In our last External team meeting, we floated the idea of moving the current website to a new platform. The goal at this stage is mostly to experiment and see if a better setup could help us attract the remaining households. The main reasons were improving our SEO/ranking and giving the site a more structured, modern look and feel.
I did a quick scan of options like Hostinger, Wix and Webflow, with prices roughly in the 3 €–17 € per month range. This is based on some initial research, so there may well be cheaper or smarter options out there.
At the same time, Joannes checked Reef’s visibility in a few AI search tools, and Reef showed up near the top of the results (@joannes please correct me if I’m misrepresenting this). That does raise the question of whether a full platform migration is actually worth the effort right now.
The proposal is saved here if you’d like to have a look: Login – Nextcloud
Curious to hear how this idea lands with you and whether you think it’s worth exploring further.
Hello Manoj, below are some notes taken during team external’s weekly meeting for your reference:
WHY
Joannes feedback on current website perfomance:
Performing well with AI chatbot but organic search visibility isn’t doing well. @joannes do I understand correctly ? what keywords do you use ?
SEO cannot be optimised with the current tool & we need to improve the branding with a proper website ( current website is not professional at all )
Manuel’s question: can we improve the SEO using the current platform@Manoj FYI
HOW
Manuel: codes is currently written in Markdown - it’ll be a lot less time consuming if the new service provider also suports markdown.
if a new website, is there a possibilty to merge all subscription channels and create a centralised database ?
Wenwei: concern about how and who to improve the SEO, it could take months before a new website goes live and another couple months for SEO to take effect ?? ( Joannes’ feedback: 2 days should be enough to build the new website )
Hi everyone,
I’m not very good with the technical details (SEO, Markdown, subscription channels).
However, I’m a quick learner, I’m good with Wix and can do some graphic design. I would be happy to play a part in designing the new website, if we decide to go down that road. I have some time the coming holidays (22/12 - 5/1)
i googled “cohousing in brussels” and we are number 9 in organic search results. not that bad as long as we appear in first page. i encourage everyone to actually do the test and post results.
I’m not sure I agree with the problem definition. Are we not reaching more people interested in a 3BR because our site is not showing at the top of search list, or is it because when people land on our site, the text and the graphics are not very clear or attractive?
Being one of the co-creators of the text, I feel free to criticize it. It was the best we could do at the time with the resources that we had, but at this stage I am genuininely worried that it might scare away people, afraid that we look very unprofessional. Why not focus on something more shiny à la “only 4 units to go!” and then some fancy text from the flyer and maybe even some sympathetic pictures from some of our group events? Just my two cents of course.
Guys, please do not do SEO. It’s a fool’s errand, unless you (1) are a consumers goods company and (2) you are prepared to stay in the SEO arms race with all other consumers good companies.
Our comms are always going to be personal, hyperlocal, idiosyncratic. SEO just does not serve the type of market we are in. Nobody impulse buys a 500K apartment.
On top of that, any improvement in performance (again, performance in a space that does nothing for us) comes with technological debt: subscriptions that need to be paid, libraries that need updating, the works. You may not see it, but we have some of that now: someone updates the Edgeryders server, the Nextcloud server, renews the domains etc. Tech is time consuming and can be expensive, so a very good case must be made for any extra. What is your argument?