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Post by bobbiedog on Mar 16, 2005 20:16:10 GMT 1
I have for some time been considering setting up a website, to bring together people, in what concerns they might have with our local, regional educational provision. What I need advice on is just what details on the site (say, naming it for example) would catch the audience I would wish to blether to, as they for example made standard search engine searches. So I would want to catch people who had Googled: "Your LEA, whatever that might be"; Education; Educational complaints; abuse; "do they not listen to you either"; whatever. What is that pulls you onto searches on search engines?
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Post by Graeme Houston on Mar 18, 2005 0:23:02 GMT 1
Hi Bobbydog, How's your forum going?
Regards the naming of your site, Gerry will be the best person to ask. Being a Psychologists makes him a natural at wording things the right way. Occasionally his first suggestion doesn't quite work the way he thought it would, but in that case the second suggestion always has an uncanny grab to it. If your going the whole hog and getting a host and proper domain, make sure they offer cheap domains (for a list of all the criteria give me a shout), that way you can get a couple (or a few) and have them all pointng to the one site.
Regards getting yourself listed on search engines, each uses different technology to rank their searches. Some still use meta tags, but because a lot of companies were fiddling the meta tag system, many have changed to a system where they read the text on the site and use that for ranking purposes, ignoring the meta tags.
I suppose I better explain what meta tags are. They are invisible bits of code that appear in the <head> tag of the webpage, and list key words. Gerrys look like this:
<HEAD> <META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Gerard Keegan and his Psychology site is designed to be a helpfull resource for Psychology Students and teachers the world over"> <META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="Higher, Psychology, Scottish, Scotland, Approaches, Perspectives"> <TITLE>Gerard Keegan's Psychology Site: Home Page</TITLE> </HEAD>
Search engines used to use meta tags a lot, but people were using them wrongly, by puting in a lot of guff that they really didn't have on the site just to bump them up the listing. Most search engines now pick out the content, off the webpages themselves and use that to decide whether the person searching would be interested in a particular page.
Anyway, as for getting listed on the search engines, it's easy since your a non profit organisation, most will let you suggest your site for free (wheras businesses have to pay a fair bit to get that privilage).
As for getting people to it, heres the thing, at first it's not really going to show up on search engines much. What you will find is that word of mouth is the next best thing.
I believe that the figures are something like 57% of your visitors will come off of search engines and 20% wiill find it through word of mouth. And at first you will be relying heavily on the word of mouth bit because it won't appear on the search engines until later.
Also you might want to contact relevant web directories. Web directories are like the yellow pages of the internet. they will categorise your site into some pidgenhole under education, and then list it there. Gerrys is usually categorised like this:
Education: Social Sciences: Psychology
So they would find an appropriate category and enter it there, providing a link back to your site. This is important, because many search engines such as google, will rank your website higher the more links you get coming back to your site from other sites.
Really the only way to get high up on the listings in a search engine, is to have the best site possible. The better the site, the higher up it will get. There is no quick fix unless you have thousands of pounds to throw at it by paying a web marketing firm.
Another thing to do is find other relevant sites, and ask them if they want to do a reciprocal link. This means they link to you on their links page, and you link back to them. Visitors will come from their site to yours and vice versa. Search engines, who find their site, will then also find yours.
Hope this helps.
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Post by bobbiedog on Mar 18, 2005 1:45:06 GMT 1
Hi Bobbydog, How's your forum going? .. Hope this helps. Hi Bobbydog, How's your forum going? .. Hope this helps. Forum is good. It goes flat. Its difficult to "service" those who post: and simultaneously grow the site interestingly. But it is helping me get more of a grip on the case: although the site itself is already ungainly and bulky; its not in any way streamlined for easy access to newcomers. All in all I reckon its a good thing for folks to do. There is a wonder in who the quests might be, who come and go: and I've met interesting people already. We have massive holes in our data: the Scotsman archives don't have articles covering each day of the trial; so that limits the "academic" possibilities, and leaves you uncertain of your comprehension. Your post will help immensely. I'll just read it repeatedly over several days: and what you put into it as understanding; will give me a framework to which I can then attach other bits and bobs. You feeding me this, stops the thought of such site development from stalling in me: keeps it moving with a bit of compost; so the chance of doing it, and doing ita little intelligently, stays alive. Ta much.
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Post by TheWeeMan on Mar 18, 2005 10:23:37 GMT 1
Bobbiedog.
You might like to consider a site name like 'Education Matters', or 'Scottish Education Matters'?. Or indeed 'Education, Education, Education'
Cobblers that that is!
If you get it off the ground I'd be delighted to contribute an article or two.
I confirm a lot of what Graeme says above. The better the site the more likely that people will come along.
It takes time, energy and commitment. If you have this you are halfway there already.
Plus its good fun.
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Post by bobbiedog on Mar 18, 2005 21:16:49 GMT 1
I would definitely take you up on such contribution. What holds me back, is getting the quality right. I know personally, much of what I would want from such a site, and I can see personally just why its needed: and there is a degree of possible usefulness, that it would be wrong to trash by getting it wrong. We need other locii from which to consider much in our mutual, collective life: other than the established institutionalised ones we already have; and establishing and usefully sustaining them, may well require somewhat fresh resource. I'm looking to something coming from students and parents. I'm looking for something that can advance inclusion of some groupings, perhaps currently marginalised, even demonised: but I'm also looking to the ordered interfaces with the collective, that the established institutions have. So, hot human occurrence, feral occurernce: but cool, methodologically sound interface back into collective process; where the aim is to bridge a two way inclusion conduit, where currently we may have effective exclusion. Then, I suppose, you're looking to make all that portable, some transferrable understanding.
Incidentally, have you come across a Julie Fast from Bipolar Happens: I have a liking for how she has coped with herself; for how she is giving a shot to beating bipolar, or living through it, without taking the medication route.
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