Sunday, March 30, 2014

Do Ancestor Landing Pages Work?

Ancestor landing pages have been part of my blog since January, 2013. I set them up after reading about them on Caroline Pointer's Blogging Genealogy. But are they an effective way of communicating with other family researchers--and attracting possible cousins?

Yes! Here's why:
  • Readership for the past 14 months has been solid, as the snapshot at left shows. Traffic was especially good on my Schwartz and Birk landing pages. The Mayflower page is only a few months old, which is why its stats are low.
  • Contacts from several readers who found my landing pages have led to exchanges of family info and a number of intriguing leads that I'm still following up. Happily, a Wood cousin found my Demarest page just a few months ago!
  • Landing pages summarize what I know about a family in one convenient place. When researchers find me through one of my Ancestry family trees, or I discover a new cousin, I mention the landing page for that family as an introduction or a supplement to the tree. A Bentley 4th cousin (Hi Barbara!) enjoyed following the links to learn more about William Tyler Bentley's family and their Gold Rush-era migration to California.
To keep these pages relevant, I periodically update them with bullet points for the latest posts about a particular surname. Also, I add new photos or documents to freshen up the content from time to time. Who knows when a cousin will land on one of these pages, recognize a photo or a signature, and get in touch?

2 comments:

  1. Marian,

    I want you to know that your blog post is listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2014/04/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-april-4-2014.html

    Have a wonderful weekend!

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  2. Although you have not created a family page for the Morgan family from New York, I have a very interesting Morgan ancestor. Jesse Morgan, my great-great -grandfather moved to Ohio, where he married my GG Grandmother, Mary Bassett. He went to California on the Gold Rush and ....well I'll tell the whole story later on my blog. But we have some of his correspondence and some names of his New York relatives, so naturally I'm curious as to whether this is the same Morgan family.Would you be interested in exchanging information? If so, please e-mail me.

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