google is pretty is to rank in these days.

but it has to be an answer to a question. like somebody might google "how to write good characters" so maybe we could write a guide to writing a good character, a good setting, a good this, a good that.

but those are a bit too broad. ideally you want to niche down, something very specific. like, how to write a good male character with a troubled past. again, not a great example. but this is where google itself allows you to find out what people want, i.e. you start a question in the search box and see what auto completes are offered. maybe one of those auto completes jumps out at you as a quick and easy to write article about.

to rank it helps if the article is at least 1k words. the more the better. it used to be that seo was kinda mystifying you had to know X trick or Y trick to get ahead. but google is pretty good at giving people what they want. so if they want a good guide to A or B topic and you write that, then you'll get there.

there is one problem, google does not favour forum answers. so articles posted as forum posts will have a harder time out-ranking shit posted to a wordpress site or w/e else.

i think i'm not explaining why we should write guides to rank on google... it's because at the end of the article you say "we run an rp site where you can practice writing and get feedback. come and join"

how to get around the forum thing, idk--could setup a secondary domain like althanaswritingtips.com (lame i know) and run wordpress, setup search console and analytics etc. maybe hosting and domain costs could be a pain unless a baller out there wants to pony up? but honestly if you wrote enough writing guides and were able to rank on google then eventually you could get enough page views to make ads worth it and get some of the costs back.

i heard a stat the other day about book reading being on the rise in spite of you know everything else technology has given us. soooo i think it's too easy to say "oh well rp is just dying out" because i just don't believe that young people aren't into escaping into a cool imaginary world through a cool imaginary character. just need to show them althanas exists.

anyway thanks for reading my long post. i'm not sure if it will help, if it's practical, or whatever--but just seeing if my totally minimal understanding of how ranking on google works might help idk.

anyway happy valentines day gang!