Why is this an RE article?

I have two thoughts on this article:

1) Maybe I'm being elitist here in my thoughts as a long time MRH forum subscriber, but why was this a RE article and not an article in the free MRH version? The hub feature would likely be more useful by people who haven't been with MRH for long or just get a copy of the PDF passed along and go 'oh, everything in one place'.

2) Do you really want the Hub to muddle your MRH brand? Yes this groups things together, but what if people bookmark or reference this non-mrhmag.com URL? How does that influence your SEO of the actual site? Why can't your mrhmag.com front page do something this? I've suggested a few times to change the front page of the MRH site to be more like news/magazine sites (think WIRED) where you promote certain threads to the front page. The hub is basically doing that with the visual forum servlets, but IMO it's in the wrong place.

EDIT: yes, I understand this was the third article in a series. I'm not trying to debate the series itself, but in this particular instance the info. The info would have been better suited as a stand alone article in free MRH.

Plans with this series

Glad I read this thread

I agree with Yaron, mostly. I am thrilled that there are plans to make this article (hopefully all three parts) a free downloadable publication. By exposing all the tips on internet usage along with exposure to the vast resources on the MRH web site, it will, IMO, promote MRH very well.

It takes time to fully provide all that is possible with such a huge amount of subjects and capabilities in this hobby. We patiently wait for the upcoming attractions.

EBook

Wow, Joe - You did it already

Nice work! The nicheacademy is an excellent resource. I've been wanting to teach my sister about the internet since she got a tablet about a year ago. This will help her understanding surfing on the web. I could teach her if I could sit down with her, but she lives 800 miles away, so this may help.

load of rambling

why ramble about things like this in public, and the SEO on an article like this about the internet is hitting a flooded market place anyhow and the offshoot from it will not give you much if any SEO in a crowded space.

That’s backwards

Your thinking is backwards here. We did not write this to gain SEO points, we wrote this to help our fellow modelers get more out of the internet in less time, and get back to their modeling sooner.

We're also doing this series somewhat in self defense ... we get many help requests that are more how to use the internet tutorials than actual modeling or hobby assistance. Now we can point folks at this material as something they need to bone up on ... more teach them how to fish than just giving them a fish.

In this case, any SEO benefit from this is moot because as you rightly point out — how to use the internet is a flooded topic space. That said “how to use the internet for model railroaders” as a long-tail topic (if you understand SEO) that’s mostly an empty space until we published this free booklet.

On a side note, if your term “ramble” is a critique of our writing on this topic, that’s rather harsh.

P.S. Our selection of topics to cover is not formula driven nor do we drive everything we publish by some kind of ROI strategy. We first consider which topics will help our fellow modelers the most, and that’s the primary driver.

Some topics will only interest a small percentage of our readers (a turn of the century backwoods industry, for example), but if we deem it helpful, we'll run with it anyway. But, we’re not stupid — we do consider a piece's “strategic” ROI value as well and we look for such pieces. But if we deem a topic as something the hobby needs, we will publish it, and phoey on the strategic ROI or the audience size.

Good response, Joe

You stated it nicely.

I did want to express my appreciation and gratitude for your having published the eBook (MRH The Internet for Model Railroaders), but I now realize I was not as explicit as I should have been. Great job.

The eBook:

To be found on the "Goodies" menu.