UX: Search Engine Optimization

[Lemmingh]

Plan

1. Create a GitHub organization, probably called markdown-all-in-one.
2. Transfer the docs website there.
3. Request search engines to index our site.
   • Bing
   • Algolia
4. Update to VuePress 2.
5. Put a big search box in home page.

Background

@yzhang-gh

One thing I am concerned about is the "UX", the clarity. How difficult is it for a user/developer to find the right page/section with as few as possible clicks? We may need different welcome pages for different people and highlight some FAQs based on our experience.

@Lemmingh

Maintaining a list of hot topics can be hard and dirty. Nowadays, people are accustomed to search, so first improving search experience may be good.

[yzhang-gh]

Do we need a GitHub organization? The good thing is it looks more "official" (although it isn't a must-do in my opinion). The downside is, (1) the naming, is it too long? is it too general (as our extension is only made for VS Code)? (2) it looks to be overkill as there won't be more repos under this organization (I guess).

For now, I think it is good enough to publish it under a personal account, either yours (if you don't mind), or otherwise a subfolder docs (or submodule) in the original repo.

search

+1. Of course we can do that.

[Lemmingh]

Well, I think an organization is OK:

• The length of base URL remains almost the same.

  https://lemmingh.github.io/vscode-markdown-docs/
  https://markdown-all-in-one.github.io/docs/

• It appears well established that "Markdown All in One" is the brand of the VS Code extension. As far as I can see, a search on Google, Bing, or Baidu shows that many people talk about it in English, Chinese, and Japanese.

• Many articles emphasize that a nice URL gives search engines a good first impression. Indeed, SEO tutorials often introduce slug optimization as the first few things. With markdown-all-in-one.github.io/docs/..., pages could rank higher in related searches.

• In the worst case, we are not awkward: there have been many accounts named after "Markdown", and some guys even put "markdown" in username of personal accounts.

[yzhang-gh]

Well, I think an organization is OK:

• The length of base URL remains almost the same.

  https://lemmingh.github.io/vscode-markdown-docs/
  https://markdown-all-in-one.github.io/docs/

• It appears well established that "Markdown All in One" is the brand of the VS Code extension. As far as I can see, a search on Google, Bing, or Baidu shows that many people talk about it in English, Chinese, and Japanese.
• Many articles emphasize that a nice URL gives search engines a good first impression. Indeed, SEO tutorials often introduce slug optimization as the first few things. With markdown-all-in-one.github.io/docs/..., pages could rank higher in related searches.
• In the worst case, we are not awkward: there have been many accounts named after "Markdown", and some guys even put "markdown" in username of personal accounts.

Interesting.

I hesitated because there was someone who came and said "You claim to be all-in-one but it doesn't include ... (features)". That's why I preferred not to use this name (emphasizing markdown-all-in-one again). But as you said, there are other advantages (e.g. SEO). I think it is a reasonable choice.