4 Keys to Creating a Great Family Tree Website

Do you want to share your genealogy research and connect with cousins through a family history website? Or maybe you want to improve the genealogy website you already have.

The best family tree websites share these key elements:

• Focus
• Organization
• Adherence to best practices
• Consistent updating

To make sure your site is on track in these areas, Nancy suggests asking yourself these questions:

Focus

• Is the site about a single surname or everyone you’re researching?
• Will you include images?
• Is it clear to site visitors what the site is about?
• Is this a research-based site?
• Do you know the goal of this site?

Organization

• Have you created logical categories for your posts?
• Is the site easy to navigate?
• Have you made it easy for people find out how to contact you?
• Have you thought about how to organize data?
• Will you have a photo gallery?

Best Practices

• Is information presented in small bites vs. large areas of text?
• Have you added ALT tags to your images?
• Have you clearly titled each post?
• Have you selected well-defined tags for each post?

Consistent Updating

• Do you update your site at least once a week?
• Do you have a plan for what you’ll post? Optimized Images
• Are your images resized at 72dpi?
• Are your images in .jpg format?
• Have you cropped images to highlight the important areas?