Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

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RCraig
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Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by RCraig »

I talked to a friend who does SEO for a living. Here are some more suggestions for increasing board visibility:

Adding Jeopardy to the game recap thread titles, e.g.:
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (Jeopardy! SPOILERS)

Writing out Final Jeopardy in the weekly poll:
Final Jeopardy!'s for the 6/27/11 week

And adding contestants full names to the game recap threads, and somewhere near the top. When the J and DJ round posts are created by the Archivists, maybe something like:

Jeopardy round
Returning champion: Jane Doe

Double Jeopardy round
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Robert K S
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by Robert K S »

Possibly a minority opinion here, but I'd much rather have quality of discussion from regulars than turning the board into a SEO fest. This isn't an advertising-supported board so there's no commercial incentive for increased traffic.
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RCraig
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by RCraig »

Robert K S wrote:Possibly a minority opinion here, but I'd much rather have quality of discussion from regulars than turning the board into a SEO fest. This isn't an advertising-supported board so there's no commercial incentive for increased traffic.
Well, alietr and I had a long talk about this the other day. He said he kept you in the loop, but maybe not. We both agreed that the roughly 200 users of this board are the only ones who have anything of value to add to Jeopardy! discussions. However, because leasing a domain name and server resources are prohibitively expensive, the site needs to be monetized stat! Our grand plan is a reconfiguration of the Jeopardy online advertising economy. In one week, this board will be fully supported by advertising. Access will still be free, but users will have to watch a 15 second interstitial video ad before reading each thread. We're also going to mount a massive Google Adsense campaign to blow up traffic for the inital ad rollout (the online world's version of "sweeps"). And because the sister site of the j-archive will remain ad free, I think it's best if you delisted it from Google. Surely millions of Jeopardy fans are googling their favorite clues each week and stressing your servers. Do the right thing!
I know what you're all thinking "Jeez, we're gonna get flooded with tons of new users!" Yeah, I totally agree. It sucks. Not a single one of them is gonna have anything useful to contribute, but it's the cross we'll collectively have to bear. Gotta keep the lights on after all. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about this plan, please reply to this post. Thank you and may all your daily doubles be true!
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MDaunt
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by MDaunt »

RCraig wrote:
Robert K S wrote:Thank you and may all your daily doubles be true!
Possibly, maybe unnecessarily snarky?

I agree that raising visibility for Jeopardy fans and ego-googling contestants would be a good thing.
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RCraig
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by RCraig »

MDaunt wrote:
RCraig wrote:
Robert K S wrote:Thank you and may all your daily doubles be true!
Possibly, maybe unnecessarily snarky?

I agree that raising visibility for Jeopardy fans and ego-googling contestants would be a good thing.
While I meant to come off as satirical, not snarky, I suppose I can't quibble with that adjective. I just felt that characterizing the efforts to increase the visibility of the forum as a commercial SEO fest were misguided. The forum is a non-zero sum game. I agree with you that we all benefit when more people find us, show up, and contribute.
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by Suze »

Sometimes a little snark is warranted, anyway.
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by BigDaddyJ »

RCraig wrote:Adding Jeopardy to the game recap thread titles ...
Writing out Final Jeopardy in the weekly poll ...
And adding contestants full names to the game recap threads, and somewhere near the top.
These all seem like they would easy enough to implement. Ultimately, of course, that's up to the most esteemed moderators of this Jeopardy discussion board. But I don't see much downside to any of them.
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RandyG
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by RandyG »

Googling on any combination containing "jeopardy" and "discussion" generally places this board no lower than page 4. Add the word "board","forum" or "fan" and it pops up to the first page. Neither jeopardy+forum nor jeopardy+board alone do too well (yet.)
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by jepkid97 »

RCraig wrote:Well, alietr and I had a long talk about this the other day...
Something about this sounds a bit sarcastic.
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RCraig
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by RCraig »

RandyG wrote:Googling on any combination containing "jeopardy" and "discussion" generally places this board no lower than page 4. Add the word "board","forum" or "fan" and it pops up to the first page. Neither jeopardy+forum nor jeopardy+board alone do too well (yet.)
Yeah, it's best to check on "jeopardy message board" though as the following are now in google suggest:
what happened to the jeopardy message board
jeopardy message board down
jepkid97 wrote:
RCraig wrote:Well, alietr and I had a long talk about this the other day...
Something about this sounds a bit sarcastic.
Yeah, it was satire. I just think a jeopardy message board should be as inclusive as possible. Others might disagree, I don't know. Anyway, because I feel the more the merrier, I think helping others find us is a good thing to do.
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by BigDaddyJ »

RCraig wrote:Anyway, because I feel the more the merrier, I think helping others find us is a good thing to do.
I agree, and not only because "the more the merrier," but also because I sincerely want for current and past contestants to be able to find their way here and share their thoughts and experiences, as well as anyone else who may have something to offer. As an aspiring Jeopardy contestant, I find this message board to be an invaluable part of my training regimen!
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heelsrule1988
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by heelsrule1988 »

I kind of like the secrecy... it's been awesome to not have threads every other day from one-time posters about "incorrect" clues and all of that nonsense.
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by barandall800 »

heelsrule1988 wrote:I kind of like the secrecy... it's been awesome to not have threads every other day from one-time posters about "incorrect" clues and all of that nonsense.
I think the old board attracted a lot of that nonsense simply because it was connected to Sony, and of course there was a link to it from the Jeopardy! main site (which is essentially the Internet 'face' of the show). The way I see it, if we put ourselves out there a bit more, we might attract a few of those people (such is the nature of the Internet), but I'm guessing most of the intake would be current/former contestants, regulars from the old board that haven't made their way here yet, and people ready for actual discussion about Jeopardy!, in general.
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by Bamaman »

I found the old board through the show's website. If I were looking today, I'd probably give up after getting the notice it was down. I tried doing a yahoo search for "Jeopardy message board...." and have yet to find this place.

Yes, I hated the one and done posters, but I fear we'll never get many new psoters if this place is hard to find. Even contestants who join, post a few times during their run and then vanish are a valuable part of the forum.
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Woof
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by Woof »

I found the old board when Googling for the answers to an online J! test. I suspect that as this board gets more use and, especially, when online testing rolls around again, more people will find their here if so minded.
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by debramc »

I can't even remember how I found the old board and it was only 2 years ago! I know it wasn't from the official J! site, and I didn't go looking for a Jeopardy message board. The only thing I can think of is maybe someone referred to it on the Straight Dope message board (possibly even our dhkendall, I know he's there a lot). I spent a lot more time there before I found the jeopardy board. (My other message boards are about gardening and chickens, and a horribly large portion of the participants, though intelligent, have a really hard time with things like composing sentences, spelling somewhere close to correctly, etc. My brain needs complete sentences and big words now and then.)
Anyway, I think this was already mentioned, but basically talking about this message board on other boards when it's appropriate is a way to attract people who may not even realize they're looking for us.
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RandyG
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by RandyG »

The latest newsletter from my web host has a good summary article titled "Crafting an Effective SEO Strategy." http://www.inmotionhosting.com/newslett ... etter.html
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by Vanya »

So basically we want everyone to find it except TRD and TPH. I wonder if there is a SEO for that?
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by alietr »

There's a Firefox extension that blocks access to any website associated with Rupert Murdoch, so maybe your idea isn't so farfetched, Vanya.
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Re: Easier to find Jeopardy forum and Jeopardy discussions

Post by Suze »

Bamaman wrote:I found the old board through the show's website. If I were looking today, I'd probably give up after getting the notice it was down. I tried doing a yahoo search for "Jeopardy message board...." and have yet to find this place.
I just did a Google search for "Jeopardy message board" and this place popped up on the first page of results. People will find the board soon enough.
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