Okay, my site nHotspot.net has been up for a few years now. During the first year and a half, we experienced great traffic from gamers looking to play on wi-fi together.

But recently, after we switched forums from myBB to SMF, we've slowed drastically in terms of members joining.

I think this is because we are categorized all wrong, therefor not showing on Google. The site is grouped in with router support still, and we branched out as a "general gaming" site some time ago.

In short, can anyone tell me how to actually have the front page (Wordpress) and forums appear on Google? So that our traffic can be up to where it used to be.

maybe users didn't like the new layout and it didn't have a good effect in the serp.

if your website is built in wordpress and a popular forum technology I doubt your problems are onsite optimization...

What is your backlinking strategy?
What keywords are you targeting?
What keywords WERE you getting traffic from when your site was performing well?
What are the keywords now?

Since when you've been experiencing this sudden drop of traffic? If its just so recent, maybe it's just an effect of Google dance. Wait for atleast a couple of week, if your traffic won't back in that duration then that will be a real big problem.

Originally Posted by eshopwiz

if your website is built in wordpress and a popular forum technology I doubt your problems are onsite optimization...

What is your backlinking strategy?
What keywords are you targeting?
What keywords WERE you getting traffic from when your site was performing well?
What are the keywords now?

Originally Posted by suichiro

Since when you've been experiencing this sudden drop of traffic? If its just so recent, maybe it's just an effect of Google dance. Wait for atleast a couple of week, if your traffic won't back in that duration then that will be a real big problem.

Now is it that you DON'T read the posts or that you DON'T understand??

The site has been changed from one forum system to another THEREFORE ALL THE URIs HAVE CHANGED, so it will take search engines some time to catch up with the changes. Six months to never and MUCH MUCH longer without any redirects.

I think you are in the sandbox.
Just keep on updating & wait.

Originally Posted by rusty_theron11

I think you are in the sandbox.
Just keep on updating & wait.

There is no sandbox.

Hm 6 months eh? Well its' been about 6, maybe I'll "just wait". But idk, it's getting scary. We're at the pont where we don't get a new member unless a user of the community goes out and brings them to the site.

The last few members who were directed to the site said they were looking for "wifi support/help" or stumbled upon a Navigation bar ad-on for Nintendo or something. We haven't supported that since before I owned the site and we switched to SMF.

Could the site's "labeling" or focus be the issue? If so how do I change this.

is it literally not showing up on Google? Try to use the site: command, if it won't appear, then I am afraid it might have been deindexed but if it appears in the SERP, then there's other reason why it is buried in the SERP.

The main reason maybe are the changes of URL as pointed out by @chrishirst above. You can do a 301 redirect to all the URL's that have been deleted so that you won't be getting a 404 error from Google.

Another thing to do is to submit a sitemap to Google through the Webmaster Tools so that Google can discover your new pages more quickly. Then continue your optimization campaign. Goodluck!

Chris and eimroda are right. In addition to what eimroda has suggested you could get backlinks to your main page and then to the grouped topic pages. This may speed up the process but if you have noticed that Google has already indexed your new home page you will probably just have to wait.

switch back

I've found SMF not to be very SEO friendly in my opinion. It has good potential as a community forum, but their releases are so far a part (they finally did a new update 11-01-2010) at over 1 year or more for an update. So I also find their SEO friendliness does not update either.

Originally Posted by my1ken

switch back

you really think switching back is a good idea ??

Originally Posted by rypher21

you really think switching back is a good idea ??

I don't think so. Google need time to crawl your site.

Changing a forum design WILL NOT AFFECT your forums' SERP. But, once you switch your forums CMS to another CMS, you're surely drop your SERP since the website overall structure was completely different now. All I can suggest is that get started from the start. Link build AGAIN your website, and hopefully after few months, you'll be back in search engines again.

Originally Posted by francis84

Changing a forum design WILL NOT AFFECT your forums' SERP.

Of course it most certainly can and will, if the new design uses different navigational layouts and does not include all links the old design may have. Oftentimes forum 'themes' are not identical in how they display the links.

Make sure you do not have any broken links that's link to another website on your pages.

I think new format of your site is not liked by user. Improve your site make it attractive.

Originally Posted by eshopwiz

if your website is built in wordpress and a popular forum technology I doubt your problems are onsite optimization...

What is your backlinking strategy?
What keywords are you targeting?
What keywords WERE you getting traffic from when your site was performing well?
What are the keywords now?

read google algorithm and then check your site that your site is fallow google algorithm roles or note.

if Google is having a hard time with your site, register your site with Google web master tools, you can see reports, submit site maps, and urls, and set who it is targeting. This is your friend!