Website venture - Concerned Citizen

[melat0nin]

Hi all

Last night I soft-launched my latest website, Concerned Citizen.

It is a discussion-cum-petition site, where users ('concerned citizens') can submit their concerns about policies, from the government to their local council to their residents' association.

Other users can vote and comment on concerns, and the idea is that with enough publicity these concerns can have petition-like effect and can effect real reform in whatever arena people think it is needed.

Obviously I'm trying to build up a community now, so feel free to stop by and have a look round, and register if you fancy it.

Hell, give it a go and get something off your chest -- fuel duty, reality TV, NHS service - whatever's concerning you, make yourself heard!

-melat0nin

 

[stevebrowne]

From an SEO point of view, I would try and get the title of the "concern" into the URL, so instead of :

http://www.concernedcitizen.co.uk/idea/21/

You would have

http://www.concernedcitizen.co.uk/idea/21/Reduce_Fuel_Duty/

Search engines like URLs like that

 

[melat0nin]

From an SEO point of view, I would try and get the title of the "concern" into the URL, so instead of :

http://www.concernedcitizen.co.uk/idea/21/

You would have

http://www.concernedcitizen.co.uk/idea/21/Reduce_Fuel_Duty/

Search engines like URLs like that

Thanks for your reply!

I did think of this, but the problem would be that people can enter any title they like, so somehow condensing that into a concise SE-friendly URL might be difficult.

Although I'm aware of SEO, i suspect the success or otherwise of a site like the depends more on publicity and word-of-mouth/email/social sites than search hits.

I could be wrong though. It's certainly a work-in-progress.

 

[melat0nin]

If anyone's got any tips I'd be really interested to hear them.

Because the site is similar in form to a forum, and they are notorious for being difficult to get going, I'd be interested to hear any ideas from people who have started and maintained successful forums.

This is the first time I've created a 'community' type site, and I'm enthusiastic about getting it off the ground.