Page 3 - Changes to SEO forum - how and why

Oh, and by the way... lots of outbound links... who cares??? You REALLY think this was hurting your site? #1 for seo on Google, what, you were trying to rank higher? Maybe you wanted to Rank organically in the sponsered results?

Look at DMOZ... they have a few outbound links on their site too... doesn't seem to be hurting them any. What exactly is the concern here? What gave you the idea that outbound links were causing any problems? It certainly couldn't have come from any of the experts here.

-Michael

I'm here - what more is there.

Just a thought; although disturbing. Many of us come to SEO Chat to interact with our professional peers (SEO pros). What will happen to the balance of the pros if most SEO pros have left SEO Chat with the intention of not returning? Do the rest of us stick to talk to ourselves or do we branch out and spend most of our time on other boards with our friends that are now on other forums? Not good...

Interesting thought SEO_AM...

I don't know what happened here today but here is a thought...

I advocated cutting the sigs totally a long time ago. I felt that the sigs attracted a lot of people who posted simply to get the links. If that is removed as a motivation for posting then the forum will be more dense with information and anyone who reads here will get a greater knowledge return on time spent.

As I understand it, you can't even get a sig until you have posted a hundred times. That may have changed. I'm not sure.

If that is still the case, and a person posts a hundred times, don't you think that they actually WANT to participate in the forums, rather just link to their sites?

Ya know... Rand is likely one of the most respected members that grew up in SEOChat.

I recall early on when a newbie and doing link exchange he got caught using robots.txt to prevent crawling of link pages.

A mistake? Well it didn't help him none, got banned on another forum, black listed, etc., etc.

I work with him in and out of SEOChat - taught him some stuff and he taught me as well...

I write this because I wonder "if" Rand didn't take the lesson learned and improved himself and no one ever give Rand a second change would he be the relative major influence in the SEO community he is today?

Pause to think about that.

The neat thing about SEO it changes - every day even. Newbies, new peers, new professionals and solid people that are as good and even better than the ones that now believe - they 'are' the only people that are allowed to change.

I've been with SEOChat longer than most. I'm here because it's good for business. Had alot of colleagues here that now are not... I guarantee many more will come along and grow.

SEOChat is a learning environment... and Rand knows this better than most.

Absolutely!

I don't put links in my signature - I use it for fun.

But Wit, as an example, does use links - do you think he was here just for the links? Really? EGOL - are you crazy?

I have a lot of respect for EGOL, but I don't like the politic involved with supressing the rights of many because few may take advantage.

Don't let people vote because some may vote for somebody other than you...

No, there's a well proven flaw in the argument.

Trust is an amazing thing - posess the ability to trust others, and you'll command respect.

Impose restrictions based on fear and you'll start a revolution.

<== pretty damned stern look on that face

No, I think you missed the point. Can you list a single example of someone posting 100 times and sticking to it for 90 days just for a link? Someone who did not contribute to the forums, and therefore lowered the value?

That's what the 90 days and 100 posts is there for. Your claim is, IMO, baseless.



A lot of people? Show us 3.

-Michael

In my opinion this didn't just happen because of the latest mods to the forums. It's mainly the disrespect towards the community that got this started.

People here should start seeing a communitysite as a democracy instead of a dictatorship...

I agree with you and I disagree with you. Yes, sig links might be useless and target to abuse but they do help your new sites being crawled faster and in some cases can even make you rank pretty high. Just on sig links from seochat I was able to rank a 2 week old site #2 on M without much work.
The problem here was the way seochat handled the situation. They banned or pissed almost all biggest posters on this forum. As a businessman I think it was a very dumb decision. You need to control your emotions. I have a few corporate clients that give me dozens of bookings on a monthly bases. And surely enough they give me problems, almost on a daily bases!!! <rant>Sometimes I feel so pissed that I am ready to get my shotgun out and pay them a visit </rant> But would I do that to the hand that feeds me? NO FREAKING WAY. Because I will be the first to suffer. So before making any bad decisions seochat admins should have thought about it first. Apology might be accepted and might be not but it can bring a devastating blow to seochat and its owners

This was certainly the case prior to the 100/90 rule. It is not the case today. If you remember we put in the 100/90 rule to get rid of the sig link leeches. It worked quite well. No need to change it. But if you are going to change part of the business model, at least discuss it among the mods to find out the impact. Once challenged... address the challenge, but do not kill the one that dares to challenge.

And then the real world.

I know of no one in the SEO community that would say... forget higher ranks, forget more ranks, forget more traffic...

I know of no forum administator that would ignore the opportunity to dramatically increase their membership, posters, active posters, and moderators...

I know of no business that would give up more potential to generate more profit.

...and I give no one outside of my business the ability mandate how I run it... I highly doubt anyone else does neither.

I could be wrong though.

I was sleeping when all this went down. You've basically confirmed a few things that I heard. Those were:

A) People were banned for stating their feelings. You're attempting to cover it up with "it was in the wrong forum" but I've seen many many posts simply MOVED to the correct forum.

B) They erased their posts. Well, in the first place, they can't delete them? Oh, no, sorry. The content is owned by you even tho we poured hours and hours of our time into it to help your business. Then there's the deal of us wanting to remove that content and/or change it in some way so you simply ban people. Yeah, that's really gonna get em to come back.

Have you taken a look at your statistics lately? About 90% of your posts come from the top 20 posters most of whom you've pissed off. Bad move.

Good luck with your forum. This will be my last post here.

G-Man

Any real business is based on your customers. They are the ones who run your business. You piss them off and they leave never to come back. Go and run your business when there is nobody to buy your product