be 2010 - 2012 recruiting profiles and then if/should they guys busy, then you create more forums. That said, I'm not a Basketball fan, therefore perhaps may not fully understand those categories.

Search Engine Optimisation

Always a biggy with me as I understand that if your website can't be found, you're delivering your brilliant content to less than you could be.

Your description is good but you mention Cincinnati just as many times as bearcat. Though on your website and within the forum categories you mention bearcat many many more times than Cincinnati. I'd perhaps re-work your description to just mention bearcat football, basketball and bearcat recruitment if that's what your discussion is about. Keywords are okay but I generally don't use those as if they work now but sort of in the back of my mind hope they have some small weight so I do use them a little like yourself.

According to yahoo linkdomain you have 26 inlinks, the higher ranking ones (and perhaps more reputable) coming from 2 wikipedia pages, well done! Other good ones carrying weight are DigitalPoint and blogspot bearcat basketball blog, which I'm guessing is your own? - Fair play.

Overall though I'd try and increase those inbound links somewhat and try to use different anchor text, one biggy I think that would work out for you if you ranked highly for would be "bearcat basketball" and not just "bearcat talk" which is almost your 'brand' name so to speak. And domain name, so you'll easily rank for that.

I'd consider editing your 'forumhome' template in vb and edit the <title> tag to exactly what your forumhome to be, and mine, if I had your website, would be something like <title>Bearcat Basketball | Bearcat Talk | Talk about everything Bearcat on this forum for Bearcat Basketball</title>. Doing so will give you some extra play with inbound links and matching anchor text.

Appeal?

Yeah, definitely. Love the colours, love the small amount of ads, love the header, love the navigation. Love the fact that the forum category section on forumhome is exactly the width of a 728px ad.

Also, it's fair to mention that I like the use of the RSS feeds though I'd use a signature in the feeds to link back to your homepage, perhaps with the anchor text of "Bearcat Basketball".

Overall 9/10. Only losing a point for going half way with the optimisation. That forum could rank for a lot more than it does.

After thought. Get a few more guys like Browdog Brown and SGW or whatever their usernames are and you'll soon have lots of contributions.