Heads Up on Searching

[DarkCloud]

Just a heads up, searching for: "civilization 4 beyond the sword" Apolyton isn't on the first page of data at all? Any suggestions on how to fix this?

-DC.

[ZEE]

we really have nothing on the site that is searchable for those words except things scattered in random threads and posts.

we need to revamp the front page.

For example "AAHZ" is on the first page of Google because i have spread my name everywhere. CFC has an Article page on their main thread on BtS. We NEED to revamp our structure. No BS, its a matter of survival now.

[Locutus]

Please don't pretend to understand SEO when you don't, especially if you're gonna panic and act like we're about to go out of business, which I can assure you is not the case.

The most important thing we can do to improve our search engine ratings right now is to upgrade our forum software so that our forum posts are actually valued appropriately by Google and other search engines: that's the bulk of the searchable content we generate but the vB2 code base is very obsolete and SEO-unfriendly so it's just not showing up in Google unless you do very specific searches. And as we've said many times, upgrading the forums is our top priority (this is actually one of the main reasons why, even more so than the improved user experience that vB3 offers).

After that we have a long list of things that we want to do that will help both the search bots and the human users, which will help keep the site healthy and well-trafficked in the future. But as said many times before, our main limitation is still manpower: we work with volunteers who all have busy lives outside of Apolyton. As long as that's the case all progress is going to be slow.

[LordShiva]

More importantly, we've dropped down to #2 for "Happy Putin"

We're still #1 without teh quotes, though

[DrSpike]

Most importantly of all, a search for DrSpike doesn't lead you to Apolyton. It would seem the forum upgrade is even more essential than ever.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Locutus


After that we have a long list of things that we want to do that will help both the search bots and the human users, which will help keep the site healthy and well-trafficked in the future. But as said many times before, our main limitation is still manpower: we work with volunteers who all have busy lives outside of Apolyton. As long as that's the case all progress is going to be slow.

Who on the staff has the appropriate skills to help with this?

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Most importantly of all, a search for DrSpike doesn't lead you to Apolyton.

That's because teh administration is trying to bring more traffic to teh site

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by Locutus
Please don't pretend to understand SEO when you don't, especially if you're gonna panic and act like we're about to go out of business, which I can assure you is not the case.

Please don't pretend to understand Information Architecture when you don't.

Your response to AAHZ was rude, arrogant, and eventually wrong. Good information architecture and logical site design are way more important than crawler compatibility.

Simply put - improving the forum pages will only give so much in terms of SEO, because Apolyton really does not have any single good place to point to!

AAHZ's is correct - Apolyton has really poor information structure, and stuff are too scattered and tough to find. For example, even if I had wanted to find the Apolycon unqiue content, I'd have trouble doing that.

All the first results on google are there because people linked to them. Why? because they are a really good start page - they have lots of accessible information with a good scope.

Let's analyze the first google page.

You have good info centers:

- Official BTS Page
- Wikipedia Entry
- CFC's BTS info center

What is the apolyton equivalent?
this http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showt...hreadid=167215
is not a very friendly page for a newbie to the site or to Civ.

this http://civilization4.net/3/74/ is also an unfriendly, uninviting page.


let's look at the rest of the results:

- IGN review
- Gamespy review
- gaming heaven review

let's look at what Apolyton has to offer for reviews:

is this http://civilization4.net/3/263/ a good inviting page for someone seeking a review? or would a new user close it?

i'm not talking about graphical design. i'm talking about the fact it's a page filled with non descriptive links.

also, are 12 chapters really best for anyone seeking a review, that is not already a member of poly who knows lots about Civ and knows who Solver is?
probably not.



I'm not here to blast you for doing an awful job. I know you have your hands full. I just felt I had to respond to bring the more important issue (IMO) to light.

You guys are doing lots of holy work, and I know that you need more workforce, that isn't always available. I know that I personalyl have refused options to contribute so far, due to time constrains - but it is not because I don't care for the site.

I'll be finishing service later this year, and i'll have a few months before the university, so i'll be happy to assist then.

My input so far is, that you should focus more on building friendlier webpages, and coming up with good ways to present information to people. This will attract new users much more.

From being a leading site with a lively forum, poly has become mainly a forum, with a very poor site attached to it.

If you ask apolyton users, you'll see that most of them came here for the site's content, and stayed in the forums without intention. Not the other way around. That's why forums are a bad place to host content by default, like poly does so often. This alienates newcomers.

Think about it - threads are a thing of fashion, and have a limited life shelve. Information should be gathered from threads (that are discussions) and placed in actual "articles", with good structure and friendly navigation.

I think you should finish the vbb thing, and then move on to rethinking the main site. After you set it up - you have to dig up all the hidden gold in the forums, and put it as articles and features.

As I've said before, once i'm done with service, i'll do my best to help.

[Solver]

What do you think, that we have no plans to make changes to other parts of the site? We have a lot of plans. There is stuff we want to change other than the forums, such as getting a decent file database set up. But it's not like we can deal with that right now. Right now, as said, forums are our priority (and yes, an upgrade will improve our SEO more than you'd think) and the forum upgrade means we can't work on restructuring the site's information in any way. We barely have the manpower to keep the forum upgrade moving ahead - as you've noticed, it's not a quick process. If we try to split our efforts now, I don't want to imagine how long it'd take.

We're not completely incompetent. The thought about featuring some of the best forum content on the main site as articles/features is a good thought and it's certainly occurred to us. Things like that aren't going to happen now, unfortunately, due to those same manpower concerns.

One thing I disagree on, though, is the Civ4 information reference thread you link to. I think it's a fairly good and concise listing of important links.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
Please don't pretend to understand Information Architecture when you don't.

I do quite well, thank you very much. That wasn't the topic of my post. There's a relationship between SEO and Information Architecture but they're not the same thing.

Good information architecture and logical site design are way more important than crawler compatibility.

Apparently you don't understand SEO either. If crawlers can't crawl your site the best information structure in the world won't help you squat, and currently that's the case for us. Search for any Civ-related topic you can think of and note how for CFC it's almost always a forum link that comes up, even for main terms like Beyond the Sword where you'd expect their main site -- because like for us, 99% of their content is in their forums. For us however the main site gets linked to in almost all cases, the forums only very, very rarely so (or if they are it's on page 5 or below, which is of course effectively the same as not showing up at all). Google HEAVILY discriminates against 1999 coding practices (and rightly so). Good infrastructure is very important and I'll be the first to agree we need to work on that (we've discussed this many times already), but that's only gonna have a marginal effect if you don't upgrade the forums first.

Simply put - improving the forum pages will only give so much in terms of SEO, because Apolyton really does not have any single good place to point to!

We have 4 million forum posts, almost 10000 news items and a whole database with articles and the like. Believe me, there's plenty to point to, but we need to make it readable before we make it organised.

All the first results on google are there because people linked to them.

That's only ONE of the factors Google considers. Yes, it's a very important one, but if the pages aren't readable that trumps any architectural issues.

What is the apolyton equivalent?

The second link you provided is the proper one from an SEO point of view, and it's not *that* inferior to CFC's info centre. Yes, it needs work but revamping our CMS has less precedence than revamping our forums, there's a thousand times more Google juice in the forums.

let's look at what Apolyton has to offer for reviews:

is this http://civilization4.net/3/263/ a good inviting page for someone seeking a review? or would a new user close it?

Yet it's better than CFC which has NO reviews. The fact is that Apolyton's reviews are only for internal consumption anyway, no mainstream gamer goes to a fan site to read reviews, that's why sites like IGN, Gamespot, Gamespy, 1UP, etc always dominate the rankings for all games -- in fact it's highly unusual for ANY independent fan site to make the first pages on Google for major search terms.

Sites like ACS and CFC really only have a chance by having a good info centre, as you point out. There are many reasons why CFC scores better than Apolyton in this respect, but at this point that's irrelevant no matter what we do: it's not like if we revamp our info centre now sites like Wikipedia, Gamespot, etc will suddenly change their links from CFC to Apolyton 8 months after the release of the game... Between now and the upcoming release of Civ5 (which is still a LONG way off) we stand to gain little from that, we should focus on getting more traffic from rarer search terms, and most of the stuff those terms would/should return are in our forums, which is why those need to be optimized first.

Everything else depends on the forums anyway: architecture, technology, community, you name it. Yes, this site needs to be rebuilt from scratch (again, as has been discussed many times), but the forums are the best place to start.

I'll be finishing service later this year, and i'll have a few months before the university, so i'll be happy to assist then.

My input so far is, that you should focus more on building friendlier webpages, and coming up with good ways to present information to people. This will attract new users much more.

We've talked about this many times, we don't disagree on what needs to be done, but it needs to be done in the right order.

[Lancer]

"Please don't pretend to understand SEO when you don't, especially if you're gonna panic and act like we're about to go out of business, which I can assure you is not the case."- Locutus


It's a fansite, not a business.

[LordShiva]

opcorn:

[Krill]

wrong smilie LS...

[DrSpike]

I want to get in early here before the techies start going at each other over techie details.

I have no idea who is right or more right on those, but one thing is absolutely clear - Siro's point that the original post from Locutus was needlessly rude was spot on.

DanQ has said very often recently that senior staff comms is a priority for him, following feedback from people (including lots from myself), and that we are improving.

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes me doubt that. Aahz's post might have been the dumbest thing ever conceived (I've no idea) but clearly he means well, and the response he has received from a senior admin is just unacceptable.

If anything it is even worse because Aahz is a staff member (albeit a very junior one). The assertion that things move slowly at 'Poly because it's difficult to recuit and retain staff is repeated here - ever wonder why that happens? The lack of judgement shown here has surprised even me.

[Locutus]

I'll grant you that my post might've been slightly harsh, and I apologise for that. But I'm getting awfully tired that everyone has to point out at the slightest opportunity just how badly this site is doing and how poor this administration is but doesn't offer the slightest bit of help in doing something about it. Especially if it's with an overblown panicked attitude like AAHZ's post, "Oh my god, we must do something, it's a matter of survival now" Yes, we're not doing as brilliantly as a few years ago but we're not nearly doing that poorly either, and that negative attitude is only making things worse.

"'You need to fix this, you need to fix that", but nobody's home when we ask for help, even with basic things like fixing up our Wikipedia page or creating an entry on Wikia. Everyone always has an excuse for not doing something, which in itself is fine but I find it funny that the excuses of us who actually do do a lot of work around here do not seem to count for anything, we're just a bunch of incompetent idiots apparently. I know I should know better than to snap at that, but I'm only human here, if you hear that sh*t every day it's bound to get to you eventually...