if you build it, they will come...

[athena]

I'm pulling this out of the Editor's Lounge because it's a recurring issue and one that has been tossed around since the early days of loop's first editorship...

I'd just remembered reading on one of the threads something about this site being hard to find. Which, sorry to say, it is (thanks to blooming Google, yahoo, etc :irked: ).

Keyframe gets between 1400-1900 visitors per day... which is a respectable number but not as high as I think it should be--particularly given the sheer volume of information we have on the site... I'd love to see Keyframe become a kind of centerhub for the online animation communities... so if you're wild about this piece of anime and then come here and discover there's this crazy Bakshi film that you love too.

I've done everything I can at this point to make the site as friendly to search engines as possible from a code point of view... now it becomes a question of 'what do you think it would take to get the word out?'


any ideas?

[lupercal]

What makes it frustrating is that Google will take one film or series of films and put them on their front page, bury others 6 pages down, and not list some at all. So when you enter something you don't know whether anyone's going to be able to ever find it.

For example, last month 'Kim Possible' got more search hits than anything else (661) (it owuld be more if whoever it was was still searching for nude pictures of her) 'Billy's Balloon' was second on 395 (actually with all the variations on spelling, and with and without 'Hertzfeldt it was probably between 500 and 600) but 'Spirited Away' only got 4 search hits, and 'The Last Unicorn' got 5.

Back before their 'Bourbon Update' in May last year most of our stuff went to the first or at worst second page. Now it's just nuts. We've recovered a bit. They never used to list 'Hedgehog in the Fog' at all, now suddenly it's the third hit on their first page.

Loop

[athena]

What makes it frustrating is that Google will take one film or series of films and put them on their front page, bury others 6 pages down, and not list some at all. So when you enter something you don't know whether anyone's going to be able to ever find it.

I know... and as I said, in terms of making the site search-engine friendly, I've done all I can... I think the code changes made last year have helped--we seem to have regained at least some of our ground since the Bourbon update... but, in terms of search engines... well, there ARE things we could do... all those slightly scuzzy search engine tricking techniques out there... but really, I don't like the idea of wasting energy on stuff like that when we could be putting that energy into what we're really good at... *content*... and at the end, content is king.


so, search engines aside, is there anything ELSE we could be doing?

Like when I was digging through the five zillion emails that had been stacking up in my Keyframe folders, I found this one that said something like "great site, but get with the times! RSS feed!!"... in other words, we take something like our news headlines and allow other sites to automatically run them on their own site--with links back to us...

Although given the fact that none of us are particularly keen about updating the News area, that I suspect would end up being a bust. ;)


There has to be a way to reach out though... I always have this feeling that Keyframe's the online animation community's best kept secret.

[athena]

A question for our regulars because now I'm curious...


how did you find Keyframe originally?
and, perhaps more importantly, why'd you stick around?

[lupercal]

Like when I was digging through the five zillion emails that had been stacking up in my Keyframe folders, I found this one that said something like "great site, but get with the times! RSS feed!!"... in other words, we take something like our news headlines and allow other sites to automatically run them on their own site--with links back to us...

Although given the fact that none of us are particularly keen about updating the News area, that I suspect would end up being a bust. ;)

I used to be keen to write editorials first time around. This time, I'm not, for some reason. But supposing I were, and supposing some of them had a bit of attitude, like the my 'Dreamworks hires Jerry Seinfeld. This ought to be worth a laugh' type one - would other sites want opinionated things like that turning up?

I ought to say I could be persuaded to write something so I can stop having to look at She-Ra though (with no offence to your toy collection)



There has to be a way to reach out though... I always have this feeling that Keyframe's the online animation community's best kept secret.

You know, I suspect that ultimately the search engines, mainly Google ARE the bottleneck, and unfortunately the way you get the word out now is to appear on the first page of hits on Google. Sites linking in used to be a plus, but with the Bourbon update Google turned that into a potential penalty, biewing them as reciprocal links (and slashing our in-links by something ridiculous like 90% wasn't it?)

One thing which could help is improving our conversion ratio. By that I mean increasing the number of people who come back and preferably become members when they drop in on a search. At the moment only a tiny fraction become members and even fewer of those write reviews. We have 1800 unique visitors a day on a good day at the moment. How many new members do we average a day, and how many of them post anything? I suspect that having lots of active members would result in us being mentioned around the place a lot more because people would feel personally involved. So maybe a question should be 'how do we make our traffic stickier'?


Loop

[athena]

But supposing I were, and supposing some of them had a bit of attitude, like the my 'Dreamworks hires Jerry Seinfeld. This ought to be worth a laugh' type one - would other sites want opinionated things like that turning up?
They might, it's hard to know. Personally I find so much of the animation news out there incredibly try or uninteresting... it's DVD release dates and giant company executive swapping... give me something about the art or the history... something with a little edge...

Like I've been meaning to post this to the forum or the headlines just to get commentary... it's basically touting the return of animation as an american art form (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/14459452.htm)... where I might argue that give the slew of cookie-cutter CGI we've seen of late, we've actually be dumbing down the art form somewhat...

I would add however it would need to be a balance... we are an animation fan site, so we can't have a news/editorial section that looks like we're continually bashing the animation industry.


I ought to say I could be persuaded to write something so I can stop having to look at She-Ra though (with no offence to your toy collection)
Well, if you read my She-Ra review you'll know that I was never all that keen on She-Ra... He-Man all the way. :D


Sites linking in used to be a plus, but with the Bourbon update Google turned that into a potential penalty, biewing them as reciprocal links (and slashing our in-links by something ridiculous like 90% wasn't it?)
Actually in terms of stats, we are where we were... our page rank tumbled from 5 to 2 but now we're back at 5 again. Our in-links dropped from 300+ to 30, but now I'm seeing in-links at 740.

I bought software after our big search engine crisis last year--WebCEO, which you can download a free-trial of... anyways, basically what it does is you can enter a whole bunch of keywords and it will generate reports like how many times a day on average that phrase in searched, what page you appear on for that keyphrase--if you appear on any page at all... where your competition is listed, and so on...

I can run a keyword popularity and keyword ranking report--I haven't run one since February according to my logs and it takes about an hour for it to process... if you ever have any keywords you want me to check, just let me know.

hehe. we're such stats junkies. :P


So maybe a question should be 'how do we make our traffic stickier'?
I will say that we are doing better than we were the last time you had editorship... at that time it seemed like you were the only one posting reviews of anything. Now our review count is more like 12-30 reviews a week...

Here's something that continues to baffle me... aside from 5000 cartoons (many of which I doubt most people have heard of), what does a site like BCDb have that we don't? why is their forum that much more active?

[lupercal]

Lupercal:

But supposing I were, and supposing some of them had a bit of attitude...

Athena:

...Personally I find so much of the animation news out there incredibly try or uninteresting... it's DVD release dates and giant company executive swapping... give me something about the art or the history... something with a little edge...

I seem to remember I once posted an article which had so much edge that you deleted it and said something like "What the hell did you think you were doing?!" Ha! Ha! Ha!

I can't remember what it was about now, but I suspect it was an outright lie, like 'Dreamworks next films is about gravel, and stars Julia Roberts'. It was probably worse than that. I don't remember.

Ok, though. You're quite right in that most animation news is just regurgitated stuff from other sites. I still like the idea of having a news section which is just outright lies. People would eventually dig that we lied all the time, and stop getting upset about it, and they'd go 'Let's check Keyframe today and have a good laugh." It would come under satire. And if it didn't, to hell with it. What are they going to do - sue a bunch of invalids?

Loop

(you can never tell when I'm being semi-serious)

[athena]

What are they going to do - sue a bunch of invalids?

helloooooo libel. :ppbb:


and yea, while I think we can get away with some slack on April Fool's or whatever, we do in fact have to contend with the idea that DreamWorks could go straight to my webhost and have us shut down. It's not like they haven't done it before.

[lupercal]

I suppose this means I can't do a profile for the new Pixar short, "My bum's on fire!", featuring the voice talents of The Archbishop of Canterbury.

Loop

[athena]

I suppose this means I can't do a profile for the new Pixar short, "My bum's on fire!", featuring the voice talents of The Archbishop of Canterbury.
hehe... me'thinks not. :)


The thing is, we can blast these guys in a review to our heart's content... largely because it's an editorial and we don't create post completely outright lies as truth--ie. DreamWorks used child labourers in the production of its last animated film and the kids were beaten with red hot pokers if their lipsync was off... then we might be in trouble.

HOWEVER... just had a thought... we could have a satire thread in the forum and invite people to post satirical articles... OR I could give you a satire column maybe?

hmm... although maybe I'm too paranoid... after all, The Onion (http://www.theonion.com/content/index) gets away with an incredible amount.

[athena]

ahh, nevermind... this is from the top of the Onion's FAQ page.


The Onion is a satirical weekly publication published 52 times a year on Thursdays. The Onion is published by Onion, Inc. The contents of this material are © Copyright 2005 by Onion, Inc. and may not be reprinted or re-transmitted in whole or in part without the express written consent of the publisher. The Onion is not intended for readers under 18 years of age.


The Onion uses invented names in all its stories, except in cases where public figures are being satirized. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental.

[lupercal]

ahh, nevermind... this is from the top of the Onion's FAQ page.

It's ok. I don't really feel inspired to write a satire column nowadays. At least, not enough for it to be regular. The Onion seem to be coverimg themselves with a 'small print' disclaimer. Anything more than that would defeat the purpose. You don't do satire and say "this is the satire column'. Part of the shtick is that people realise it's satire without having a neon sign announcing such. The National Lampoon magazine got away with this for at least a decade. They probably had a 'small print' dislclaimer on the bottom of some pae somewhere. The other way you get away with it is simply by gaining a reputation for comedy/satire. For instance, Nat. Lamp. used to have 'The humour magazine' on their cover.

Loop























Loop

[lupercal]

"If you build it they will come"

Especially if it's a brothel.

Loop

[lupercal]

(that was just a pun, BTW, which had nothing to do with anything. Once I saw the wordplay, that was it.)

Loop

[MonkeyFunk]

Kim Possible search terms finally got to you, hm?

[athena]

Kim Possible search terms finally got to you, hm?

hehe, he's just bored because we lost two weeks of stats when the recent crash. :rolleyes:

[lupercal]

Kim Possible search terms finally got to you, hm?

No, it's just when I see a humourous double meaning, my comedy chip activates. Unfortunately I also have another chip which makes me notice double meanings all the time.

Loop