Does the forum really need SEO? It already gets lots of love from Google.
Any SEO needs to be done carefully. My concern is that deliberate attempts to improve Google ranking can be seen as attempts to “game the system” and actually result in a decrease in ranking.
Thanks you guys. I can look up that stuff myself. I was making the point that a reader shouldn’t have to look up random jargon acronyms. It’s most helpful when the writer includes the full term in the first place.
Not any more. Google has dropped us significantly in its ranking system since their last algorithm update. The number of visitors to the site has dropped accordingly, along with ad revenue.
Google publishes some broad guidelines, but does not give out the actual method that their algorithm uses, so folks like us are left to fumble around in the dark trying to figure out why we no longer feature as prominently in google search results.
You may not have been familiar with it, but SEO is a fairly common internet acronym these days. I haven’t seen it written out as a full term in a very long time.
No it doesn’t.
No forum should be easily searchable through itself.
When a secondary site like Google will do it better for them.
I don’t see why this forum should even be able to search itself.
Why, that seems ludicrous.
Everything should be Google Google Google and not this own site.
[sarcasm] off [sarcasm]
We’re not talking about this board’s (admittedly crappy) search function.
We’re talking about google’s search algorithm and page ranks. In other words, if someone searches for how many people are killed every year from coconuts, does the Straight Dope website and message board show up on the first page of hits or is it buried way back on page 100 where no one will ever find it?
Google search results drive a lot of people to this site. Google’s recent algorithm changes have dropped us significantly in the page ranks, so we are getting fewer people steered towards the Straight Dope and the SDMB, and our advertising income is dropping proportionally.
I wasn’t familiar with the acronym SEO. I am certainly familiar with the idea of trying to improve your prominence on search engines, however.
Is this a generational thing? Implying that young people do not / can not write?
I am not keen on podcasts, and YouTube is far too slow as a means if imparting information, let alone anything that needs to be thought about. IMHO, YouTube is a place for the opinionated and the crazies with their conspiracy theories and other nutty postings. That’s one market, the SDMB is another.
When is somebody going to break down and say exactly what is needed to keep going?
Speaking as one who joined in only a few months ago, I did not find it any different from many other forums.
International Clearing House (ICH, an excellent news-based board run by Tom Feeley) provoked strong reactions in the discussion of current issues and an asbestos suit was highly advisable. One or two LinkedIn forums also got pretty hot, despite moderation. ICH is currently remaking itself and is looking for a way to permit comments without trolls and the seriously obnoxious flaming everyone. The existing moderation system apparently got overwhelmed.
Is ICH a model? It runs on donations, but is always hard up.
Thanks. I wasn’t aware that things had changed. That’s a shame because this place deserves a high search ranking. In spite of a large noise to signal ratio, there’s a lot of good info along with all of the noise. I know that I’ve received some very useful answers more than once in GQ.
I wonder if it would be worthwhile to do some advertising, or if they’d even be interested in spending money on it (or if it would gain anything). Imagine paid links to interesting threads or staff reports popping up in people’s FB feeds.
I often use Tapatalk to access the SDMB, I wonder if some kind of SDMB mobile app would bring in traffic.
So, thought a bit more over the weekend about the Patreon angle. Chris Chapel, one of the guys I follow on YouTube (he has the China Uncensored channel) has what he calls his 50 cent army. Basically, he asks his Patreon members to donate 50 cents an episode. If we fired back up the Staff Reports, perhaps asking some regular 'dopers to contribute to columns, we could do something similar…ask people to contribute $.50 for each new column as one option, perhaps also some sort of monthly or annual contribution at different levels. Chris gives his Patreon members some special perks which we could do as well (to be worked out). Other channels I’m a supporter of do as well. This would be one revenue stream.
As I mentioned earlier, we could also host a YouTube channel as well, assuming someone could be found to front it and we could scrape up the initial capital to get it started and keep it going. Basically, there is a lot of content on this board that could be used for a weekly video channel IMHO. We could also think about a Twitch channel using the game room…I know there are some gamer 'dopers on the board, perhaps one would be willing to be the front, or find someone. Or a movie review or pick apart channel, discussing movies or TV shows. Personally, I think something like Curious Droid, Joe Scott or Issac Author’s channel would be really cool…or Because Science. The point is, if we had a presence on YouTube or something like Twitch it would give us a new audience…one who might be interested in joining the board as well. Or becoming a Patreon member to support it. It would be all about using the brand but expanding it and expanding the audience. There are, of course, other ways to do this. A presence on Facebook or Twitter feed that discusses hot topics or points out interesting threads.
I think I suggested what could change in my original post. If long-term members were more self-aware and willing to extend a bit more compassion to new members, it might go a long way to keeping newer members around and posting. It’s the board culture to be hard on newbs. I don’t think that’s something that can much be moderated, except in extreme cases. And I will say that when it was extreme in my own personal experience, mods did step in.
I did not mean to imply that it was everyone. Far from it. There are lots of very good, smart, kind and worthwhile people here. They’re why I stick around. Plus I learn lots.
I don’t mean this in a critical way, but this probably has to do with our comparative post counts. You won’t draw much flak if you don’t participate a lot.
My join date: 04-20-2008 (although I lurked before this)
My number of posts: 28
Why?
I, too, am an outsider. I regularly consume information from all points along the political spectrum. Despite how obviously wrong I am to 99.5% of the posters here on The Dope, I still choose conservatism. I have seen nearly every conservative thought shared in here in the past 10+ years shot down with little to no debate. Conservative ideas are just wrong. Full stop. Additionally, the posters of said conservative thoughts are ridiculed, insulted, and thought of as less intelligent than members of the super-intellectual, holier than thou, elitist clique who seem to run this place. That being said…I’m still here several times per week so is my lack of posts hurting the SDMB in any way? IDK, but I guarantee not many of my political bent would stick around here very long.
I hear this a lot, but I wonder if it true. What particular conservative thought has been shot down with little to no debate on this message board? People on this board will debate to death just about any topic you can think of, so an example would be nice.
Get better ad providers. I’ve been whitelisting sites that I want to support (for example, the NY Times, the Washington Post) and I’d be happy to whitelist this site if the ads were better. Locked banners, pop-up windows, crappy clickbait – simply awful. Plus, I doubt it really appeals to the older, smarter (really, we’re smarter than, for example, YouTube commenters, Yahoo! answers, Quora) demographic here anyway.
As it is, I would never visit this place without blockers. It’s not just that the ads are terrible and intrusive, but they seem to carry more malware than, for example, the ads from the NY Times. Get better ads, make an appeal to turn off blockers, and maybe that will help.
Even if I became a member, you still need the blockers for the front page. I cannot believe this place serves pop-under ads. Jeez.
:smack: I had no idea anyone would take that literally. Of course freedom of speech isn’t applicable in the constitutional sense. So allow me to rephrase:
*I’m all in favor of the free expression of ideas
*
There. All better? Back to the discussion at hand…
No, newspapers the medium that the original articles were published in are dieing. Not just young people don’t read newspapers pretty much no one does. While there are sights that are trying to survive by publishing articles using either a subscription or ad based model all of them are struggling look at fivethirtyeight and the problems they’ve had.
I was here before the pop-unders & redirects started, so I’ve stayed. However, if I came to this site from a google search I would quickly close my browser. It’s worse than that ‘upstanding’ corner of the internet; porn sites. :rolleyes: I wonder how many come once & then flee. By eliminating the redirects, how many new people might we be able to attract & would the additional eyeballs on the banner ads offset the lost revenue from pop-unders & redirects?
While we’re at it, do something to make this place mobile friendly; it’s what all the kids these days are doing. [del]Satan’s[/del] Sultanstheme is awful, including that annoying up arrow that takes up real estate & can’t be deleted. Personally, I’m not a fan of mobile sites that trade larger font for (lack of) functionality; that’s been hashed over already.
When viewing on mobile, I use the old SD 3.7.3; however, when one zooms in to increase the font to a reasonable size the banner ad also increases in size. It’s still hard to read the screen when literally half of it is a an ad. IOW, do something to make it more mobile friendly.
I third/fourth/fifth letting us know order of magnitude of how much revenue we need; are we talking a bake sale or a bomber?
I hate quoting an entire post so I edited out some pieces and left the most insightful parts, although EVERY word of this is solid. Bottom line - the presence is outdated, the thinking set in stone, the racism and sexism horrific to newer blood, and many of these ideas are 5-10 years too late.
Can it be rejuvenated? Anything is possible! But the amount of hand-wringing over fucking avatars tells me it’s unlikely. And the superiority complex is not only laughable but appalling when “kids today” are more able to debate and open to new ideas than many here who think themselves erudite. It’s a shame because there have been fun posts.
Racism is stomped upon quickly and without mercy. And, we’re trying with Sexism.
You’re fooling yourself. You don’t need to sling around slurs to be nakedly racist. The scientific racism, disdain for black culture, and dismissive tone right here shows differently.
