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Brandon Rhea Brandon Rhea 2 June 2016
46

Why Social Media is Important For Communities

Wikians are often at the epicenter of their favorite fandoms. You represent the biggest experts there are, not to mention that you have some of the most intense passions for pop culture in the world. That's why it's not very surprising to know that social media is an important tool for your community. What better way is there to talk to other fans and let them know about your community?

Every day, we talk to fans on our own brand accounts, @getfandom and @Wikia, and we've learned a great deal about the importance of engaging with an audience on social media. As social media becomes more and more important in the evolving internet landscape, I wanted to share some of what we've learned with you.


When you have a well-established community, you…


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Mira Laime Mira Laime 24 February 2016
86

How to Deal With a Bad Bureaucrat

We’ve given plenty of advice in the past on how to deal with trolls, annoying users, and bad admins. But what if that user who is upsetting the community is a bureaucrat, and can delete anything and block anyone they like?


  • 1 Try diplomacy first
  • 2 When to get a bureaucrat demoted
  • 3 How to get a bureaucrat demoted
  • 4 Bureaucrat trouble in very small communities


As in any dispute, the best option is to talk it out: Stay calm, assume your bureaucrat isn’t evil, but just coming from a different point of view, and see if you can find a way to work together.

Try these options, if a bureaucrat is causing trouble:

  • Talk to the bureaucrat: Leave them a message and let them know what you think they should do differently, and why (be nice about it).
  • Talk to the oth…



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SEOkitten SEOkitten 26 October 2015
17

The Importance of Images

Greetings, Wikians!


One common SEO question at Wikia is about the impact images have on rankings. Search engine algorithms are not public and most look at hundreds of unique factors, but correlation studies have shown pages that include properly tagged, relevant images often rank higher than pages that do not.

Google and other search engines are getting better at understanding the relationship between images and other on-page content, but search bots cannot understand the images themselves. Happily there are some steps we can take to help the search engines out.


  • 1 File Names
  • 2 File Descriptions
  • 3 Image Galleries and Image Navigation
  • 4 Next Steps


File names should be as descriptive as possible; James Bond-Thunderball-Jetpack.jpg is better for SEO than…




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SEOkitten SEOkitten 28 September 2015
11

Using Keywords Without Stuffing or Spamming


Hello, Wikians!

I introduced some simple keyword research tools in the previous SEO blog post; this time I want to discuss how to include those keywords on the page for maximum impact on search rankings and user experience.

The internet was less sophisticated in the mid to late ‘90s. During the Geocities era, it became a common practice to “optimize” pages using spammy blocks of unrelated keywords or sentences stuffed with synonyms and close match variations.

In the attempt to adhere to this outdated best practice, countless websites still publish nonsense like this:

C3PO, sometimes called Threepio, is a gold droid (robot) built to assist humans with customs and translation. Protocol droids like the talking robot C-3P0 can be different colors, but T…


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SEOkitten SEOkitten 31 August 2015
10

Search Suggest, Trends, and Content Coverage


Hello, Wikians!

Most active communities have a growing list of wanted pages and numerous articles that could be improved. With so much on our to do lists, how do we even begin to prioritize?

In this post I'm sharing a couple of simple tools that are ideal for quick keyword research. Figuring out what searchers are searching can focus our creative efforts on the topics people are most curious about and help us gain more readers and contributors through prime placement in organic search results.

Those who hear about Search Engine Optimization for the first time often guess that it has something to do with keywords—and for good reason! Keywords are the words or phrases that a user enters into a search engine, and both search algorithms and the bro…


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SEOkitten SEOkitten 10 August 2015
10

Intro to SEO


Hello, Wikians!

My name is Angelina, and I recently joined Wikia to help out on SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. That sounds impressive, I’m sure, but what does that mean?

SEO is a multi-discipline field that aims to bring greater visibility and traffic to each of our communities through prime placement on search engine results pages. Our team monitors traffic and rankings, devises tests and impact projects, and makes recommendations across a wide range of topics—from the words linked on each page to the names of our image files to mobile-friendliness of pages.

Some days are spent helping the Product and Engineering teams on new or improved features, and others are spent updating help pages or creating documentation for the Community Team. …


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BertH BertH 17 June 2015
17

Update your Facebook widget

Hi Wikians!

Many of you have created Facebook pages for your communities to help get news and updates to your readers and editors. Some of you also use your main page to promote the Facebook page of your community's topic. If you use the Like Box plugin/widget to show Facebook content on your wikia, you'll need to update to a newer plugin from Facebook.

Next week (on June 23), Facebook will drop support for the Like Box, which used the tags |}

Got questions? Let us know in the comments. Need help? Let us know via Special:Contact.

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Cnoteboat Cnoteboat 26 January 2015
36

The Importance of Search Engine Optimization

Hi there! My name is Charlie Boatwright and I'm an analyst in the Analytics Team here at Wikia. Part of my role involves investigating research questions pertinent to Wikia using the data we have available to us. One of the first topics I was assigned to look at is the attributes of Wikia article pages that drive pageviews.

One of the biggest drivers is what's known as SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, which is the process used to make it easier for wikias to be discovered and indexed by search engines. That way, search engines can properly rank a wikia's "relevance" and "importance," based on that search engine's criteria, in order to show the best search results possible for a user's query. For example, when a user searches "Who is Walt…

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Cooksey.michael Cooksey.michael 3 November 2014
24

Creative uses for Wikia Maps

Confession time: I am a huge map nerd. Always have been! When I was a little kid, some of my favorite books were actually atlases. And even today, I still adore looking at maps.

So naturally, I was so excited when we launched our new maps feature here at Wikia. There is so much you can do with maps, especially in our world of fandom. Of course, you can use the maps tool to create and annotate traditional, geographical maps, but you can *also* use the maps tool to annotate images and provide deep, creative insight into your favorite fandom, fictional worlds, details into video games, and more. You can even try annotating a "still," or image from a scene out of your favorite show. This is simply another great way to provide additional details…

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Sannse Sannse 29 September 2014
34

The Zen Admin

Today's topic was suggested by 452, and it's a good one. We've talked about the attributes of the ideal admin, and about the best ways to react to trolling. But between that is the best way to react to users you dislike or are causing problems on the wikia in ways other than simple trolling.

This is related to "Don't Feed the Trolls," but there are some differences. Not feeding trolls is generally about not giving feedback to those that are editing specifically to get a reaction to their disruption. But sometimes there's more involved than that, and sometimes your reaction is not just about not feeding, it's also about your own effect on the wikia and its community.

So let's talk about your reactions to vandals, users that don't listen, or w…

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