The Complete Story Behind the Fall of SEOChat
The title of this post may be misleading for a few reasons, the two biggest being:
1.) SEOChat still exists - The fall refers to the drop of membership from an average of 40-50 members at any given time to around 5 at many times
2.) I have no “back office” knowledge of the drop - except what is outlined in my post below
I suppose I should start with my reasons for posting the complete explanation which is basically because I have written so many responses to PMs, I would rather just point them to this explanation…Let me break that down. I am inherantly lazy and want to just type it once.
A little bit of history about my involvement with SEOChat
I found SEOChat much like so many other people. Several years ago I was searching for an answer to an SEO question and being new to the forum scene (at least the SEO one) I did a Google search and SEOChat was the first result. Now I can’t remember what I searched for but I can guess it was either something like “How Do I Submit My Site to Google” or “What is PR?”. I would venture a guess that one of these two questions encompasses 90% of how new webmasters are introduced to the idea of SEO.
It wasn’t long before I was addicted. At that time SEOChat was a powerhouse and that meant that any question you asked, day or night, it was not only answered quickly but by those who really knew their stuff. The exponential growth of my sites was due to the massive amount of knowledge gained in just a short few years.
It was through my awareness online and my desire to give back by answering the questions of those finding this resource for the first time that I became a Moderator. At the time this was a pretty big deal to me, not because of any possible gain I might receive but because it gave me a chance to contribute to a resource that gave so much to me.
You have to understand that at that time, the forum was run nearly 100% by the Moderators and Members. There was very little interferance from ownership and that made for a growing community where all were welcome. This is particularly important as you will see in the paragraphs to follow.
So, now that a bit of my personal history is out there, we can move on to what most people really want to know. I will probably keep things a bit simple as it’s the ideas I am looking to get across not neccesarily the details (such as names, etc). SEOChat is basically owned by a company that owns many other webmaster related forums and sites. In fact many would point to the first downfall being when they purchased it from its original owner (another story although there probably isn’t enough room here to go into it) As a company, their number one concern is revenue. I should note that I have no issues with that as I rely on my income made online also. It is for that reason that I won’t go into the addition of ads when they first purchased the site. This was inevitable and although it turned a lot of people off, the forum grew after they did that.
Instead,the downfall traces back to about 6 months before it became apparent. It was at that time that revenue had slightly dropped and because their other forums and sites still showed a pattern of growth, ownership decided to step in and get involved. It isn’t the mere fact that they got involved that started a chain of events but how they got involved.
Their first course of action was to start paying SEOChat members to write articles. This was absolutely brilliant and it was something I fully supported. After all, SEOChat had some of the best SEO’s around and what better way to showcase the forum then to have them show this knowledge in a structured environment. What followed though was a quantity over quality approach which directly hit the reputation of the forum. Most articles ranged from misinformed to downright wrong. We aren’t talking theories here which can be disputed but instead downright wrong advise. These issues (and all issues up to my ban, which we will get to) were brought up in the Moderators forum and our concerns voiced. A pattern would emerge where those that helped build the board and represent it were never right and ownership (which in those days rarely even visited the board) was always right.
Moderators predictions on the danger of these articles proved correct when criticism of SEOChat on this basis flourished. This caused some SEO’s to question the articles in the forum itself and those that spoke out were quickly censored as these articles were owned by SEOChat so they had a vested interest in any criticism being squashed.
So with the great idea of a superb knowledgebase falling by the wayside, membership numbers dropped further. This caused ownership top bring out the big guns. With a fairly new forum (forums.digitalpoint.com) making waves, they decided to try to emulate them. What did they do? They added a rep system. Now they didn’t just copy DP but in an attempt to bring back those defectors who complained at DP about rep not being public, they made sure every comment was displayed in the thread itself.
They then decided to try to get young members that love modifications, and added Karate Belts to each post along with a chat room type box called a Shoutbox.
It should be said that Moderators were not in on this at any time and in fact could never answer members questions about these new “features” as we would never get a fair explanation on what the purpose was or how they worked. The rep system was supposed to be for prizes each month. A reward to those that contribute. As of this post that still hasn’t happen and because they took a leave and forget it attitude, it was abused in way never seen on DP.
The rep system there is a particular thorn in my side as I questioned some of the ways it would work in the Moderators forum. Keep in mind that that section is not visible to users or bots so I felt as I was looking out for the best interest of the boards in asking about things like “Will the comments displayed publicly take over and interfere with the reading of posts?” I was sent an email threatening my sites and telling me that *** knows best and I better retract my questions.
This was a turning point in my time at SEOChat. This was the first time I was threatened and set the tone for the next few months. It was publicly known now that the job of moderator had changed. You no longer were allowed to shape policy or be a middle man between members and ownership. You were there to delete SPAM and remove links only.
It was after this point that things took a drastic change. All the new features put veterans off (the rep especially as it became a Chat Room in each thread which Mods were not allowed to edit) and the explosion of the General Chat area meant SEO was a side issue. For a month or two, membership did increase but it was a flow of people to General Chat. The SEO side was clearly dropping and where there used to be a welcoming of newbies, there was now a contempt. What was once a respect for those that would in a few months time become valued members, was now a “Look it up, stupid” attitude.
Now during this time, ownership had a great idea to increase ads. If revenue drops by 50%, just double the ads! Of course everyone knows this just doesn’t work and any initial gain by having more ads has been met by an exodus by those on dialup or the people who just can’t take 50 ads on a page.
This is basically the back story and buildup to what would become the nail in the coffin. The no follow. No don’t get me wrong, there are actually reasons to have a no follow, especially on an SEO forum. The mistake here was the same as all before it. Ownership tried to be sneaky and add it in the middle of the night. What ensued was members only finding it out when someone was taking a look at the source code. The Moderators were asked what was going on but we had no idea ourselves. Even at this point, something could have been done to right the ship. Just answering the questions would have been a start but instead ownership took an extraordinary step. They decided that anyone asking for an explanation would be censored and most likely banned. There was a wave of bans and an attitude of “If you don’t like it, leave” (which was uttered many times.
It was this attitude (also used on Moderators) that caused 3 Mods to announce their resignation. I then added mine to my mix after ownerships response to this exodus was that they were no good anyway and they weren’t the forum. That was just too much arrogance for me.
In the end, 3 more Mods resigned leaving the vacuum to be filled with anyone willing to volunteer. Now a few of those Mods are good people so I mean no disrespect but it just wasn’t the same. I subsequently made 2 or 3 posts voicing my concerns over the changes and was banned by one of the new Mods. Just about every senior member was given the same fate in what I can only imagine was a way to “start from scratch”
What has resulted is a dead forum where some topics might not have a post in them for a week or two at a time. A virtual ghost town. This story is not over of course. Ownerhip still wants that revenue back so they are resorting to all kinds of methods to get it. Many of which are quite devious and they have done everything to attempt to silence those who know about them. I am not stupid enough to elaborate but I am sure they will be coming to the surface very soon.
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