Dungeon Master Forum

If you use any searching engine, you'll stumble upon sites like for example the Encyclopaedia rather quickly, while you usualy discover this site only through links on sites like the Encyclopaedia or the RTC homepage. I think it'd be good for the forum if it's URL was submitted to more searching engines to make it more widely known. So what do you think about this?

I was doing a search with Google, coming up with this forum on 5th position. Pretty good, I think, maybe that has changed since the time you wrote your comment?

Regards, PitD

Indeed this site came up first on Dogpile.com .. I think it needs a new front page though. Seeing it come up with a "the page is not in use yet go here" comment under it might be a bad thing..

moo

Maybe we should evaluate what the most prominent searching engines are for the different countries people come from in this forum... USA, Engand, France, Argentina etc... and then see at which position the forums come up for each of them. I only tried google so far... but there are many others as well...

Regards, PitD

Using "Dungeon Master Forum" in Google returns this site as the first result.

But using simply "Dungeon Master" returns this site on page 7 of results-- that's terrible!

Google relies on linking and good accurate content to rank pages. We need to get lots of other people linking to this site if it's gonna appear high up on Google using a basic phrase.

Tell your friends! Shout it from the rooftops! Link! Link! Link!

BTW, Christophe, it would be very useful if your site had a prominent link to here on your front page, somewhere near the top...

EDIT:
Positions using "Dungeon Master"
Google: Somewhere on page 7!!!
Altavista: 10th
Excite: 51st
Yahoo: 3rd
Teoma: Doesn't figure in the first six pages, got bored after that
Dogpile: 49th (page 3)
Lycos: 18th (page 2)

Positions using "Dungeon Master Forum"
Google: 1st
Altavista: 2nd (but a poor abstract)
Excite: 2nd
Yahoo: 1st
Teoma: Doesn't figure in the first six pages, got bored after that
Dogpile: 2nd
Lycos: 3rd (kind of)

somehow between dec 12 and now this page droped from #1 on dogpile to #55 on dogpile.. WTF? DMJ which is dead get's more hits than this.. could it have anything to do with changing the front page ??!! I've not looked at it in depth.. but it's the only thing that changed.. I had the little blurb but the part where it names the page you are on had just "dungeon master" on it and now it has "welcome to dungeon-master.com"

just throwing out theories here..

It is possible...I don't think it mentions dungeon master directly for the first 40 words, if that makes a difference

See, it's linked from the DME forum, from both ian's and the rtc forums...i can link it prominently from mine, it can be linked on the front of the dme...that's five links : (

Well then, try adding "Dungeon Master" at the very beginning of the front homepage again, it doesn't has to be really visible, it only has to be there. You will see whether that changes the site's ranking again.

Maybe it helps if you put something like this in the header of the front page (if it is not already there..)

<META content= dungeon,master,dungeon master, dungeon-master, forum, dungeon master forum name=keywords>

Found this style META tag in our corporate web-site. I think it helps the web spiders to get useful keywords of the content.

I have added a link on my home page.

I have also slightly updated the home page here:
added "description" and "keywords" meta tags
edited the title to add "dungeon master"
edited the first sentence to add "dungeon master"

These little changes should improve the ranking of the site.
But we'll have to wait for weeks until they update their indexes.

META keywords aren't used by Google, and I think many other search engines have also dropped them as they are too unreliabe and can be abused too easily.

Also, repeating variations on words/phrases as you've suggested doesn't help, in fact you can be penalised for it. One occurance of dungeon, master and forum should be enough.

Thanks for the info, didn't know that..

As far as I know, the way Google indexes pages -their Pagerank system- is a highly protected secret.
How can you be sure that the meta tags are not used at all?
I know there has been a lot of speculation on the net about how google ranks web sites. Have you got rock solid information about that?

I think we can wait a few weeks and see if the changes I made are really useless (it may be possible, I really don't know for sure). I just did what I did for my web site.

And I agree that the number of other pages linking to this place is also very important in the ranking.

Do you have other suggestions to improve the ranking of these forums? I think it should appear in the first 5 results when you search "dungeon master".

Also, about repeating the same words several times: if what you say was true, my web site would not be the first or second result on google because I have pages where "dungeon master" appears tens of times.
I made a quick search: in the 142 pages of my web site, the string "dungeon master" appears 1745 times. That is more than 12 times per page.

You're right, no-one knows for sure how Google works, but the general consensus seems to be that it either ignores the keywords meta tag or only uses it if the words relate to the content of the page.

So for example, if you ran a porn site (!) and all the content text was about sex, but your keyowrds were about kitchen knives, then it would know that the keywords are deliberately misleading and ignore them.

As for the repetitions, I meant within the keywords meta tag, not the page content itself.

Interesting, using "Dungeon Master" on Google now places these forums on page 2 of results. It was page 7 the other day!

I also think that the more people click on links in google search results, the better ranking.

So, if many people go to google, search for "dungeon master", and click on the link to this site in the search results (and ignore other results), it should further improve the ranking.

lol, i must admit i already do that on most work computers except my own and my manager's...so I don't leave a weird link in their pull-down i go through google : )
actually, i search for dm.com...that would make a difference then, right?

Weird -- If I use "Dungeon Master .com" on Google I don't get anything that leads here.... anyone else?

Yeah, if you type it the wrong way you get no hits : )
I didn't realise i typed the whole address to get the hit...this sucks!

One problem might be, that "Dungeon Master" is not solely used for "our" game, but also for various other rpg-related topics, esp. in D&D where "Dungeon Master" is used very often.

yeah, what's up with that, you'd think it was popular or something...

sorry to bump this thread up.. just type "dungeon mater" on google.com (forgot the "s")
we appear on page 4 for a "dungeon master" search, this is better than before..

I have just tried "dungeon master" on Google, and now ChristopheF's site is the 1st site listed, George Gilbert's RTC page and the DM forum are on the 2nd page.
Quite an improvement.

if you type dungeon master forum it's first though

Since I've been in my new job, I've learnt a little more about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but not nearly enough to implement it properly. I'm going to try and get a summary from my boss at some point so that I can implement it on this site. Watch this space.

Bizarre -- we're back down to page 7 on Google again for "dungeon master".

page one on dogpile.. page 4 on google for me..

you see, most people don't search for this place.. most people already know where it is.. and anyone else who did searches likley go to the encyclopedia and get redirected here.. or RTC and get redirected here or sever other sites that get redirected here.. etc. See what I mean? There are so many other ways to find the forums they don't need to find it in the search engines.. and you need the clicks in the engine to stay up top..

moo

You guys should get a link from the Little Green Desktop's Dungeon Master page. That site is so awesome.

Page 6 now -- that's even more bizarre. Searches shoul be the same for everyone, why is page 4 for you Cows? Do you use google.com or another variation?

i think that the D&D-term "dungeon master [guide]" does compete with dungeon master. therefore could result the different ratings.
I got to know these forums through ChristopheF´s website, i had not thought about a DM and Csb forum!

The links from the Enc's forums to here *are* a bit confusing to new users as it simply looks like this forum/site is part of that website. Which is why we get lots of messages from newbies saying stuff like 'I downloaded so and so from this site and it doesn't work!' -- but of course, there are no downloads on this site. Perhaps that needs to be made clearer Christophe?