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galway
Joined: Apr 26, 2004
# Posts: 300
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Posted: 2006-Jan-10 12:28
I have tracked this forum for a long long time 'Google', I have seen many posts and topics discussed. I also often monitor numbers of members etc.
The forum was always a good starting point for people to discuss the finer points of our industry and for people new to seo to gain good knowledge.
It seems that as the months have gone past and turned into years this forum has risen to a high plateaux and now is in decline in relation to the posts and the replies.
Many posts only get one or two replies and there seems to be quite a few with virtually no response. Also many answers to questions are very bland and non helpful (but not all) and some answers are just plain dumb.
My questions are this,
Is there a lack of expertise on the forum?
Are the experienced members now elitist?
Are there fewer members?
Are the questions poor and so the response is so.
Are there too many silent watchers.
Am I wrong in my concern.
Or is this forum stagnated.
There are other forums that seem to be much more lively in debate than this one, however I am merely prompting debate and not directly criticising this platform. I would be interested to know what others think.
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dudibob
Joined: Oct 13, 2005
# Posts: 1472
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Posted: 2006-Jan-10 12:34
could be you :p I try answering people with my limited knowledge  some questions aren't always specific enough to answer straight away too, others just say 'how can I become number 1 in Google' which is an extremely vague question :s
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galway
Joined: Apr 26, 2004
# Posts: 300
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Posted: 2006-Jan-10 13:16
I agree but that is a different question to why am I not listed or why have I dropped. The latter two offer the opportunity to tell a webmaster if their site has problems.
Only two days ago I watched a post from a lady who was told her site was ok when it was completely outside of the boundaries of what is acceptable.
A similar post was by a guy who had been sandboxed for a year, again the first answers were it all looks fine, however, even a basic level of expertise would reveal some huge issues. Even when GS1 posted it was very cryptic?? I told him how it was in plain English. Even with my 'limited knowledge'  I told him ten times what the expert with 6000 posts did.
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10465
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Posted: 2006-Jan-10 14:09
Point me to the "cryptic" post...
If what I am posting is cryptic, then I wanna know about it, pronto.
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serenoo
Joined: Dec 12, 2000
# Posts: 204
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Posted: 2006-Jan-10 14:11
galway I have had your same sensations. I'm here from 2000.
I think there is a new forum that gets more visitors.
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galway
Joined: Apr 26, 2004
# Posts: 300
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Posted: 2006-Jan-10 16:06
Sure,
See the thread at the foot.
I recon thats pretty cryptic to the original poster who is clearly very inexperienced, Its also a shade elitist, however its far better than the earlier response.
In addition the general forum response to this post was pathetic. Here was somebody who really needed help and nobody was prepared to spend the time.
I am not here to criticise individuals though, clearly the forum is stagnated. Just look at the low numbers of replies for the majority of posts.
When you then look at the quality of those replies then clearly it does not inspire the inexperienced to post again. Far better they spend their time on vibrant forums.
What I am not doing is critising people individually but this forum never used to be like this.
[link]
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10465
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Posted: 2006-Jan-10 16:16
I see the thread. I didn't look at the site at all. I don't read every thread on the forum, and I don't reply to every one that I do read.
It was 1 a.m. here when I posted that. I hadn't time for a deeper look, and thought those searches might give the poster a head start to see what was indexed, fully intending to take a deeper look later.
Sometimes sites are indexed, and simply not ranking. Many times there is a www/non-www problem, or duplicate title and meta description problem, and that can get the poster started with a few things to fix.
Note to self: must do more.
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galway
Joined: Apr 26, 2004
# Posts: 300
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Posted: 2006-Jan-10 16:32
g1smd
On the contrary,
It is the members that should do more, all the people watching should be active and join and do more. There are only a few of you, I have seen your posts everywhere and I can understand that you gave a brief reply.
The point of the thread is that a couple of years ago this lady would have got a whole series of helpful posts from the members.
I just feel that at the moment unless its a Google shake up all the expertise is down to people like you and Hampstead etc and there is a general apathy amongst the members of this forum. I am alarmed at how many posts just go unanswered and I count posts with just one or two replies unanswered as most of those replies are vague and unhelpful.
Of course this lack of response will kill off a forum in the end.
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maniac_sarah
Joined: Dec 06, 2005
# Posts: 43
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Posted: 2006-Jan-10 16:49
I will chime in as a new member...I have found this both helpful and not helpful - let me explain...
In terms of getting some basic understanding of SEO best practices I am finding that here. I have had some good advice from even a few of you who have posted to this particular message -
As a marketer (and one that is an expert in paid search strategy) I look to these forums to help me present clear problems to my tech/dev department with regards to our site (I know it is a mess but am having a hard time putting together the list of everything - simple thingss like titles & descriptions, 301 redirects...etc are ok but I dont know code...). I can understand the fundamental basics but also realize things are constantly changing - I would love that I am in here to just simply keep up with the change, however what I really need is reinforcement from experts to help convince my tech/dev dept and CEO that our site needs major re-working. I get push back every single day from my tech/dev team and on the flipside get heat from my CEO on delivering traffic through organic results.
When I do get replies to my questions or read replies to questions similar to mine through searching the forums, I usually look at the users profile who is responding and read a few other of their posts to gauge their knowledge/expertise (as much as you can do that without knowing the person). I have been disappointed as I may not know exactly what to search on to get some answers answered or how to articulate a question to get the best possible answer.
I also realize that this is a free forum and people get paid good money to work on sites to make them SEO friendly while keeping the end user in mind. My company is a start up so the money is thin...I left a good paying job to take a chance on a start up and am trying to get as quickly up to speed on all things SEO as well as drive change in the organization. So for that I appreciate all of the help I have been given and would simply say if someone is not being clear in a question then help them ask the right one...of course except for those who simply come in and say how do I get to be #1 in Google - as a new user I have to say I promise I will never post that question.
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10465
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Posted: 2006-Jan-10 17:45
>> as a new user I have to say I promise I will never post that question. <<
It is very easy to get to #1 in Google -- for an obscure term that no-one searches for, as that silly thread over there amply demonstrates.
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dudibob
Joined: Oct 13, 2005
# Posts: 1472
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Posted: 2006-Jan-11 09:31
that thread is extremely random, but fun
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ClickIt
Joined: Jul 31, 2000
# Posts: 746
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Posted: 2006-Jan-12 02:43
Though I rarely post commnets anymore, I still check SEF to keep track of what is going on.
As I have moved up in my career, I am no longer spending 14 hours a day teasing out the secrets of the Web. Rather, I have had to hire other people to take on the jobs that I used to do. And as such, I am not quite so up to date with the latest and greatest. So I leave it to other people to comment on the vast majority of postings.
I assume that some of the more prolific posters of years past have done something similar. It is not for lack of interest nor caring. Rather, it is perhaps time for the new kids to step up and start posting with flurry and fury. My beard is literally grey. I have to run a compnay; let someone else post 9 times a day now.
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lizardz
Joined: Nov 12, 2004
# Posts: 1394
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Posted: 2006-Jan-13 18:59
galway, speaking only for myself, there are a few problems:
1. too many newbie posters. you can only answer a newbie question so many times before it gets boring.
2. directly related to 1: since there are too many newbie posters, the statistical odds of snagging a killer client are very low on these forums, thus eliminating a major reason to post for me.
3. too many site review requests of aff sites etc. In one year, I think I looked at maybe 2 sites that had any promise at all. Again, for time spent, nothing learned, I know why bad sites don't rank. And I know why bad sites tend to stay bad, it's the owner, cheap, unoriginal, nothing new or creative to add to a site or topic, wanting the easy way up etc, not a formula for success.
4. too much catering to newbie posters, that's my opinion, for what it's worth, which isn't much I'll happily admit. Catering to newbies too much leads to problems 1-3. And tends to drive away more experienced posters, since when you are more experienced, you are presumably making enough money to not want to spend time on stuff that won't pay, either in terms of money or aquiring meaningful information.
5. ongoing site programming problems. That's a personal annoyance, I just don't like stuff that doesn't work well. I want to be able to delete stickies, not have to escape programming code, etc.
I'm not saying this to argue, but since I'm I guess one of the posters who decided to drift off, for the above, plus other, reasons, maybe my input might be of some use.
In the programming and webmaster forums, same problems, only worse, hardly any interesting questions that will actually teach me something new, just 'where do I get free software to do x or y?' type questions. those are boring.
There's a few other fairly major issues but I'm not going to get into those since there's not much that can be done about them.
wish the forums luck though, there's some nice posters here.
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Curt
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 3747
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Posted: 2006-Jan-16 05:35
Yep, ditto to many of those who posted above. lizardz brings up some very good points (especially point 3):
3. too many site review requests of aff sites etc. ... I know why bad sites tend to stay bad, it's the owner, cheap, unoriginal, nothing new or creative to add to a site or topic, wanting the easy way up etc, not a formula for success."
If I built a site like that looking for the easy way up, I'd never ask for help with it.
For me, time... time is the issue--haven't been visiting for a while.
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