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How SEO Forums Help Me

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 28, 2007 in General

Although a fair number of new people have found this blog, most of you seem to be pretty advanced in the fields of Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. As you know I don’t often discuss the basics because, well, most of you know the basics.

Still, I’ve been very critical of SEO forums through the years and people often wonder — sometimes with great anger — why I bother to read them (or post in them) any more. We each find unique value in online communities, but I think other people share some of the values I have placed in SEO forums. I know they have.

So let me begin by explaining why I am critical of SEO forums.

Why SEO forums suck

SEO Forums share bad information Don’t blame the forum communities or the forum operators. It’s not about placing blame. Forum pages are very much like search engine results pages. They provide lists of links that are relevant to some general topic. So the presentation of a forum index page is very similar to the presentation of a search results page. And just as a SERP can provide information about a topic (information the user sees and absorbs before clicking on any listings), so a forum index page can provide information. The thread titles and (if available) brief descriptions, the little balloons that some forum software provide which show the first comments in a discussion — all these things push information to people.

I often browse a forum simply by looking at the thread title, description, who started the thread, and who last posted to it. If I’m in Highrankings’ forum and I see that Jill, Randy, ProjectPHP, or some other moderator/admin has followed up to what seems like a very basic thread, I move on. Once in a while, if I think the topic is interesting, I’ll open up the thread and read through it. And on some subset of occasions I will still follow up to the follow ups from the forum operators. The same is true at other forums I still participate in.

But most people don’t get their first impressions from what I write. They get their first impressions from thread titles like, “Has Google banned my site?”, “Why does Yahoo! hate me?”, “Is it okay to exchange links with this directory?”, “Where can I find blog linking software?”, “Banned to Google Hell - I’ve gone supplemental”, “Google dish washing detergent industry filter has banned me”, “MSN rocks! - I’m number 1!”.

Most SEO myths are built through forum thread titles. Sure, there are ancient blog posts and SEO tutorials out there that tell you reciprocate with every site on the Web, but most people don’t read those old posts. They are reading forum thread titles more than anything else. Forum operators rarely moderate thread titles. They’ll close threads, ban abusive users, patiently provide links to their sticky threads that discuss the fundamental stuff, answer tedious questions, interesting questions, share thoughts with their peers — but how often does the misinformation get edited out of a forum thread title? Not very often.

SEO forums become stomping grounds for idiots There are some very well known idiots in the SEO community. Some of them are considered to be “A” listers by otherwise reasnoable people. What does it take to be an idiot? An inability to grasp the fundamental principles of evaluating and sharing information. SEO idiots typically are the most hostile, negative, abusive, critical, rampaging people in the SEO community. Many of them are forum moderators and admins. Some of them have very popular blogs and Web sites and they get lots of link love from otherwise reasonable people.

SEO idiots rarely admit to being wrong when they are wrong about something major. I often admit to being wrong about major stuff. For example, a lot of people have said through the years that Google targets certain “verticals” for closer scrutiny and heavy filtering. I’ve often denied seeing any evidence to indicate they do this (because their search results for those verticals typically suck). Nonetheless, Matt Cutts recently confirmed (at SMX Advanced 2007) that Google does indeed pay closer attention to (gasp!) “Real estate” and several other unnamed “verticals”.

I was wrong. Many of you conspiracy theorists were right. It’s nothing for me to admit I’m wrong when the facts are there. However, even today there are SEO evangelists who still about the Google Toolbar PR values with reverence, who think that you get into the supplemental index through duplicate content, and who believe that Google ranks by links. Idiots. All of them. Not because I disagree with them, but because all of these ideas have been debunked for years.

It’s one thing for someone who is very well established in the industry, who has been doing things a certain way for years, to resist the suggestion that their guiding principles may be flawed. We all need to be skeptical of criticism directed at the things we believe in. It’s quite another, however, for someone to continue advocating the same nonsense year after year when it has been widely debunked. And these people continue to propound their nonsense in their favorite stomping grounds: SEO forums. They flame, bash, ridicule, and abuse anyone who disagrees with them. They show no professional courtesy and cannot help but resort to condescending retorts when they want to express their disapproval of anyone else’s idea.

How do you know someone is an SEO idiot? It’s not easy, as we all look like idiots on occasion. We all get angry, frustrated, and have bad days. But if you browse a forum for 2-3 years, you should be able to figure out who the SEO idiots are. They are the ones who rarely link out to any credible sources of information to back up what they say. Their authority lies not on proper research but rather on bashing, badgering, and bullying people.

Why SEO Forums Are Great

I learned SEO in a forum Had it not been for Virtual Promote’s SearchEngineForums and GetHighRankings sites I would never have learned about search engine optimization. By 1998 I had been participating on the Web for a couple of years and wasn’t doing badly in terms of building traffic. I was getting thousands of visitors every month. Problem was, new sites would come along and appear in search engine results for queries I didn’t even know people were using. My Web marketing until then had been built around banner exchanges, Webrings, niche directories, links on other people’s Web sites, and news group and mailing list announcements.

In those days you could build up quite a lot of visibility with those methods without ever spending a dime. But the Web was changing and people were becoming more attuned to key influencer sites, news sites, and search services. Visibility is vital to Web marketing and I had no clue as to how to build my search visibility.

I learned the basics in an SEO forum, but even the basics didn’t help me very much. They were still only recently defined principles and there were technical secrets that the heavy hitters held back. For the most part they were forbidden to share the deeper stuff — the “formulaic” SEO. And in those days — when Altavista, Infoseek, Northern Light, Inktomi, and other now unknown search engines ruled — “formulaic” SEO worked better than anything else.

The shining moment for me came when a spammer took a huge chance and told me — in the Altavista forum at SearchEngineForums — exactly how to create a doorway page. I was fascinated with doorway pages because everyone was talking about them, people were reporting them to search engines, but no one was explaining exactly what they were. That doorway page template remains the heart of my on-page optimization principles today. I just happen to use it to lay out content, rather than spam a page with keywords.

That doorway page taught me more about relevance than all the SEO tutorials ever written combined.

And I learned other things from the dark side, too. For example, I learned about hallway pages, sometimes called crawler pages. I learned how spammers used hierarchical tiers of crawl pages to get their content indexed quickly. In other words, I learned about custom Web directories, and HTML site maps, and how good tight interlinkage is so important to getting a site crawled and indexed.

I learned about how links from other sites gave better link love than links from my own sites (this is no longer true, btw).

I learned about other things, too. And you can still learn the basics in SEO forums — up to a point. The problem is that the noise-to-signal ratio has increased across the Web since those years. How do you figure out who is right and who is wrong? Experiment, evaluate, adjust.

SEO forums tell you about search updates Just when everything seems rosy and boring, you’ll see an upsurge in complaints about lost rankings in SEO forums. That’s the signal to start checking your rankings, your competitors’ rankings, your site: indexing, etc. You can tell when something big is going down because you can see the pain and agony spreading across the Web.

SEO forums tell you about new resources I’m no fan of SEO tools. Most of them report the same generally useless information (Toolbar PR, Alexa ranking, and number of Yahoo! backlinks). If you’re hoping to learn about the latest SEO gizmo in an SEO forum, you’re not learning anything from this blog.

A good new resource is something like a new blog, a new news site, a new directory (a real directory, not some “SEO friendly” directory), a new search engine, a new service from an existing search site, a new SEO tool that doesn’t have anything to do with PR, Alexa rankings, or Yahoo! backlinks, a news story, an entertaining video, etc.

SEO forums tell you about conferences and seminars I’m not a conference/seminar circuit player but there are a lot of them out there and people undoubtedly get some value out of them. At any rate, you generally hear things at conferences and seminars that you don’t see in SEO forums (although the B.S. factor can be just as high at a conference party as in an SEO forum). Conferences and seminars help you meet people, build your credibility, build your contacts network, and if you’re lucky they have vendor displays where you can pick up an assortment of neat (but cheap) pens, flashlights, CD disks, t-shirts, and other junk that at least gives you something for your money and time.

SEO forums occasionally have authoritative statements from search reps Search service companies have been monitoring SEO forums since Jim Wilson launched Virtual Promote’s forums. In those days there was no “GoogleGuy” or ‘MSNDude” or whatever. They lurked, they tracked spammers, and they were generally not very friendly with the SEO community. And the fact that only 2-3 forums today have active search service reps is a generally bad thing for the SEO community because that participation implies or confers a credibility those forums don’t deserve.

So what if Brett Tabke and Danny Sullivan started those forums? You can find plenty of crap, nonsense, and SEO mythology in their discussions. Those particular forums are not well regarded because of their high signal-to-noise ratio (too many SEO idiots stomping around in the discussions). Those particular forums just happen to have some very smart, decent people who participate, though, and the forum operators have good relationships with a lot of people.

But that is why I read SE Roundtable. They’ll often report what the search reps have to say. Of course, search rep posts are also often repeated on other forums and blogs. But you definitely want to know what search reps say if they step into a discussion.

There are some really smart, well-informed people in SEO forums Ron Carnell and I have crossed blades many times, or so it seems. But he seems an affable guy if you’ve ever seen his avatar in the HighRankings forums (he looks like Alan Hale, Jr., who played the Skipper on Gilligan’s Island — how can you not love the Skipper?). Ron can take any half-composed description of a Web server problem and offer the most professional, complete technical diagnosis of possible causes and probable fixes you’ve ever seen. I have never seen anyone in the SEO industry offer better, more informative posts than Ron on tons of technical stuff. It seems like he has suffered through every server crash, inefficiency, or glitch that can plague anyone trying to make two lines of code work on the Web.

There are other people out there (not many, in my opinion) who offer Ron Carnell-quality professionalism and advice on various technical aspects. It’s not all about server configuration and maintenance. These guys like to tinker and it shows in the quality of their information. Bill Slawski is another guy who has spent all his time (or so it seems) tinkering with search engine patents, analyzing them, applying what he has gleaned to today’s search algorithms, etc. Jonathan Hochman is the dominant SEO contributor for Wikipedia. I hate Wikipedia. So do many of you. Jonathan believes in it enough to want to be part of the process, and he brings a certani integrity to the process. We don’t always agree with his judgment but he knows how Wikipedia works and he invests a huge effort to ensure that the SEO-related articles are at least not jammed with garbage.

SEO forums are lucky to have guys like these helping out people, because everyone gets burned out. You’ll never seen many of the real specialists participating for any great length of time. They’ve seen every question, answered every question, and have generally helped resolved some major issues through the years. But they are like sleeping dragons now, rarely coming out to breathe fire and give the peasants an extraordinary show of strength, prowess, and professionalism. It’s a good thing when these guys come back to say hello and get caught up in a technical discussion.

SEO Forums are great places to hone your skills I have not lost my passion for learning about search engine optimization. I didn’t just learn it by having people explain technical things to me. I also learned it by helping other people. Many SEO forums have Web site review sections. You often have to earn the privilege of asking for a review by participating in discussions. I often urge people new to the industry to give feedback in the site review discussions. It doesn’t matter how little you know. The more you expose yourself to, the more you’re going to learn.

Simply telling strangers what you think of their presentation, organization, and calls to action helps you learn how to look at your work dispassionately and critically. Practice what you preach, practice until you’re perfect, and then keep practicing until you lose your passion.

Giving free SEO reviews and Web design reviews helps you look more professional when you’re dealing with clients. You’ve discussed many of the sensitive points already. I don’t have as much time for site reviews as I used to but I’ll still occasionally do one. I need the practice. We all need the practice.

SEO analytical skills are in the “use ‘em or lose ‘em” category. If you don’t have enough business coming in to keep you doing paid analysis every day, then you should be doing free analysis on those days when you’re not servicing clients. Helping people helps you. It makes you think analytically, you are exposed to a constant stream of new situations, and you build your client service skills. The less often you lose your temper with someone who just doesn’t get it, the better you’ll be able to maintain your client relationships.

Last words … I see other value in SEO forums but these are, to me, the most important points. I don’t feel most people get as much benefit from browsing SEO forums as they should. We’re an eclectic mix of interests, needs, skills, and availabilities. We come together like a rainbow of colors in a mixing bowl. You never know what today will be like in the SEO world. It’s always different. And it never changes.