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Thanks for the interesting question and answers! I can tell you from experience that thinking and worrying about why someone decides to thumb something down will get you nowhere but with heartache. I've had so many comments and posts thumbed down that I couldn't imagine why people would thumb it down. I have one post that I like to call out, where it was just a fun afternoon post (on Rand's birthday back in 2009) and I got so many thumbs down it was crazy. I was fairly new to the company then and was a bit heartbroken. Now, we do get "thumb spam" where people decide to thumb down every comment on a post. I can't say why they do it but they do. Usually we catch them and I will email them about it. Sometimes I get a response back that they're sorry but got upset over a comment, but usually I get no response. But they don't do it again either. When it comes down to it, I'd recommend just not worrying about why others decide to thumb a comment or post down. I think some people do it without rhyme or reason. Maybe they don't like your name, maybe the title of the post turned them off, maybe they're just having a bad day. But the way I see it, if someone thumbs my post or comment down, it means I've struck a nerve. And I'm ok with that. Sorry I don't have a better answer than "don't worry about it".

I'm a small business owner who managed to get lost down the SEO rabbit hole a few years ago on another forum. Since then I have learned so much that I do spurts of intense study for a few months then leave it alone for a year.  I then come back to learn all the new and exiting changes that are constantly going on. What I do find odd is that in my experience 99.99% of the SEO "experts" who call my business and try to sell me a product or service fail so miserably that I just shake my head & then go back to my own learning instead of paying someone else to do the work for me. I understand that lots of people who are new will ask the same new questions, I sure did. If they are asking the wrong ones a two fold approach might help. a. Answer the question. b. Guide them to the proper questions with examples of why another method of thinking might be important.

That makes some good sense too. Thanks Bemcapaz. I'll dig around a bit and see if I can find anything on that

LOL!  I guess she's not into girls, which is fine by me!  LOL!

Thanks Doc Yeah I think I have a problem accepting any kind of reward for anything to be honest. Even when I get paid by a client I feel bad for taking the money, even though we've done a good job for them. I don't know what that's about lol. But anyway thank you very much. It's good to hear someone had the same worries and paranoia before. I'll stop worrying about it now

There definitely are and have been for a long time... I was one of them for a while, I linked spammed with software to get sites up. That is until I realized what proper SEO was, and how much better it is, especially in the long term. That's just the problem though... it did work to a certain extent, but it came with its problems.

Hehe, well spotted!

I've been a pro member for about 6 months and I've only just discovered Q&A! I must have seen it before - just didn't register. Looking forward to using this forum a lot in the next few months.

Okay thanks guys

Thanks for the reply. Well, it's more on the siloing side of things that I'm wondering, it's just I noticed on a Bruce Clay article that he says scuplting and siloing are pretty much the same thing with different names... is that not the case? I understand what to do with siloing (well, I sort of understand it) and I understand why to do it, or at least I understand the reasons given that I've read, but it's cloudy at best. My question really relates to siloing through themes. I can see how it would be beneficial but only if what I've read is correct... and I don't know that it is. In terms of what have I read, I just Googled "Siloing" and read a bunch of articles on the first couple of pages. Also, I'm doing the SEMPO Advanced SEO course (which FYI doesn't seem that advanced so far, it should be called the SEMPO Intermediate SEO course really, I was hoping to learn some stuff and this siloing is the first thing I've come across in it that I didn't already know), anyway... the course recommends siloing if you have any content that is not indexable, or not easily indexable (Javascript, Flash, etc...). I gather there really is no definitive answer as to whether it's something that should be done?