[Bf-docboard] Redirecting old 2.3 docs: help needed!

[Raindrops From Sky]

Hi Luca,

Thanks for sharing the thoughts.

On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 8:30 AM, mindrones <mindrones at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 11/02/2011 11:54 PM, Raindrops From Sky wrote:
> > Why not simply retire the old pages, rather than this exercise?
>
> Because it would be a waste. We know the link between the pages, not
> informing search engines about it has no sense to me.
>
> The problem is not only removing the old ones, because in some cases we
> also have to climb 4 google pages to be found. Best using everything we
> have at hand IMHO :)
>

That was my point: While the old outdated pages may bootstrap the SEO
ranking of the new pages, the website becomes bloated (just look at the
sheer number of non-usable pages, from 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 versions). The
traffic is split, which hampers the SEO rating of the 2.6 pages. Pruning
the site will accelerate the SEO rating of the 2.6 pages.

First of all, the question is, does the Blender wiki have to rely on SEO at
all? The wiki pages are meant for people who already know of Blender. These
people will be looking for specific terms such as "Blender wiki" or
"Blender docs" or "blender help" or "blender manual"; and will surely not
miss the wiki (once the description meta tags are configured).

On the other hand, people looking for other generic terms such as "3d
modeler", or functions such as "compositor", "video editor" may have
difficulty in finding the wiki. To draw such people to Blender wiki, we
will need some more SEO tricks. But whatever we do should be limited to the
pruned pages only.

> Simply copy the previous content to the latest branch page and add a
> HatNote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hatnote) that this
> content is based on old version x.xx; and may be outdated.

 The current wiki started as a transcript of those pages already. After
> so many years (5/6) it has not much sense to do that :)
>

True: There is hardly anything relevant; because of (a) new features and
(b) drastic change in GUI in 2.5.

In any case once your "auto-generate reference wiki page from GUI code"
starts working, the reliance on old pages will decrease even further.

Note that this actually speaks in favor of retiring the old version pages!
:)

*******
Perhaps it is best to get rid of the 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 pages; and focus on
SEO on the 2.6 pages.
If you are forming an SEO team,  I am interested in joining it (to find
optimized keywords for each page).

Regards,
Narayan
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