I went back and read this thread. To follow up on the things I brought up…
The mission statement could be broken into more than one sentence for impact and placement. Other than placing Open Uru as two words at the beginning of the sentence, my change is just a difference in how we say things, so understand my suggested changes are not a biggie for placement.
Mission
Open Uru provides a venue for those interested in Myst/Uru gaming. We provide free resources and a gathering place for cooperative creativity and exchanging of ideas for development of Open Source Uru projects.
Main Page: The URL
http://openuru.org/ now takes one to a real home page. Resources are now explained in basic English
For search placement I would probably write the sentence differently.
OpenUru.org provides free resources for Myst/Uru projects and teams.
- Blogs – Example: [URL to example blog – preferably one with Myst in the name]
- Wikis – Example: OpenUru.org’s Myst Related Wiki
- forum space – Example: Open Uru Forum
- Enterprise class open source development tools
- project management – Example: [-link-]
- issue tracking – Example: [-link-]
- Code repository – Example: [-link-]
- Continuous Integration – Example: [-link-]
Much of this is redundant. But for placement these links with link text, alt text, and title text on the top page of the domain have significant value in a search engine’s eyes.
I personally really like the clean, brief to the point page as it is. But, for the search engine’s sake I would provide additional links.
Wiki’s Main Page – This page is way more informative than the old page. I might change the opening sentence to read: OpenUru.org provides a venue with resources for a diverse community of projects to encourage a cooperative environment for the exploration, development and exchange of ideas in Cyan Worlds' Myst
game universe and Open Source Uru.
Usability – It has been improved. A lot. I’m not sure how the changes have affected Google placement. It may be too soon to know. The site changes will influence Google/Yahoo. We just have look each month on a couple of search terms. Or add Google Analytics (GA) to capture that information. I’ve learned a lot about my blog and clients’ sites using GA.
To get a good idea of how the site is coming across I would find a noobie on the GoMa site and ask them to do an inspection of the site. Explain very little to them other than to visit the site and give you their impression. I suggest this because the improvements make it look pretty good to me and I THINK new people would understand. But, until a new person actually tells us… our glasses may be too tented. If you want, I’ll put a post up over there. I can also contact new people (PM) at MOUL Forums and ask them too.
Goals – I think the goals are much clearer now. I know your basic marketing approach is word of mouth. So, add that where you can. Ask new signups post links back to OU. I just changed my signature at GoMa. I’ll update my other signatures too.
Also whenever you post a link into OU be sure you use important keywords along with the topic info. Saying, 'There is a great discussion on where to start the game
here' basically does nothing for search position. Instead say it as; 'See the great discussion on
Where to Start Playing Myst/Uru at OpenUru.org.' It is a bit hypie and corny but humans don’t really care about corny when they are looking for info. It helps placement a load. Think of it as word of mouth for search engines. I try to consider my wording whenever I make a link to a site I like.
The menus here look good. The header part of the sites is nice. The code in the menu is:
Code: Select all
<li id="nav-home"><a href="http://www.openuru.org/"><span>Home</span></a></li>
You might consider adding other attributes to help placement. Hopefully the menu is in an include.
title="Myst Uru Open Source Home" – This changes for each link. But it gives you a way to add text and not mess up the pretty link text.
rel="parent" – This can be used on all pages in the site with the HOME link. See
Link Types
rel="contents" – This can be used with the Community and Wiki links. Where this is used the link should point to Table of Contents type page, i.e., the Board Index. So, this should probably be different on the home page and the forum, if that is possible. The home page goes to a ‘pre-forum’ community page.
rel="section" – Links within the forum or wiki that point within could use this one.
rel="related" – could be programmed into the wiki category links.
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<li id="nav-home"><a href="http://www.openuru.org/" title="Myst Uru Open Source Home" rel="parent" ><span>Home</span></a></li>
Code: Select all
<li id="nav-comm"><a title="Myst Uru Open Source Forum" rel="contents" href="http://www.openuru.org/pages/Community.php"><span>Community</span></a></li>
The Community Page – This is a rational layout… Home->Community. The explanations are great for new people. The links here would give more push if they were on the home page. I’m not sure moving them would make enough placement difference to be worth the change. Lots of SEO things are like a swimmer shaving their body to cut 0.01 seconds of their time. Having the membership in groups explained to help new people understand there are blocks to just posting is important. So, this page should probably stay.
I would add titles to the links in the body of the page.
The other pages the top menu lead items lead to are fine. I would add links to words in the About Page’s text to help placement.
Blogs are coded to use the posts title and the first 150 or so characters of the abstract or opening paragraph to create a meta tag description. Google and Yahoo do not like duplicate titles. If one cannot easily add changing descriptions then it is better not to use them. Google/Yahoo will try to take a description from the opening text of the page.
I like the layout of the site much more. I think new people will find it easier to use.
Hope this helps...