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).