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St. Colomban / St. Columbin / St. Columban - Murray_Quinn - 04-19-2006
For Fergus &/or Jeff,
I noticed the Mar 17th topic re the "AKA names" of St. Columban, i.e. - St. Columb*i*n & St. Col*o*mban, and was wondering if it would not be an idea to have these other two spellings also listed "up front" so-to-speak, (perhaps in smaller font), below the current Home Page title name "St. Columban- Irish". The reason I point this out is that, just as some, (or maybe it's many? - who knows?), novice genealogists probably sometimes miss out on important family "name connections" simply because a family name was not immediately recognized due to a slight, or gross, mispelling of the name, is it not also possible that, simply because a researcher has one or the other "alternate names" of St. Columban in mind, or on a document, that he/she may not make that simple little connection which would allow them to realize that "HEY! - Maybe this place name is spelt differently"?
Re: St. Colomban / St. Columbin / St. Columban - jeff.legault - 04-19-2006
A good point and one I had already considered when I raised that with Fergus a few weeks ago on best ways to handle soundex (sound's like) spellings common to the genealogy world for family names, that we can think about applying here. In the background code of the page I have already inserted some key words a few search engines will pick up as alternate spellings of content on the page. So far I have these 4 variations and will add others to cover more variations:
St. Columban
St. Colomban
St. Columbin
St-Colomban
An additional technique would be to add the words somethere on the page but make the font white so it's not blatently visable but it will be indexed by search engines that do not recognize embedded key words in the background of the page. In the grand scheme of things on the Internet as far as search engines go it all depends how different your site is to get better rankings in the results when searching for a term. The more similar we are the less chance we will pop up to the top. Also like any tool or device a search engine's usefulness can vary widely depending on the skill of the user.
My goal is to find a good balance between making the site easy to find for most everyone and to ensure we get the best search result rankings when folks are searchng for terms related to St. Columban and not just "St. Columban". We are covering a number of topics on the site that changes frequently so it's an ongoing task to monitor and keep our eposure current. Getting the right mix is part trial and error combined with collective knowledge on search engine methodology.
I have connected the site with few different tools from Google as an experiment to collect some information on what terms folks have been searching for and what ranking the site was returning in the search results. Also how the site is being used in general. Here are some samples of actual searches we have some statistics on where people searched on these terms and the site was included in the results. The number following is the average position from the top of the reults:
Top search queries ? ?Average top position ?
?1. "automatedgenealogy com census" ? ?8 ?
?2. "edmund mooney" ? ?4 ?
?3. bytown ottawa ? ?8 ?
?4. kenna mclaughlin ? ?10 ?
?5. joseph kosinsky ? ?7 ?
?6. john meloche ? ?10 ?
?7. st columban quebec ? ?1 ?
?8. gwmcrae ? ?9 ?
?9. jas murphy ? ?1 ?
10. "st columban" williams family ? ?1 ?
11. broken grave ? ?1 ?
12. saint columban quebec canada ? ?1 ?
13. st columban canada ? ?1 ?
14. montreal irish community ? ?7 ?
15. construction "st colomban" ? ?8 ?
16. st amboise montreal ? ?10 ?
17. sean delaney ? ?51 ?
18. caseys gallery ? ?6 ?
19. baer desjardins "the welcome" ? ?8
The tools I am using to get some measure of how the site is being exposed are here if anyone wants to learn more about these programs:
Google Site Maps
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/navigation.html
Google Ad Sense (the adds you see on t he side margin of the page)
https://www.google.com/adsense/?hl=en_US
Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Also our own site stats we collect from the site log files are quite revealing, the visits number is the most relevant in this data. A visit is usually a period of about 30 minutes where the same user hits multiple pages:
http://www.stcolumban-irish.com/stats/
I will be using this information to try different approaches to marketing the site in the right areas to support our goals. So far we have done well and have seen a generally upward tend compared to when the site was fist exposed to the Internet last year but we can and will do better. We are just at the tip of the iceburg here on increasing our popularity.
Hope this helps to understand the efforts underway to increase our exposure. Keep in mind some of this takes a little time to see the results and we have only engaged in some of these efforts recently. It's an ongoing effort by all of us to spread the word. We have all done a great job in promiting the site and the inititiave it represents. I'm optimistic this will improve in the months ahead.
Cheers!
Re: St. Colomban / St. Columbin / St. Columban - dublin9 - 04-19-2006
Hello Murray, Jeff and Fergus,
I like the idea of using the various spellings for St.Columban, particularly as the French version is used on maps and other resource material. Thanks,
Anne