For a while, I wasn’t happy with the event calendars on Burbank.com, Lowell.com, and Newburyport.com. Because of the way the default calendar was used, I couldn’t index event listings, and there were also duplicate page issues due to the functionality. The calendar featured pop-up events, and when a visitor clicked anywhere on the calendar, he was taken to a main calendar page that listed all events. As soon as the event passed, the event was removed from the site.
As a result of this set up, events were prevented from being indexed in Google. Organizations were still happy to be listed because it provided good coverage for a few days before the event, but it was far from optimal. With these issues in mind, I wrote a post on the private domain forum Domain Boardroom, and I posted a request on the blog as well. Mike St. John, a programmer and domain investor responded, and he was able to change my calendar from average to fantastic using his tremendous programming skills.
Not only am I able to index each event separately (allowing me to email links to people and post them on social networking sites like Twitter), my events are now indexed in Google. Literally a half hour after launching the new calendar, I received my first Google Alert with a calendar event listed.
When you have a chance, check out Newburyport.com for the “before” calendar, and then check out Lowell.com or Burbank.com for the “after.” If you happen to see something funky, please let me know as there may be a couple of hiccups here and there.
I know this change is going to drive more traffic to the site, and it’s going to make a whole lot of organizations and businesses appreciate the extra event exposure. I really appreciate Mike St. John’s help for all of his hard programming work because the “what you see is what you get” calendar that I had was turned into an awesome traffic generating device. If you have any programming needs, I would use him again in a second.
