Little confused here. What about a company name, URL, or niche is private or trade secret?

I think you're seeing from the "giving away the farm" angle...

Some people drop product names, company names and URLs in the hopes of getting more traffic... :-)

In order for someone to get scooped or ripped for their idea they would need to give links to documents they have written up, domains they have THOUGHT about acquiring so you can now buy them, all their research into said niche, and so much more.

Most people here are happy to drop their URLs and names for traffic, attention, backlinks, etc, Or some just need help. Most websites that come and go through this forum don;t last long. You'll find them expired.

Plus most people won;t steal your idea if they don't know at what stage you are on it yourself. If your 10 people working on a project and almost done a single person willl not steal your idea as they will not and could not do it by themselves fast enough to scoop you. there is very little danger here.

This is a great community to get help from and a great community to get trolled in. Just depends on what you say in your questions =)

Branding purposes.

Look at companies like Nike. You think they care? Look at the competition, adidas, puma, etc. But Nike is still one of the top shoes out there.

People are here trying to brand themselves, get their names out - target newbies/those wanting to learn. And of course there will be those wanting to learn the competition, get ideas, steal ideas etc. It's all part of the process.

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I actually end up making sales to people here, everyone is competition all the time, including your customers, you are all competing for the same money somewhere, a guy that buys someone on here's e-book may no longer have money to buy a shirt from me, similar to someone buying a six pack of beer at the store, that's just the way it goes.

My goal is as much publicity as possible. My real secrets, my real keywords, are not on my website, the ones on my website are generic and non specific, my images are watermarked, at low resolution and slightly distorted, no good for direct copying, and any more photoshopping to them produces horrible results. There really isn't much to steal from me, can't speak for others.

In short, you can't get publicity from hiding, everyone should have links on here.

As for SEO, there really is nothing on here you can't read on MOZ or the like. I never found this to be a good source for any new information, the majority of the people here seem thoroughly confused on SEO yet speak as experts, you really have to know what your doing already to sort through all the garbage on here to find a rare gem.