Let's try to increase our visibility

Discussion in 'Technical Issues & Suggestions' started by Big_Dog, May 26, 2014.

  1. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    Hi everybody! I'm in the process of trying to improve our SEO, or make our site more visible. I'd like it to show up higher on the list during a search for language learning forums, for example. I have been told the two most important things for this are:
    1) getting links posted on other highly ranked sites
    2) having good content on our site that people want to link to

    Everybody is doing great as far as content goes. Thank you all so much for that! Over half our members post here, which is amazing since I think most forums only get about 10% of their members to post. And it's good stuff too. I'm always eager to read what you all have written when I log on everyday.

    biTsar has some good ideas about this:
    I completely agree with him.

    Please use this thread to make further suggestions on growing our forum.
    Thanks,
    Big_Dog
    Last edited: May 28, 2014
  2. biTsar

    biTsar Active Member VIP member

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    My offer still stands, ¢lick, ¢lick. In for a penny, in for a pound.
  3. Peregrinus

    Peregrinus Active Member

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    Obviously you will want to be careful about members being too aggressive on other forums with links lest they be accused of spamming, primarily a danger with posters don't regularly contribute there. One way though might be through youtube vids. I often see links not just in the descriptions, but also clickable ones on the youtube screen (pay only??). In the end though I imagine it just takes time for even greater amounts of content to be created here which can be sucked up by the spiders. I'll try to do my part.
  4. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    As I mentioned in our conversation, I already created an ad on AdWords. I've had it going for a week. We've had 64 clicks, and about 15,000 impressions. Or are you talking about something else?

    I checked a Google search (language learning forums) - we are now on page 8. Before, we weren't even in the top 10, so there has been some improvement.
    Last edited: May 27, 2014
  5. biTsar

    biTsar Active Member VIP member

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    I missed that, sorry.
  6. Stelle

    Stelle Active Member VIP member

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    I think that forums have to grow organically. While I can understand wanting to improve page rank, the last thing you want is members spamming other language learning sites. That will give this forum a bad name, and - worse yet - alienate the very people polydog needs to attract.

    Here's what I would do to organically grow traffic:

    - Have a link-friendly image and encourage members who have blogs to post it in their sidebar.
    - Encourage members to tweet interesting threads out to their followers, and ask others to weigh in on the conversation.
    - Encourage members to do the same on Facebook: post interesting threads and invite others to join in.
    - Build your own social media presence. Does polydog have twitter and/or Facebook and/or Pinterest accounts?
    - Find some good quotes about language learning, create images, and upload them to pinterest (linked, of course, to the forum). A good pin can get picked up and repined multiple times. I have one that isn't even particularly pretty, and it's been repinned over 900 times - completely accidentally on my part, to be honest. I think that particular pin helped my blog get to number two for the search term "self study Spanish".

    Focus less on *more* people, and instead think about how to get the *right* people to come: people who are interested in languages and who will join in on the conversation. That's what will help you grow.
    Fasulye, luke, BAnna and 1 other person like this.
  7. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    Thanks Stelle,
    Polydog has twitter. I had a facebook page, but it was shut down due to inactivity, and the only way to re-open it is through my Thai phone number, which doesn't work here. So I'll do what it takes to create a new page and hook it up. I have no idea what pinterest is.
  8. Peregrinus

    Peregrinus Active Member

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    Have you considered altering the name of this forum to add a subtitle like "Polydog: Polyglottery & the Art of Learning Many(/Multiple) Foreign Languages." Something like that might aid the SEO quest since it hits all the bases in the title.
  9. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    Surprisingly, I've been told that doesn't matter.
  10. Wise owl chick

    Wise owl chick Active Member

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    I hope that more young people will join.

    Today I feel suddenly young and not sufficiently intellectual in comparison with all the people who post regularly here. I think that all the poeple are old, except tastyonions who is 7 years older than me.

    It would be nice if some people who haven't studied in the university will join. I don't know how I can help becuase I don't visit the fora the last 3 years and I've never used the social media.
  11. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    It would be nice to attract more beginners, of which many are young. But how?
  12. Wise owl chick

    Wise owl chick Active Member

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    Yes, it would be nice, but I don't know how. Sorry. Or some poeple who aren't beginners and they want to chat in some different languages because where they live they can't do this.
  13. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    Do you think a chat room would help?
  14. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    Perhaps you could host public domain materials, and then have a place to talk about them. There was some forum like that at fsi languages.org but it seems to have died. Have someone to practice the rote dialogs with skype integration? songs?
    luke likes this.
  15. oleg973

    oleg973 New Member

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    I just joined this forum this week, so I don't know much about this place. I just wonder if this forum has something special to offer as compared to other language forums.

    There are many language forums out there, each with its own style, characteristics, and learner group. I think establishing a specialty for this forum will help its promotion.
  16. Peregrinus

    Peregrinus Active Member

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    There is a place for a generalist all-inclusive forum, and for a long time that place was HTLAL. But due to a variety of factors, both technical and in respect of internal management, it has been losing ground for a long time. At one time, it attracted academic and other experts in the field of language learning who contributed a lot and attracted members. But now it never seems to get any new such posters to replace the ones who left. It still is a good place to get reviews on various language courses and learning methods, although a lot of that is subjective.

    Most other forums are either method based (LingQ, Benny, etc.) or language based. If I could suggest something for this forum long term, while still keeping a generalist nature, it would be to try something that has started and stopped several times on HTLAL. Namely, pooling our talents and native languages to develop our own enhanced Assimil style courses that can really take a learner to a high level, which to me means a genuine B2 and 10K words of vocabulary. But first the theoretical foundation and methodology behind the project would have to be developed.
  17. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    Happy happy joy joy! Facebook finally decided to let me use my birthdate instead of my thai phone number to recover the account, so we are back up! I'm connected to our twitter account too. Any ideas about what I need to do with those accounts? I'm a facebook moron.
    polydog facebook
    polydog twitter
  18. rlnv

    rlnv New Member

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    It may not directly affect page rank, or other ranking factors, but it should increase click through. Page tittles are often used as a snippet describing the link in search engines. So if you have something that clearly points out the site purpose, it will attract more clicks.

    Along the same lines, if you go to your home page and look at your H1 tag, it is "Featured Threads". Not good. H1 is your most important page descriptor, and your home page H1 should clearly describe your site purpose. Featured threads says nothing about your site purpose.

    Another thing I noticed. It won't affect page rank, but could prevent inbound linking issues. You are missing a DNS "A" record for www.polydog.org. Typically, you include that record and resolve it to your site as many people will automatically type www. Right now they get an error. Keep in mind with both root and www A records, all traffic should be directed to one or the other. That can easily be accomplished with some code on your web server to do a 301 redirect of all www traffic to the domain root.
    luke and Big_Dog like this.
  19. Cainntear

    Cainntear Active Member VIP member

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    I think you'd just be inviting disaster with that -- design-by-committee leads to poor results and/or lots of people falling out.

    The internet is full of begun-but-unfinished language courses, and in the end, a lot of people put in a lot of time, but nobody gets anything useful out of it. Instead, may I make a suggestion?
  20. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    These things are in work now. Question - would changing the domain name have any impact?

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