John Carcutt asks at Search Engine Journal: Are SEO forums still needed? If you ask me: No. I stopped using SEO forums a years ago. Even my favorite one, SEO Refugee bored me. Why?
People on SEO forums are inaccurate, rude, problem instead of solution oriented and often spread rumors as well as old news. I’d rather prefer the cutting edge stuff. Also there are plenty of faster, more reliable and more advanced solutions out there.
To show you what great SEO forums alternatives there are, I just collected 7 of them:
- Ning Communities, offering closed and open forums with collective blogs and many other community Web 2.0 like extras, there are a few, I participated in a closed regularly until it wasabandoned for good by the admin. Ning is a paid service by now.
- Mixx Groups offering topical news sharing, forums. The news sharing works fine, discussions remain largely unnoticed though
- FriendFeed Rooms, accelerating communications and making them almost chat like, just joined a few rooms, SEM e.g. and SphinnZone and created one for SEO 2.0 (search marketers are very fragmented there as of now it seems)
- Google Groups are making discussions and knowledge sharing easy
- LinkedIn Groups, taking out the anonymity out of forums, many people have had success with them
- Facebook Groups, connecting with peers in similar manner to LinkedIn but with more features and potential members, organize where you’re already at
- Wetpaint Wikis, combining a knowledge base with discussions, this popular Wiki solution, I created a Wiki for SEO 2.0 which hasn’t taken off yet but I will use it to build up a SEO 2.0 knowledge base
Which one of them do you use and prefer? What do you use them for? Or do you still resort to old school SEO forums and let newbies flame you?
Last updated November 17th, 2010.
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This thing has 10 Comments
Great list, but i missed a funny image, like in mostly all the other posts ;)
I prefer the google groups and the blogoscoped forum. There are fresh news and information.
Well, I’m too busy right now for images. Did you notice that this post took me a little more than half an hour? Btw. I also like the Google Blogoscoped forum but it’s not SEO specific.
So – - I went to your wetpaint wiki and did not find anything there but a notice that it’s private.
Is there a door to get in, or is there no door yet?
Merlin
Merlin, now it’s not private anymore. Thanks for the heads up. I wrongly assumed that private means others can read it.
Nice idea, I was wondering where that title was going.
I am still a fan of SEO forums though even if you do put them down ;)
Well Glen, which ones do you read or participate in then? How often? What do you do there? Then compare it with the usage of other, 2.0, social media.
NEW WEBSITE DESIGN? OH YEA!!
I’M GLAD YOU USED ALL CAPS FOR YOUR HOMEPAGE’S TITLE BECAUSE CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL! OH YEA!
I only go to these sites when I am lonely
Excellent list of alternative resources, have to agree that conventional SEO forums aren’t what they use to be.
Nice information. Book Marked it.
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