This week’s chapter focused on getting eyes to the blog. Since we have analytics installed we are able to keep track of visitors to our blogs. I want you to use your analytics to help guide you. Right now the three class blogs with the most visitors are OddIsNotContagious, ScrumptiousRecreations, and BeTheGame. When I look at the analytics for these three I notice two different traffic patterns. With ScrumptiousRecreations, Ursula got a lot of initial traffic from a facebook post about her blog. What is really good is that 60% of the people visited at least once more. A low returning visitor rate is a sign that your content is not engaging.
With the other two blogs, they are both getting a high amount of organic traffic. With OddIsNotContagious, Bonnie wrote about a keyword that inadvertently ranks very high and not a lot of blogs or websites write about it. The keyword is “walmartian.” If this is my blog and I see a lot of traffic coming from this keyword, I am going to embellish it. What else can I give my readers that will help them with their search? What was the context of their search? Did they want to know the definition of it? Did they want pictures? I would write more posts that include different variations of “walmartians.”
With BeTheGame, Shameka is getting a lot of organic traffic from people searching for the show, Be The Game. This is interesting because usually new blogs wouldn’t rank so high for a current TV show. It generally takes months and years to make a blog relevant. The analytics give clues about what people want to know about the show. “How can I watch a missed episode of bet’s the game?” is one keyword. I would take that keyword and make it into a post title. Also, people are searching for episode recaps. That would direct me to write more episode recaps.
These are just three examples from the class. What do your analytics tell you? If you have low traffic then you need to optimize you postings. Try using a keyword tool. Put in one of your major keywords and try to find a variation of it that is less common and easier to get people to your blog. For example, you will never get a visitor with the keyword “android” even though there are 38 million searches for it, every month. What other variations of android are still being searched for but less competitive as far as search engine rankings are concerned?
For this week, I want you to start getting a little bit of traffic to your blog. I do not care how you do it, use your Facebook page, send an email, WOM, forum postings, craigslist posting, etc. I want everyone to get at least 20 visitors to their blog for the week. (I generally would not drive traffic to a newer blog until it has a couple months of content, but we are on a time constraint here). We want to see how people are using our blogs and some people do not have much traffic. If you are getting some decent traffic, then try and let your analytics guide you.
I also want you to go to http://websitegrader.com and get your grade and then tweet it to me. Your blogs are new so they are not going to score high. Do not worry. Take a look through the report and see if the report helps you with your strategy. Additionally, you can check out the blog grader and see what that says.
As an added incentive, the two people with the most unique visitors to their blogs this week will get their quiz grade bumped up to a 13. If you have a 13 for the week, then you can bump up any other quiz.
Work Summary:
1) 20 visitors min
2) websitegrader.com
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