First off, I’d like to say great job on the site. There is a ton of great information on here. My only issue is that I was not able to find the site very easily. I think I ended up getting here from a mention in an Amazon review. I’m not exactly sure how much control you have over this, but it would be great to see The Mattress Underground higher up in the Google results as I could not see it in the first ten pages of searches for “mattress reviews” or “mattress buying guide”, both of which should have this site at the very top. Perhaps there’s some sort of search engine optimization to be done?
Anyway, I just wanted to ask how long is acceptable to leave the mattress in the box. I will be moving at the beginning of February, but it would be nice to have the mattress ahead of time and then transport it while still vacuum packed.
Thanks!
Hi jlith54,
Thanks for taking the time to share your comments … I appreciate them 
I’ll answer your specific question first and then I’ll make a few comments about the first part of your post.
While it’s normally best to check with the manufacturer about these types of questions because they will generally know more about how long it is “safe” to keep your mattress compressed without causing any damage or degradation to the materials and components (it can vary based on the quality and specifics of the materials inside the mattress) … if you are only thinking about keeping it compressed for a few weeks or so (less than a month) then it would generally be fine.
One of the biggest challenges that I (or anyone) that takes on a project with the size and scope of this one is the time it takes and the number of hats that one person has to wear. When you are a single person that spends a great deal of time on a project such as this (I spend about 12 - 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year and I haven’t had more than part of a day off in several years!) then changes can be somewhat slow and incremental … and are never as fast as I would hope they would be.
When I first started the site and put my original “5 year plan” together (which is almost complete although it may take the rest of this year which would make it closer to 6 years) … the original idea was to write some basic articles for the site itself (a little over 100 originally) and then use the forum replies as a repository for the more detailed information that people wanted to know or asked about. I keep a list of the significant posts that I link to on many occasions in reply to questions but at some point this year this will be revised into a full fledged “research center” which is more itemized and where multiple answers to similar questions will be amalgamated into one and won’t require forum searches and will include titles that will be tailored to and picked up more easily on google SEO results.
I was also determined from the start that this site would never become a “review” site and would always focus on more legitimate forms of mattress research.
While other people’s comments about the knowledge and service of a particular business can certainly be very helpful … I always caution about about using other people’s experiences or reviews on a mattress (either positive or negative) or review sites in general as a reliable source of information or guidance about how you will feel on the same mattress or how suitable or how durable a mattress may be for you and in many if not most cases they can be more misleading than helpful because most consumers have little knowledge about mattresses and mattress materials or how to assess the quality of the materials in a mattress and any mattress that would be a perfect choice for one person or even a larger group of people may be completely unsuitable for someone else to sleep on (even if they are in a similar weight range) and reviews in general certainly won’t tell you much if anything about the suitability, quality, durability, or “value” of a mattress for any particular person (see post #13 here).
It would also be fair to say that in spite of the significant growth of the site … I have actually held it back to some degree (by delaying the implementation of some of the things that I know or have learned through experience would increase traffic) so that my own hours don’t become a bottleneck and that the traffic on the site and the number of questions that people ask in the forum doesn’t become overwhelming.
Google also ranks “information density” and organic search results quite highly and they crawl the forum on an ongoing basis so using the forum in different and more creative ways also has some real benefits in SEO results as well. For example I have often found myself in the position of doing some research to answer a forum question using various search terms and finding that the post that contained the question was on the first page of google results less than an hour later (and of course my reaction is usually something along the lines of "no that’s the question I was researching … not the information I was looking for).
I also have many plans in place for my second 5 year plan that will allow for and accommodate much greater traffic and volume and will significantly increase the scope and reach of the site (and the SEO rankings) but the site already attracts well over a hundred thousand visits a month (actually much more than that) and there are several thousand mattress related search terms that already appear on the first or second page of google searches. I have even had comments from some people that they have a hard time avoiding search results from this site although of course it depends entirely on what they are searching for.
The website as it now appears is only a small part of some of the initial plans I had when I first developed the idea of the site and the initial plans have also been revised on a regular basis as I gained experience with what people actually wanted to know and what type of information would be most helpful (and of course going through the learning curve involved with being a webmaster) and the type of SEO information that google ranks more or less highly.
Having said all that … I completely agree with your suggestions and that they are all both necessary and desirable (and again I appreciate them). They will all (and more) be implemented over the coming months and years and some of the suggestions that you have made will also be outsourced as well because my webmaster duties are my least favorite of all the hats I wear
Phoenix
Awesome, it’s great to hear your plans for the future. I didn’t mean to suggest that I want there to be more reviews for mattresses on this site, but I mostly meant that as a first time mattress buyer, those were my initial searches in an attempt to find a site exactly like this. It also would’ve been extremely helpful to find out right away that mattress reviews aren’t really all that helpful.
But it sounds like you have all those plans under control, so in the meantime I will spread the word!
Thanks!
Hi jlith54,
While the search term “mattress review” that also mentions a specific mattress will often rank more highly than just “mattress reviews” because there are thousands of so called “review sites” that only exist for the sake of SEO rankings and have very little meaningful information … I completely agree with this as well and it would probably be a very good idea to make an article that is titled something along the lines of “mattress reviews and their limitations” one of the first articles in the research center
At some point this year there will also be some additional changes to the site navigation and design which will also improve the usability of the site and the ease of finding some of the information that is currently “buried” in the forum … and will most likely improve the SEO rankings as well (particularly with mobile devices).
Thanks again for your comments and suggestions.
Phoenix