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TLS and Google Optimization

Recently I did google searches for Final Fantasy VII to see how quickly TheLifestream.Net turned up.

Results:
"Final Fantasy VII" - Page 18.
"Final Fantasy 7" - Page 21.
"FFVII" - Page 6.
"FF7" - Nowhere to be found.

However, a search for "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" yields us as the seventh item on the first page. Same if you use the "FFVII" abbreviation here.

Obviously we need to appear on the first page in google when searching for Final Fantasy VII. What can we do?

Yop gave me the following information:

Writing "Final Fantasy VII" in the title of an article and inside the article is a lot more important than the simple use of the "Final Fantasy VII" news tag. It is also very important that the high-profile FFVII websites link to us.

It has been my habit to always write the abbrevation "FFVII" in my articles and simply refer to the game as "the game" rather than "Final Fantasy VII". I have now changed this and renamed all the UT articles so they spell out "Final Fantasy VII" in full and not just "FFVII". Making this a trend should help, if only slightly, to make us appear on earlier pages in Google.

Notice also how many of our front page newsposts don't mention "Final Fantasy VII" in full. Again, the tag is not nearly effective enough.


In short: Make "Final Fantasy VII" your mantra and write it more often, in newsposts and in resource articles.
 

Ghost X

Moderator
Meta-tags! I always make this suggestion to my web developer friend when he is building up my website, and he looks at me like as if I am existing in a late 1990s time warp, where my education about website-building stagnated. Can't hurt to suggest it here though, if you don't use 'em already =p.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Meta tags are largely ignored by google, so don't focus on those :monster:. I do believe those (and a meta description) are automatically generated thanks to an addon.

We use google webmaster tools, recently re-activated those; should check those more often. I just did, and it turns all our /category pages are also blocked by an overzealous robots.txt file; lemme go fixx. I also removed a crawl delay I had set in there back when we were on a shittier host, so search engines should be able to index us better now - and iirc I've IP banned the shitty chinese bots anyways. That should fix some errors coming from our sitemap.

I recently fixed an issue where the forums were... well, not indexed at all, which is kinda significant for the site rank as a whole, sorry about that :monster:. According to webmaster stats, indexed pages peaked to 4000 (on an average of 479), so that will help too.

Maybe also relevant is how most people find our site; iirc, most of these come in through google image search. Remember to properly label, tag and name images when adding them.

Code:
	Query	Impressions	Clicks	CTR	Avg. position
sephiroth	110,000	600	1%	120
cloud strife	40,000	200	0%	35
final fantasy	27,000	170	1%	100
jenova	18,000	320	2%	26
tifa lockhart	12,000	110	1%	26
tifa	12,000	90	1%	44
aerith	10,000	250	2%	35
bahamut	10,000	12	0%	150
sephiroth advent children	8,000	170	2%	58
vincent valentine	8,000	110	1%	60
final fantasy dissidia	8,000	35	0%	110
final fantasy 7	8,000	30	0%	180
dissidia	5,500	70	1%	120
cloud and tifa	5,500	50	1%	100
kadaj	5,500	<10	-	150
lifestream forums	4,500	1,600	36%	1.0
tifa advent children	4,500	60	1%	98
tifa lockhart advent children	4,500	50	1%	86
yuffie kisaragi	4,500	35	1%	16
advent children	4,500	30	1%	120
aerith gainsborough	3,500	150	4%	18
cloud ff7	3,500	50	1%	71
tifa and cloud	3,500	22	1%	90
final fantasy 7 characters	3,500	16	0%	98
lifestream	3,000	90	3%	37

Maybe also relevant is the incoming links. Apparently, Aaron links to us the most, probably through his signature on fools-gold.org, :monster:.

Code:
Who links the most
fools-gold.org	239,061
finalfantasyradio.net	84,470
ffof.nl	48,298
ff-xiii.net	7,040
freethought-forum.com	5,302

Your most linked content
/forums/?referrerid=9	255,110
http://thelifestream.net/	144,417
/ffvii-advent-children-complete/6139/this-just-in-the-love-triangle-debate-over/	5,636
/forums/index.php	5,100
/forums/showthread.php?t=11

Maybe also relevant is the list of internal links (i.e. pages linking to other pages within TLS):"

Code:
Target pages	Links
http://thelifestream.net/	6,556
/forums/	3,456
/forums/index.php	3,236
/site-goals/	3,211
/chat/	3,058
/non-compilation-articles/final-fantasy-ix-ultimania-translations/1921/final-fantasy-ix-ultimania-coverage/	2,322
/final-fantasy-dissidia/dissidia-final-fantasy-ultimania-translations/1822/dissidia-final-fantasy-ultimania-coverage/	2,322
/ffvii-advent-children-complete/11168/tls-presents-&#8220;case-of-denzel&#8221;-audiobook/	2,318
/forums/showthread.php?t=6	2,252
/forums/showthread.php?t=11	2,232
/forums/showthread.php?t=9	2,217
/category/dirge-of-cerberus/	2,209
/category/final-fantasy-dissidia/	2,194
/final-fantasy-vii/1998/the-ffvii-that-never-wasa-look-at-what-was-left-behind/	2,172
/donate/	2,160
/category/non-compilation-articles/	2,153
/category/compilation-of-final-fantasy-vii/	2,153
/category/site-news/	2,152
/wp-login.php?action=register	2,146
/final-fantasy-vii/7025/ffvii-and-canon-2/	2,134
/category/advent-children-complete-dengeki-profiles/	2,133
/category/final-fantasy-vii-early-material-files/	2,133
/site-usage/	2,127
/archives/	2,127
/contact/	2,122
 
I'm really bad at labeling and tagging images. I normally just use the <img src=""/> function and be done with it. I know the other functions that can be included inside are
class="lightbox" title ="" and alt="". But since you've now presented how important these are I'll start using them.

What is this "lightbox" thing btw? When uploading an image I can choose to open or not open it in lightbox... Is it important in any way?
 

Octo

KULT OF KERMITU
AKA
Octo, Octorawk, Clarky Cat, Kissmammal2000
I dunno if this is relevant but I don't even have TLS bookmarked (other than on my phone) so every time I come via google.....I dunno why :monster:
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
@Demp: You should just use the wordpress uploader / gallery feature, which uploads it to the right directory (relevant for backups), resizes it if/when needed, and applies the correct tags / styling to the image. There's a number of fields you can fill in there; title, alt-text, that kinda stuff, which then gets automagically added to the image if/when reused on other pages. Image reuse is / can be kinda important; we've built up a rather large stack of images over the years, and it'd be a shame if they get lost due to being poorly tagged.
 

Fangu

Great Old One
I'm just gonna add again that I highly recommend using the WordPress gallery instead of external sources. I know some of you are gonna give a fuck about it anyway, but I still want to say it. We Know Stuff You Don't. Obey.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
2342023699_a1b37573b5.jpg
 
I suppose today is as good a day as any to replace the UT images (which at present are uploaded on WorldOfBits) with TLS WordPress versions.

Note however that this means approximately 570 new images will be added to the WP gallery. Yes, that's about how many images there are in the UT series thus far. Can the WP gallery take it?


EDIT: Then again... At present I am unable to place two FFVII snapshots next to one another without them crossing the border on the right side. This however won't be an issue after the site redesign, so I'd much rather wait until that time to re-upload everything to TLS WP. This way I can re-upload images which are not cropped.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Off course; as we speak, we have about 2800 images (times two or three or so for the resizes), 500 more wouldn't be a problem. For the record, the images uploaded to the external site really don't sit well with me, I like to keep all our content in the same place etc - what if your host suddenly bums out for whatever reason? Just saying :monster:.

Also, as for the styling, you can either indicate this as a styling bug / problem that needs to be fixxed, wait for the restyling for that, or just upload to TLS via the uploader and use the direct link in whatever eldritch coding you're using to get the position / size right (as long as you don't go making huge-ass images tiny)
 

manc

Pro Adventurer
AKA
Shahab
Recently I did google searches for Final Fantasy VII to see how quickly TheLifestream.Net turned up.

Results:
"Final Fantasy VII" - Page 18.
"Final Fantasy 7" - Page 21.
"FFVII" - Page 6.
"FF7" - Nowhere to be found.

However, a search for "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" yields us as the seventh item on the first page. Same if you use the "FFVII" abbreviation here.

Obviously we need to appear on the first page in google when searching for Final Fantasy VII. What can we do?

Yop gave me the following information:

Writing "Final Fantasy VII" in the title of an article and inside the article is a lot more important than the simple use of the "Final Fantasy VII" news tag. It is also very important that the high-profile FFVII websites link to us.

It has been my habit to always write the abbrevation "FFVII" in my articles and simply refer to the game as "the game" rather than "Final Fantasy VII". I have now changed this and renamed all the UT articles so they spell out "Final Fantasy VII" in full and not just "FFVII". Making this a trend should help, if only slightly, to make us appear on earlier pages in Google.

Notice also how many of our front page newsposts don't mention "Final Fantasy VII" in full. Again, the tag is not nearly effective enough.


In short: Make "Final Fantasy VII" your mantra and write it more often, in newsposts and in resource articles.

pay the cash....google will sort it.
 

Lex

Administrator
I've been using the WordPress gallery but not adding in the relevant information when it's uploaded. I can sift through all the images I uploaded when I get home.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Much appreciated, :monster:. You should probably consider the media collection as just as important as the actual articles; not only for google searchability, but also for re-use in future articles. Check if an image already exists before adding it again too, btw.
 

Lex

Administrator
Will definitely do both so in future ^_^. It's just a bit of a distraction when you're in the brain mode of "whereamiputtingthisimageorighttheresthelinkaaaaaaaAAARGH" then you have to fill in image info and forget what you were writing about XD. So I think i'll be leaving it until the prospective article/page is finished, because of thought-train-derailment sad times.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
I guess it'd help if you draft your posts (or at least the text content) and treat markup and image adding and whatnot as a separate process, :monster:
 
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