SEO communities are presented with a very tough challenge:
1. Do I have simple, basic info that has been tried and tested and will help a novice webmaster improve their site without baffling them with acronyms and search jargon.
… or
2. Do I opt to discuss more technical and advanced issues, narrowing my market to the higher level SEOs.
Option one helps the broader internet community but has the risk of annoying the more advanced users, causing them to leave the community and find more advanced pastures to graze. Option two runs the risk of confusing the novice users, making them believe that SEO requires studying advanced maths, science, behavioural studies and programming just to understand what’s being discussed.
This could then cause the novice SEOs to seek out more simple information, which leads them to poorer quality forums with cut-and-paste responses rife with spam and misinformation… or they opt to hire the SEO services of a snake-oil salesman since they didn’t know any better.
I’ve seen many articles promoted on Sphinn that are great, just geared at a more entry-level SEO market and be shunned by some members arguing that they thought a social media site purely for search marketers should cover more advanced topics.
SEOmoz members have also noticed that some of the more active members from a few years ago are no longer commenting and have moved on. This isn’t because the content or topics discussed have become poorer in quality, it’s simply because their level of knowledge has advanced.
I completely understand both sides to the argument and I too like juicier reading from time to time, but I also really enjoy the back-to-basic info because it’s often too easy to overlook some of the more simple things that can have a great impact on improving the performance of a site.
The other thing to remember is that maintaining such a community with such great information isn’t something you can do for free. It might start out that way, but with overheads, research costs, staff, conference fees, development of tools, etc. etc., it all adds up.
So to cover these costs, it’s important to determine what level of users the community should pitch its products, services and info at.
Aim at the novice and you’ll get lots of new sign-ups, but those users are likely to move on as their skills advance. Aim at the advanced user with the assumption that other entry-level resources will help get the novices to your level. Or do both and potentially bore some of the advanced users and confuse the newbies.
It’s a very tough call and if you get the mix wrong, you’ll just end up annoying everyone.
Once you know the level of consumer that you want to pitch your community to, then comes marketing and promotion to get the attention of those users (which is a whole ‘nother post).
I’ve seen a lot of discussion lately (well, there’s always discussion like this going on… I just happened to notice it recently) where people are discussing going back to basics, and while this makes great discussion and I welcome members to continue asking these questions, let’s just take a moment to step back and look at the challenges faced by running such a community. In turn, that will help us better appreciate how well SEOmoz does this each and every day.
