On 09/26/2017 09:42 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 11:52:39PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> I think cleaning up the metadata on our site and keeping content
> fresh etc - these are good things. There's a good oppty here to clean
> things up, make our message clearer, update things and maybe even
> institute better processes / initiatives for keeping them fresh.
> However, lacing our site with keywords and stuffing our page titles
> with buzzwords to vy for the attention of a bot whose algorithm
> changes daily is not ok. The core function of the website is to
> communicate a readable message to humans, right? Let's not compromise
> the consistent and coherent voice we've established....
The core function of a website doesn't matter if people looking for it
can't find it. As a case in point, people looking for "Fedora Media
Writer" get
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2016/04/26/fedora-media-writer-the-fas...
as the first hit. That's at least associated with our sponsor and not
entirely foreign, but I'd think we'd want
https://fedoramagazine.org/make-fedora-usb-stick/ or even
https://getfedora.org/workstation/download/ to outscore it.
Sure, like I said, using this as an opportunity to clean up / better the
metadata to improve those results is a great idea. I just want to make
sure we don't start working keywords unnaturally into the text or gaming
for territory that is too generic.
I would think the first step would be to come up with an inventory of
those things we want to ensure come up in the results - what are the
terms, and what pages do we want to appear prominently for them. Maybe a
good approach would be to come up with a task list of things we want
people to be able to do with the website(s), then test them and see what
users search for / how they approach it, and use that to develop the
inventory of keywords to optimize?
~m