Actual really missing forum topics this time.

Not just wishful thinking like all the other forum topic suggestions.

[wheel]

Maybe I don't get out enough into the other areas of this site - but I'm here pretty much exclusively for SEO.

So how come there's no SEO specific forum? I know there's a link dev forum, and for me that's most of SEO anyway, but still....seems kind of like an odd oversight, no?

[Marcia]

That would be this one, it's just not called that.

[webmasterworld.com...]

The way I see it, the forum title (and description) just leave some leeway for a little broadening of the scope.

[engine]

SEO is such a broad topic. If you want to discuss SEO for a specific search engine, we have a specific forum for each. Similarly, we have a research forum [webmasterworld.com] where SEO topics can be discussed in-depth.
We have a New to Web Development [webmasterworld.com] which will cover beginners, and Webmaster General [webmasterworld.com] forum where the topic doesn't relate to an existing forum.

With those alone, I'd like to think we have SEO covered.

[wheel]

I'm not suggesting it's not covered. I'm suggesting if someone does a drive by of the forum looking for a section on SEO, they don't see one :).

[eelixduppy]

A lot of people that stumble upon WebmasterWorld do so through a SE. If SEO is what they were looking for they are going to get caught up in reading a bunch of threads on the topic. :)

[Brett_Tabke]

Remember a few years ago when Google demonized the "SEO" word? You look throught docs on G's site and it makes all sorts of references to SEO as a bad thing. Also, Google Spokesman Matt Cutts recently accused SEO's of being criminals - both in his presentation at PubCon and in video interviews [videos.webpronews.com] done by Mike McDonald over at WebProNews.

In that environment, why would we use "seo" on a forum? Why expose our members to that kind risk or negative sphere? We want to be a positive force in the community and leadership on simple things like this is where we can best do that. SEO is just a step in the greater scheme of website marketing and promotion. WebmasterWorld is about the holistic approach to website building, marketing, and maintenance.

[edited by: encyclo at 12:44 pm (utc) on Nov. 29, 2008]
[edit reason] typo [/edit]

[wheel]

Fair enough - that's actually quite a sane reason for not having an SEO forum. Particularly since I seem to be getting more tinfoil hat as I get older, and am completely on board with the idea that eventually any sniff of SEO of any type is going to be seen as bad by the SE's.

[Robert Charlton]

...holistic approach...

I've always considered all of WebmasterWorld to be about SEO, with all the subforums simply components of it. The holistic approach makes so much sense to me that I don't know how you could meaningfully separate out "SEO" into an individual forum... unless we had, say, a button-pushing forum, where each post might automatically incorporate the seeds of its own destruction. ;)