A few days ago one of our respected volunteers sent me this analysis. Paul Puente is a Tennessee county volunteer and an html coding expert. He has run this analysis that reveals broken links on alhn state pages. (And just so you know the huge number on Tennessee has been fixed) This may not be as bad as it sounds especially for those of us who’ve had ours online for awhile because this validator will locate the re-directs that rootsweb caused when they went from rootsweb.com to rootsweb.ancestry.com http://validator.w3.org/checklink is the web site. Anyone can use this utility for their site. Now, here is better news. Paul has created tutorials that will help us bring our sites into WC3 compliance...”the new coding”.... His tutorial’s are excellent in that they are explained in ways that even I can understand. They are simple and easy to follow. Paul will be doing a series of these tutorials over the next few weeks that will be posted on this mail list as well as having a permanent home on his web site. I will post the first tutorial very soon along with the link to its home. The Board of Directors is extremely grateful to Paul for taking time to help out those of us who need it. Analysis of ALHN State Websites – November 12, 2013 State Search* Errors** Domain and Index page Alabama No 39 http://www.usgennet.org Alaska page 2 57 http://www.alaskaweb.org/ Arizona - - no website Arkansas - - http://www.arfamilies.info (account suspended) California No 21 http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~caalhn/ Colorado No 24 http://www.genealogyalongtherockies.com/colorado/colorado.htm Connecticut No 36 http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ct/state/ Delaware page 2 25 http://www.delawareroots.org/ D. of Columbia No 29 http://www.us-roots.org/washingtondc/ Florida No 3 http://www.fl-roots.org/ Georgia No 6 http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gaalhn/ Hawaii No 3 http://hometownchronicles.com/hawaii/index.htm Idaho page 4 50 http://www.usgennet.org/usa/id/state1/alhn/index.htm Illinois No 10 http://www.us-roots.org/illinois/ Indiana No 26 http://www.usgennet.org/usa/in/state1/index.htm Iowa No 10 http://www.us-roots.org/iowa/ Kansas No 3 http://www.pa-roots.org/data/index.php?5209 Kentucky No 0 http://www.us-roots.org/ky/state/Welcome.html Louisiana No 69 http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~laalhn/ Maine No 11 http://hometownchronicles.com/mealhn/ Maryland No 28 http://www.marylandroots.net/ Massachusetts No 14 http://www.ma-roots.org/ Michigan No 3 http://www.mi-roots.org/ Minnesota No 23 http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mn/state/ Mississippi No 12 http://www.us-roots.org/ms/state/ Missouri No 210 http://www.us-roots.org/missouri/ Montana No 16 http://www.us-roots.org/montana/ Nebraska No 2 http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/state1/ Nevada No 11 http://www.us-roots.org/nevada/ New Hampshire No 6 http://www.nh-roots.org/ New Jersey No 42 http://www.usgennet.org/usa/nj/state/ New Mexico No 4 http://nmahgp.genealogyvillage.com/ New York No 2 http://www.newyorkroots.org/ North Carolina No 6 http://www.ncalhn.org/ North Dakota - - no website Ohio No 20 http://www.genealogybug.net/ohio_alhn/ohio.htm Oklahoma page 4 87 http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ok/state/ Oregon - - no website or no link to website Pennsylvania 172 http://www.pa-roots.com/index.php/pacounties Pennsylvania page 2 11 http://www.pa-roots.com/ (not linked from the States page) Rhode Island No 27 http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ri/state/ South Carolina No 16 http://www.us-roots.org/southcarolina/ South Dakota No 13 http://www.us-roots.org/sd/state/ Tennessee No 259 http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~tnalhn/ Texas No 66 http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txalhn/ Utah No 36 http://utahalhn.tripod.com/ Vermont No 1 http://www.vt-roots.org/ Virginia No 71 http://www.usgennet.org/usa/va/state/vaalhn/index.htm Washington No 76 http://www.usgennet.org/usa/wa/state/ West Virginia No 16 http://www.us-roots.org/westvirginia/ Wisconsin No 17 http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wialhn/ Wyoming No 193 http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wyoming/ Wyoming No 16 http://www.genealogyalongtherockies.com/wyoming/wyoming.htm * Does the website appear on first 5 pages of results in Google using two keywords: genealogy and the name of the State. ** Number of errors on index page only as measured by W3C markup validation service. Includes errors and warnings. *** http://www.pa-roots.com/index.php/pacounties had 172 errors Explanation Search Results: If the website doesn’t appear in the first two pages (20 results) people generally won’t go beyond. I checked 5 pages or 50 results for each State website. Page Errors: If there are significant errors on a page it may not render (display) correctly. This is especially true for older browser versions. So if people actually find the website but they can’t clearly read what is on it then they leave. Notes and Observations a.. It is not just keywords that are important but how many links a site has going out and how many coming in from other sites. b.. Most (almost all) of our sites are not optimized for search engines (see below) a.. Kansas has no ALHN logo and the title of the index page is PA-Roots b.. Although Kentucky meets W3C standards, it does not have any keywords which accounts for it not showing up in the first 5 pages of a Google search. c.. Some States such as Hawaii and New Mexico have too many keywords and Google doesn’t like that. Too many keywords could indicate a spamming site. d.. Many ALHN State sites don’t even have the name of the State as a keyword. As many keywords as the New Mexico website has New Mexico is not even mentioned as a keyword. Its in the title tag but that doesn’t help. Link Checker http://validator.w3.org/checklink Here is a sample output from Ohio State site: Code Occurrences What to do 404 1 The link is broken. Double-check that you have not made any typo, or mistake in copy-pasting. If the link points to a resource that no longer exists, you may want to remove or fix the link. 410 1 The resource is gone. You should remove this link. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Google has an excellent article on this subject which every volunteer should read: http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf