What is the best way to create a free space page to insure it is searchable on wikiTree and in Google [closed]

Question

I am having a lot of trouble doing searches both on WikiTree and on Google for many of the Free Space Pages our USBH project has created. I understand that commas can be a problem.

If I were to create an FSP for example: The Hunter Plantation in Marengo County, Alabama - what is the best way to create it so that it will show up easily in both WikiTree and eventually on Google?

Answer 1

I've already corresponded with Gina, but for anyone else reading: there are a lot of pages on WikiTree, and there is a very large backlog of pages that haven't been indexed by Google yet. It's unrelated to the commas.

Comments

Jamie, thanks for that reassurance.  Knowing that the punctuation is not at fault, is there anything we can do regards SEO for space pages?  Is it the url, or text within the page that gets picked up?

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Thank you for the response, Jamie. So a general-purpose search for WikiTree pages using Google's own search page may miss a lot. But does the backlog also apply to the dedicated searches for all WikiTree pages, free-space pages, and categories that are available with the radio buttons at the bottom of the page

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:SearchPerson ?

If so, then the idea of building searches for those items within WikiTree, as has already been done so successfully for help pages, is even more attractive.

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We spend a lot of time tweaking things to improve SEO and make our Google overlords happy. That being said, it's possible there is more we can do to improve how quickly free space pages get indexed but I'm not sure.

I'm pretty sure the popularity of a page affects how often it gets indexed, so linking to an individual page (especially on a popular site outside of WikiTree, like Twitter) might help the page get indexed faster.

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@Jim

The backlog is with Google (WikiTree has a lot of pages, and Google decides how quickly to index those pages based on a lot of things such as how many other pages link to WikiTree, how many errors it runs into, how fast the pages load, etc), so any of the specialized WikiTree searches that use Google will be a bit out of date.

The person search and the new help page search use our own search server, so those are usually indexed within minutes. We do plan on building other searches similar to the Help page search, but I don't have an estimate for when those will be worked on.

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Great, thanks Jamie. Looking forward to new improved searches in due course!

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So our "ambassadors" should all be out there Tweeting!  

Answer 2

I too have noticed that free space pages do horribly on google. Maybe it's because no other websites ever link to them. The traditional advice was to get a respectable website to link. That's why people used to do guest posts etc, to get the link. I don't know that it works any more.

Comments

I've been testing several of our project's pages on Google search and some show up at the top. Those do not have commas in the headline name. (We don't seem to use the Page Name section). Other pages people have created, without commas, don't show up at all in any of the search pages unless I add WikiTree at the end. A lot of the pages we make have a location (county, state) in the headline name. Those never show up since apparently, they use commas.

Unfortunately, our pages do not seem searchable on WikiTree either and this makes our project very difficult to access. These pages are part of the US Black Heritage Project. They are plantation pages and they need to be searchable.

Thank you for your reply.

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Do any of you have a standalone website for your work? That's what I would suggest, with descriptive links on it to your WikiTree pages. You could make it look nice (ANYTHING looks better than a WikiTree free space page). This would give a "big picture" and you could try to get publicity for the standalone page. It would be easier for people to bookmark as a resource. You can turn a blogger.com blog into a static webpage, and that's free. Or you could keep it as a blog, make new entries when you have a new WikiTree page etc. Google loves Google.com sites. This has worked well for me.

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(ANYTHING looks better than a WikiTree free space page).

commented by Jane Peppler 

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I absolutely disagree with that statement.  What a space page looks like depends on its purpose and function - and I've seen some space pages that are as good as, or better than, some websites.

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Thanks Paul and Jane. Not sure how our project would be able to handle that transition. If it were just a couple of us, maybe, but there are many of us in the project. I really would just like to know the BEST way to create a free space page that would be searchable, even if it is best on WikiTree. Google, I understand may not always work. I guess I am asking for a standard instruction that will insure that I can search for it with the best possible results. Thanks!

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A step by step instruction is really what I want...as if I were in kindergarten, LOL!

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Free Space pages are actually searchable within WikiTree if you use the Search function that is meant for them. Click in the pull-down list, Find-- Search -- scroll to the bottom. Select the Radio button that says "Free Space" and search away.

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See my answer here but also the qualification from Jamie here.

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I have to ask if your project is listed in the top list of projects, or as a sub project. And if you have the free space link on the first page. If I can find the project then I can find the free space profile that way. But I’ve noticed that a number of projects are buried, not listed as sub projects of a major larger one. Perhaps we need an index of free space pages somewhere.

Answer 3

I'd suggest trying wordpress (wordpress.com). You can have your own domain of sorts, which looks like [familyname]genealogy.wordpress.com. They have blog and website templates that you can customize that come up in google results. I did that with some success a few years ago, its a bit messy but robertongenealogy.wordpress.com is an example you can see.

Regards,

Paul.

Answer 4

See my comment about Gina's question at this link. If you use the dedicated Google search for free-space pages with the appropriate radio button at the bottom of the Search page, the coverage should be good.

Edited to add: This might help Gina doing her own searches. It may not solve the second issue, where people from outside WikiTree would benefit by finding free-space profiles from a general Google search.