Home alone 2.0
Notes:
This post is stimulated by the thought that of the thousands and thousands of blogs and websites out there, many will get little or no traffic. I was curious to discuss with you what your ideas and thoughts were around how you would handle this. It seems that it may be one of those topics that many experience, but few want to discuss. My favourite kind!
Your thoughts…
How do you handle it when nobody shows up to your website, blog or latest post?
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25 Responses to this post
February 12, 2010 at 5:49 pm |
If the situation didn’t change after noticing some highly visited forums or other sites about my content… I’d change the content. Apparently the one I have up there is not interesting to anybody. If it’s any good to anyone you’ll get your hits. Naturally SEO and other techniques do help, but eventually if the content has no value, there will be no visits.
February 12, 2010 at 5:54 pm |
Hey buddy, great to have you comment on RADSMARTS. You’re a technical genius, with proven, tour-de-force problem solving skills. Thank you.
What’s your opinion of SEO as a driver of traffic? Main advantages/disadvantages?
Best to you,
Robin
February 12, 2010 at 7:14 pm |
Maltanaannon just raised the bar. While I’m pretty sure my content is good – I also know its also available almost everywhere else. I’m not sure what the answer is, but it can’t be more of the same.
February 12, 2010 at 7:21 pm |
Hey Ben, I’m always a tad nervous when my publishing buddies weigh in with their generic content war stories.
What hope is there for the rest of us? You always taught me that the key to publishing success was content with a ‘fresh twist’ on categories that are ‘done to death’.
In your opinion, is this still the case?
Best, Robin
February 12, 2010 at 7:36 pm |
Holy cow! Robin Dickinson AND Maltaannon, two of my biggest heroes talking about a topic that has been on my mind for several months now! This is great
As an owner of a site that has no traffic, I would be glad to share my thoughts/experiences on this.
I’m in the process to teach myself PHP, and I have been developing my own personal website. At the moment I am not in a position to market myself or my website and just as expected, I have very little traffic. During development of my site, I don’t expect any traffic because of the very reason Maltaannon mentioned, “if the content has no value, there will be no visits”.
or in my case. no content = no traffic.
The interesting thing about having a site that has no content, is monitoring what little traffic comes in. I have google analytics set up, and it tells me what sites are bringing visitors to my site. It just so happened that a couple months ago, I commented on Matannons “simple camera rig” post on his website. It was just a quick post, but in all honesty, that was the highest referring site bringing me visitors for about 2 months.
Since then I have also commented on a couple other blogs, and each time I would get a spike in referring visitors from these sites.
I thought that it was pretty amazing that my site that was not intending to bring in any traffic, that has literally no content, can get visitors just by being active and leaving comments on sites that get good amounts of traffic. I keep thinking is a shame that I have no valuable content on my site that would bring visitors back.
But my site is living proof that being active and making comments on other peoples blogs will bring in traffic. I’m not suggesting everybody go out and spam other peoples blogs by just commenting your url all over the place. Keep you comments relative to the original post, be engaging in the comment, and I think you will be surprised how much traffic comes in.
In my opinion to bring in traffic you need to:
1. Not get hung up on the development stage. (unless it is for education, and you don’t intend on bringing in traffic
)
2. Just get your site going. Use wordpress its fast and easy.
3. Make sure the content on your website is valuable.
4. Be passionate about your content.
5. Make relevant comments on other peoples blogs that allow you to put in your website next to your name and email. Be positive, Be engaging, just be active to bring in more traffic.
A bit long winded, but thats my two cents.
-Jacob
February 12, 2010 at 7:47 pm |
Hey Jacob, it’s wonderful to get your generous thoughts and experiences – with a sense of humour!
Now that’s a top combination of input.
Your point about commenting on other people’s sites resonates with me. It’s something I like to do a lot of. More to stimulate dialog than anything else. I leave up to 50 comments a week on other sites, and as you say, they attract interest back to this site – and spark ongoing conversations. It’s important to add value – be engaging, as you say – rather than just signpost back to a blog.
Will you be using SEO, Jacob? And do you have any thoughts on how often you will post?
Your five point plan is excellent. Thanks, and best of luck with your site.
PS, I spoke to Maltaannon on skype the other day. He’s a talented and generous soul.
Best to you, Robin
February 12, 2010 at 9:31 pm |
Robin, I will be using basic SEO practices on my site, like:
1. Using valid markup
2. using keywords that are relative to the content.
3. using a basic robots.txt for pages I don’t want indexed by search engines.
4. Create a sitemap to ensure all wanted pages are found, and indexable.
Other than these basics, I am not to worried about SEO. As long as my content is valuable, and I am truly passionate about my content, I think it will do just fine.
Some people will disagree with this, but I think that basic SEO is important, but its not the end-all, be-all in online marketing. Good SEO, and high search engine referrals do not necessarily mean you will make more sales. You have to have a valuable product or service to offer once the visitors get there.
Besides, I feel it would be a very harmful thing if you had terrific SEO, with a very large population of internet users visiting your site through search engine referrals, only to have these visitors see a bad product or service that they are not interested in, or see no value in.
I would focus more on content than SEO any day.
-Jacob
PS Yeah Maltannon is great! Ive been sitting in on his happily after effecting sessions, where he has a live demonstration on a fan chosen topic, but then has a Q and A at the end. Being able to ask questions to him in real time, and getting genuine answers is just amazing.
Not to mention the tutorials on his site. He has a different way of approaching visual FX problem solving than I see anywhere else. Truly amazing!
February 13, 2010 at 2:36 am |
Being active is what I meant by “notifying some highly visited forums or other sites”. It’s quite generic but that’s what it is. Comments, forum posts, site lists. To answer your question Rob about SEO – sure. I guess it does help a lot, but I’m not putting as much effort in it as one may thing I should… and honestly – I don’t think I have to. Theres more to visits than just keyword relevance. Most of us google for info. And by google I mean Google Search Engine. It it was based solely on keywords it wouldn’t be the #1 choice for online search. My point being that it’s more important to have other valuable sites linking to you in whatever way possible. Think of it this way: Links lead to your site, keywords lead to posts on whatever Links are pointing.
Here’s my story. When I started publishing free online tutorial I first recorded a couple of them to something to attract potential visitors and I published all of them at once. It was a total of 3 or 4 tutorials. Looks much more serious than just one tutorial, doesn’t it? Then after publishing a few more I googled for “after effects tutorials” and started being active on the sites that poped up. By that I mean leaving relevant and valuable comments on some blogs (“FIRST!!!” doesn’t count), if it was a forum I proudly announced my presence (cgtalk.com in this case), and after getting a little more attention and reassuring myself that I have something of value I submitted my site for the listing.
Then people started coming to me as I continued to provide valuable content. I got noticed by Creative Cow, Toolfarm, Motionographer and many other huge players in this community. Hell.. even Adobe itself, for which I am now a proud Ambassador.
Ahmed The Deat Terrorist would say: Location, location, location.
Well… I say: content, content, content… and being active.
February 14, 2010 at 7:08 pm |
Thanks, Jacob. That’s valuable SEO input. I really appreciate you sharing it here.
Best, Robin
February 14, 2010 at 7:12 pm |
That’s terrific experience you share, Maltaannon. Coming from your great success, we can all learn a lot.
Thank you, Robin
February 12, 2010 at 9:47 pm |
well….the whole traffic issue mostly breaks down to the golden web “rule” -content is king- …but as Jacob has stated, there are things you can do, to get some valuable attention and those users are “worth” way more than anybody who got to click on your link after (s)he performed a search on goo…umm….yahoo
here is another thing that takes this one step further:
-competitions and events-
I was lucky to participate in the “unplugged title challenge contest” and made it to the final round. Beside the invaluable experience of seeing all those talented artists putting great animations together and John’s constructive critique on each single (!) contest entry, it brought me some significant traffic…although I didn’t win. And, on a side note, I got to meet 2 amazingly talented artists that I am still in contact with.
So participating in online events and contests (such as the five second project on GSG for motion designers) is a perfect opportunity to do both, showcase your skills, connect with other users and get their attention. I don’t know the exact marketing term for that, but just like “hard facts” those users are definitely worth more than a random person who is surfing the web.
Is there an exact expression for that kind of user/traffic?
…)
(as I am always willing to learn, I’m closing this with a question
-Hakan-
February 14, 2010 at 7:15 pm |
That’s a great example, Hakan. My brother, John was delighted with the excellent input from all participants – and he also generated significant traffic from the competition.
I really appreciate your input here.
Best, Robin
February 13, 2010 at 9:52 am |
Getting traffic is always a matter of going where the people are and giving them a reason to visit you.
Jacob, you’ve found that with your blog commenting. Adding an interesting comment to an interesting discussion gets people curious about what more you have to offer. Same thing with forums. Same thing with article marketing. Same thing with anyplace else where people congregate.
Go where they are and give them a reason to visit you. It’s that simple.
One more thing, Jacob, I don’t know where you’re going with your content, but one thing I learned with the first website I did. Don’t wait until you have absolutely every piece of content up before you open it to the world.
I lost months that that first website could have been live while I created every last piece of content. I could have easily built it one section at a time. I could have easily started it with a few pieces of content in each section and built it as people were actively visiting it.
There is almost always some way that you can start small and scale up as you go. I encourage you to think of how you can go live as quickly as possible.
Nobody else is going to know the full scope that you planned to have and feel cheated because not all of it is there. Let them enjoy what you already can offer them. Let them see your site growing steadily. It will expose more people to what you offer sooner and give them more reason to keep coming back.
You’re getting traffic without content. Consider what you could accomplish if you had both.
February 14, 2010 at 7:17 pm |
Great input, Jeff. Thanks. I also love your attitude of ‘get it out there’. It’s good advice, and something that I took quite a few months to learn.
Best to you, Robin
February 13, 2010 at 11:46 am |
Jeff’s and Maltaannon’s comments are spot on. This discussion is particularly poignant to me/us as we’ve just launched another site which has incorporated what was previously niche, online content.
Starting small and scaling up has always worked well for us.
The ‘content is king’ mantra is always true. But we have a slightly different approach insomuch we never write any editorial copy or site news with SEO in mind. This is a policy decision based on the fact that we’re writers first and foremost and don’t want the constraints of SEO expression. There’s also another side to this.
We direct people to our content using a diversity of social media systems. It’s the old adage attached to presentations. Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you’ve just told them. This is true of any piece of web content. We never worry about search engine ranking as we’re not sitting back waiting for something to happen. We make it happen. We want to build loyalty and interaction. This doesn’t mean we get hung up on people leaving comments on the site. Comments are left all over the Social Media platforms.
There’s a reality check needed though. You have to allocate a significant amount of resource to connecting, commenting, talking-to and interacting. This is very often overlooked. Our content production is miniscule in real terms. Generating the traffic takes up the bulk of time. But the added benefit of the social interaction centered on a piece of content is where the real payback is. That, in turn, can open up all kinds of opportunities.
The other really good point Jeff made is that nobody knows your site ambitions. We make a point of launching with 20 pieces of high quality editorial content, photography etc. with 10 articles in the bank to follow up with whilst we get other things in order.
Get as much feedback as possible. Listen to the people who drop in. You HAVE to get feedback. Then, listen to it. Act. Change. Our original concept for our first online publication was very different to the one we ended up with.
Jeff’s point about losing time is a very good one. And Maltaannon’s comments about Google keywords is terrific advice.
Finally, I’d say this. It doesn’t matter how much a website cost – or its functionality, if the content you’re reading is poorly written, or badly formatted. Being multi-skilled and understanding/studying written presentation can make the difference between someone coming back or never wanting to read another post.
Oh yes. And ask questions!
February 14, 2010 at 7:22 pm |
Luke, I love that point about asking questions!
It’s so timely to get this input from you given your very recent site launch. There are so many excellent points in generous your comment for others to benefit from. Thank you.
Best, Robin
February 14, 2010 at 4:36 pm |
What an excellent discussion this has become – I’ve got my work cut out for me just absorbing all the intelligent commentary and resources within these comments.
I am surprised no-one has mentioned Twitter yet – it’s a huge generator of traffic back to your site. You have to invest in Twitter first for this to be true. This gives me an excuse to refer you to Laura Fitton’s (@pistachio on Twitter) “How Dare You NOT be Awesome” presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/pistachio/how-dare-you-not-be-awesome-formatted
If you follow “Laura’s rules” on slide 22 you WILL see more traffic. I’ve listed them below, extract from here:
http://pistachio.posterous.com/lauras-rules-0
1. be kind and fair to everyone.
2. don’t worry whether or not anyone likes you.
3. help people.
4. ask.
5. act. (get excited and share it)
6. love yourself.
7. love others. (try radical forgiveness)
8. gratitude for everything.
9. hope is your only hope. (and fear is your only worry)
10. be present.
If you applied those rules to Twitter for example, you’ll begin to see why it can be an incredible traffic generator for you. The content on your blog/site would also reflect those rules.
Great discussion Robin, you continue to amaze and inspire me with the community engagement you’re getting here with your posts.
Cheers,
Tony Hollingsworth
February 14, 2010 at 7:26 pm |
Thanks, Tony. I’m blown away by the generosity and calibre of content people are leaving for others to benefit from. It’s far exceeded my expectations. I’ve learned more from the comments from the past few posts than I have from anything I’ve written. Hmm.
Your Twitter input is excellent – especially given your proven success.
Talk soon.
Best to you, Robin
February 14, 2010 at 5:56 pm |
Great post, Robin and great feedback from the commenters. Traffic is a funny subject because it’s not about how much traffic comes to a site – it’s the quality.
And those quality visitors want quality content – especially if you want them to engage regularly.
But before you run off and develop tons of quality content, you need to know what you want your site to accomplish – what is your niche or differentiation and have a long-term strategy. How will you continue to deliver long-term? You also need a customer acquisition and communication plan.
Your site doesn’t need to attract everyone – just the right people who will be part of your community, share your resources and their great experiences with others, and buy your products/services.
I also find with blogs – a long-term strategy is ultra-important because in the early stages it’s easy for people to manoeuvre around a site. What about a year from now – will they be confused by tons of unorganised content?
And, just like Jacob Henderson mentioned – it’s a two-way street. You need to be part of the community and contribute. That’s how people get to know you – social media sites/tools/tactics help this along like Tony Hollingsworth said.
Lastly – using analytics to understand what people are doing on your site is crucial – it’s needed feedback so you can improve what you are doing and continue to improve your visitor’s experience.
I could go on for days – but I’ll leave you with this post from SassySEO.com on how to come up with content: http://sassyseo.com/2010/01/sassyseo-insights-vol-5-content-ideas/.
Keep tossing us bait for fantastic contributions. It’s stellar here.
Cheers,
Kristin
February 14, 2010 at 7:29 pm |
Wow, Kristen. That’s amazing input. It summarizes the recent conversations you and I have had. Thank you.
I also appreciate your link to SassySEO.com. It’s an excellent source of valuable information.
Best to you, Robin
February 15, 2010 at 8:26 am |
How could I neglect this conversation – there is so much value here, I’m humbled. But if the rule is “the only hope is hope” I hope I have something of value to add as well. I’ll try to summarise my thoughts from above.
I’m interested on branding here to drive traffic. Tony’s, Kristin’s, and Jeff’s comments in particular intimate towards brand.
I’ll give an example from my experience: My Microsoft blog when I worked there, generated more traffic, with the same content, than my personal blog. http://blog.rog42.net. It’s true to say that the most hit sites are huge brands in their own right – Apple, Google, NYTimes, NineMSN etc.
Now of course besides already being in the community “psyche” and having valuable, or at least prolifically available, product, these organisations have huge resources to hand. But I do think that even using the same resources as I, with my Thesis themed WordPress site (eBay anyone?) they would still generate more traffic.
Marketing 101 will tell you that all brand is, is a well recognised summary of your organisation’s values. What you stand for.
Once you have a recognised brand, you’ll generate traffic regardless. Then you work on maintaining the brand – i.e. adding value through content, building trust through relationships both on- and offline.
So my question is: “Is it more important than even content, or SEO, to work on your brand?”
February 17, 2010 at 11:17 am |
Wow, what an interesting, high-value conversation!! Thank you guys for your very interesting comments (is the #nscm community super talented or what?!).
I’m no SEO superstar or anything, but just from my own experience, here are 2 additional resources I’ve found very useful:
1. I’ve recently listened to the audiobook version of Gary Vaynerchuk’s best-selling book. This book is gold, I absolutely loved it! All about quality content and engaging the online community on your market / niche. Besides, Gary is a fan-tas-tic speaker so my advice, listen to the audiobook instead of reading the book, you’ll get a much more entertaining experience. After listening to it, I was so pumped I felt like Ricky Balboa ; – )
Here’s the link to the book website (http://crushitbook.com/) and another one to the audiobook on Audible (http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/ProductDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes&productID=BK_HARP_002086)
2. I’m a big fan of the Problogger website (www.problogger.net). Darren Rowse really knows his stuff and I find all his posts very helpful. Some of my all-time favourite posts on his blog include:
- 31 days to build a better blog (extremely useful, all about having a long-term strategy for your blog, as Kristin pointed out): http://www.problogger.net/31-days-to-building-a-better-blog/
- 7 questions to ask on your blog to get more reader engagement: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/12/02/7-questions-to-ask-on-your-blog-to-get-more-reader-engagement/
- What to do when your search rankings drop: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/12/01/what-to-do-when-your-search-rankings-drop/
You can also follow Darren on Twitter at @problogger.
Thanks again for creating this great conversation forum, Robin! I’ll follow your advice and do my best to stay “on brand” in my blog ; – )
Cheers,
Myriam
Myriam
February 17, 2010 at 9:39 pm |
Myriam
Great resources – thanks – @problogger and @garyvee are the real deal. You do know Gary Vaynerchuk will be in Sydney soon to keynote at an event in Sydney (he is delivering a 2 hour talk on using social media to grow your business) The event is Connect Now and is shaping up to be one of the more interesting events I am seeing pop up in Sydney this year. Follow #cnow on Twitter and see: http://www.connectnow.net.au/
Cheers
Tony
February 17, 2010 at 8:49 pm |
Thanks for joining in Myriam,
I find it intriguing that I’m already following or have read all but the book you mention. I’m an avid fan of audiobooks, and have audible credit
See you at #nscm.
All the best
Roger
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