Roadmap for the Henry Salt site

The Henry S. Salt Foundation started out as the Henry Salt Archive, later renamed as the Henry S. Salt Society, over 25 years ago. Our mission has been to promote the work and ideas of Henry Salt, Ernest Bell and other inspiring activists.

Since launching the Henry S. Salt Foundation progress has been made in many areas, as highlighted in our annual review. One area of underperformance has been our ranking on Google. Whilst this was anticipated, due to complexities of Google algorithms for new domains, it cannot be left unaddressed.

We’ve always operated on a limited, self-financed, annual budget which barely covers the operational costs of the website and our research. So we’ve had to make difficult decisions for our priorities for 2024 and 2025.

2024 / 2025 Roadmap

1. Google Ranking
2. Book Publication
3. Site Additions

Google Ranking

After the loss of our Henry S. Salt Society site it takes time, often years, to establish a new domain and as a result a website that hasn’t been updated in nearly three years continues to rank higher than this site, despite the numberous improvements we’ve made.

Unfortunately researchers will trust a website that consistently appears at the top of search results, as it is perceived as a credible and authoritative source of information. With ChatGPT and other AI tools harvesting websites for information it’s more important than ever that active websites, that can correct mistakes quickly, rank higher than abandoned sites.

It could be argued that even though the Henry S. Salt Society site hasn’t been updated in nearly three years it still serves it’s purpose. However, the absence of regular updates and engagement raises concerns about the society’s dedication to advancing the ideas and philosophies championed by Henry Salt. In the absence of recent publications, updates, or dialogues, the society risks appearing as a relic of the past rather than a living entity dedicated to the ongoing exploration of Salt’s contributions.

Being ranked below the Henry S. Salt Society site means scholars, enthusiasts, and the curious public are not seeing fresh content, such as our blog posts, news updates, and book announcements.

Therefore our entire research budget for the next two years will be used to purchase Google Ad Rank for our keywords. This will mean we rank top of Google search results for Henry Salt and help establish this website quicker than would otherwise be possible.

Book Publication

As a direct result of prioritising Google ranking it has been necessary to scale back the plans to publish the second edition of Henry Salt’s Seventy Years Among Savages, edited by George and Willene Hendrick. A very limited number will still be published to meet our obligations to those who pre-ordered a copy via our newsletter. Obviously we are disappointed that we won’t be able to print more copies but the main objective is to finally have the book in print.

Work had started on a second book for republishing in 2025 but has been abandoned for the same reasons as the above.

Site Additions

With no budget for research and the website budget reduced to the bare minimum it’s obviously going to impact the number and quality of new content for the website. We do have a small number of articles, reviews and other minor items waiting to be transcribed, but these aren’t significant additions.

The Fact Check section was introduced in late 2023 and serve two purposes:

1. Correct mistakes we have seen whilst carrying out our research and hopefully help researchers from republishing these same mistakes.
2. They help with search engine rankings.

Long Term Roadmap

Phase 1 was establishing the Henry S. Salt Foundation as the most credible and authoritative source of information on Henry Salt and Ernest Bell. Phase 2 is to ensure that website is prominently ranked. Should we meet Phase 2, which isn’t guaranteed, we’ll publish a long term roadmap.