4 Thoughts on The Filipino Diaspora Website

Hello Everyone!

I believe I need to air some thoughts about this site to make it work better as I do care since I am posting articles here.

Here are my thoughts (frankly) on how this site works. I hope someone responds to this call.

Based on what I gather after more than four years of writing online, here are the things I saw which I think everyone concerned should give attention to.

1. The menus of the site are not that friendly to writers. I actually was confused on which page I should post. The menu should clearly show to the visitor that that page is the page where guest bloggers like me should click on and post or see where I have posted my article. Avoid very long menus as this occupies unnecessary space. Too many tabs spread out views.

What we are really interested in here is that more writers should be able to post something regularly. But if we just have very short descriptions of what we intend to share in the home page of The Filipino Diaspora, it should be something catchy or intriguing.

I do not find the post in the front page that attractive that I would click on it. Something attractive will be something original that we seldom see online.

How about an editorial page or blog so everyone will be updated what's happening in this site.

2. Everybody just post on the home page as if nothing happened to the previous post. No reaction, no comments, no response, nothing. I expected some feedback from readers but nobody, it seems, seemed to bother  about what is being posted here. It seems, to me, that people are just interested in posting notes about their articles. Those articles may not be what many people are not really that interested in.

Image Source: shafali.wordpress.com

How about having some categories to sort out which one is all about love, about science, about people, etc. so that gives readers choice on something which they believe can enrich their lives. And maybe longer articles would work better to attract more traffic.

As a rule nowadays, the least number of words you should post to attract search engines is 400 words but 300 would be fine. Many of the posts here are too short. Search engine tendency is to treat the short post as spam.

3. No tags for articles posted. I don't know if tags, or keywords, just like what we do in the different writing sites are available to bloggers. I couldn't find a box where I can place the tags together with my post. Lacking these distinctive keywords prevents search engines from "seeing" your articles.

I posted in this site and I noticed that nothing happens to my links as I could detect the links that have been clicked. That means many contributors don't bother to read the home page of The Filipino Diaspora.

4. Let's write something targeted to fellow Filipinos. A truly Filipino site should show Filipino interests and tastes. That makes the site unique. And many Filipinos will want to see the site because they can easily relate to the articles in it.

In other words, whatever we post here should be relevant to the website's name. Care for your viewers and they will show their care for you. Make your post count each time, so that they will derive great knowledge and understanding by reading something from this site, not just simple links that divert readers to other sites.

I once did the same thing, that is, putting a lot of links in my Home Page that send viewers out of my website. The result: the gradual decrease in Alexa rank of my website. Diverting views from the site tells the search engine that the site is not interesting. Thus, viewers click away from the site.

Just my thoughts. You may ignore it if you want. But if you care, you will see the reason why I posted this. And also, you will be able to encourage me to visit this site regularly.

All the best. :->