As a blogger, I watch the ups and downs of my blogs’ attendance as closely as I used to watch my Amazon.com ratings. Thanks to Google Analytics, however, I can now find out much more than how many people are visiting my site. Through Analytics I can find out how long visitors lingered, which pages they looked at, what part of the world they are from.
But most of all, I can also find out what search words they typed into Google that led them to my little website, and in this, the fun begins. In scanning the search words, I discover what it is that that people are looking for.
And so, according to my experience, if you want people visiting your blog, here are the words you should use.
Hats for men with long hair
In a blog post about style in the Court of the Sun King, I made mention of hats and men with long hair. (The post was: “Hats and long hair: for men only?”) I was astonished to discover that quite a number of people came to this rather obscure blog on 17th-century research. They had Google searched “hats for men with long hair.” Apparently, there is a crying need! (Marketers, take note.) To name a few of the Google searches (without any corrections to grammar):
best kind of hats for long hair
hats for long haired men
hats for longer hair
hats for thick long hair
hats to wear for long hair for men
hats with hair 4 men
historic men with long hair
how do you wear a dress hat with long hair
how to wear hats with long hair
long hair and hats
long hair hat
long hair in fancy dress
men long hair with hat
men’s fashion hats for long hair
mens caps with long hair
I’ll end with one cute variation on this theme: someone searched Google for “two longhaired guys side by side.” Without hats, however. And ended up on my blog. (Such a disappointment.)
Cantharides
The second subject of interest was somewhat worrisome. I wrote a blog about the use of cantharides (Spanish fly) at the Court of the Sun King. (“Athénaïs: innocent or guilty?”) A swirl of searches resulted:
history of Spanish fly
spanish fly history
how to prepare cantharides
medical problems with spanish fly
spanish fly experience
spanish fly for horses
spanish fly tincture
Spanish fly is used as an aphrodisiac, but it can be deadly — the Marquis de Sade killed two young women in this way — and so these searches, apparently out of Africa, concerned me.
Cleavage
The third subject of universal interest — no surprise here — is cleavage. On this blog, some time ago, I wrote about “Google adventures into the history of cleavage.” My research had, surprisingly, revealed that — contrary to our expectation — aristocratic women of the 17thcentury used corsets to make them look flat. (They didn’t want to look like a milkmaid.) A number of searches mentioned cleavage, including this one, which I find intriguing: “historical cleavages in Canada.”
Last, but never least: Oprah
On a final note (this I’ve read but not tested): put the words “Oprah Winfrey” into your blog and you will be overwhelmed with visitors.
And so, to conclude, the foolproof sentence I suggest one use to attract traffic to a blog is:
Oprah Winfrey has no need for Spanish fly; her cleavage alone attracts men with long hair wearing hats.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which basically means “How I get my blog post/webpage to show up on Google.” Having a website is essential to a writer, but what’s the point if your website isn’t noticed?
I’ve been writing blogs for a very long time, and reading about Social Media and blogging is something of a hobby, but every time I read about how important SEO was, my eyes glazed over.
My curiosity eventually got the best of me and I waded in. It was ugly. Tech talk, tech talk, and more tech talk. Finally, I broke through. I got it! It’s not hard. In fact, it’s kind of fun.
1. Keywords are the key to effective SEO.
Give some thought to what your keywords will be.
To find keywords that are most often searched for on Google, use Google Adwords.
Type in the keywords you’re thinking of using, and click. A chart will come up showing variations of your keywords, how often they are searched for on Google, and how high the competition is. It’s great if there are a million searches a day for your keywords, but not so great if there are ten million other listings.
A high search number and low competition is ideal. For this post, I decided simply on “SEO,” which has quite a high number of searches (673,000), and only medium competition.
2. Use your SEO keywords in the first few sentences of your post.
The closer to the beginning the better.
3. Make headlines in your post that contain your keywords.
Not every headline, of course, but at least one.
4. Put at least one illustration in your post, and use the SEO keywords in the alternative text (“alt text”) description.
This is so that Google will know what the illustration is about.
5. Use your SEO keywords a few more times throughout your post.
But don’t make it look forced. Content is key.
6. Before you press “publish,” make sure that your keywords are in your URL.
And that’s it! Other factors that help a blog post rank on Google—in addition to headlines and illustrations—are good content, links and short paragraphs, but the most important thing is your selection of keywords.
If you use WordPress, I highly recommend the plugin WordPress SEO by Team Yoast. It makes this process very easy.
I hope that this post didn’t make your eyes glaze over! Please leave a comment if this helped you, or if you have a tip to share.
Most of Thursday I prepared for a talk/reading in support of the Killaloe Public Library in my home town. I knew that many there would be friends and family, so I wanted it to be special.
Several times, I paused my talk to give out door prizes. This was so much fun, I’m a convert!
Doug De La Matter took some great shots! (I have more of them up on Flickr.)
I very much enjoyed being interviewed about my work by Tim Knox for his series “Interviewing Authors.”
“Interviewing Authors is one of the Web’s premiere blog and podcast destinations that focuses on the process of creating, writing, editing, publishing, marketing, and selling an author’s work.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but Tim made me feel very much at ease and asked informed writerly questions. It was a fun chat. I love “shop talk.”
I invested in a funny-looking ball of a USB mike for it, thinking that I might like to make podcasts of my own.
(Ya, in my spare time? Well … I just might!)
You may read a print transcript of the interview here.
What you don’t see in the transcript is all the laughter. (Tim got a chuckle out of my brief bio: born in Miami, raised in California, aged in Canada. I should have added, “like Cheddar.”)
Links, for those of you who are reading this on a non-hotlink site:
{Ad for The Shadow Queen in the New York Times Review of Books!}
Publication swirl: ups, downs, ups! A book tour entails a heady combination of fatigue and exhilaration. The challenge is not to come down with a cold. (Grrrrr.) Plus snow (!) today in Toronto, which I hope doesn’t affect the turnout at the reading tonight at A Novel Spot in Etobicoke.
My task today is to prepare for the talk/reading—my first full-on one. I never take this type of thing lightly. I think I have it basically plotted out, but I’ve not timed or honed it. That’s going to take time.
Plus, I need to get my talk printed out. This is surprisingly difficult on the road. I’m tempted to get a travel printer—but this would add to my already overly-bloated luggage.
Some guest blog posts I’ve written on my Blog Hop Tour:
I was pleased with this review from The Free-Lance Star: Real life characters inhabit intriguing story, which concludes: “A remarkably different and very interesting historical read.”
There have been some excellent reviews on Amazon.com that please me very much.
Highlights from the tour so far:
• The woman in North Vancouver who named her daughter Josephine after reading the Trilogy. She had a beautiful book her daughter had made a drawing in, and she asked me to sign the page opposite. I wish I had taken a photo.
• Moderator Jen Sookfong Lee at the “Enlivening the Past” panel in North Vancouver asking me if I’d brought my clown nose. (No, of course not—but it does make me wonder if I could pull off a reading wearing it. Doubtful!)
