Search Engine Optimization

    Today I changed the title of the home page from the "Here our highest good is pleasure..." to a generic "The Epicurus and Epicurean Philosophy Discussion Forum" in hopes that this will help make discovery of the forum easier on search engines.

    I also will experiment further with a little google targeted advertising to see if we can increase our findability to those who might be looking for us.

    I will probably create a graphic for the right sidebar to preserve the "Here our highest good..." phrase on the home page.

    Suggestions on these kinds of things are always welcome.

    I have also signed up for another 30 day test run using Google search ads. The limit of characters is very small, so this is the best I have come up with so far, and what is running right now on searches for Epicurus and Epicurean:

    For a test, I just googled epicurus on my phone. After hitting "more results" four times we still hadn't shown up.

    When I googled epicurean, New Epicurean showed up on the 3rd "more results" ? but no Epicurean Friends.

    Not sure if it matters, but I've got Google set to not store my searches. This, I think, would make my searches similar to someone who is doing a first time search for Epicurus or Epicurean.

    Thanks Godfrey. In the past I didn't focus on publicity because I was not sure we had things organized properly and I didn't want to publicize our growing pains. At this point I think we've made a lot of progress, and I would not be embarrassed for people to see the current state of the forum, so I think it's time to get serious about publicity. ;)

Finding Things At EpicureanFriends.com

Here is a list of suggested search strategies:

  • Website Overview page - clickable links arrranged by cards.
  • Forum Main Page - list of forums and subforums arranged by topic. Threads are posted according to relevant topics. The "Uncategorized subforum" contains threads which do not fall into any existing topic (also contains older "unfiled" threads which will soon be moved).
  • Search Tool - icon is located on the top right of every page. Note that the search box asks you what section of the forum you'd like to search. If you don't know, select "Everywhere."
  • Search By Key Tags - curated to show frequently-searched topics.
  • Full Tag List - an alphabetical list of all tags.