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Another new joiner - google SEO for AKAPS needed?

Andy Pierce

Member
Joined
27 Nov 2020
Messages
633
Location
Cambridge, UK
Hi all, another new joiner here, from Cambridge. I found UKAPS through google searches, although generally UKAPS doesn't come up in the first few pages of the results for some reason. At least for me, a google search on 'ludwigia palustris' (my current project) puts the first UKAPS entry on page 3, under "Ludwigia palustris advice needed". For what it's worth I'm keeping a Wordpress site of my aquascaping adventures (https://aqua.egads.uk) and google doesn't like that either. ;)
Looking forward to new discussion!
-Andy
 
Welcome!

Ukaps is well indexed, if you search for a question such as "why is my rotala dying" Ukaps is the 3rd response, if you search for a general planted tank question ukaps is in the top responses. Google does this behind the scenes matching sentiment and intent with search structure and common searches, if however you search for the latin name of a plant google will try and put you towards shops/wikis as it thinks your intent is purchasing/information.

My thesis was on Natural language processing sentiment and search :) I don't know that much about SEO though.
 
Hi all,
The google search results seem person-specific
I'm pretty sure they are, we will all get UKAPS results high up in our search list because Google knows we are frequent visitors to UKAPS. When @Andy Pierce started looking, he wasn't a frequent visitor to UKAPS, so Google placed us much lower down the search.

Is there a frequent UKAPS searcher who always uses a proxy server? In that case they might not get UKAPS promoted up the search list.

cheers Darrel
 
Greetings!

As a rather new member of UKAPS, I found it by googling a million questions over several weeks, and after a while realised that pretty much all of the useful well-explained answers and advice came from here. I trawled through loads of forums and asked all sorts of questions - it seemed like unless I wanted to know about a type of fish, there aren't that many websites or blogs set up to answer the many questions I needed answering (mostly about planted tanks and all the logic & knowledge behind them), but UKAPS always had good answers (plus a nicer UX than other forums too).
 
Hi all,

I'm pretty sure they are, we will all get UKAPS results high up in our search list because Google knows we are frequent visitors to UKAPS. When @Andy Pierce started looking, he wasn't a frequent visitor to UKAPS, so Google placed us much lower down the search.

Is there a frequent UKAPS searcher who always uses a proxy server? In that case they might not get UKAPS promoted up the search list.

cheers Darrel

I've done some tests; over a few VPNS for the phrase "rotala dying" - always same results too.
Ukaps is always in the top half of the page, never first.

Google uses a term "Relevancy" - I don't know the ins and outs of this and it's been years since I really dug into it, but this will be based on the searches in your browser history, and account if you store your searches. Google uses context, as we're (almost) all in the UK we will likely lean more to ukaps than other plant sites - more people from the UK possibly come here than say "aquatic-r-us". So in short, Ukaps comes up near first for us who visit it, comes up near first for those who don't as we're a great source of information. Now, if everyone could give succinct thread titles, we'd do even better.
 
I did a lot of work on the sitemap that is fed into the search robots at the start of the year, so robots that hit the site will catalogue the entire site now, about a month ago I added another option that rather than catalogue just the first page of a topic it will now catalogue all pages on a thread, so lets see if that improves things, I am no expert in SEO, but a lot of our new members tend to find UKAPS via Google.
 
At least for me, a google search on 'ludwigia palustris'
What you have to keep in mind what you typed in there is a product/plant specie, and there are many many sites selling this product/or wikipedias, they would be ranked higher than UKAPS.
under "Ludwigia palustris advice needed".
If I type it that way, it was ranked first for me almost every time using various VPNs and different browsers!

With the plant name, depending on which country my VPN terminated in it varied the results. Site is ranked based on the titles of pages that is submitted in the sitemap to crawlers!! Like @castle says, to improve it members should think a little more when creating thread titles for example!
 
Is there a frequent UKAPS searcher who always uses a proxy server? In that case they might not get UKAPS promoted up the search list.
Hi Darrel & Everyone,

Normally, I just go to the login page - so I hardly qualify as 'a frequent UKAPS searcher'. But, I tried an experiment a few minutes ago. I always access the internet through a highly-reputable VPN service. So, using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine, I searched for 'aquarium plant' and UKAPS came in at position #62. And 'aquatic plant' was at position #69. When searching for 'aquarium plant society', UKAPS was in #1 position.

JPC
 
Hi Darrel & Everyone,

Normally, I just go to the login page - so I hardly qualify as 'a frequent UKAPS searcher'. But, I tried an experiment a few minutes ago. I always access the internet through a highly-reputable VPN service. So, using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine, I searched for 'aquarium plant' and UKAPS came in at position #62. And 'aquatic plant' was at position #69. When searching for 'aquarium plant society', UKAPS was in #1 position.

JPC
I have been chatting to someone today that one of the moderators put me in touch with, so lets see what comes out of that, after reading some information in regards the forum software this evening I have noticed that the forum description wasn't great either, it was just "Welcome to the UK Aquatic Plant Society", it has been inherited like that and never bothered to change it, so today I have created a much better forum description also with a lot of major keywords, so hopefully that helps too ;)
 
we will all get UKAPS results high up in our search list because Google knows we are frequent visitors to UKAPS
One's search results are customised to you. Everyone one sees what google thinks they want to see and will cause maximum 'engagement'. Engagement increases their revenues.

One word: Duckduckgo.
 
Strange isn't it Put Amazon into your search , the most important ecological rich part of the plant and vital to the Earth and first thing you mostly get is a shopping website owned by the richest man on the planet. Sign of the times
 
As a rather new member of UKAPS, I found it by googling a million questions over several weeks, and after a while realised that pretty much all of the useful well-explained answers and advice came from here.
Snap; that sums up my experience perfectly. If you're looking for data / science based answers to questions I think there's an inevitability that you will find your way to UKAPS.
 
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