I don’t think it’s any big secret - check out some business forums and you can get an idea of SEO costs - they can range from anywhere between a few hundred pounds per month to thousands.

Scott

You bring up an excellent point which I think applies to other areas of the web as well - businesses buying into the “wrong concept” and end up messing things up. I’ve seen a few gaming communities literally revolt against the forum admin because they added unsavoury advertising to the forum! In that case, the community split into groups, some staying with the forum and others leaving to setup their own competing forum. Actually thinking about it, I’ve seen similar things happen in SEO communities over the years as well.

That said, if you look at gaming forums as an extreme example - lack of openess and freedom of expression are far from being the problem - in fact, if anything the members are TOO open and express themselves TOO much - to the point that 30 year old men seen to devolve into a something between a virtual version of Lord of the Flies and a Clockwork Orange.

So based on that I would say that to a good extent we have a reasonable ability to express out opinions but as a (virtual) society, many communities still lack the maturity and responsiblity to exercise that right appropriately.

That said, it was immensely stupid for the company you mention to start trying to silence people - they clearly bought the forum over with no idea or experience of how to run a community like that. It was just a dumbass marketing decision that ended up going sour. IMO, your friend would be better off starting his own competing forum and inviting as many members to join him as he can! If you can get even a small group of regular posters to go with you that’s the hardest part of setting up and establishing a forum accomplished.

Cheers for th interesting comments!
Scott

Actually, I am commenting here for another reason, not spamming itself. It looks like (although the situation you describe is pretty clear and well-known)… Spammers and spamming tend to obscure other serious problems, that are much more important. E.g. a friend of mine, moderator for a number of years in a very decent forum (about plants and ecology) told me that the whole forum was literally SOLD, to a company nobody has a clue about. That forum’s posters and moderators had done a very nice job, dilligently working paylessly to produce worthwhile reading material in their field of interest. The only thing they enjoyed as a reward is freedom of expression and information among them. Now the forum was bought; all the dissident voices were shut down (e.g. anyone speaking positively of businesses the new owners regards as their competitor), and so on.

Spammers are not THE problem. Lack of openness and true freedom of expression, in many cases IS, THE problem - i think.

Best regards, I’ ve added you to my blog-roll. Keep the good work goind.

Even then, it’s never going to be a SEO decision - it would be a pure marketing decision (perhaps with some thought on SEO) - and even then, a marketing team will never ditch brand.com because they think keyword.com will rank better on Google!

I’d wager that of the top 1000 companies in the world, the vast majority would favour brand.com, over keyword.com.

I think we’d differ on the (quite literal!) million pound question - I’d rather spend £5 million on development and marketing than the domain - hell, I’d even be happy to take a new domain name for 6 quid if I couldn’t find an existing site to buy over that I like, as long as I had £5 mill to spend on dev, etc.

That’s just down to personal preference at the end of day though - if I had £5 million to put into a project, it would likely be something a little bit different so there would be less value in a keyword domain. Of course if I decided to setup a kick ass online book store that would only ever sell books then keyword domain might be the way to go.

To be perfectly honest, I think any startup spending serious money on a keyword domain would be a little risky. The marketing and development work still needs to be done, and any help the keyword domain gives to link building still doesn’t ensure top rankings (assuming an “average” business here, not a pro SEO). Operating a secondary site for product lines (e.g. like childrens.co.uk) is very different kettle of fish to starting out with a keyword domain as your core business site.

Everything in it’s place I guess.