I'm quite impressed...

I only started playing here a few days ago and I really have to say that this is an unbelievable site. By far the best web based chess the internet has to offer and quite possibly the best chess server out right now. Unbelievable.

More people need to know about Lichess! What's in the works as far as spreading the word and what can we the community do to help?

Thanks!

Hi WarCrazy, thanks for the kind words.

Advertising ourselves is our weak point. Most chess players don't know that lichess exists to make their lives better, and I don't know how to fix this problem.

One thing is certain: we won't pay for advertisements on search engines or other websites, because lichess makes no money, and because ads suck.

Having serious Internet media talk about lichess would help. But how to achieve that?

I had the exact same reaction when I came to this site a few years ago now. I also wondered what would be the best way to propagate lichess.org to the masses.

It's compounded by the fact that whilst it may be fairly straightforward to contact people who play over-the-board chess, the majority of those people are elderly men who are skeptical of change. If lichess wanted to get the most out of advertising, it wants to target young, educated men in emerging markets, as lichess receives about 33% of it's traffic from Russia and Iran.

If you look at the Alexa figures, lichess is around the 17,000th most popular website on the internet globally, but it's the 3,700th most popular website in Russia. It's the 1,770th in Iran. I personally think compounding on this success is vital, and could lead to getting published in online news outlets in those regions (which then in itself helps lichess get noticed elsewhere).

Once I have more time (ie, after my summer law exams), I'm planning on going on a big PR drive. I've done PR work and have a good friend who did PR for an American start-up, so I'll ask her to help too in creating press releases, targeting online media (like HuffPo, Wired, Techcrunch, Forbes). I'll also probably politely ask as many GMs, IMs, and NMs as possible if they would like to check out the site. I'm sure there will be some who will agree with open source, free technology, and endorse the site out of kindness.

Ultimately, this goal is twofold - it creates a greater online presence just by being completed, but if it does attract any media attention, lichess could be included onto Wikipedia, which is then of course a great stepping stone for future PR drives.

What about trying to reach new players through social media? Having an active Facebook page might be a good idea to promote the site.

Already good rank in Google: 6th and 7th position, when "online chess" is searched for. Alas, when "Schach online" (German) is googled for, lichess comes out at 12th position.
Are there any experts in the forum's reader who know what can be done to raise the position in Google, Yahoo, and the like. And in different languages.

I had "Chess online" translated into Russian: "шахматы онлайн". I put this into the Russian Yandex search engine and lichess came out -> second !

French: Top of List ! ( of course )

Spanish: Google: "ajedrez online": 6; "ajedrez en directo": 18; Better in Bing: 6. Results are probably different when searched from Spain or America Latina.

Also one could look at how many search requests are originated in total and indifferent countries - though I myself do not know how to do this. There must be lichess players who are knowledgable in web marleting methods.

I should also say that very positive effects in all directions are most always achieved by a well designed mascot. May be some artists might come up with suggestions.

I think Thibault has created a Twitter feed and a facebook. But I also think Thibault is somewhat keen to let lichess grow organically at the same time; I don't want to second guess, however.

As to SEO, if I remember correctly that was done by Hellball.

Suggestions of a mascot are singular and unconsidered, to date.

On #3: improving lichess's top-level offering is a what is most needed IMO, but sadly, most GMs who make a living out of chess prefer to be rewarded somehow for their presence. Anand's face being plastered all over chess24 is no accident; he was paid good money for that. I like the idea of appealing to previously underserved regions like Iran and Russia.

#5 and #7, yes, there has been a decent amount of SEO done. I actually have a lot more propositions with regard to that. The problem is that technical aspects of SEO involved boring, soul-sucking work. :) If anyone wants to implement one of these propositions, just ask, I have a bookmark folder's worth of them.

My suggestion is for us to create online tournaments for countries. At the end of year we can organize a world cup type of tournament. I will start organizing for my country asap.

Hellball, you should make github issues out of your SEO recommendations. It will greatly increase their chances of getting implemented.