Weekends, Keyword Order and Website Traffic Changes

Weekends

What is that ancient commercial slogan? Weekends were made for Michelob? Something like that, I'm sure. If you monitor website traffic, have you ever noticed that your traffic slows down from Friday night until about Sunday afternoon?

I didn't say it stops. It just slows down. I see about two thirds of my normal traffic (and what's normal?) from Friday night to Saturday evening in the US. I know quite a few people back in the states and I know they don't hop back onto their computers until later in the weekend. Friday nights are for movies and running around with friends doing God knows what.

Unlike my counterparts over there, I don't have many friends here in the Philippines and movie-going is a major outing and not to be done at night. There's only one local theater and the choices are limited.

Keyword Order

Does the order of keywords in a post title make a difference? How about in the content itself? I have verifiable proof that it does. Just Google for "twitter twirl" and see where my previous post, "Twitter, twhirl and Guy Kawasaki", shows up in the results pages and then do it for "twirl twitter".

The first search showed my post at #19. The second showed it at #5. Your mileage may vary. It's amazing that it showed in the index this quickly. It hasn't been 24 hours since it was posted. I was confused about ranking in the wrong order until I figured out that I had misspelled "twhirl" as "twirl" in the post content. Apparently, other people misspell it when searching for it too, as I noticed in the searches for it in my log.

Changing the search to "twitter twhirl" and "twhirl twitter" yielded #4 and #52. I rank better for "twirl twitter" than "twhirl twitter". Amazing.

Website Traffic Changes

I started experimenting with keyword stuffing, density and different types of posts and topics in January of this year. I've also reduced my social interaction with other blogs and websites, without becoming completely antisocial.

I've noticed my daily search traffic rising and my social traffic sinking. It's exactly what I expected to happen.

There's Always A Reason

The biggest reason I'm become less socially active in the blogosphere is because I'm reading the same things over and over again. Rehashes of rehashes. I'm looking for things that inspire me and I'm not finding the inspiration I'm looking for.

On the flip side of that coin, I completely understand that people won't want to return to visit this blog for the exact same reason. If I continue to harp about the same things over and over again, and then rehash what someone else already wrote about (even unintentionally), it makes for a mundane reading session.

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R.J. from Link Building Bible on 2008-04-06 at 3:45 am (Reply)

I do notice the weekend drop off, but I've actually not noticed a drop off this week so far.

Should I start the keyword density, stuffing, etc. right away, or should i utilize the social networks for building some blog popularity and brand name, and then begin focusing on the on page stuff.

My blog is already getting about a quarter of it's daily traffic from the search engines, after only 3 weeks. It's always ranking second to Digital Point, and since my blog is geared towards webmasters, and I am fairly active in the section about my niche, that isn't too shocking to me.

R.J. @ Link Building Bible's last blog post..Unasked: An Online Profile for Getting a Backlink

Tim from Very Rare Coins on 2008-04-06 at 4:21 am (Reply)

I've noticed that Tuesday is quite often a slower day for my sites. And this week for the Red Deer Digest, Wednesday had less than half the search traffic of every other day.
It really seems to be influenced by the topics I pursue. With the Digest, I have been covering upcoming events that quite often fall on weekends. Everyone is searching for these events online to find out more info, and they all wait to the last minute on Saturday morning.
What are the demographic groups that are slacking off on the weekend? It must be office workers who go online at work or something
And by the way, since that disgusting corned beef hash the army fed me, I don't like any kind of hash, especially rehashed corned beef.

MrCorey on 2008-04-06 at 11:56 am (Reply)

I find that my traffic seems to peak on Sundays, but that's probably because of the geek nature of a lot of my posts (and, of course, my best posts are usually produced on Sundays).

MrCorey's last blog post..So Sick my Skin is Crawling

An American Living in the Philippines

Weekends, Keyword Order and Website Traffic Changes