Search Engines and Speaking of Seth

[Sena]

Over the past few years I'd occasionally searched for other Seth web sites and didn't come up with much. I'm surprised I didn't come across this one. It makes me wonder what else is out there.

Deb, I am becoming aware of the limitations of Google!

[Batfan007]

google is even more limited now that ever, as its algorithms and criteria have changed over the years -  it now excludes more and more useful information from results, and most of the top results are for commercial websites, ads etc. It is a business first, and tool second.
And some websites get left out altogether.

[Batfan007]

Sena, I followed your link and found that paradisenow.net is a pretty interesting web site! I emailed the owner and told her about our forum to see if she'd add SoS to her links page. She seems like a very interesting person, I hope she visits. Over the past few years I'd occasionally searched for other Seth web sites and didn't come up with much. I'm surprised I didn't come across this one. It makes me wonder what else is out there.

most ones I found tended not to be in english.

and a lot of top results in english via google point to new age sites where people are either saying "seth is rubbish" (who have never read any of it) or "I've heard about this seth/Jane books, what's this about" and then an answer from people who have not read the material, or you know glance at one chapter 20 years ago, so not very good quality of information. But those sites have lots of members and lots of traffic so their results fill the top pages on search engines.

Or the skeptic websites where people are all "anything i can't observe with my own eyes doesn't exist" - yet for some reason they still pay their electricity bill?

[Sena]

But those sites have lots of members and lots of traffic so their results fill the top pages on search engines.

Yes, "new age" sites have loads of members, but this site has only 157. About 30 non-members visit our site everyday, so the proportion who join is a very small one.

[JimK]

this site has only 157. About 30 non-members visit our site everyday, so the proportion who join is a very small one.

I'm just wondering how you know how many non-members visit this site per day and that the percentage that join is very small. I'm guessing this has something to do with cookies but I don't know much about that.

[Deb]

yet for some reason they still pay their electricity bill?

OK, that did make me laugh out loud. Good point.

Yes, "new age" sites have loads of members, but this site has only 157. About 30 non-members visit our site everyday, so the proportion who join is a very small one.

I think a lot of the visitors here are spiders/bots, but Analytics shows me some visitors are referred from Sethnet.org and even then I don't know how many are bots and how many are real people. SethForums seemed to have a lot of members, but it didn't seem like there was too much activity towards the end. Anyone know how long that forum was in existence? SoS will be 2 in December. I think the discussion forum heydays are over, thanks to the grab n' go availability on Facebook. Even Barrie's Yahoo forum stats, the last time I looked a them, showed a huge drop over the past few years.

I'm not sure if there's much I can do to drive traffic here, other than be more consistent on Facebook with posting links to SoS. One problem is that people can come here and read and learn without having to join. Actually, I've seen some members log in from time to time that have been members for quite a while and yet have never posted.

I could make this site really restricted as far as accessibility goes, to 'force' people to join in order to read, but then I don't know if the search engines will be able to catalog anything here if most of the boards are members-only and not Guests. Although when I search "seth jane roberts" this forum does not come up at all. I know a little about SEO, the bots should be picking up those names from all over the place here and yet for some reason they are not listing us. If I type in "seth forum" we come up #1, but how many people search for forums these days? I need to work with my Analytics to force Google tell me what search terms people are using to find us. It dumps most search terms (98.99%) into a category 'not provided' because of the way they're handling search data now. Ticks me off.

Anyway, I'll think more about restricting access to the forum to members only, if only to get an idea of whether that makes a difference or not. It will inconvenience those members who don't want to log in to keep up with a public thread, but I could also just try it for a while and switch back if it's a problem. Just thinking out loud here.

I'm attaching a screen capture from Analytics that shows how people are coming to SoS, for anyone who enjoys data and stats. This is for the past 30 days.

[Dandelion]

For what it's worth, I probably would not have joined if there hadn't been plenty of public discussions to read.  In spite of my strong desire to find a Seth group, it still took me several weeks of following some of the discussions here before I did join.  I have passed on other forums and groups because I would have had to join before I could get a feel for what they were like and see if they had the kinds of discussions I wanted to participate in.  Private sections are good for certain discussions, and perhaps we might want to increase our use of them (even though I don't always log in so I don't stay current with those and also can't see the attachments on the public board when I'm just lurking like that).

Forums are most valuable for in depth discussions, so not everyone will be interested.  Not only that, this forum has a pretty specific focus.  Personally, I prefer the organization you get with a forum over the "now you see it, now you don't" type of thing you get with something like a FB group, and I also prefer having a specific focus (as long as it's not narrowly enforced, but instead, open enough so discussions on other topics are welcome).

My suggestion would be to focus on ways to increase participation versus just trying to increase the total number of members.  (And maybe this discussion should be a separate topic?)

[Sena]

I think the discussion forum heydays are over, thanks to the grab n' go availability on Facebook.

That may not be a bad thing, if Facebook weeds out the less serious posters.

"Deb"I'm not sure if there's much I can do to drive traffic here..

I would suggest that all members make an effort to post more, because the more active a forum is, the more likely that others will join.

[Deb]

For what it's worth, I probably would not have joined if there hadn't been plenty of public discussions to read.

Thanks for your input Dandelion, that wouldn't have occurred to me but it makes complete sense. I also did split this topic as you know, it seemed to on its own life very quickly. 

"now you see it, now you don't" type of thing you get with something like a FB group

That's been my complaint with FB regarding Seth things. It's been handy for me to get quotes from people like Ejay and Ivan who have read books I haven't read yet, but there's no practical way to go back and find things when I want to. It's also easy to miss things, FB is at its best when people can log in very frequently unless someone is just looking for a quick fix.

That may not be a bad thing, if Facebook weeds out the less serious posters.

Another good point. Part of me felt like I should "advertise" the forum more on Facebook to draw more people here, and I do see that we get some visitors from Facebook. But if they're the FB crowd, they may not be interested in discussing things in depth. So I'd be spending a lot of time courting the wrong demographics.

I'm not concerned, this forum is not going "away," I'm committed and we just need to make its popularity a reality ala "you make your own reality, there is no other rule." It's just the search engine indexing thing bothers me, as SEO was becoming so organic a few years ago and as John says, it is now more focused on big business. And even with the natural ranking of search engine results due to high traffic and link popularity, it's hard to compete with wikis and youtube, sethcenter, sethnet.

[Batfan007]

But those sites have lots of members and lots of traffic so their results fill the top pages on search engines.

Yes, "new age" sites have loads of members, but this site has only 157. About 30 non-members visit our site everyday, so the proportion who join is a very small one.

there's also a lot of sub-literate garbage on new age sites. I'm not saying all of them, but the ones I've looked at so far seemed to have ticked the  "brain optional" box. to be fair, most posts seemed to be from people who had hearts, the status of their courage however is unknown to me. I don't care for communities where people want to click their heels together 3 times and wish everything awesome all the time, but don't want to get off their ass and walk down the yelllow brick road, nor make any kind of effort in life.

I do find good discussion boards on things like my hobbies (transformers, as in the toys not electrical thingos) and physical training / exercise etc. It kind of goes by topic. some things you can find thriving communities, other topics not so much.

And yes social media has made  a major impact on people not bothering with message boards anymore, along with using mobiles rather than home PCs.
Whatever the method, it's about engagement, and finding that mix of what people want, that's convenient.
I prefer more in depth forum discussions and topics, and being able to read old thread etc over facebook groups.

Seth books and communities are a niche of a niche of niche.
Another thing that helps search results / page ranking is the more sites that link to this forum / website, it's seen as more valuable to search engines.

But at the end of the day, nothing beats high volume traffic for making a website turn up more (or be linked to more) in search results.

[Deb]

Wow you just recharged my batteries. It's been a while since I've searched for the forum and it's great to see it coming up in so many ways and search engines. There's nothing like a constant flow of fresh posts to keep the search engines interested.

I didn't know about Google retaining a copy of web sites until I was working on a web site for a particular client and she could not get my changes to show for her. I thought I was losing my mind, had her clear her cache so many times. It seemed to be an issue for a couple of people only, but it had me stumped until I researched it. It still didn't explain why I could see the changes and a couple others couldn't. Wasn't browser based. Good point about copyright infringement. You've seen Wayback Machine too? https://archive.org/web/ That's actually been handy for me.

Nice to see the FB page is also getting noticed, it's interesting to see how many likes it has vs. followers (10 more followers than likes) and how that compares in growth with the number of new members here.