chaos
Owner
¿Que pasa? Parte dos (4/01/08)
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Since the first installement worked so well, I have decided to make these "internal updates" some what regular. I've somewhat decided on a timetable - for every major external update (i.e. an update on the front page of the site) there will be a corresponding internal update. If anyone has suggestions for this process, please, make yourself heard :)
1. Visibility
The first item I'd like to bring up is the visibility of our site. What I mean by "visibility" is - how much of the Internet knows of our presence? Related questions are: "how are we doing on Google rankings?" and "what are other people saying about us on the Internet?".
Right now, our situation is a weird one. While Google acknowledges us, we do not have particularly high rankings on any search terms and the "extra" links they give us are mostly related to our forums (more on the forums later). However, we are sitting pretty fucking pretty (heh heh) as far as word-of-mouth goes. I've searched the Internet extensively through Google and BoardReader and noted a few things:
As far as Google ratings go, we are so-so. I setup the "Google Sitemaps" service today - hopefully that will provide some insight on how to increase our Google visibility. Smogon tends to be #2 for the search term "competitive pokemon"; I'd like to boost that to #1. We also are like, #10 for Metagross and other important competitive Pokemon. I'd like to bump those as well. Anyone have suggestions for search terms we should try to boost our ranking for?
Most of our "Google power" tends to be invested in the forums. This is mostly due to people linking to the forums for junk before the site opened, I guess. I'd really like to move away from depending on the forums for everything. We're doing a pretty good job so far, I think. The main thing we need to do, at the moment, is to get our guides off the forum and onto the site and get them linked to across the Internet.
2. Big Brother Smogon >:)
Vineon expressed interest a week or two ago in seeing my old "Pokemon Watch List", so I thought I would bring this up with everyone. "The List" was a collection of every moderately popular Pokemon site on the Internet with statistics on how popular they were. It was lost with my old computer, but that's not a big deal as it was around two years old anyway. If anyone still has interest in The List, it could be brought back as a sticky in this forum or something.
3. Lazy chaos
Right now, I'm working on a revamp of the Pokemon Dictionary article. My goal eventually is for it to be a suitable introduction to Competitive Pokemon and to make it the defacto "startup" guide on the Internet. I've also been working on these goddamn tl;dr posts. My short term plans are to add index pages for generations (i.e, www.smogon.com/dp/ etc) and to finish importing Move, Type, and Nature data into the Smogon Database and finish up the Dex. After that, the next priority is to get the WFTC up and running so we can kill the Wi-Fi forum :)
Oh yeah, there are a few HTML peer edits I need to finish up too. I'll probably do that first. Thanks for HTMLing guys!
4. Productive other people
Anyone have anything to report about the article project? As said before, a whole lot of articles have been claimed but I don't know exactly what kind of work has been done on them. FYI, Jibaku's uber guide needs the HTML treatment!
6. In the words of fat Serebii
Until Next Time, See Ya
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Since the first installement worked so well, I have decided to make these "internal updates" some what regular. I've somewhat decided on a timetable - for every major external update (i.e. an update on the front page of the site) there will be a corresponding internal update. If anyone has suggestions for this process, please, make yourself heard :)
1. Visibility
The first item I'd like to bring up is the visibility of our site. What I mean by "visibility" is - how much of the Internet knows of our presence? Related questions are: "how are we doing on Google rankings?" and "what are other people saying about us on the Internet?".
Right now, our situation is a weird one. While Google acknowledges us, we do not have particularly high rankings on any search terms and the "extra" links they give us are mostly related to our forums (more on the forums later). However, we are sitting pretty fucking pretty (heh heh) as far as word-of-mouth goes. I've searched the Internet extensively through Google and BoardReader and noted a few things:
- We are mentioned or linked to in nearly every "How to Battle" or "Intro to Competitive Battling" thread.
- When people ask for movesets, people tell them to go to www.smogon.com or link them to an analysis.
- There are more people who praise us than naysay. Those who naysay tend to be shot down relatively quickly too.
- ...anything related to Syclant. Doug, it'd be appreciated if you somehow made it more clear that these Pokemon are not endorsed as "official" by Smogon. I don't know how to do that, or even why people think that kind of junk in the first place, but it happens. Once I explain what's going on, people tend to shut up with their complaints. One individual even asserted that we are "radicals." I found that funny...
- ...the tier list. This has been tamed for the most part by the introduction of X-Act's tier algorithm, but it still pops up here and there.
- ...the philosophy of our site altogether. "Smogon controls minds!!!!!!!!!" Yeah, shut up.
As far as Google ratings go, we are so-so. I setup the "Google Sitemaps" service today - hopefully that will provide some insight on how to increase our Google visibility. Smogon tends to be #2 for the search term "competitive pokemon"; I'd like to boost that to #1. We also are like, #10 for Metagross and other important competitive Pokemon. I'd like to bump those as well. Anyone have suggestions for search terms we should try to boost our ranking for?
Most of our "Google power" tends to be invested in the forums. This is mostly due to people linking to the forums for junk before the site opened, I guess. I'd really like to move away from depending on the forums for everything. We're doing a pretty good job so far, I think. The main thing we need to do, at the moment, is to get our guides off the forum and onto the site and get them linked to across the Internet.
2. Big Brother Smogon >:)
Vineon expressed interest a week or two ago in seeing my old "Pokemon Watch List", so I thought I would bring this up with everyone. "The List" was a collection of every moderately popular Pokemon site on the Internet with statistics on how popular they were. It was lost with my old computer, but that's not a big deal as it was around two years old anyway. If anyone still has interest in The List, it could be brought back as a sticky in this forum or something.
3. Lazy chaos
Right now, I'm working on a revamp of the Pokemon Dictionary article. My goal eventually is for it to be a suitable introduction to Competitive Pokemon and to make it the defacto "startup" guide on the Internet. I've also been working on these goddamn tl;dr posts. My short term plans are to add index pages for generations (i.e, www.smogon.com/dp/ etc) and to finish importing Move, Type, and Nature data into the Smogon Database and finish up the Dex. After that, the next priority is to get the WFTC up and running so we can kill the Wi-Fi forum :)
Oh yeah, there are a few HTML peer edits I need to finish up too. I'll probably do that first. Thanks for HTMLing guys!
4. Productive other people
- Shiv and Brain setup a new photo album at http://album.smogon.com/ :)
- Lots of articles have been claimed.
- A few new articles have been HTMLized and put on the site.
- Lots of changes have been made directly on the SCMS :) Thanks for everyone who continues to update the site behind the scenes.
- X-Act fooled the shit out of everyone.
- Probably a whole bunch of shit I personally dont notice.
Anyone have anything to report about the article project? As said before, a whole lot of articles have been claimed but I don't know exactly what kind of work has been done on them. FYI, Jibaku's uber guide needs the HTML treatment!
6. In the words of fat Serebii
Until Next Time, See Ya