On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 11:52:39PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote: > > > > Well, the marketing strategy is intended > > to be audience-centric, but > > structured around the editions as a way > > of organizing the project. > > That's somewhat different from whether > the website is audience or > > edition-centric. > > "Marketing strategy" sounds more formal and organized than what I am > familiar with and aware of. Are there any pointers to specifics on > this, outside of the website efforts? I am interested because a > formalized strategy would help us make design decisions about > collateral / materials we're asked to create on the design team. Agreed, an overarching, authoritative strategy, written down and maintained, would help a lot for these types of discussions and supporting work. > > Search engine position is an easy number to get and compare over time, > > but is there convincing evidence that it's meaningful? Is it meaningful > > in either of these senses?: > > > > 1 - Good position in rankings will help make $THING more popular > > 2 - Good position in rankings reflects popularity of $THING > > > I think #2 is _probably_ true. And #1 is > > probably true if advertising > > works at all, which it seems to. > > A bunch of data I referenced was snipped wrt specific terms and > results I saw; I am wondering if you can corroborate them w the tool > you have? > > I dont understand how #2 can be true if the #1 ranked dev desktop by > far and #2 ranked desktop by quite a lot arent reflected in the > results at all. How can it reflect whats going on when 75% of the > dev desktop base (win 50 + os x 25) isnt reflected? > > Of course advertising works, but SEO isnt advertising. None of this > works without data. You need data to drive SEO. You need information > about the audience youre targeting to even know what you're > optimizing for so it's relevant and not unnaturally forced into your > content. Do we have these marketing data resources? > > 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.... There are already quite a few searchable bits in the source behind the page. We could of course work with those without affecting the content. But doing so without clearly supporting a coherent strategy probably isn't going to have a huge effect on Fedora's popularity. I also don't think anyone's saying the website is deficient -- IMHO it's the best it's been in a *long* time. I'm all for improving or reworking the content to be fresh, timely, and high value. It needn't be an artificial function of trying to "game" SEO. Maybe we should start with the authoritative written strategy mentioned above. -- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ The open source story continues to grow: http://opensource.com _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
