WebRev Blog

Shareaholic is a program that tracks web traffic.  It's important to realize that it primarily tracks the web traffic of users that have voluntarily downloaded the app into their web browsers or onto their websites, so it's not a comprehensive account of all web traffic.  The statistics are interesting, however.

Yesterday,  Shareaholic's blog posted February's numbers (shown in the chart above), which show that Google Search and direct traffic (people are clicking in directly by typing the URL in their browsers, or clicking in from feed readers) are still far away the most popular way that people are finding blogs. 

Of the referral services (places where people clicks on links to stories posted by their networks), Facebook is by far at the top. 

The creators of the study have Pinterest fever, just like most of the social media news sites, as we wrote about last month.  The social networks, however, drive a microscopic amount of traffic to most of the websites being tracked by Shareaholic compared to Google Search and direct traffic. 

Remember, however, linkage and traffic to and from the social networks that rank high on Google, ironically, actually helps a website rank higher on Google's search, so it is important not to ignore these valuable resources.  Also, your own traffic results may differ dramatically from those of Shareaholic, whether or not you are using the site. 

What sources have you found to be most useful for driving traffic to your site?

A story is making the rounds this week which is being pushed as "new" news, but actually isn't.  Well, sort of.  Let's start at the beginning.

I long time ago in a land far, far away (ok, it was about ten years ago, and this all happened in the Internet)...Google and other started crawling blogs and every started figuring out ways to get their own blogs to the top of the search engines in a field of study that would become known as "SEO (Search Engine Optimization)."  One of the techniques for gaining "points" on the search engines was to get people to link to your website, and eventually bloggers figured out they could trick the search engines into thinking other websites were linking to their own site by going on other blogs and posting links back to their own blogs.

So Google, which by then had become the mother of all search engines, and industry standard, changed its "algorithm" to not read javascript or AJAX script, which rendered most blog and website comments useless for search engine marketing.  Over time, Google has continued to fine-tune its algorithm to be able to read and index blog and website comments without counting the back-links to the blogs, giving an unfair advantage to bloggers who are just trying to "game" the system by linking all over the web to their own blogs rather than writing quality content that other people want to link to.

The big news of the week (so far) occurred when Digital Inspiration happened to discover that Google is now indexing Facebook comments, and then Google software engineer Matt Cutts confirmed the change on Twitter.  It is unknown right now whether there is a window of opportunity for SEO aficionados to grab some back-link "juice" by linking to their own blogs on Facebook.  If so, it will only be a "brief" window, as Google is pretty good at quickly recognizing this sort of tactic and shutting it down.

Now, more than ever, it is important to be aware that literally everything you do online is likely to show up in a Google search - even commenting on a friend's Facebook page.  So don't post anything online that you wouldn't want the world to know.  Also, now more than ever, it is important to realize that what your friends post on your blog and your website and your social networking profile (even as a comment) could reflect as much on you as it does on them, so moderating comments may no longer be an optional activity.  In fact, it's now more important than ever.

Neowin has a great article today, Google introduces 'Sort by Subject' to image searches, so I decided to check it out. I love, love, LOVE this new feature! Every once-in-a-while, Google does something that reminds us all why it's the king of search engines, and this is one of those things.

Most of the time, when I go looking for a picture to use, I only have a vague idea of what I need. I'm usually trying to either illustrate a blog post, or describe something I've seen to a friend, and need a photo or series of photos to do it.

I've had a couple of discussions lately about peacocks - yes, that's the truth. I've actually had more than one conversation about peacocks - one was about the actual birds and how loud they cry, and the other was about using the feathers for decoration.  I also have a peacock art piece as a wallpaper for my phone.  I really like peacocks.  Soo....I entered "peacocks" into the search bar under images.google.com.  That brought up a list of photos ranked by popularity under that search result - mostly photographs of male peacocks displaying their feathers. 

I could have started guessing, and searching for things like "peacock noises," or "peacock feather decoration," or "peacock art," and that would have worked.  But now, with this new feature, I just clicked on "sort by subject" in the lefthand column, and it sorted all of those nearly two million search results into popular categories, like "peacock tail," and "male peacocks," and "peacock background," and "white peacocks," (I LOVE those!), and "peacock drawings," and "peacock colors...".  You get the idea.

How does it do it? Google explains:

Sorting by subject uses algorithms that identify relationships among images found on the web and presents those images in visual groups, expanding on the technology developed for Google Similar Images and Google Image Swirl. By looking at multiple sources of similarities, such as pixel values and semantic relationships, and by mining massive amounts of data, we can make meaningful connections and groupings among images.

 What this means, in addition to the fact that searching for pics on Google just got cooler, is that it is more beneificial than ever to use strategic tags and titles on your photos and posts, because doing so will now increase the likelihood that your images will show up in their respective "subject" category on one of these searches.

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. 
 

In a tough job market, your ability to work your network is key to finding a job, and in today's world, that happens online.  In the past, the best site for job contacts was LinkedIn.com.

Have I ever mentioned that I find Linked-In(or is it LinkedIn? LinkedIN?) annoying.  For one thing, I'm never sure the proper way to spell it, and it doesn't "look" right no matter how you do.  For another, it's so complicated, and I find it counter-intuitive.  It requires you to put all of your contacts into categories that they really may or may not "fit" in.  For example, most of the people I've met over the years who are likely to help me find work are not people I've actually worked with. They are people I've met at conventions or online, and this type of connection is not even recognized on LinkedIn.  For another, you get to "know" people by socializing, and LinkedIn is not good for that - it's "all business," which for me ends up being "no business."

Apparently, I'm not the only one.  The folks at a new start-up, called "In the Door" figured out a workable solution.  It's a Facebook App that meshes your Facebook friends' employers with Indeed.com's job listings.  With just a few clicks, you can easily view a list of job openings at the companies where your Facebook friends work (i.e., where you already have connections). 

To try it out, sign in to Facebook, then go to InTheDoor.com, and follow the instructions.  Within a couple of minutes, you'll have a list of your friends and their employers sorted by location, as well as how many jobs are listed at each employer.  Clicking on the number of jobs gives you a list of job openings at that employer,  and clicking on each job opening gives you a brief description of the job with a link to the full listing Indeed.com (a job search engine that compiles listings from many online job sites). 

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. 
 

We've been talking this week about managing content to attract search engine traffic.  In its simplest form, this is an easy concept.  You figure out what someone who might be looking for your post would enter into the search engines to find that information - then you use that search term in the title of your post and in the body of your post.

But how do you know what your potential readers are REALLY searching for?

If you've been blogging for awhile, check your stats, and find out what search terms have been successful for you in the past, then build on that.  If you're new, or if you're starting a new blogging topic, you'll have to be more creative.

Luckily the search engines are happy to help you out with this. If you'll go to Google, for example, and start entering your topic, Google will make suggestions in drop-down menu form, based on the most popular searches on that topic. 

You can also use the social networks.  If you go to search.twitter.com, and enter your topic, you'll see tweets on that topic, and you'll get an idea of the vocabulary the "twitterverse" is using when talking about that topic.  That might give you some ideas.  Also, if you go to Facebook, or Ning, and do a search for your topic, there may be pages or groups formed around your topic, and this will also give you a better idea of the exact search terms people are likely to be using when discussing your topic.

There are software programs that can be used to suggest keywords for you, but in my opinion, they are a "lazy" and ineffective way to go about this process for most webmasters who actually want to build relationships with their readers. You'll never really get inside the heads of your readers, because the software packages are saving you the time of having to do that.  Also, unless you're trying to attract website traffic in the hundreds of thousands (to attract enough random visitors to build ad revenue), you'll probably be spending money on something that you could fairly easily do yourself for free.

What are your ideas for more effectively using keywords in your writing?

Also see:

• Managing Content to Attract Search Engine Traffic
• Writing Post Titles To Attract Search Engine Traffic
• What is SEO/SMO, and why should I care (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
• Making Your Internal Links Work for You - Keywords and Anchor Text

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. 
 

This week we're discussing managing content to attract search engine traffic.  One of the most important things you can do to make your posts or articles search-engine friendly is to use your keywords in your post title.

In creative writing it is sometimes common to write a "catchy" title to pique the interest of your reader.  Traditionally, in creative writing (especially in print media), your reader has usually already committed to reading your work, by purchasing the book or magazine that contains the article or chapter or story.  The title is a way to organize content, and enhance the reader's experience.

Blogging is not creative writing, and most of your potential readers literally have MILLIONS of other options to read for FREE.  Unless they are in your immediate circle of friends and family, it's likely they won't even know you exist if you use "creative" post titles that tell the reader nothing about the content of your post.  So, how will your potential readers initially find you?  Most will find you on the search engines or social networks, by searching for specific content.  They will enter the keywords they are looking for, and choose the articles or post that appear most relevant to the topic they are researching.

For example, take the title of this post.  I'm hoping to attract readers who want to know how to write good post titles to maximize SEO.  My chances will be much better with a title like "Writing Post Titles to Attract Search Engine Traffic," than with something creative like "What's in a Name?" which tells search engine researcher nothing about what my post is about.

Finally, it is very important to get to the point, quickly.  A good rule of thumb is to keep post titles to 65 characters or less, or at least include all of your keywords in those first 65 characters (the search engines only display one line of text in post titles). 

Also see:

• Managing Content to Attract Search Engine Traffic
• What is SEO/SMO, and why should I care (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
• Making Your Internal Links Work for You - Keywords and Anchor Text

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking.