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[Selroth]

Simple enough question.  And if so, how should we?  Take a google ad?  Go out and find sites to host a banner for us?  Just advertise more among sister sites (and update their banners for once, lol).

[sillydraco]

sure! we could advertise with google, i think DeviantArt has slots available too!

[J'Karrah]

Google Adwords can be expensive if you really want to get a good spot, and while "pay-per-click advertising can be less expensive, if your maximum cost amount is reached in early in the month you are taken out of the ad rotation until the start of the next billing cycle. 

Banner exchanges with other forums in the same category are always a good idea: SilverDragonsbreath, Dragon Realms, Rashan's Forum, etc.  If you have an account on draconic.com you can always add the forum's link to their database.

A rotating banner thingy like Rashan's has, or like Scales and Fuzz would help encourage members who have their own sites to provide a link back to the forum (especially if you made it a requirement for banner participation).

If you haven't already, think about submitting the site to DMOZ http://www.dmoz.org/  it's free and you'd be amazed at how many search engines pull information from there.  Only problem is it can take a while for them to get around to approving the submission since I think most of the work is done by volunteers. 

You come up very well on a Google search for "draconity" (second place, I believe) but you don't come up anywhere in the first 10 pages on Google if someone searches for "dragon forum."  Check your meta tags (if you have any)  to include every variation on dragon, draconity and otherkin that you can think of. 

Also you might want to consider a slight change to the "page name" for the index page to better help your search engine placement.  Something like "Draconity.Org: A Dragon Forum Community"  would help. Google will index the new name to include "dragon forum" which will help move the site to the forefront of dragon forum searches. 

That's why the page title for my site is "Fantasy Dragon Art and Sculptures from EbonDragon Productions."   A search for "dragon art" brings my site up at #5,  "fantasy dragon art" brings me up at #10  and "fantasy dragon sculptures brings me in at #1 and just "dragon sculptures" brings me in at #11.  The answer to the old question "what's in a name" definitely is everything when dealing with search engines.  And as Google goes, so goes Yahoo, MSN, Dogpile, and all the rest of them.

Finally, be sure to check out Google's "For Site Owners" http://www.google.com/intl/en/about.html  There is a ton of information available for free that you may find very useful.

[Aurelia]

Yes we should advertise but not yet.  When the site is sorted with the themes, addons and the other extra bits we need to get done then yeah, advertise all over! :D

For now though it's like saying "come to us!...but we're not finished yet" which wouldn't do as well.

[Selroth]

Thanks for the advice, J'Karrah!  That's some pretty useful info.  I already googled our site quite a bit, and I found draconian.com .  It's just an ad-site pretty much, but it does stick up in google for "dragon" and does get a lot of hits.  It's been registered since 1997 or something, but expires next month.  So, I put a backorder on that.  Heehee.

I don't think I'll use it just for this site, but to make it a much more reliable and friendly directory for all dragon communities.  I may try to make a bit of pocket-change off it by throwing some ads on there, as many domain horders do, but not as annoying.

[J'Karrah]

Thanks for the advice, J'Karrah!  That's some pretty useful info.  I already googled our site quite a bit, and I found draconian.com .  It's just an ad-site pretty much, but it does stick up in google for "dragon" and does get a lot of hits. It's been registered since 1997 or something, but expires next month.  So, I put a backorder on that.

Yeah, I have a link on that site as well from way back.. which is why I'm not being charged for it... but that's not the one I was talking about.  I was talking about this one.  I have an account there so I could put a link up for you if you want, but I'd also have to be the one to make any changes or updates to the link.  You wouldn't be able to do it yourself because it would be attached to my user account.

With changing the titel on the index page, I hope you don't think I was talking about changing the url.  Right now, when you open the index page the "title" that comes up on the tab is "Draconity.org - Index"  What I was suggesting is changing the "Index" to something a bit more descriptive that would include the focus of the site: a dragon forum.  Or if you'd like to broaden the focus to include more than just dragons it could be something like "Draconity.Org: A Dragon & Otherkin Forum and Community"  Google really doesn't care how long the title is on the index page of the website.  Just make it as descriptive as possible.  The url would still be http://www.draconity.org/index.php  but the title (what shows up i the tab) would be different.

As for putting a backorder on draconian.com, she put the domain and everything up for sale a couple of years ago and was asking something like $24,000 for it, but no one seemed willing to bite.  That's when it went from being content driven to being ad driven.  It's a shame, really.  It used to be a really impressive resource.  If she actually lets the domain name lapse, good luck in snatching it.

EDIT

Got to looking at the source code for the forum's index page and you don't have anything for meta tags (no keywords of any kind) nor any kind of a description.  You also don't have a specific <title> tag.  I have 38 keywords for my site and a fairly detailed description: "Original fantasy dragon art, one of a kind dragon sculptures, gifts, and more from EbonDragon Productions.  If you love dragons or know someone who does, stop by today" 

And on SilverDragonbreath, on her main forum page title reads: "Silver Dragon Breath dragon forums for Dragon chat, Dragon Newbies, facts on dragons, dragons in books, games, tales and movies and a Members Guild"  This is also the page description.  Because of this when you do a Google search for "dragon forums" her site comes up in the #1 position.  Rashan's actually comes up #11 because the name of the forum is, simply "Rashan's Dragon Forum."  And we actually get quite a few members who found us through Google.

The only thing search engines have to grab hold of when they index Draconity.org is the url.  And without a description, when someone actually pulls the site up on Google what it's showing is the news messages that are next to the site banner.  That's useful to anyone who's already a member, but does nothing to encourage anyone unfamiliar with the site to actually click the link.

So basically, the best way to help drive up business/membership would be to really work on better Google placement first before worrying about spending money on advertising.  Work on putting together a list of keywords (25 keywords bare minimum), a more targeted title, and a good description.  If you can make it to somewhere in the top 30 search results (3 pages w/ 10 results per page which is default for Google) you wouldn't really need to pay for advertising.  And the main reason I say to shoot for somewhere in the top 30 is most people won't look deeper than 3 pages in.

[Selroth]

Ah yeah, I know what you're talking about.  Odd that the meta data no longer works.  A while ago I made it customizable in the control panel, but now it's pulling an empty string. 

Code: [Select]

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=', $context['character_set'], '" />
<meta name="description" content="' . (!empty($context['blog']['meta']['description']) ? $context['blog']['meta']['description'] : $context['page_title']) . '" />', empty($context['robot_no_index']) ? '' : '
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />', '
<meta name="keywords" content="', !empty($context['blog']['meta']['keywords']) ? $context['blog']['meta']['keywords'] : $modSettings['default_meta_keywords'], '" />

The strings are supposed to be, respectively:

A community full of people who have a powerful affinity for dragons, however they may define it.

Dragon, Draconity, Dragonity, Otherkin, Therian, Spirit, Draco, Affinity

I suppose I should junk them up a bit more.  As you said, more than 20 is preferable

As for the site title, I knew what you meant.  It would only apply for the Index page, if I were to do it.  Page title, however, I don't think is too significant in search engines compared to meta data and the first actual site content.  Perhaps what I should do is have an invisible paragraph that would be caught in the search engine's preview text.


Draconic.com I've known about for years and years.  Draconian.com, not so much.  It's a shame the owner of Draconian.com turned it into an ad site, and kinda let it drift and not be a very... solid site.  Hopefully, if I do snatch it, I'll be able to turn it into a much more intuitive and user-friendly index.  And I certainly wont charge $20k if someone wants the domain, heh - that's a lil far fetched.  ...or maybe I will :) 

I haven't previously oriented this site to be very "findable."  We haven't had very good technology, and as Aure points out we may not be ready to advertise a site that's still under heavy construction.  We're in no rush to get a bigger flow of users - in fact, more than a year ago it seemed we were getting too many and of the wrong kind!  I'm sure once we're ready, we can find ways of making the site popular - if that is what we want to do.

[Aurelia]

It's interesting that people are voting no, they don't want the site to be advertised on other sites.  Why is this people?  Why do you think it's not a good idea for us to allow the community to be seen and accessed by more dragonkin?

[Saq]

If it gets us more members, then yes, we should advertise.

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