Search Engine Optimization to transition to new board

[FlyingArrow]

Sanj,

 

To help people find our new home and ease the transition it would be useful to put some SEO tactics to work so that when people Google "Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders" they get a link to here. Currently the MSN board site is the #1 google hit on this search. You may wish to include these words in the title and other places on the site to help people get here quicker. I believe if you simply put "Formerly BerkshireHathawayShareholders.com" in the header after Corner of Berkshire and Fairfax the spiders will see this and will likely place this site high in the search results.

 

I'm sure other web SEO guru's can advise on additional SEO strategies to help. This will ensure that less frequent visitors and guests of the old site can find their way here.

 

Just a suggestion.

 

Cheers!

[Parsad]

Mark,

 

Ah, that's gobbledy-gook to me!  Lucy, you got some 'splainin to do!

 

I think you're going to have to explain that to me in laymen's terms.  Or anyone else that has other ideas regarding that.  Cheers!

[ExpectedValue]

Mark,

 

Ah, that's gobbledy-gook to me!  Lucy, you got some 'splainin to do!

 

I think you're going to have to explain that to me in laymen's terms.  Or anyone else that has other ideas regarding that.  Cheers!

 

Basically, I think Mark is suggesting that you take a few measures on this board to include "Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders" in places on these forums. For example, the sub-Board for Berkshire Hathaway could be called just that. The title of the overall board ("Corner of Berkshire and Fairfax") could also say something like formerly the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders board.

 

The idea is that a search engine will see "Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders" on the new forums and add that to their search results index and gradually this new board's address will come out on top of search results rather than the old MSN one.

[Parsad]

Tariq,

 

Last night, I was thinking of archiving the old posts in a new folder entitled "MSN Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Archive".  Would that work?  That way I can have the archive directly on here, and the search engine would pick up the name.  Is that correct? 

 

Also, this boards own search feature would be able to locate old posts.  The only concern I had was that the dates would not be accurate.  I have to figure out some way of keeping the original post's dates.  Thanks! 

[ExpectedValue]

Tariq,

 

Last night, I was thinking of archiving the old posts in a new folder entitled "MSN Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Archive".  Would that work?  That way I can have the archive directly on here, and the search engine would pick up the name.  Is that correct? 

 

Also, this boards own search feature would be able to locate old posts.  The only concern I had was that the dates would not be accurate.  I have to figure out some way of keeping the original post's dates.  Thanks! 

 

Yeah, that would probably work Sanjeev.

[FlyingArrow]

I think that's a good idea and will help Sanjeev.

 

Tariq is correct in his understanding of what I was suggesting.

 

Search engines are very particular in what they use to assign page rank (whether you are on page 1 of the result or page 100)

 

I would still suggest naming the board "Corner of Berkshire and Fairfax - Formerly Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders on MSN" for at least 6 months. This is the first and most prominent item on the home page so the search engines will give this a higher page rank and people searching on google for "Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders" or Berkshire Hathaway MSN" will find our site. Sanjeev, try those two searches now on Google and you'll see that the old site is the number one result in both cases. Once they shut MSN down the result will disappear or will still show but the link won't work because MSN will be shut down. People who remember the old site name but not "Corner of Berkshire and Fairfax" will never find us.

 

If you put what I'm suggesting at the top of the home page it will help to get our new site higher up in the results. It won't likely get to the top for some time as the search engines look at a whole bunch of things and the MSN site in general will rank high due to it's affiliation with MSN.

 

Anyway, thanks again for your work on this. I've found the site and our "family" is here. And what a great site and board it is. I for one am happy to leave MSN behind.

 

Cheers!

 

 

[FlyingArrow]

Sanj,

 

If you google "berkshire hathaway shareholders message board" your blog board now shows up on around page 8 of the search. Of course our old home is the first result.

 

There are a number of search optimization things that can be done to move the result up. But the search "spiders" are now seeing the text you added to the sites.

 

I will share some thoughts off line, as there are clearly competitors trying to recruit the family ;)

[FlyingArrow]

Sanj,

 

If you google "berkshire hathaway shareholders message board" your blog board now shows up on around page 8 of the search. Of course our old home is the first result.

 

There are a number of search optimization things that can be done to move the result up. But the search "spiders" are now seeing the text you added to the sites.

 

I will share some thoughts off line, as there are clearly competitors trying to recruit the family ;)

 

The new text is working. A google of "Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders message board" or "Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders board" now results in both the blog and message board site coming up on page 2 of the results. A little more activity here and we'll be on page one of the results.

[Parsad]

It's been pretty active on this board in the last week or so, and I think a few more weeks should help.  Remember, there are a stalwart of boardmembers still clinging to the old board, and that will disappear after next week, so we should have another flood of members come here in the next week or two.  Cheers!