Thank you all for your comments. Just to clarify, I am not suggesting a new focus for the Seniors Only Club as a whole. We're focused on seniors and the things that we, as seniors, find interesting. We are doing well in our focus on being a seniors forum, and I don't want to change that. In the future, I will try to remember to use a capital "F" when discussing the Forum as a whole, which is the entirety of the SENIORSonly Club website. Within the Forum, we have topic categories and, within each category, we have more specific topic areas which, unfortunately, are called "forums" within the language of forum software and organization. Sometimes when I talk about a particular forum within the site, you might get the idea that I am talking about the Forum. No, we are a seniors Forum, and I don't want to change that. As a seniors Forum, we're doing well SEO-wise. I'd like to be number one rather than number two, but that's just my competitive nature and not something that I view as a need. That other forum has several years on us and that's kind of hard to compete with. Besides, if we were number one, we'd probably have too many people here and I wouldn't like most of them. However, within the Forum, we have categories, which would be Forum Administration & Notices, Education & Entertainment, Getting it Done, and so on. Our categories weren't really set up to be competitive SEO-wise. For the most part, category topics are too general and there are too many other sites out there to compete with. Theoretically, "I Remember When" and "Hot Button Issues" are the only ones that I could conceive of being competitive in search engine rankings. Within the categories, we have forums. For example, "I Remember When" has four: Jobs I Have Had, People I Have Known, Places I Have Lived, and Other Reminiscences. For the most part, the forums were set up for the convenience of our members but they have more potential to be competitive when it comes to search engine rankings. In the "Hot Button Issues" category, I can see us becoming competitive in topics relating to Conspiracies & Paranormal someday. There are other forums, as well, that might show up on search results in the search engines, particularly when the searcher is looking for a forum about the topic, or to discuss the topic. Just as we want to do well in the search engines on topics relating to senior forums, each category and each forum within the Forum can be competitive. With these, we're still talking about fairly general subject matter so there are a lot of other sites to compete with. Meanwhile, we have various threads within the forums. When thread titles are informative and posts are on-topic, this is where we have the greatest - and most immediate - opportunity to show up in search engine results. Other than the main page of the Forum, the pages that come up the most often in searches are Tall Tales & Fabrications, Senior Employment, Evolution of Language, and Politics & Government, oddly enough, given the number of sites there are out there dealing with politics and government. On specific searches, we have done well in the number of people who have clicked on our link for the following search terms: “good old days magazine”, “how many presidents had rh negative blood”, “how many us presidents had rh negative blood”, “2x4 over time”, “famous people with rh negative blood type”, “senior citizen quotes”, and “famous rh negative people”, in that order. These are the searches that have brought us the most people other than those who are specifically looking for a senior forum. Our top ranking keywords, which are the ones that we rank highly on, regardless of whether anyone clicks on the link, are: “how many presidents had rh negative blood”, “inspirational quotes senior citizens”, “my apament smells like shoe poish”, “hilary clinton rh factor”, “senior forum members”, “how many us presidents had rh negative blood”, and “message boards for seniors”, in that order. Unfortunately, we rank high in a couple of these only because of the misspellings. On some searches, the search engine will render a snippet, which highlights a quote from the top site in the search. These are like free ads. Search keywords that have triggered our site to be featured in a snippet from a search engine include: “eric clapton christian”, “famous rh negative people”, “senior citizen quotes”, “famous people with rh negative blood type”, “milkweed and milk thistle”, “how to fix bent stem”, and “how many calories in uncle tetsu cheesecake”. If you were responsible for any of these, congratulations. That’s what I am trying to achieve here. Each thread can reach out to the search engines by having a thread title that reflects the focus of the thread, and through posts that remain on-topic. That doesn't mean that every thread has to do that. We have plenty of threads that are not focused on a particular topic. These may not serve our search engine needs, but they serve the needs of our members, and there's no point in attracting people to the forum if they can't enjoy themselves. The same is true of the games. Although I am not overly pessimistic about the search engine potential of the game section, given the amount of time the search engine spiders spend there, the games are important to a lot of our members, therefore they are important to the Forum, as are some of the relatively pointless (but fun) threads. There is room for these, so long as every thread isn't made pointless by being derailed. Without a focus to our threads, we may as well merge them all into one and called it "Chit Chat' or something, but that's certainly not what I want to do.
@Ken Anderson Thank you for taking the time for your explanation, i have better site of the goal now. As far as competition out there with other sites, in my eyes, " SoC " is #1. I have done a lot of searching, nothing that i came across even comes close.
In other words, what do you know, what do you know how to do, or what do you know how to do differently than many other people? Can you explain it so that others will understand? That's a part of what I am looking for.
"Comments on Forum", "Introductions", and "Member Websites" are sub-forums of "Introductions & Announcements," which is a forum, all of which are part of the larger website, which is a Forum.
When Ken started this forum, almost 5 years ago now, we only had a small group of people ; but except for those who have passed away (or just vanished), most of those core members are still here and enjoying the forum, all these years later. Plus, we have added more new members as time went on, and many of those who actually became involved with the forum, also stayed on. I think that at first, we just had the main categories, but no sub forums. However, as we had more people posting and more topics being discussed, members requested a sub-forum, or it just became obvious that we needed a sub-forum about some topic. Food and drinks, for example started out as only one heading, but then Ken added a sub-forum where people could find recipes easier, and later, another one where we can recommend restaurants that we enjoy (or didn’t enjoy, for that matter). So, pretty much the expansion has come from the requests and needs of the forum members here.
The whole business sounds a little confusing, don't it. Well, no problem what we call them. When I sign on I'm going to Seniors only Club.com and read what you all said. That's enough for me to know.
The way I originally understood it, this whole thing is a board. The large divisions were forums. Then sub-forums. Then individual threads. Maybe I misunderstood because that's not what they are being called now. Ken, I know a little bit about a few things but not enough about anything that I would feel qualified to give advice on them. However, I do know how to make delicious pear preserves. I spent most of yesterday and today making some. I hesitate to start a thread on How to Make Delicious Pear Preserves because I doubt if anybody outside my area would be remotely interested. I know how to make martin gourds, bait a fish hook, and clean a fish.
That sounds like a perfect topic to me. As someone pointed out, very few people actually tried to do any of the things they learned in the Foxfire books but the books were hugely popular, anyhow. I'm thinking you'd have better luck with pear preserves.
When you title an instructional thread in that form, it's great, because searchers are likely to phrase their search in the form of a question. Someone interested in learning how to make pear preserves might search on terms like... how to make pear preserves how do I make pear preserves? directions for making pear preserves making pear preserves Or something along those lines, so the sort of title you suggested would match the most likely searches that might find it. Search engines can recognize and can match derivates, such as make and making. So yeah, that's the idea. Excellent.
I split these posts off from the Using Your Own Brain thread. The challenge is to think of something that you know well, and can teach. It doesn't have to be a skill. It can be whatever you have to share. I'm not talking about anything fancy. Teach it in your own words and in your own way, but stay on topic. I am doing something of the nature of what I am encouraging here in my Taking in a Feral Cat thread. As you can see, it's nothing fancy, and it doesn't require a doctorate degree. I think it's reasonable to suggest that we all know some things that we can teach, or explain, or whatever. Then, if you're really proud of what you have created, promote it to others, by posting links to it. Besides good, on-topic content, referring links are also important when it comes to being found by the search engines. They consider a link to be a vote, signifying that the webpage being linked to is authoritative or worthwhile.
Interestingly, a blog post that I published on AbiLogic to promote my Taking in a Feral Cat thread has made it to page one of Google on the same day that I posted it, for searches on "taking in a feral cat" but my thread hasn't yet, although I suspect it will. I don't want to include a link to the blog post here, because one-way links are more valuable SEO than two-way links, but if you were to search on AbiLogic, then navigate to their Articles section, you'd find it in the Cats section of the Animals & Pets category. If you do so, please feel free to rate it too.