Case Study: The Fall of SEOChat

Wasn't sure which forum to put this in, but perhaps under Business as this reads like a case study - interesting and informative analysis by a well-known DP'er outlining the Fall of SEOChat

 

They banned me twice. Third time is the charm.....

 

I know there will be a lot of posts in this thread basically saying how much SEOChat sucks, etc but I think there is a more interesting issue and that has more to do with member retension in General.

Its amazing to me the number of arrogant forum owners that repeat this model to the same disastarous results. Changing major features without sticking a toe in to test the water.

Obviously, we are on DP so there is a pro-dp tendency but I will say that when it has come to things like ad placement or additional ads, Shawn has always consulted his members. Additions like iTrader and rep reform were responses to users requests and rather then do the easy thing (like scrap rep) Shawn has adapted it in a unique way.

I hate to agree with Anthony on any subject but it seems I have no choice once in a while. No Follows and Removing signatures completely seems to be the new trend and in Webmaster forums has *seemed* to have a chilling effect.

 

Oh yeah yfs1, it would do you good to agree with me more often, maybe you should link to those threads while you are at it so folks know what you are talking about on this very important issue to forum owners and members!

I have, thanks to Joey become aware of some forum owners taking members signatures down to guest viewers and have done something about exposing forums that do this!

Funny that one guy put them back up right away after I told him to ____ off

 

I was never a visitor to seochat that often, but I remember reading some of those articles - and thinking - WTF were they thinking? Some of the advice was exactly 180 to what I had been doing and what had been working for me. I thought it was nuts. Add to that, most of the articles had about 1 or 2 sentences of useful information spread across 4 to 5 pages. The intent was so obvious - make me read further so I could see a few more ads. Crazy man.

Some of the Seo advice is good there (randfish, egol, and some others) but, like in every other forum out there, its 99% crap, 1% good. And the people who know their stuff aren't spilling their good beans, anyways, yet people keep asking the same inane questions over and over again.

How long will I be in the sandbox?
Will google like this? (or conversely, will google hate this?)
What domain should I choose?

Ugh. Torture sometimes. In any forum, it is sooooo easy to tell who knows their stuff (and who makes money) and who does not. The people who do aren't posting very much good information, and those that aren't are parroting what they've heard elsewhere - whether its reality or not.

 

If anyone wants to see the fight and some history here it is in a nutshell......

http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=559

If you want to learn more about the signature issues yfs1 was discussing see this thread and the one over at Minstrel's forum that is linked within this one!

http://www.vbwebmaster.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1688

...............................................................................

 

Rands blog is actually a great view of things from members perspective. Theres a lot of comments there but I think it actually shows how much those that posted regularly liked that forum.

On the average forum, you don't have that much passion and if they had used that to their advantage the growth rate would have continued.

Its a lesson to other forum owners that no matter how popular or big you are, you are still just made up of your members.

 

I find it amazing how long seochat members have been hanging in there, and am not sure what they were hoping to see happen. The place has been going downhill gradually for a couple of years now ...

 

It was a good forum until the moderators ruined it by following the crybaby members who used to PM them, that's how I got banned both times!

Shawn benefited greatly because he had ZERO moderators in the beginning here!

In addition, I must say as I told Sarah King in a PM over these signature issues, that I have had a few problems with Shawn over the years (mostly because of me and my style), but compared to other forum owners he looks like a saint to me!

Saint Shawn

 

I pretty much gave up when a post I put up to help a fellow business man was deleted. Because I said I won't ship to heavily muslim countries because the belief system allow them to rip off infidels and everyone in the US can be considered an infidel. Worst country for cons like that - Nigeria

I spelled it out so it wouldn't be taken as 'racist' or whatever, but since truth can hurt the whole post was deleted -

 

I have never really been anywhere other than dp but whenever I come across another forum while googling for a bit of code or something I always get put off by the layout.

The amount of adverts and the things that are done like putting masses of adverts in the middle of the thread and even popups/popunders etc.

My view is that if you get the layout and the rules right like dp has then the knowledgeable people will flock to the forum and its these people that give it the level of good content that it needs to be an ongoing success.

First impressions count.

 

I think the comments made by Toddied on Rand's blog entry
http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=559
are what makes it worth reading. Those are some good suggestions.

 

wow, so things are serious over there! that blog was pretty eye opening - now to go see if I am banned yet, if not maybe I should get banned and join the banned wagon? (Pun intended)

Thanks I needed the red!

Are you a mod at seochat - the one that deleted it?

boo hoo -- waaa waaa
LOL

 

i used to visit SeoChat quite often before i discovered DP. I enjoy reading those SEO articles there ... It is indeed a good SEO resource over there .. Those are the articles that makes me understand what is SERP, what is PR ...

And soon i've found that it's full of spam, and slow page loading because of the heavy ads... i hate the rep system there, it appears just below the post ... so when a lot of ppl are giving you a rep, the page will be full of rep instead of posts, which makes me quite sick to see that ..

And DP is the way to go. One Mod rules. (i don't know if it's still shawn the own mod now) But Long Live DP

 

most of the people on seo chat couldn't seo their way out of a wet paper bag.

and those articles ....

 

You need a 1,000GB broadband connection to surf that website quickly - jaysus full of banners and ads and more ads, not for me thanks.

 

Over moderation killed SEO Chat, it is as simple as that.

It is the number one killer of every forum I have been on, bad management is the main reason members quit forums, lack of communication with members leads to bad forum management!

 

Like most stories... you had to have been there to understand it. I, among others, was deep within SEO Chat. It is a shame what happened. Like it or hate it... SEO Chat was the leader in SEO forums. There are other forums that are broader in scope or narrower in vision, but SEO Chat, it its day, was the best.

Take a look at how many threads get started and how many posters are still discussing the granddaddy of SEO boards and what happened. SEO Chat was good while it was good. Today, SEO Chat is.... (you complete the statement).

 

Not within the past 4 years.