A water shed year: finished the Website and started to use it to enhance area protection.
- Overall Results
- What Are Visitors Visiting Exactly
- Why Does this Matter?
- What Can SAPAA Members Do?
- Bonus Website Statistics
Overall Results
The above chart is both dense and informative. It displays the Google analytic results for our website over the past year. There are three measures of note:
- Light Blue, Total clicks:
- How many times a user clicked through to the site.
- General trend up meaning users are more likely to trust our information
- Purple, Total impressions:
- How many times a user saw a link to the site in the search results.
- General trend up, creates familiarity with the SAPAA ‘brand’.
- Orange, Average position:
- Average position of your site in search results, based on its highest position whenever it appeared in a search.
- This has improved slightly but our position should have climbed higher.
- Liking and linking to SAPAA sites (by our members) can help with this measure.
What Are Visitors Visiting Exactly
Web Conversion, FINISHED!
When an individual visits sapaastewards.com, they can now see the complete listing of protected areas. This was noted in the August Newsletter in the article: Renovation of the SAPAA Website by Hubert Taube.
Each page accepts comments from visitors and is a ready means to communicate on developments of the site. Future work on a site inspection report, discussed below, will provided more focused information.
Top Google Searches
A bit like the Academy Awards, the following twelve-terms are the most frequent ones ‘Googled’ by the public and which contributes to the above statistics:
| Top queries | Clicks | Impressions | Position |
| sapaa | 24 | 1930 | 8.01 |
| bruderheim natural area | 13 | 278 | 4.69 |
| tolman badlands heritage rangeland | 13 | 159 | 2.66 |
| bruderheim sand dunes | 7 | 206 | 8.57 |
| halfmoon lake natural area | 6 | 147 | 8.28 |
| wagner natural area | 5 | 1155 | 8.64 |
| lily lake alberta | 5 | 437 | 11.36 |
| wildhay glacial cascades natural area | 4 | 170 | 4.91 |
| beaverhill lake heritage rangeland natural area | 4 | 143 | 8.78 |
| north bruderheim natural area | 4 | 84 | 4.64 |
| redwater natural area | 4 | 72 | 7.6 |
| innisfail natural area | 4 | 29 | 4.66 |
Device Preferences
An indirect measure of an evolving audience is what type of device is used to visit our site. Mobile phones are the preferred method to visit followed by desktops and then tablets. This means most readers can take SAPAA into the field. This supports Citizen-Stewards and work on Site Inspection Reports.
Other Digital Avenues – Facebook
A portion of the above activity to the website has been driven there by posts from our Facebook page. There are nearly 60 members with SAPAA members in the minority. The group is best described as sleepy but with potential.
Why Does this Matter?
In a previous report, So – Why Do We Need a Website?, I listed three roles for this tool: Educate and Communicate, Describe The legal framework for Protected Areas, and help to Report and Monitor sites.
Each view and visit to the website tells a Protected Area’s story. These areas provide steppingstones for plant and animals between larger preserved areas. For humans, a local Natural Area is easier to visit than travelling to a provincial or national park.
What Can SAPAA Members Do?
Looking toward 2024, what can a SAPAA Member (or the General Public) do to help our organization promote protected areas?
Hit that LIKE Button!
Most important, ‘Like’ pages and promote on your own social media (X or Facebook).
Visit and Report on Protected Areas (when ready)
The Web team has been working on a site inspection form since the summer. A bit stalled for technical and capacity reasons, it is not too far off. When ready, use this form instead of the government form and report your own site and visit nearby ones.
SAPAA 