Upside down

[juster]

Why is it that many (or most) American boards have the general forums as last forum? I see it many times, the introductions, feedback etc are all downstairs.

 

I find it a bit strange an does not welcome me as new member. Ok, I know how it goed, but there are more people who don't. I like it better to have the general forum on top. In it are the rules, announcements etc etc, almost anything a new member needs to read and needs to feel at home.

 

So can you explain why it is pretty common to do it this way?

[Brandon]

Why is it that many (or most) American boards have the general forums as last forum? I see it many times, the introductions, feedback etc are all downstairs.

 

I find it a bit strange an does not welcome me as new member. Ok, I know how it goed, but there are more people who don't. I like it better to have the general forum on top. In it are the rules, announcements etc etc, almost anything a new member needs to read and needs to feel at home.

 

So can you explain why it is pretty common to do it this way?

My reasoning behind it is that I want our best content up top, and to me, the general forums is a "well if you can't find anything else to talk about" type section.

 

Why would you put a general forums above the best content of your site?

 

I think this is a good question, I just asked an admin of anther site I help with, why they put their general forums up top. I'm interested to hear what everyone has to say about this, maybe we should move our general forums higher up on the index.

[Mike]

I couldn't agree more, Brandon.

 

The way I explain it is to look at the page source on your forum index page and see your site as the search engines see it.

 

Is it about targeted content or is it about about jokes, who's shovelling snow that morning and what you're having for lunch? If you have a top-notch, keyword-rich post that really targets your niche, why place it at the bottom of the page with introductions and off-topic posts above it?

 

We all have off-topic forums, but we set them up to try to keep our members around a bit longer. The off-topic forum is just that - off topic. Or, as I prefer to view it - off target.

 

Go to the mall and walk past any store's window display. Are they displaying last summer's clothing, or the bargain bin items? Or are they displaying the latest and greatest, the products with the most appeal and the higher profit margins? Walk into a department store and look at the displays. Go back 90 days later and see how everything has been moved. Move your forum categories around and see what happens to your bounce rate, your average time on site and your overall traffic.

 

If you don't know how to market and sell your site, who is going to do it for you? Leave money on the table and I can assure you of one thing. The next guy along will gladly scoop it up for you. And if you don't think you're marketing your site, you need to sit down and re-think what you're trying to accomplish. When a visitor lands on your site, you have mere seconds to draw that person deeper, or they are away to the next site.

 

Some of my own pet peeves -

 

Forum sites with that floating registration reminder chasing me down the page. When I see those things, I'm gone.

 

Forum sites with chat boxes at the top of the index page. To me, that's a site more about chewing the fat than providing me with targeted content. I give up before I ever look further.

 

Forum sites with those Top 5 stats displays at the top of the page. I just arrived on the site, I don't know anyone from Adam and have no reason to know so-and-so has the most posts or is the newest member. Why would or should I care?

 

And the search engines don't care about those bits of fluff, either.

 

What 'product' are you displaying in the prime display position on your site?

[juster]

Nice things you name there Mike, I agree with those horrible items.

 

But than again, it is al about the topic of the board. I do not agree completely with what you say. You make a comparison with a mall and shopwindows, but I do not think you can compare that with a board, unless you are selling items/products.

 

Also, I do not think it realy matters for SEO how the order of your forums are. Ofcourse the general forums must be a small percentage of the board, but that is logical. It would be bad to see more pages in SE about the wrong stuff. I think this because people will find you anyway.

 

I have my general forums on top. I must say my board is about health with pretty heavy topics and the reason I have it on top is as follows:

 

- In my country it is more common that way, so it would make people irritated to find each board uses something else

 

- In it are intro, feedback, news, agenda, requests for participation for tvprograms, interviews etc, but also offtopic. So it shows perfectly what we are about, but also that we can have fun, not only serious stuff.

 

- Rules are there too. These are very, very important for us so besides the registrationrules, I want all members not to miss it out. (I hate forced read, so wont use that)

 

- 80% of our visitors find us by SE, so it proofs it does not matter if it is on top or not, people search on words, not on board.

 

- Most people visit my (and your) board knowing what it is about. So they know what they can find and on any board it is pretty common to scroll to see all info. So better to put these forums on top, the other ones they will find anyway.

 

But must say it does depend on the topic of your board. What works best for my board may be bad for yours. Like I said, here in Holland it is most common to have the general forums on top (I do not know one which does it other way round right now) and it works fine, so again: Why do US boards do it other way round. I do think the general forums are a very important part of a board, and I do not mean the offtopics/fun forum, but the rest.

[Mike]

But than again, it is al about the topic of the board. I do not agree completely with what you say. You make a comparison with a mall and shopwindows, but I do not think you can compare that with a board, unless you are selling items/products.

I'll wager you agree with me more than you might even realize. ;)

 

Is your forum straight out-of-the-box? Or have you modified it with add-on features? Is it the box-stock forum style, or have you added a new style?

 

Maybe you've done none of those things, but I think we can agree most admins have. And why add new looks or new features, unless you're trying to make your site more appealing to visitors than the competition's site? You want to showcase your site, to attract the potential 'customer', a.k.a. member. Without trying to sell anything to anyone, a forum gets all tuned up to be better than the next forum, just to attract more members.

 

Which, in my own (not-so) humble opinion, is trying to 'sell' a site.

 

As a 'for instance', Brandon could have set this forum up on a domain like forumsetup.com. But he wanted to attract IPB admins. He could have left the standard IPB logo up there, but he wanted to brand the site with a familiar graphic. He didn't need to worry about trying to modify any files to improve SEO, but he wanted to optimize things as much as he could. Now I might be as wrong as wrong can be, but I'm guessing he did those things to improve traffic and to try to make this a premier IPB site.

 

If I see a possible change that might improve SEO, I look at the change from a guest/member point of view, as well. If I make an SEO change that others won't notice, who cares? If I make a change that others can deal with, then that's OK with me. If a change runs the risk of antagonizing members and chasing them away, then that is counter-productive and I won't make the change. It is just my own opinion again, but if I have the opportunity to replace general posts with keyword-rich posts at the top of the page, that is a risk I am going to take, every time.

 

Look at the spider activity on your own site. Often you will find instances where a spider jumped on a page, was there for a few seconds and jumped right back off. I want that spider to land on keyword-rich content before it is away again.

 

On the other hand, I've never come up with the guts to try placing the navbar at the bottom of a page, rather than the top. I really want to do just that, but I figure that would have everyone howling at me. :)