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 Replies: 14 / Views: 1,317 |
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Valued Member
United States
128 Posts |
Hey all, I am the webmaster for my local coin club and have had this site up for about 6 months now. Many of our members are not computer savy nor have a computer, but for those that do, they use our site quite often. I built it through Google Pages so each user gets a gmail account built around our domain. We have a member only area that we hoped to have internal classifieds on and we are in the middle of digitally archiving all our clubs meeting notes (since 1951!). Other than that there is not much there. My question is this: what other services do you think would be value added to the site? Our website is www.lincolncoinclub.comThanks for your input. Bryan |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1454 Posts |
I'm not much up on making websites and all but it looks like it is a nice website. Looks like it has lots of information and would be helpful to any coin club. Sorry I can't be any more help than that.
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Rest in Peace
United States
2668 Posts |
Looks good, I bookmarked it for further look & use.  |
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Valued Member
United States
376 Posts |
I think the site is great just the way it is. It gives all the information anyone would need to make a decision about joining your club or giving the members a list of the upcoming events.
Do you have internet members? Where you get members joining over the net and paying dues and interacting with the club that way. It would be another way to increase the membership and the treasury.
I am Vice-President/Treasurer for a coin club and we have many members that are not in the area and connect with the club over the net. We have had several auctions by our online members that have netted a tidy profit for the club. Might be something to consider and bring up at the next meeting.
Madspec
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Pillar of the Community
United States
651 Posts |
Bryan, I've actually seen your site before and liked it for the same reasons madspec pointed out. For me it's simple, not congested, easy to navigate, . Thats why I added your link yo my site several months ago.  The only thing I'd be interested to see is some more info/history of the club itself. Best of Luck Ken |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
597 Posts |
Nice site, I wish some state sites, like the state where I live had sites as KISS(keep it simple sam) as yours. Also there is nothing distracting or annoying on your site. Good job.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1984 Posts |
I agree with Ken and Madspec about internet members and a bit more info on the club and maybe a featured member's page or something like that. Nice site overall, simple consistent pages, coherent design. I know you only asked about services, but I do have a couple of nitpicky site suggestions for you to ignore (as my wife has learned to do). 1. Get rid of or shrink the date on the home page. 2. A point of taste/accuracy: I would consider changing my header to The Lincoln Coin Club--Live From Lincoln, Nebraska! rather than the other way around. Other pages are headered Live From Lincoln Nebraska, whereas I'd start all of mine with The Lincoln Coin Club. For example: The Lincoln Coin Club--Become A Member. Because after all, the page is about becoming a member of The Lincoln Coin Club rather than Live From Lincoln Nebraska. Marketing and search-wise I'd say it's best to keep hammering away at the name. 3. After scrolling down from the top of the home page there is an awful lot of blackness on the left of the page. It's a great spot for clickable images from member collections, a chance to slide everything else closer to center, or to get your sponsor info more prominently placed, thereby eliminating the need for a separate and presumably less-visited "Sponsor page". Imagine what other crud I'd fling at you if I was charging you my regular consultant's fee--     |
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Forum Dad
 United States
24148 Posts |
quote:
Marketing and search-wise I'd say it's best to keep hammering away at the name.
Sorry but no. You want the pages subject matter first on every page, not the website name. Look at the top of this page, what's first? The reason for this is search engines only look at the first 50 characters or so of the title and ignore the rest. What good is 20,000 pages coming up in the search engines if they only come up for "coin community". The people that know "coin community" already know where you are. Take a look at any ebay auction, do you see ebay in the title? What's first? ebay isn't in the title anywhere. Always target your advertising and SEO at non-members, non-customers, etc. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1267 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1984 Posts |
Bobby, I guess you didn't understand. My point was that there was no reason to say "Live From Lincoln Nebraska" first on the main subject pages, as that might only be appropriate for people who were "from Lincoln Nebraska" or might want to "live" in "Lincoln Nebraska." As for other pages containing other things for search engines: While it's conceivable that someone looking for information on coins will be looking for: "A Telephone Call From Australia!" or "1 out of 1000 or more!" I think it would be simpler and more uniformly appropriate for the main subject pages of the Lincoln Coin Club to contain Lincoln Coin Club, just as all the category pages on ebay start with (surprise, surprise)--"eBay," and forum pages on this site contain "Coin Community Forum." I say change the order all you want, but put the club's name (Lincoln) and purpose (Coin) in there somewhere along with a summary of page content. |
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Forum Dad
United States
24148 Posts |
Well I'm sure you think your right, but I have cold hard facts. I switched the order of the titles 3 months ago and the hits from search engines have increased 10-fold since. Now you've switched from your first post, you were talking about "order", which I am. Now you're talking about "containing". Two completely different things. You can make your titles 1,000 characters if you want and include the title of your site and not get penalized for it, but only the first 50 or so will count. For this reason, I want the content first and the site title last. If something gets cut off by the search engine, I want it to be the site title not the content of the page. I'm still working on changing this section by section across the site. Each section I do sees an almost immediate increase in traffic. Pages are reindexed within hours. I'm certainly not saying its a bad idea to put your site title in the title of every page, but I am syaing it's a bad idea to give it priority. You're very good at finding exceptions to what I say but I assure you that for every topic you find here that what I say doesn't apply, I can find hundreds that do. Also I guaranty that 95% of all ebay page titles do not have ebay in the title. The categories do only because most category names are short and all characters will be included anyway, most of the time. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Now here is a suggestion. As long as you use this forum to advertise your web site, why not advertise this forum on YOUR web site. I've notice many people that use coin forums to advertise a personal or coin clug or dealer web site but so far can not find one of those that even mention coin forums like this. On one forum I visit I've seen many times a post of how to increase notariety of that forum and people use it to promote their own but never mention the forums they use.
As I noted why not mention this forum on your web site?
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
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Forum Dad
United States
24148 Posts |
Actually they do send some traffic this way. Our search engine is first on this page along with a link to the site. Thanks Bryan! Carl, while you are correct for the most part, there are many members here, including dealers, that support us with links and we do appreciate it very much. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1984 Posts |
Bobby, your knowledge of how to generate hits for a wonderful, broadly appealing website obviously far outstrips mine. The problem is mine, because I wasn't clear in my first post in describing the problem. The "order" problem was in fact the "content" problem. Specifically the name of the club was omitted on several pages. I should have described more specifically my meaning. In mentioning search I was talking about trying to reach people looking for the local coin club in Lincoln, Nebraska, and that the header of the pages should say Lincoln (Nebraska) Coin Club. Right now several pages omit this fact and they say, for example: "Live From Lincoln Nebraska - By Laws and Consitution." Nothing about the page being for a coin club. My suggestion was mainly meant to remedy this fact. Bryan will have to clarify the purpose of the website, but I was operating under the assumption that the 7-8 page website was primarily intended for members or potential members living in the Lincoln, NE area. Generating hits from all over is a worthy goal for some sites, but at this point if users don't live in Lincoln Nebraska they can't enjoy the benefits of membership or full use of the website. If the Lincoln Coin Club wants to increase its hits it can put anything it wants as a header. Maybe " Morgan dollars Paid to Live Nude Teen Girls At Lincoln Coin Club Meetings" would be best for generating hits, but for a site without a huge web presence should we really try to crash the servers? If the local Lincoln Coin Club wants to do more in the header they could include other local names in any combination, i.e. Coin Club Lincoln Nebraska West Bethany College View Havelock -- Membership Information. In your previous post and all of your posts your points are all absolutely right and dead on. I agree with them all, and thank you for pointing out the flaws in mine. I will try to do better in the future. |
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Valued Member
 United States
128 Posts |
Wow,
I never expected so much response. Thanks for the pointers...
I agree that I should change the "Live from..." line. Not sure why I did that, but too easy to fix. As for it causing issue with search engines...I dont think it does...Google Analytics shows me where my hits and bounces come from and I get many from common search strings like "Lincoln coin clubs", "coins lincoln ne", etc.
As far as generating hits, thats not a big issue for us. The site doesn't generate income (except for the tokens we were selling a while back that I need to check and see if we are all sold out on). As a nonprofit, we are hard pressed to spend all our money every year, most of which comes from an annual show, dues, etc. We get an average of about 25 hits a week according to Google Analytics, mostly North America, but occasionally Europe.
As for internet members, hmmm...I'm not sure the members would be up for that, but perhaps we could form classes of members or something...
As for the history of the club, thats a good idea. We are currently digitally archiving our monthly meeting notes from 1951 to present and putting them in the members area. I think we can look at a summary history to put in the public area. I like that idea...
As for the wasted space, its a design issue that I have to work with using Google Pages. They have preformed templates that are WYSIWYG, and the template I chose was a two paner that sort of limits me...I could add stuff there further down, perhaps icon up some of the sponors info or something...hmmm...something to consider.
Thanks for all the compliments, comments and suggestions!
That is EXACTLY why the Coin Community search engine with link is at the top of the page!
Bryan
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Replies: 14 / Views: 1,317 |
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Posted 08/14/2007 03:41 am
