Characters/Rugrats and search engines

I made the Franchise page because the series had enough pages for one, but I could help with this too.

Alright, which page would like to go after first? You can select any page that is linked to on Characters.Rugrats or adjacent to one of that trope's indexes. How about Ivy League for Everyone as a start (in Lucy Carmichael's folder).

I'll take care of my page tomorrow as I'm going to sleep shortly.

I should be able to do more of the characters page tomorrow, but don't hold me to that, as procrastination is my worst habit.

I'm a bit confused over what's being cleaned. Are entire pages being cleaned, as long as they redirect to Rugrats, or just Rugrats examples? Maybe this should be moved to long-term.

Entire pages; the idea is that if Characters.Rugrats gets so many inbounds, it and the pages it connects to should be cleaned to improve wiki stats or something or other.

Yes, the goal is cleaning up pages so people are more likely to stay on TVT which could improve our popularity. I wonder if there's something else that could have harmed our popularity (maybe the unreleased work pages cleanup, or a lack of articles on Poketubers/Smashtubers who are becoming the rage nowadays, or something else?) Still, two of the tips here are "Find keywords that are driving traffic to your competitors" and "Produce engaging, original content", and this thread's goal is focusing on the second one, but we may need to improve the first one. Maybe we should discuss other methods of SEO or causes of our fall from grace here as well.

That said, we should indeed move this to Long Term Projects. The original scope of cleanup was about 600 pages, but with the addition of cleaning up pages adjacent to indexes of tropes linked from Characters.Rugrats, the scope is approximately 4000 pages now. Plus, all possible ideas for improving the search engines worth discussing will also be a fairly big thing. I'm also considering a rename to "SEO-related Cleanups (Characters/Rugrats, All Might, and more)", as I want to focus on Characters.My Hero Academia All Might and other pages related to him as well (the last trope addition to his page was in October). War Jay 77, do you agree?

Alphabetised Soap Opera Disease.

Next page for me, Evil-Detecting Baby (pothole in Coco LaBouche's folder, not related directly to her).

Also, I've noticed that Foxley is an editor who likes to alphabetise articles (he cleaned Coffin Contraband today). The work he's doing is good, but perhaps it could be for our goals. What do you say, ~Foxley ? Would you like to keep doing what your doing, but for this thread? You could alphabetise articles for this thread and advertise our thread in edit reasons? This topic is likely to be moved to Long-Term/Projects, but you can start anytime. Just read the previous posts (especially the OP) to basically see how we function. So would you like to join, yes or no?

We're at #5093 now.

Edited by Piterpicher on Feb 10th 2020 at 2:35:32 PM

Alphabetised Evil-Detecting Baby.

Next page for me, Acquired Situational Narcissism (Charles Finster's folder).

Please see previous post as well.

I wouldn't mind moving this idea to long-term projects, though maybe with a fresh start and a different name to attract more attention

I don't think I can help with the project right now. Maybe it'd get more attention in long-term.

I'm not sure most Poketubers or Smashtubers are tropeable.

Edited by Pichu-kun on Feb 10th 2020 at 1:56:49 AM

Yeah, most Poketubers are just people who sit around talking about Pokemon. I watch a bunch of them and very few of them make genuinely creative content- they either record themselves battling, record themselves capturing shinies, record themselves playing the game... or just post videos about their opinions. It's fun to watch, but none of it is very tropeworthy. The most creative Poketuber I know of is one I already made a page for - Pikasprey.

A fresh start, you say? I have considered just moving this to LTP with an updated title, but perhaps focusing this more on search engine optimisation could bring us more editors. There are some things I'd like to agree on first:

1. Use the acronym SEO or use full name Search-Engine Optimisation, or don't use it at all? I also want a name that makes it extremely clear this is a white hat project mainly focused on wiki improvement with possible other expansions, while still being clear and attractive to editors. Something like "Wiki Development for Search Engine Popularity Project" would fit?
2. Should we try to search for a troper frugal enough to want to spend 299$ per month for the Agency plan so a specific group of 20 tropers could know the detailed analytics? I know you're not made of money as you go to college, I'm in a similar situation, but perhaps someone is? Alternatively, we could make a donation pool which has to reach 299$ per month, which could be sent to a specific guy willing to work on this? See plans page. I currently am ad-free and so are you, but I assume I could sacrifice 1 more buck each month? Now to get 298 other people to spend 1$ each month at such a place. I know this sounds strange, but we may need the detailed analytics to know which pages we should really try to focus on as the Free Top 5 may not be enough.
3. What other goals than just Characters.Rugrats-related upgrades can we have? I have consider stuff like "Make pages that are at least Standing on all games reviewed/played by a popular Youtuber like AVGN, Vinesauce, or Markiplier", or "Make the My Hero Academia - All Might page have at least 200/250 tropes" (I did mention that page was our third best keyword, and it brought us 21K+ inbounds), or "Upgrade pages on currently hot stuff, like VideoGame.Plague Inc because coronavirus". I also wonder if certain pages being deleted/locked just because of them being controversial/upcoming has hurt us, but maybe leave that for later.
4. What should the end goal be? I personally thought of the end goal being "return to the top 5000 by the end of this year and get into the top 4000 at least by the start of 2024".

Please, tell me your thoughts. Because I legit want to help our website reach a trifecta of "popular/fun to read/not terribly dated".

Edited by Piterpicher on Feb 10th 2020 at 11:15:28 AM

I'm not entirely sure what it is you want me to do. I tend to alphabetize pages on an ad hoc as I spot something that looks messy and I have the time to sort it. But if there is something specific that needs looking at, I can probably do that.

I'm not concerned about how popular we are. That's gonna take some real advertising for what is already a grassroots website anyway.

"High-inbound pages (and linked pages) cleanup" would be a better name IMO.

The idea was for you to still alphabetise tropes, but do those which have examples on Characters.Rugrats or are Previous or Next on indexes for these tropes, and post a link to this thread in the edit reason for why you've done so to attract more people. However, as this thread may go through a fresh start with a scope different than just upgrading these pages and actually focus on the search engine optimisation, it may not be necessary. I might message you later, but for now, feel free to alphabetise pages as you see fit and have time to do so, like you've been doing up to this point.

I'd love to help and go through your ideas and stuff, but frankly I know next to nothing about these things, so I can't make any informed judgements on any of it.

Cleaning up the wiki is what I already do, if that makes us more popular then awesome, but I've got no idea how to do anything else for the wiki's popularity.

Brainulator9: You don't think we should be more popular, but the numbers don't lie, we've had a pretty big fall which could jeopardise our future growth, and being popular will bring us more editors and pages, pure and simple. In terms of real advertising, I don't know what we'd do there. And you see us as "grassroots" for some reason? As for "High-inbound pages (and linked pages) cleanup", that isn't really what I intend to do, I also want to focus on adding stuff and possibly changing our paradigm as I think more pages and bigger pages may be more attractive to readers than just cleaned-up pages.

War Jay 77: Admittedly, I'm not super advanced on this myself (I don't have an SEO college diploma or cases where I've saved a website from the brink by helping its popularity under my belt). That said, I personally think it's mostly making new pages on popular stuff that drives people here, not sure if cleanup does (we were #3800-something in the late 2011, and that was the old ZCE-infested era). It's also hard to say whether the cleanup-oriented era hurt us because growth may indeed fluctuate (we were #2684 in May 2015, #3181 in June 2016, #2601 in January 2017, #1870 in November 2017). Maybe this is just cyclic? That said, the fall then didn't seem as drastic? I should consider upgrading the Timeline.TV Tropes page, maybe I'll find a pattern or causes there.

Anyway, here's the simplified questionnaire. I think anyone without elementary SEO knowledge should understand it.

1. Are you fine with the new "Wiki Development for Search Engine Popularity Project" name for the new LTP thread? Do you have a better suggestion for a name?
2. Would you be willing to spend 1 buck each month for a possible donation pool so people could buy the Agency plan at Alexa? On second thought, should a possible community funding have a mod agreement first?
3. From what I can tell, you seem to like WebVideo.Dad. Consider a long-term goal for improving that page to an even higher level, like making it reach 100 wicks? His channel has hundreds of thousands of subs, it could be a step forward. I'll skip the other popularity things as you're not interested in those and that's okay, it's better that you focus on the thing you're good at right now. I'll also skip the end goal question as it's ultimately hard to judge.
4. Do you ultimately think you're getting a bit more understanding in what brings website traffic and other stuff thanks to our talks? Would you be willing to learn more? Just out of curiosity, I want to know if I motivate people to learn about such things.

Edited by Piterpicher on Feb 10th 2020 at 12:15:24 PM

Personally, I think we'll be fine as long as we're solvent.

Still waiting on TV Tropes 2.0, though.

I mean, I think it's actually possible that the cleanup era has been bringing less people as people seemed to really like this site back when it was full of chaos and poorly-enforced rules; but on the other hand, the people we're getting as a result are more likely to also follow the rules and making the wiki clean makes people take us more seriously even if others are bummed we're not as "fun" as we were.

I like the idea of making the thread with your proposed title and I do think getting traffic helps the site, but I wouldn't personally stress it too much, as there might be nothing we can realistically do.

I was thinking about this today. Now, perhaps some things can still be done, and I will eventually start that thread as I think we should still try to get our groove back and keep working to make the site better. I guess professionalism may make us less fun, but we may also be held in higher regards. As the fluctuating results show, it's hard to say.

Edited by Piterpicher on Feb 11th 2020 at 10:05:34 AM

Honestly though, a lot of this may also be because of the various glitches, bad/untrustworthy advertisements, and our general not-so-great reception outside of the site; there's a lot of major issues with the site that have nothing to do with the actual quality of our content, and that's stuff that the Admins need to fix, not us normal tropers.

So yeah, I think the project can definitely help, but there's so much more to this issue, I think it's unrealistic to put it all on ourselves.

we were #2684 in May 2015, #3181 in June 2016, #2601 in January 2017, #1870 in November 2017). Maybe this is just cyclic?

I think that these numbers suggest a more prosaic explanation: the wiki simply experiences a dip whenever there's a presidential election season in the US, as the people who make up much of our audience over there are drawn to that real-life high-stakes contest instead. This theory is further backed up by the fact that out of the four websites that are most similar to us in terms of audience overlap according to Alexa (Know Your Meme, FanFiction.Net, My Anime List and Archive of Our Own, if you were wondering), the first two have experienced comparable declines in recent months. If so, our numbers are likely to remain stable at best throughout this year, but should bounce back up in 2021.

This theory still doesn't explain why are down 2k spots compared to 2016, of course, but I believe we shouldn't forget that the internet is in constant flux, and while its English section is by far the largest, it is far from making up its entirety. The growth of the non-English web can very easily depress this website in the overall rankings even if our actual audience numbers experience no change whatsoever.

Now, one underappreciated stat is that while both our top five keywords (mostly Rugrats & South Park stuff) and keyword gaps where Alexa believes we could be doing better (Nana Shimura, Fairy Tail, Tokyo Ghoul, Hunter × Hunter, Star vs. the Forces of Evil) haven't budged at all recently, GameSpot has quietly become our top traffic source as far as individual websites (vs. search engine terms) are concerned.

Not to beat my own drum, but this suggests that what I have been doing these past few months (creating dozens of pages for newly released games and/or somewhat older games that haven't yet been featured on here + the associated clean-up of existing pages & indexes) is working, even if not to the extent that's sufficient to overcome our other problems. Since I am more time-constrained this year, I would rather focus on that, if only because that's the subject I understand the best on here.

Edited by NTC3 on Feb 11th 2020 at 1:51:09 AM

That is quite the observation, NTC3. Indeed, certain cyclic events may help or hinder a website. As a comparison, let's use Smogon, the competitive Pokemon site. As you know, Pokémon Sword and Shield has been released in November 2019. Archived data for their website is sparse, but look at the chart.

The game's release and the fact it's currently in the state of evolving meta had to be a source of growth for them. That said, it was a positive influence for them, while we're under a negative influence. You also mention the non-English audience growth which is legit (remember Pewdiepie vs. T-Series?) could be a cause of worry, as our translation efforts have never achieved anything that great. It's not comparable to Wikipedia's, though Know Your Meme isn't a well-translated site either. Perhaps a Hindu or some other translation could help, but our URL system, while simple and comfortable and I probably wouldn't want to change it in, like, ever, is anemic in terms of that sort of stuff.

I still want to do the fresh start in Long-Term Projects as I'd say at least 30% of popularity relies on userbase and content. Then again, as stated earlier, I'm an SEO rookie. Maybe making pages on more and more games (especially those reviewed/played by AVGN, Markiplier, Vinesauce, etc. Just look at Kang Fu, for instance. I also think my split of the Super Smash Bros. games or Leisure Suit Larry games had to be a fair step forward.) and expanding them would work great indeed. I'll try to start the new thread tomorrow, as I'm going to sleep soon. Keep up the good work if you find the time for it, NTC3.

Edited by Piterpicher on Feb 11th 2020 at 11:28:34 AM

It might not give us a very big boost, but I do want to make pages for the YouTubers Drew Gooden, Danny Gonzalez, and maybe Jarvis Johnson; they do commentary stuff, but their videos are very creative and have tropeworthy content. They're also channels that are growing quickly, so the sooner we can make a page the better. I can't make VG pages because...well, I know very few Video Games without pages here.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 11th 2020 at 5:30:06 AM

Took me a while, but I've started the new LTP thread for search engine improvements here. Please help if you're interested, it's a new project and a successor to this thread oriented around creation unlike others.

Edited by Piterpicher on Feb 17th 2020 at 9:20:26 PM