G+ Impact, When you Plus some One else.

Recently, the 7 Rivers Figure Skating Club web site has seen a surge in search results and traffic.  I found out what had happened.  Because at first I was concerned that it was a false hit or worse.

Recently, Google created their Pages for groups and businesses.  I used the Plus1 button on a few things as the "7 Rivers Figure Skating Club" G+ profile.  The results have been wonderful.  To the right, I have displayed a portion of the Google Search Results graph for our figure skating club.

Thank you Google, this is such a wonderful tool.

Online Strategy for 2012

Google for NonProfits logo

On a posting by Google for NonProfits G+ account, they asked what your non-profit's strategy will be for 2012.

Being that this blog is all about my discovery into assisting non-profit figure skating clubs, I could write a few comments here.  At least regarding our online activities.

• Enroll into more Google Programs
• Google for Non-Profits
• YouTube
• Google Check-Out
• Following G+ developments and integration
• Picasa and Photo integration
• Google Calendar integration
• Introduce Google Adsense 
• Yahoo - Flicker integration
• Customized Email accounts
• Use demographics data gained by Adscense and Google Analytics to improve:
• Local Advertising
• Introduce campaigns for Figure Skating Competitions and Test Sessions

Search increased, traffic increased

Something that I am finding interesting, search results is a general indicator that is much more of an overall indicator or you're web site's visibility on the Internet.  When your site is showing more often and more consistent during search queries, then you can pretty much bet the general traffic will increase.

I'm using Google.com/Webmasters/Tools, Google.com/Analytics, and something proprietary from my web server for my analysis.  The interesting thing is, I don't think I can say I have an increase in clicks from those searches.  However, there has been an uptick in general traffic.  

What has been increasing is direct traffic, and referrals from other websites. Resent changes have been to add a Google+ link and further comments from this blog.  Also, in the USA, we have the start of the Christmas Holiday Shopping season.  Some one at the ice rink, during club lessons, informed me that by including some information about where to buy figure skates, we pop up on the short list of web sites.

I think this will be further evidence I need to start a program at the rink where I or some one interview all sorts of skaters and post their comments at the club web site.  Getting members to talk about what makes them like this sport may pay off very well in the future. 

I'm sure I will have approval.  I just have to remind myself this is something that will take time.

Traffic Sources: all in a day

True, one of the side affects of this blog may be generating visits to my wife's figure skating club.  But the following is not what I intended:

7RFSC - Going Global

Yes, this is all from traffic generated today, November 20th, 2011.  

• 4 in the USA (2 are probably me)
• 1 in Check Republic
• 1 in Slovakia
• 1 in Latvia
• 1 in Indonesia?

I always thought I could use this site traffic information to identify how the club could market a competition... but some how, I don't think Tomah, Sparta, or La Crosse can host anything of an International level.  But if you guys are getting useful information from what I'm blogging about, I'm honored.

Getting your Members to help 1: G+ & Photos

Fresh and unpainted: Ice

G+ Integration into your club's figure skating site:  Photos.  There are always people that will have apposing views of what you post at your club's web site.  Specially photos.

So, one of the things that Google Plus does for you is it makes it easy to know when a photo is public or not.  You can have a member of your organization tag a photo with your organisation's name.  You will be notified and you can send a simple private message to this person making sure it is OK to use.

When you click on an image in G+, a simple right click will reveal the image URL.  Just use that link to display your image.

7RFSC Logo @ Moose Lamb Arena, Tomah, WI

Ideally, this also gives some control to your fellow members.  If they realize that they no longer want the picture at the website, they just take it down on their G+ Profile.

More over, this can make your web server more effective.  Specially if your server has it's own bandwidth issues or storage space limitations.

This way you can get your members to feel involved with the website and feel like they have a say.  The benefit for the club is that you have now driven your members to sign up for G+.

Well, that is the theory, any way.  But check out the pictures in this blog posting.  

The source for these are from Google Plus.

Google Plus Pages - for Non-Profits

Google + Pages for Non-Profits

A Hangout Session

On November 15th, I got the chance to meet with, in a Google Hang Out, Leslie, Manager of the G+ Pages for NonProfits and with Gopi Kallayil.  There were 3 hangouts available.  There was going to be one with a general population and one with invitations.  I got to participate in 2.  

First, I have to say I'm still not used to a company being so open with the public.  Also, I am not used to being in the place where I have opportunity to interview people in these positions.  

Google was seeking us in the non-profit sector for feedback concerning their services, specifically about the Brand Pages.  I did not get a chance to ask them everything I wanted, and I think that was my fault... I found myself talking about myself too much, I think.  

Some of the points I came away with.

The Plus sign isn't Boolean any more.

• G+ will become integrated into search in other ways.  They are going to use the "+" before a name so that you can get the Google Plus page to come up for that organization.  
• Code linking between your website and G+.  This will help some of your statistic information and the search verification between your home page and the G+ Profile page.  
• Google is actively looking for how to allow for better brand management.  Essentially, when you want more than one person to edit the page.  To be able to edit that page as that company / non-profit and not as another segment of that group.

G+ Pages Utility: Club Events

Club Events on G+:  Hang Outs



I will be looking at proposing the use of Google Plus Hang Outs for club events.

Hang outs could be used for spacific usefull events.  For instance, the annual meeting and general registration days.

Perhaps this could be used as a means to do a limited broadcast of other club events.

Breaking Google Plus News: Group Pages

G+ Now has 'Pages'.  So now your group can have a 'Page' on G+.

Google has made it so when you go to another group's page, you can click a link to make your own page.

Thanks Google!

I've already started making the 7 Rivers Figure Skating Club page.

Google / Analytics

I can't believe I didn't sign up for this one earlier:

www.google.com/analytics

Many more details than just the regular webmaster tools page.  I think I didn't want to use it at first because I thought there would be a fee.  But I think the terms said it is free for first 10 million page views a month.  It was easy to implement too.  I just copied some code into the web site template, and away it went.  I am even getting real time data too... real nice.

2 Immediate projects: Interviews and Reviews

I'm working... and I'm trying 2 things at once here.

I'm in the middle of expanding my line of thought regarding interviewing club members.  And I'm working on my first non-7RFSC.org website review.  I want to stick to what are good examples and still be constructive.

If any one has a good example of a child interview between ages of 6 and 14, you can send it to me on G+.

AdSense and Your Club

I'm attempting to use the Google AdSense system.  You may notice the additional items on my page.  While many may consider this as being a 'sell out' proposition, there is something to consider.  When some one clicks on an advertisement, we get to learn a little more about the visitor.  This could be a positive impact on the figure skating club and could provide direction to future content creation.

As always, when this starts providing more information to me, I will share it on this site.

<---------Update 10/29/11--------->

I have been logged into AdSence, for maybe about 2 days, and I think Google really has a good thing setup. 

• Hilton advertisement recognizes that I'm referring to US Figure Skating Association figure skating clubs. (Hilton is a long running sponsor of the USFSA)
• Wisconsin development organizations, underscoring the targeting of my subjects and building their businesses.
• SEO and SMO related businesses

Why I like this is that it seems that Google's system could really work for this website.  The task relationship that a person would have when coming to my blog is to find something out and use what they have learned.  After learning what they came fore, the fact that there is a link to the Wisconsin Development Corporation may spark some interest in them with that page.  

Google has a lot of ways you can customize what add topics to allow/not allow.  For instance, I didn't want anything gambling related... so I blocked them.

I could probably go on, But for more information, I suggest the Google AdSense You Tube Channel. 

Needed a Little Time - Oh the Stats

Searched on 10/25/11

So, I have waited for a little time.  Stats are starting to come in.  I must report, I see some improvements in my page ranks.  I have a boost in some of the more geographic oriented searches and Google is teaching me about some search terms I may not have thought about.  Of course, this image to the right displays that "Figure Skating Western Wisconsin" has 7RFSC.org listed higher than when I first took a look and documented.

Google Searches 10/26/11

One of the invaluable tools at Google is this search term and graph tool.  You can get surprised at what works when some one clicks onto your web site.  For 7RFSC.org, I never thought Private Dance Lessons would have earned a click from some one.

But this does give me an idea for something.  But more on that latter...

Something we, as web page creators and administrators must realize that Content is King.  The content can be a map, music, online forms, documentation, video, and pictures.  (I'm trying to keep this in mind.)  Call it the "Content Rule".  Google, Bing, Yahoo and others use this model in their searches.  But we can not just whip up 'fake content'.

Recently, Google.com has made some success in identifying 'fake' content. Or, content that was copied/pasted from some where else.  As a figure skating club goes, we may be tempted to grab something from a Parent/Child parenting site or other things just in the sake of helping our skating parents with hard decisions in this expensive sport.  But doing this would mean your site gets DEMOTED in the ranking system.

Now back to my idea:  When I saw "Private Dance Lessons" as a search term, it made me wonder about Figure Skating in more 'grand' terms.  It is a private sport, not (usually) part of a school's curriculum, done as an individual (mostly), expensive, requires dedication from the entire family, and it has all it's own unique challenges.  I wasn't sure how this could be expressed... But I think what we can do, as a club, is to interview children and parents.  Ask them questions regarding these challenges and see where they go.  Posting both, a transcript and a video would be desirable.

This is making me one busy guy... not sure when I'll get this done. :-P  Oh yeah... I married into the sport!

Google Web Master Tools - Works After a Few Days

Good news, the Google Web Master Tools are starting to work.  Here is a look at my dashboard for 7RFSC.org in before/after.  This started on October ‎15, ‎2011

As of October 20, 2011, Google is giving me information.

This is the starting page as of October ‎15, ‎2011.

Internet Searches How " " Changes Everything

Couple of good things today, I remembered how different Google will react to using quotation marks.  I have a couple of screen shots from my search results and the difference it makes.

No, this is not 2nd on first page... This IS the second page.  The web sites that beat 7rfsc.org are some of the following:  

University of Wisconsin Figure Skating Club: uwfsc.rso.wisc.edu/

Wisconsin Figure Skating Club: www.wisconsinfsc.org/

Wisconsin Figure Skating Council: www.fscouncilwisconsin.org/

Western Wisconsin Speed Team: www.westernwisconsinspeedteam.org/

SkateWeb: Skating Clubs and Rinks: United States - Frogs On Ice: www.frogsonice.com/skateweb/clubs/us.shtml

Spooner Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce Area Travel Planning: www.spoonerchamber.org/pages/visitors/recreation.php

Wisconsin Ice Skating Rinks | Ice Arenas: www.skatingfitness.com/Ice-Locator-Wisconsin.htm

Lifeskate: Figure skating club directory: www.lifeskate.com/skate/clubs.html

Cutting Edge Skating Association: www.cuttingedgeskating.com/

From the above listing, there are only two that in my opinion should be relevant to the search goals.  WWST and CESA.  As web sites go, the others in the above have done a marvelous job at getting themselves ranked.  

But notice the difference when I use quotes around the word "Figure Skating"  Google has no choice but to recognize this as a single grouping of letters.  It works out where 7rfsc.org is #3 on the search list.

Now I have to wonder, does Google consider this when I make my keywords for the figure skating web site.  I've placed the meta/discription words in place... but I had not used any quotation marks around any of them.  I'm gonna wait a little bit to see what happens after Google compiles the web site in their /webmasters/tools/ page.

Google Web Master Tools

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

So, this is what the google webmaster tools gives you.  Essentially, it is a free Google Analytics.  Even if your own server gives you analysis for free, you still want to use this because of the exposure to Google.  I used this on my club's old domain and it helped get us some incredible rankings.

To set this up, use the URL I have posted above.  (By now, if you don't have a Google.com account, get one.) Log into Google, and the first page you get will be one that shows all of the web sites you are a part of. But if this is going to be your first, it might show something completely different... like the 'setup your web site' routine.

You will enter the URL of your web site, and then Google will give you 3 different ways to verify that you own or manage that site.  The first way is to enter some code into your site's home page.  Then if you can't do that, there is an alternative page giving you other ways.

Once you get in, you will find this page I screen shot below.  Now, at first there will not be anything available for you to use.  Google has not obtained the information needed yet.

But it will... it so very will.  More will follow.

7RFSC - MetaData

Meta Data, at one time, was the big dog of internet search optimization.  It still matters, but now it is more of a way to fine tune your page rankings.

As I am trying to get 7RFSC.org to be visible once again with searches, I'm revisiting the metadata.  The back end system we use is Joomla.  This system has many benefits over the old system we had.  But one of the non-benefits is not being able to manage metadata effectively.  For a web site where we are very uniform in the purpose, it is a tedious task to update this information.

Tonight I've taken to task the updating of several pages with metadata.

Oh, for those that don't know.  Meta Data are keywords.  In most cases this is what a search engine will use to update relevance.  At times, words are used here that are not actually within the web page itself.  So if on a web page you are just talking about 'working out' but didn't have the opportunity to use the word 'training' then this provides the option to include that word with out changing what you actually wrote.

Taking My Own Meds, Managing External Links

Some time ago, I had a domain name for myself.  It was titled: Dooleyserver.net.  I had this domain since before I got married and then once I did get the not tied, I offered to piggy back my wife's figure skating club web site off the back of my own personal domain.  I called it 7rfsc.dooleyserver.net.

Now, there were several personal reasons why I did this, but as things go, so too did this need to go.  But not before I learned a lot from this web site management. I had things setup at one point where when you looked for "Western Wisconsin" and "Figure Skating" our club was either 1, 2, or 3 on the Google.com search results.

I've now fixed up our club's web site so that it is on it's own domain and it is filed as 7RFSC.org.  It is on a good server and the up-time is amazing.  But now I need to fix some of my own search results.  The same search I relied on will not show our club's web site within the first 5 pages.  Very nearly, this is a virtual reality death.  We may as well not exist.

One of the first things I need to fix is my relevance.

How real is this web site to the outside world?

We see that many search sites, Bing, Google, Yahoo will display snippets of your web site.  And of course, you see that they will identify portions of your site that are real to your terms.  But part of this judging comes from when other web sites identify your site with other similar topics.

7RFSC.org has the following link page data:

Name	Site Address
United States Figure Skating Association	www.usfsa.org
Figure Skater’s Website	www.sk8stuff.com
Skate Web	www.frogsonice.com/skateweb/
Professional Skaters Association	www.skatepsa.com
International Figure Skating (Magazine)	http://www.ifsmagazine.com
Ice Network	http://web.icenetwork.com/
Figure Skating Council of Wisconsin	http://www.fscouncilwisconsin.org

We had these links from our old web page.  And we had link backs from most of them.  So on, 10/13/11 you can guess... we have Zero.  This is not helping... but I only have myself to blame.  I'll be getting a hold of these organizations to fix this.  I hope some change happens soon.

Mission: Web Site Review for Wisconsin Figure Skating

This is a start, I'm looking to review the web sites for Figure Skating Clubs that belong to the Wisconsin Figure Skating Counsel.  The list of figure skating clubs can be found here:  http://fscouncilwisconsin.org/member_clubs_main.html

Full Disclosure:  I run the web site for the 7 Rivers Figure Skating Club (http://7RFSC.org)

Perhaps when I am done with these clubs I will continue to do more.  I hope that my work here will help these reviewed clubs with design, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media optimization (SMO).