Brian Kelly wrote:
I think this is very low.
> A reason could be the URLs which you CMS generates. Here's an example of
> one:
> <http://www.museumofcroydon.com/ixbin/indexplus?_IXFILE_=templates/page.html&
> _IXACTION_=file&_IXDB_=cat&_IXpage=Home&_IXSESSION_=xxxxxxxx>
<snip>
>
> Two URIs for the same resource, neither meaningful. This dilutes Google
> juice, makes it difficult to share resources, makes bookmaking confusing,
> etc.
>
> This page would be much better if it had the URI:
> http://www.museumofcroydon.com/yourstories/
>
> I think you need to change your CMS - not something easy to do, I'm afraid.
Whilst it's true that it's much better to have one URL per page, in theory
Google is pretty good at detecting duplicate content, and can navigate
between complex URLs so long as there are links between them all (or an XML
Sitemap which lists them all).
However, you can help Google out via its Webmaster Tools service: h
ttps://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
If you go into that, verify your site, and then open Site configuration >
settings, there a section where you can tell Google which parameters
(everything that appears after the "?" in your URLs) are important (ie,
generate different pages) and which ones aren't.
From a quick look at your URLs, I'm guessing that you should set the
following params as "ignore":
_IXFILE_
_IXACTION_
_IXDB_
_IXSESSION_
And then set the following as "don't ignore"
_IXpage
However, I've only had a quick look, so you'd want to check those out.
The main reason that most museum websites have high percentages of traffic
from Google though, is simply that they have a lot of web pages with a lot
of text on them, which then score highly for lots of searches on obscure
words phrases that only a few people are interested in (the so-called "long
tail" effect).
This is useful and important - especially if you're giving those searchers
valuable information from and about your collections - but you may want to
focus more on searches from your core audience - ie, people searching for
visit-specific words like "museum(s)" or "days out" or subject-specific
words such as "croydon history" or even just "croydon" and who are in your
local area (or at least in the UK). You can measure all of these things via
Google Analytics or other such software, but the key to increasing your
presence for these search terms is to produce web pages which are as good
quality and as relevant as they can be, which in turn will encourage other
people to visit them and link to them.
So whilst there are technical things you can do to help fix any problems
Google may have in indexing and understanding your website, the long-term
means to increasing the number of search-engine visits is in the breadth,
depth and quality of content...
Cheers,
Frankie
P.S Loving the Bubble Car on the Visit page, but I can't find a link to any
information you have about it (and how it's related to Croydon) anywhere!
--
Frankie Roberto
Experience Designer, Rattle
0114 2706977
http://www.rattlecentral.com
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