Using one vBulletin installation with multiple domains for SEO

[Adult SEO]

Dear vBulletin users and admins,

I have discussed this topic in the past several times (also on vBSEO.com), and was told by vBulletin e-mail support that it is allowed for me to use multiple domains with 1 vBulletin installation for SEO purposes, however, in the licence agreement it is stated that you are allowed to use 'just one' domain per licence.

As I am currently working on a bigger customisation of vBulletin that I have been working on for almost 1 year now, I would like to discuss it again to maybe have the licence agreement changed to enable webmasters to use multiple domains on their forum for SEO purposes in accordance with their licence agreement.

Aprox. 2 years ago I started with www.papegaaienforum.nl, a forum for parrot lovers in The Netherlands.

My (SEO) concept was to use a seperate domain for every parrot specie subforum. For example for African Grey parrots www.grijsje.nl, for Love Birds www.agapornisforum.nl, for Macaws www.araforum.nl and so on.

This concept has proven to be super successful, and within just 3 months the forum was the biggest parrot forum in The Netherlands and had top rankings for almost every major parrot keywords.

It had the main parrotforum.nl domain for the main parrot related information, and each subforum domain for more specific parrot related information. This concept enabled Google to determ the value of the content on the subforum more precisely and resulted in #1 rankings for almost everything parrot related, above all existing forums that offered all information from just 1 global domain.

Being able to use seperate domains per subforum is a huge benefit for SEO.

Maybe it would be possible to get the licence agreement altered so that webmasters are officially allowed to use multiple domains for their forum, as long as it is used for subforums.

Best Regards,
Jan Jaap

[Steve Machol]

It sounds like the intent is to make these appear to be separate forums, which requires multiple licenses.

[Adult SEO]

Well, you can see it on the parrot forum.

Normally a webmaster would have parrotforum.com/subforum/ but now it is actually using its own domain.

It is basicly the same as when you have 1 domain, but for SEO it is one of the most valuable things to have as it will make the content on subforums more relevant and of higher value.

I already asked this before via email support and was told it was ok.

However, in the licenceagreement it sais 'one domain' so I wanted to make it clear via the forum.

[Steve Machol]

Is the intent is to make these appear to be separate forums?

[Adult SEO]

An other example: a webmaster forum owner would be able to use:

WebmasterForum.com ->
WFSEO.com
WFSEM.com
WFMarketing.com
WFAdSense.com
WFAdWords.com
....

And these domains would serve the normal subforums, so its just the same as 1 installation but it would use domains for subforums to make the content more relevant to the domain and better indexable.

There would be some problems to solve for the webmaster because the cookie does not preserve by default over multiple domains, but I managed to get a multi domain login to work on the parrot forum.

[Adult SEO]

Is the intent is to make these appear to be separate forums?

No, it is intended to make the subforums better accessible. It is 1 forum: parrot forum. And the subforums have a seperate domain for better accessibility.

[Steve Machol]

Will there be links back to the main forum? What are the exact modifications you intend to make?

[Adult SEO]

Yes, it is just like a regular forum, just instead of forum.com/subforum/ (using vBSEO) it will be www.subforum.com (it could also be subforum.forum.com).

www.papegaaienforum.nl has been setup like this since 2006, a parrot forum with a seperate domain for subforums.

[Steve Machol]

That doesn't answer my questions but if I understand this correctly then I believe one license is sufficient. I reserve the right to modify that should new info come to light.

[Adult SEO]

Well, the parrot forum should be all you need to see how it works for yourself ;)

And yes, there will be links back to the main domain. The subforum domains are only in use for the subforum of the main forum.

In this case: parrot forum, with a seperate domain for amazon parrot related discussions.