I’m just an SEO idiot.
December 30, 2007 by shiva
We launched our site on December 14th, 2007. We are all artists trying to make a living doing the things we love. We share ideas and information amongst ourselves, trying to help each other advance our creative expression and earn a living at the same time. It was decided that we would try to reach as many mac-using artists as possible. To do this, people have to know we exist.
Our traffic is low but that is to be expected. We did the following to increase our traffic:
- Installed the AddThis widget
- Added a custom field called HEADLINE so we could be witty and make the title specific to the software or idea we are writing about.
- Installed Design Sitemap Generator 3.12
- We joined BlogBurst
- We signed up for a free web stats service.
- Instead of "publishing" a "new issue" every week, we decided that it wouldbe better to post a new article every few days.
As you can see our traffic has risen slowly since that fateful Friday and our ALEXA rank has risen from 9 million to 6 million. I can’t take any credit for any of it. We have few return visitors and a lot of our traffic comes from Windows users. Call it "accidental traffic".
|
Day
|
Date
|
Page Loads
|
Unique Visitors
|
First Time Visitors
|
Returning Visitors
|
|
Wed
|
12-Dec-07
|
27
|
9
|
5
|
4
|
|
Thurs
|
13-Dec-07
|
31
|
22
|
20
|
2
|
|
Fri
|
14-Dec-07
|
61
|
9
|
4
|
5
|
|
Sat
|
15-Dec-07
|
7
|
6
|
5
|
1
|
|
Sun
|
16-Dec-07
|
25
|
9
|
8
|
1
|
|
Mon
|
17-Dec-07
|
12
|
3
|
2
|
1
|
|
Tues
|
18-Dec-07
|
28
|
10
|
7
|
3
|
|
Wed
|
19-Dec-07
|
10
|
5
|
4
|
1
|
|
Thurs
|
20-Dec-07
|
26
|
8
|
5
|
3
|
|
Fri
|
21-Dec-07
|
12
|
3
|
2
|
1
|
|
Sat
|
22-Dec-07
|
16
|
14
|
13
|
1
|
|
Sun
|
23-Dec-07
|
10
|
6
|
6
|
0
|
|
Mon
|
24-Dec-07
|
12
|
12
|
11
|
1
|
|
Tues
|
25-Dec-07
|
7
|
4
|
3
|
1
|
|
Wed
|
26-Dec-07
|
30
|
18
|
14
|
4
|
Paul (a moderator at the Revolution Theme Forums) advised another forum member to install some additional plugins to help increase his website’s visibility. I realized I know nothing about SEO except that it means "Search Engine Optimization". Trackbacks? Pings? Yep- I am a naive artist hoping that "if we build it, they will come". If only it were that simple.
I found Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day by Jennifer Grappone & Gradiva Couzin at our local library. For an SEO idiot like me, the first chapter had enough information to check it out. The book lays out a 3 month battle plan to increase traffic to a website- a plan that doesn’t involve a full-time commitment. The associated website (http://www.yourseoplan.com/) has the templates and worksheets mentioned in the book and articles from other SEO experts.
The experiment begins January 1st. For 90 days, I will post a recap of my daily "SEO hours" every few days. Maybe I will figure out what a trackback is.
In the meantime, I will follow Paul’s suggestions.