T-Bucket Forums Blog

Somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming.

The statistics on the T-Bucket Forums are, once again, pretty amazing.  We felt we were making a positive move when we moved the site over to a KnownHost virtual Private Server and we were right.  We’re able to handle the larger number of visitors we’re seeing (and we’re seeing a l-o-t more) and the page load times improved tremendously.  We felt we were making another positive move when we installed vBSEO on the site and we were right, once again.  Our numbers were always growing before, but now they are exploding.

We installed vBSEO on 17 May.  On that day, we had 439 members.  On 1 June we were at 470 members and today we have 546 members.

In that same time frame, our post count has gone from 8,771 to 9,871 and today we have 12,381 posts.

Since 17 May, the traffic we’re getting from search engine searches has gone up by 35%.  That is a result of the number of searched keywords climbing an incredible 120% in that same time period.  Yes, I think vBSEO is working and working well.

The number of daily page views has increased by 54%, since 17 May.

The number of pages indexed on Google has gone up by 86%, since 17 May.

The number of inbound links Google is reporting has doubled since 17 May.

The hit counts on the site continue to climb.  Our total hit counts for this month (with two days left in the month, mind you) are up 11% over last month.  If you’re sitting down, then I’ll share with you that this hit count has increased by 230% (!!!) since January.  Two hundred, thirty percent in six months!

The number of unique visits to the site is up 35% over last month and that number is an 86% increase since January.

We’re looking into having some apparel items made up, to promote the site.  Proceeds from the sale of these items will just go into the site’s war chest, so we can continue to grow the infrastructure as the activity numbers climb.

Once again, I want to thank the T-Bucket Forums sponsors and the members that have made financial contributions to the forum.  We deeply appreciate this support and we’re dedicated to working even harder to make the site a more valuable resource to everyone.

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It’s getting to the point that we’re nervous about looking at the statistics for the T-Bucket Forums.  The numbers have been so impressive over the last few months and we’re wondering how long these numbers will hold up.

But the good news is we’re not seeing any signs of a slow-down yet.

One of the more impressive graphs is the one showing the monthly hit count for the T-Bucket Forums.   The  points on this graph represent the end-of-month totals for each month, since the first of 2008.  March didn’t represent much growth over February, but the numbers have been overwhelming beyond that.

Here is a graph that is going the opposite direction, but that is a good thing. The points on this graph represent the Bounce Rate for the last few weeks.  Bounce Rate is a number reflecting the number of visitors that visit a single page on a Web site and then move on, without viewing a second page.

The key to getting more members is to get more visitors to a Web site.  We thank our members who are linking to the T-Bucket Forums on their own Web sites and on other sites, as this helps build our traffic numbers.  But we are also relying on the search engines to ferret out keywords from the site.  The more keywords we can get indexed, the more chances we have for our pages to appear in searches.  The more pages we can get to appear, the better the chance for getting visitors to our site.  The more visitors we can get, the better chance we have for converting visitors into members.

This graph shows the number of keywords that have brought visitors to the T-Bucket Forums.

As you can see, the total number just keeps growing, day by day

And, as you can see in this graph, our membership count continues to climb.  The membership count is one that we’re really amazed to see.  When we first considered setting up the T-Bucket Forums, we realized this was likely going to be a very small niche forum.  Our initial estimates on total membership was in the neighborhood of 200 members. We’re now approaching our 500th members!

We mentioned a few weeks back that we had installed a new piece of software, called vBSEO.  The entire purpose of using vBSEO is to be as effective as we can be with our Search Engine  Optimization (SEO) tactics.  It all comes back to trying to get the search engines to notice us.  Frankly, the vBSEO script is not cheap, so we worked as hard as we could to attract the search engines, without spending any money.  But the results we’re now seeing, after adding vBSEO, prove the script is worth every bit of the money spent.  This last graph shows the number of search engine visits we are seeing each day.  And look how it continues to climb!

Some of the changes made to the T-Bucket Forums have come about because of the wonderful support we have been able to receive from the site sponsors and member donations.  The truth of the matter is that we simply could not afford to do some of the things we’ve been able to do, had companies like Spirit Industries, Ron Pope Motorsports and Total Performance not been willing to support the forums with their advertising dollars.

And this doesn’t mention the donations we’ve received from our own forum members.  Every time you log into the T-Bucket Forums, remember to thank members like Bill Pederson, datonamanmike, der Spieler, LumenAl, RocknT, Tbucit, tfeverfred and Youngster for helping us to pay the hosting expenses with KnownHost.  Every time you learn a bit of information from the GARS Articles forums, remember our sponsors and donors provided that script for us to use.  Every time you realize that our growing membership is helping to make the T-Bucket Forums such a valuable source of information, remember that we couldn’t afford scripts like vBSEO on our own.

The T-Bucket Forums went live on 21 October 2006.  On 13 January 2007, after attracting only 15 members and 48 posts, we decided to throw in the towel.  And now look - we’ve attracted 15 new members in the last 9 days and we’re regularly getting between 70 and 100 posts a day.  I suppose this is why we’re so often amazed to see the way the site continues to grow.

To all of the members of the T-Bucket Forums, we just want to say, “Thank you!”

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We’ve had another busy week at the T-Bucket Forums.  We keep thinking as the weather improves, then the forum will settle down a bit, but this certainly has not been the case.

We were excited a month ago, when we saw we had finally edged over the 1,000,000 hits/month number for April.  We saw 1,100,000+ hits that month.  Well, without trying to be ‘punny’, all we can say is the hits just keep coming.  In May, we exceeded 1,250,000 hits!

To give you an idea of the growth we’re experiencing, in January of this year, we didn’t even have 450,000 hits.  And we saw 1,250,000+ hits last month?!?  This represents a 170% increase, since the first month of the year.

A week ago, the top 20 keywords used in Google searches showed we had 18 on page 1, 1 on page 2 and 1 on page 3.  This morning, we have 19 on page 1 and just 1 on page 2.  Over the course of the last two weeks, since we installed vBSEO, the number of keywords used to link visitors to the forums has increased by 82.

The stats from the forum show 988 threads, 9,871 posts and 470 members.  That is a weekly increase of 68 threads, 615 posts and 18 members.  Now these numbers might not seem significant, standing alone.  But we need to look back to the increases we saw in a two week period from 11 May to 24 May.  In those two weeks, we gained 83 threads, 847 posts and 22 members.  Last week’s numbers suddenly look much stronger.

Our Bounce rate continues to improve, as well.  Bounce Rate is reflected in the percentage of visitors that land on one of the forum’s pages and then leave without viewing a second page.  That overall, monthly percentage dropped approximately 2% one week ago.  Today, we are down another 3%!

We want everyone to remember there are now some new forums for the submission of technical, how-to articles.  We hope to see more members submitting articles in the coming weeks, so we can become an even stronger T-Bucket resource.

Now it’s just a waiting game to see who submits our 10,000th post.

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A lot has been happening around the T-Bucket Forums over the course of the last 2-3 weeks.  Some of those happenings have managed to derail our weekly statistics, but we’re ready to start picking up where we left off with the numbers.

First things first - we’re sorry to report that one of the T-Bucket Forums’ long-time moderators has decided to step aside.  Rick has been working on the T-Bucket Forums staff for several months and we’re going to miss having his input on some of the decision-making.  Rick, we wish you the very best and look forward to seeing you on the forums.

If you’ve been following the weekly statistical reports on this blog, you’ll doubtless be aware that we’ve had some concern over how poorly the site has been ranking in some of the search engine results pages.  Sure, we’ve been getting traffic, and yes, we’ve also been getting some new members.  But we have felt all along that we could improve the numbers, all the way around.

We’ve been making some template changes to the T-Bucket Forums, trying to make the site more appealing for the search engine spiders and bots.  We’ve been trying to get rid of unnecessary bits of code, so the search engines won’t have to look so long and hard to find our content.

We’ve been very fortunate in the last couple months, as our sponsors and some special friends of the T-Bucket Forums have provided enough funding for us to make some very positive changes.  Our move to a KnownHost virtual private server has got the site running much quicker and with room to grow.  One week ago, we stepped up and purchased a very powerful piece of search engine optimization software for vBulletin forums, a script known as vBSEO.

Already, within one week, we are starting to see some positive results from vBSEO.  We were using a piece of SEO software prior to installing vBSEO, so we weren’t really looking for any earth-shaking numbers to fall out.  And the numbers may not be earth-shaking, but overall, they are already showing positive trends.

So let’s look at some numbers.

The forum has 920 threads, 9,256 threads, 452 members and 204 active members.  Over the course of the last two weeks, we’ve gained 83 threads, 847 posts, 22 members and 9 more active members.

Currently, Google is showing 3.500 indexed pages.  Two weeks ago, that number was at 3,640, but had fallen all the way to 2,790 one week ago.  We’ve recovered nearly all the indexed pages we had, which is not typical with new installs of vBSEO.  Typically, a site will lose a large number of its indexed pages, as vBSEO is rewriting forum URL’s in a completely different format.  But we’re holding our own, to this point.

And this is where we’re going to start looking at some numbers a bit differently.  And we’re going to be looking at some entirely new numbers.

There is a statistic known as Bounce Rate.  Bounce rate is measured by the number of visitors that visit a site and leave the site without ever looking at a second page.  Obviously, the lower a bounce rate percentage number is, the better.  A lower percentage indicates that when people visit a site, they find it interesting enough to look around a bit.  We already had a pretty good bounce rate, for the site, but we’re watching it improve.  Last Saturday, the overall bounce rate for a 30 day time period was 13.42%.  As of today, that same number has dropped to 11.65%.  Our bounce rate has been under 2.5% for the last 3 days.  Thursday, the bounce rate was at ZERO!  Every single visitor to the site stayed long enough to view at least one more page.

We use a piece of software that tracks all the visits to the site from the search engines.  It also tracks how many keywords are being used in search terms, for these people to find us.  It’s been frustrating to see that over the last several weeks, there has been little change to the number of keywords used to find the site.  Fortunately, vBSEO is helping us correct that problem.

In just 7 days, we’ve seen a rather flat-line graph take a very positive upward turn.

This graph shows fourteen points of data, the number of search engine keywords used to find the  site over the previous 30 days of each point.  The vertical red line indicates the day we installed vBSEO.  And you can see the numbers have climbed, significantly, since that day.  If we can just keep this one metric alive, it will mean more and more search engine traffic arriving at the T-Bucket Forums.  And when our bounce rate is looking as good as it does, more visits are likely going to bring us more members.

As of this afternoon, our top 20 Google search terms are all showing some positive positioning, as well.  Of the 20, 4 were number 1, 1 was number 2, 1 was number 3, 3 were number 4, 1 was number 6, 2 were number 7, 5 were number 8, 1 was number 10, 1 was number 11 and 1 was number 28.  Of the 20, 18 were all on page one.  The 19th was only one spot off page 1.

Yesterday, we added another powerful script to the T-bucket Forums, called GARS, or the Geek’s Articles and Reviews System.  This script allows us to transform some of our forums into newly-formatted Articles forums, Reviews forums and Tutorials forums.  It lays the information out into a more professional format and allows the articles to be printed in the same format.  We encourage our members to add as many technical articles as they care to write, as this will help cement the T-Bucket Forums’ position as the Internet’s leading T-Bucket information resource.

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Yes, you’re quite right, the stats didn’t get posted last week.  It was one of those kinds of weeks.  But I still have the figures for last week, so we’ll look at those stats as well as the data from today.

Some of the biggest news for the T-Bucket Forums in April was that we finally edged up over one million hits for the month.  We went over 1,100,000 hits and our average daily pageviews were over 6,700.

The trend we’re now tracking for May is really attracting our daily attention.  At the current daily average, our hit count will be down a bit, but still over a million hits.  It’s the average daily pageview count that is a jaw-dropper.  We’re averaging over 7,400 pageviews per day, due in no small part to the numbers from 5 May, when we saw over 52,900 hits and over 17,900 pageviews in just that one 24-hour period.

Let’s look at the weekly numbers.

On 4 May, we had 807 threads (+34) -  8,007 posts (+436) - 413 members (+7) - 190 active members (-2)

On 11 May we had 837 threads (+30) - 8,409 posts (+402) - 430 members (+17) - 195 active members (+5)

On 4 May, Google showed 3,630 indexed pages (+970) and 1,435 inbound links (-225).  A search on the phrase T-Bucket brought the forums in at number 6 of 381,000 results.  A search on T-Bucket Forums brought the forums in at numbers 1 and 2, with links to the forums at numbers 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 of 91,500 results.  A search on T-Bucket Forum brought the forums in at number 1 of 57,000 results.

On 11 May, Google showed 3,640 indexed pages (+10) and 1,406 inbound links (-29).  A search on T-Bucket brought the forums in at number 6 of 372,000 results.  A search on T-Bucket Forums brought the forums in at numbers 1 and 2, with links to the forums at numbers 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 of 38,100 results.  A search on T-Bucket Forum brought the forums in at numbers 1 and 2 of 92,700 results.

On 4 May, Yahoo showed 1,998 indexed pages (-158) and 4,092 inbound links (-337).  A search on T-Bucket didn’t bring the forums into the first 70 results.  A search on T-Bucket Forums brought the forums in at number 1, with links to the forums at numbers 4, 7, 8 and 9 of 53,100 results.  I did not record the data for the search on T-Bucket Forum.

The drastic loss of indexed pages and inbound links on Yahoo has been somewhat concerning, but it seems the recent assault on the forum by the Yahoo Slurp spiders has paid off.

On 11 May, Yahoo showed 4,693 indexed pages (+2,695!!) and 6,121 inbound links (+4,686!!).  We’re baaaack.  A search on T-Bucket brought the forums in at number 64 of 238,000 results.  A search on T-Bucket Forums brought the forums in at number 1, this blog in at number 2 and links to the forums at numbers 4, 7, 8 and 10 of 63,200 results.  A search on T-Bucket Forum brought the forums in at number 1, this blog at number 3 and links to the forums at numbers 4, 7 and 9 of 73,200 results.

On 4 May, AltaVista showed 2,160 indexed pages (-200) and 4,200 inbound links (-310).  A search on T-Bucket failed to bring the forums into the first 70 results.  A search on T-Bucket Forums brought the forums in at number 1, this blog at number 3 and links to the forums at numbers 4, 7, 8 and 9 of 53,000 results.  Once again, I failed to record the data for the search on T-Bucket Forum.

On 11 May, AltaVista showed 5,050 indexed pages (+2,890!!) and 6,110 inbound links (+1,910!!).  A search on T-Bucket brought the forums in at number 64 of 239,000 results.  A search on T-Bucket Forums brought the forums in at number 1, this blog at number 2 and links to the forums at numbers 4, 7, 8 and 10 of 63,200 results.  A search on T-Bucket Forum brought the forums in at number 1, this blog at number 3 and links to the forums at numbers 4, 7 and 9 of 72,900 results.

Whew!  That was a lot of typing.  But I would be remiss in my duties if I failed to once again thank all of the forum sponsors and those that have made donations to the forum.  We’re examining a couple of add-on scripts that we think will add a lot of functionality to the forums, so there may be some changes in the near future.  And it is because of the confidence these companies and individuals have place in us.  We hope the efforts we’re putting into trying to improve traffic to the forum is an indication of our appreciation.  We look forward to our continued partnerships and shared successes.

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Each week, we take the time to review the statistics for the T-Bucket Forums and each week, we are amazed at the growth we are seeing.  It would seem the decision to move to a KnownHost virtual private server was made at the right time.  We’re seeing more and more activity, but the VPS is still loafing along, as it delivers faster page loads.

At some point this afternoon, the T-Bucket Forums will go over one million hits for the month.  We’ve flirted with this number in the last 2-3 months, but today we will finally make it over the top.

773 threads (+24) - 7,571 posts (+425) - 406 members (+9) - 192 active members (+2)

Google shows 2,660 indexed pages (+400) and 1,660 inbound links (+47).  Here are the results from the phrase searches -

T-Bucket - number 6 of 320,000 results - T-Bucket Forums - the forums come in at number 1, this blog comes in at number 2 and links to the forums show at numbers 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of 27,500 results - T-Bucket Forum - number 1 of 67,200 results

Yahoo shows 2,156 indexed pages (-19) and 4,429 inbound links (-163).  The phrase search results are as follows -

T-Bucket - 69 of 231,000 results - T-Bucket Forums - the forums come in at number 1, this blog comes in at number 2, Add to Google links come in at numbers 6 and 7 of 58,000 results - T-Bucket Forum - the forum comes in at number 1, this blog comes in at number 2, numbers 5 and 7 are Add to Google links and links to the forum come in at numbers 9 and 10.

Alta Vista shows 2,360 indexed page (-20) and 4,510 inbound links (-100).  The phrase search results follow -

T-Bucket - number 70 of 230,000 results - T-Bucket Forums - the forums come in at number 1, this blog comes in at number 2 and numbers 6 and 7 are Add to Google links - T-bucket Forum - the forums come in at number 1, this blog comes in at number 2, number 5 and 7 are Add to Google links and numbers 9 and 10 are links to the forum.

When we see these great numbers, all brought about by the participation of our members, we realize all the work and effort required to keep the forums running is all well worth it.

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If you’ve visited this site before now, you’ll know that we use this blog to keep track of some statistics for the T-Bucket Forums.

Each week, we look at some search engines to see how the T-Bucket Forums are being ranked, how many indexed pages we have and how many inbound links we have.  We then report these numbers in this blog, so our progress (or lack thereof) can be easily tracked.

Today, as we were looking at some search engine results, we stumbled across another T-Bucket-related Web site.  I’m not going to mention any domain names, but the index, or home, page of this particular site announces the domain name of the site is for sale.  The announcement goes on to state the site receives over 1,000 hits per day and the asking price of the domain is $9,995.00.

We’ew not trying to poke fun at anyone, but if a site that can only pull in 1,000 hits/daily is worth that much money, then we’re wondering what the T-Bucket Forums are really worth.  We’re currently averaging well over 35,000 hits/daily.  Hmmm, does this make the T-Bucket Forums worth $350,000?

If anyone is interested, we could probably be convinced to sell for the reduced price of $250,000.  It would take some arm-twisting, but we likely could be persuaded.

Hey!  Where did everyone go????  HEY!  Come back, we were just kidding!

And in case anyone is wondering, no, the T-Bucket Forums are certainly not for sale at any price.  Our members make the site priceless.

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It appears our streak of seeing our traffic numbers setting new records may be over for a bit.  Two weeks ago, the T-Bucket Forums were breaking records every day, but that has settled back down to the point that yesterday was the slowest traffic day we’ve seen yet this month.  I suspect our members are taking advantage of the warm Spring weather, to either get ready for a cruise or were fortunate enough to be in the wind.

Nevertheless, the overall monthly statistics are still looking very impressive.

749 threads (+38) - 7,146 posts (+377) - 397 members (+11) - 190 active members (+1)

Google shows 2,260 indexed pages (-230) - 1,613 inbound links (-71) and a search on T-Bucket brought the forum in at number 6 of 302,000 results, which is an improvement of 1 position and 8,000 results.

Yahoo shows 2,175 indexed pages (-135) - 4,592 inbound links (-138) and a search on T-Bucket brought the forums in at number 63 of 247,000 results, which is a drop of 6 positions and an loss of 4,000 results.

AltaVista shows 2,380 indexed pages (-150) - 4,610 inbound links (-130) and a search on T-Bucket brought the forum on at number 63 of 247,000 results, which is a drop of 6 positions and a loss of 5,000 results.

Some of the search engine results have been a bit disappointing, but then we started looking at some very detailed results from Google Analytics and realized I was missing some of our hotter keywords.  Currently, the combined search engines are providing 26.45% of our traffic.  Of that total number, Google accounts for 23.46% of the new visitors, Yahoo accounts for 34.03% of the new visitors and (surprisingly enough!) AOL accounts for 48.48% of the new visits.

So we started sifting through to see what search terms people were using to find the T-Bucket Forums.  All along, we assumed that T-Bucket would be one of our stronger search phrases, when actually it is one of the weaker terms.  The more popular terms are T-Bucket Forums and T-Bucket Forum.  So we worked out way back through, looking at these terms and the results they produce.

Searching for T-Bucket Forums,  Google brought the forums in at numbers 1 and 2 of 25,000 results.

Yahoo brought the forums in at number 1 and this blog in at number 2 of 62,100 results.

AltaVista brought the forums in at number 1, this blog at number 2 and numbers 4 and 5 were Add To Google links to this site, out of 62,100 results.

AOL Search brought the forums in at numbers 1 and 2, with links to the forums at numbers 5, 6, 7 and 9 of 5,450 results.

We then did another search on the phrase T-Bucket Forum (singular) and Google brought the forums in at number 1 of 34,000 results.

Yahoo brought the forums in at numbers 1 and 2 of 80,200 results.

AltaVista brought the forums in at numbers 1 and 2, with links to the forums at numbers 4, 6 and 7, of 80,200 results.

AOL Search brought the forums in at number 1 of 4,780 results.

These were more along the lines of numbers we were hoping to see.  We’ll start tracking these phrases, as well, to see how well we’re being ranked on those searches.

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The traffic on the T-Bucket Forums has been so much heavier that we’ve been watching it on a daily basis.  I’m a bit late on this report, but I took a close look at the figures through 15 April, the half-way point for the month.

The total hit count for the month was already at 71.16% of March 2008.  Our bandwidth usage was at 96.56% of March 2008.  As of last evening, our bandwidth usage was at 101% of last month.

Our average, daily hit count was up 37% over last month.

Our new member registrations seem to be down a bit for this week, so it would seem that our current members are just spending more time using the forums than before.

It would appear we may have picked a good time to move the site over onto a KnownHost VPS, as we’re better able to handle the traffic with the VPS.

It’s interesting to see how many people are interested in T-Buckets!

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In looking over the weekly statistics for the T-Bucket Forums, I am really amazed at the incredible growth we are seeing this month.

A little over one week ago, we moved the T-Bucket Forums to a Virtual Private Server, hosted by KnownHost.  We saw an immediate and dramatic increase in page load speeds after the move.  And with the exception of just one day out of the last seven, our site hit counts have been higher than anything we had ever seen before.  Two days ago, after monitoring our VPS resources for a few days, we made the decision to double the amount of guaranteed RAM for the VPS.  It was minor, but we once again saw a slight increase in page load speeds.  It has added to the monthly hosting expense, but we were regularly using 80% of the RAM, so we felt it was better to be safe, rather than sorry.

After just 12 days in April, our total hit count for the site is at 56.03% of the March 2008 total.  Comparing March 2008 to April 2008, our average hit counts per day is up 34%  And we have already used 77.36% of the bandwidth we used in March.

711 threads (+30) - 6,769 posts (+390) - 386 members (+13) - 189 active members (+4)

Google shows 2,490 indexed pages (-50) - 1,684 inbound links, which represents no change - a search on T-Bucket brought the forums in at number 7 of 294,000 results.

Yahoo shows 2,310 indexed pages (+230) - 4,730 inbound links (+350) and a search on T-Bucket brought the forums in at number 57 of 251,000 results.

AltaVista shows 2,530 indexed pages (+390) - 4,740 inbound links (+350) and a search on T-Bucket brought the forums in at number 57 of 252,000 results.

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