Well, my recent post on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) gathered considerably more interest than I had expected. SEO and Web Analytics generally go together, but it seems that SEO is the more glamorous partner of the two. How do we convince Google (and Bing, and DuckDuckGo - other search engines are available) that our content has useful information for searchers? And, more importantly, how do we convince those search engines that our content is better than our competitors'?
I've written previously that one of the key areas of focus - after producing high-quality content (usually written by a human, but this is the 21st century) - is getting inbound links from other sites which write about a similar topic. I've been working on that with the Star Trek content on my site - finding a few other blogs which include review of Star Trek episodes, and then posting comments, adding to the discussion, and providing a link to the relevant page on my site.
This is a longer-term strategy. One of the most frequently visited pages on my blog is the article "How to make the numbers 1-100 using just four digits and basic arithmetic'. This all started when I posted a link to my work-in-progress article on a maths homework help site, kicking off a thread with an explanation of the question and my answer. The maths community being what it is (mature, sensible, and intellectually curious) visited my site, added to my solution and started posting responses on the thread. All of which generated inbound links to my site, and now, each year in August and September, as students return to school and their teachers set them the same puzzle, I get a spike in traffic to that page!
It's a slow-burn, but it provides genuine inbound links form a reputable and reliable source. Money can't buy that kind of reputation.
Well, sure it can. You pay 'influencers' to promote your product on their site, and providing they're reliable and have a good reputation, they link to your product and you get the 'link juice' which bumps your site up the Google results.
It beats me, then, why my recent SEO post got so much attention. Suddenly my comments section is being spammed by SEO businesses around the world - especially the middle- and far-East. I had no idea I was regarded as such an authority on such subjects!
My advice, since you're here and reading this: find the reputable sites. Find the ones that give you the opportunity to post links (backlinks) to your site. Blogs and forums are good; product pages that offer you the opportunity to write reviews with links are good. One reputable site is worth more than 10 lower-ranked sites - and trust me, despite my best efforts, this is not a highly ranked site!
Leave a comment below (although blatant spamming will find my delete button).
Other articles I've written on Website Analytics that you may find relevant:
No comments:
Post a Comment