RSS Feeds: Changing from a Social-Oriented Site to a Search-Oriented Site
From the beginning of 2009 to the beginning of 2010, I concentrated most of my writing efforts to change this site from a social-oriented site to a search-oriented site. The conversion actually started in 2008, but I didn't concentrate on it. You may wonder what effect it has had on what I write, how I write and how often I write. I'll try to explain as I go along, but only after I tell you what effect it has had on the site itself.
Types of Visitors, Traffic Numbers and Earnings
When I started this thing back in 2006, I started it like a personal diary. I really didn't know what I was doing and I didn't care. This was my only website and it was designed for one thing: To kill time. As a retiree living in a foreign country, there weren't a lot of things I was interested in outside of the home. That has all changed, but it took some time. In a few months, this site will be 4-years old and it has changed as much as my outlook on life has.
The first year was spent or so was spent being incredibly social. I interacted with quite a few other websites, commenting here and there, and made sure I interacted on social sites.
After Steve, of Ramblings from the Marginalized, submitted my post titled "Downloading Pirated Anything Is NOT Illegal" to Digg, I started to see the value of getting fresh, unique visitors. It took a long time for it to sink in, but sink in it did.
I played the stupid linking games invented my other people, which involved sites like Technorati and other social aggregation sites. The effects of those efforts were temporary at best and it took a long time for me to remove the offending posts, some of which will be redirected to this one since they exist in more than one search engine index despite my best efforts to get them to go away.
Until I started concentrating on search visitors versus social visitors, I would be lucky to see my Mint statistics report even 200 unique visitors per day and most of them were the same people every day – social visitors. I now see 1000 plus unique visitors per day during the weekdays and 800 to 900 unique visitors on weekends and holidays – mostly search visitors. I know I still get social visitors because I have over 400 people subscribed to the article feeds.
Before concentrating on search visitors, I'd be lucky if I made $30 a month from advertising. That number has more than increased tenfold and I just very recently started showing ads to non-search visitors, which should only make that number increase.
What do I write about?
What do I NOT write about? I don't blog about blogging, something I started out doing and found out was an incredible waste of time. It attracts other people who blog about blogging and that's about it.
Since I live in a foreign country, I write about things that interest me in the foreign country and hopefully, it will interest others. I also write about things that affect me personally, all the while attempting to keyword-optimize everything I write about.
There is so much to write about that I've actually spread myself too thin on multiple blogs. Everything with sight or hearing is game and I have no problem coming up with something new all the time.
How do I write?
I write more than a few words each time. I write posts as long as they can be without repeating myself, with the goal being 300 words or more. It gives the search engines much more to chew on that way.
I also read and reread everything I write so that it doesn't sound like I'm writing for a machine to read. It's called natural writing and should sound like I'm saying the words and not just writing them. I'm not perfect, of course, and sometimes I catch mistakes long after the fact (like missing words).
How often do I write?
The reality is that I write as often as I have the notion to do so. I no longer try to keep a schedule of any kind and I really don't care if I miss a few days or a week. Remember, this is no longer a social-oriented site. Being regular is one of the things social visitors come to expect. The search engines don't care as long as you continue to write something once in a while — I can't tell you how long that period is because some people do well while writing once every other month.
One of my online friends, Grizzly of "How to Make Money Online for Beginners", taught me that it wasn't how often you write that's important; it's the quality of what you write. He likes to write long and rambling posts, but I don't ramble that much (at least I don't think so).
Experimentation and Cleaning Things Up
I'm still experimenting with this site, even if it isn't obvious. I'm also still going through the long process of removing and redirecting the URLs for posts that have no real value to me or to my visitors. It's a slow process because doing it any faster than I have been doing it so far would basically gut the number of articles, cutting the total number in half if I did it all at once. I write a few, remove a few and that's how it goes along.
The effect has been awesome, in my opinion. I still get recurring visitors and people reading more than one page and I get a lot of search visitors and I think the numbers will continue to increase with time. I get the best of both worlds (social and search) and I don't have to hang out at places like Twitter or Facebook to achieve it. Places which, in my opinion, are designed to kill more time than I care to kill.
By relating my experience in changing from a social-oriented site to a search-oriented site, perhaps you (if you have a social-oriented site) may consider the benefits of withdrawing from extended social interaction. After all, how social do you need to be?
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Great and timely article. I've tried to keep my site focused but after a year or so I just don't have the inspiration to continue down such a narrow path and have been thinking along the same lines that you've articulated here. I've always enjoyed this site, the whole thing is a lesson in search-oriented vs. social-oriented topics.
My last blog: Dreamweaver Has Stopped Working
Hi RT,
Oh boy, I know some bloggers who really should read this post. They spend a great majority of their time, trying to attract comments to their blogs. They seriously view it as a major metric of "success". But then at the same time, they write post after post trying to figure out why they aren't making more money; relative to the amount of visitors they get.
I get your blog both in my feed reader, and by email; so I noticed quite a while what you were up to … lol, although I will admit to having a bit of a WTF moment, during your transition, when you wrote the post about Diarrhea and Hemorrhoids. At that point, this was still at least a "semi-social" site.
I pretty much stopped worrying about trying to make money with my "primary" blog. Although, like you, I think for 2010 I'm swearing off writing about blogging or making money. I'm doing a "picture a day" project, which has me actually enjoying making a daily post.
I am however intrigued by your "cleaning up" paragraph. I'm in the process of transitioning my former local blog about Hawaii, into more of a generic travel site … with the goal of better monetization. I have a whole bunch of posts on there now that eventually just won't fit. I hadn't really considered how best to get them off the site. But I like this idea of just "swapping out" old posts, as I put up newer more relevant articles.
Thanks,
Todd
My last blog: Another Tough Day At The Office
I definitely jumped the shark with the diarrhea thing. Plugging in new posts, somewhat related to old posts, makes it easy to do 301 redirects without it being considered web spam. I still have a lot more social-only posts to do away with and I think it will probably take the entire year to do it, unless I get a wild hair up my wazoo and decide to do some things in one massive burst.
In the meantime, I still have other sites and other projects in the works. I hope they all work out as planned because if so, then I'll probably be more effective all the way around.
Interesting post. I gave up on using social networks even before I really got started. As you mentioned, you need a lot of time to kill when you don't want to lose courage. And you really need to know the rules to see any effect from those.
My last blog: Wrap-up Portable Tripod is also a Protective Case
Glad to see it's all working out for you RT :)
"I played the stupid linking games invented my other people, which involved sites like Technorati and other social aggregation sites. The effects of those efforts were temporary at best and it took a long time for me to remove the offending posts"
Could you expound on this a bit. What are the offending posts all about?
In regards to the social-oriented sites, even if you are successful with lot's of commenters, it's takes a lot of time to reply to all those. I've seen a couple of very successful social oriented sites change the way they are doing things lately. One removed comments all together AND only has one ad on the entire site!
My last blog: Samal Island Map
They were thinly veiled linking schemes to improve stats at Technorati and other sites. I can't really describe them any better without actually giving an example and I don't want to do that.
RT,
Watching the transition from a social blog to a search oriented blog has been interesting and fun. The bodily functions post kinda threw me for a minute too, but I quickly realized what was going on. Good for you!
I'm very pleased with how well my main blog is doing monetization-wise, and my goal for this year is to double it or come very close to doubling my earnings. Like an online friend told me recently, I'm actually thinking that some of my posts on the newest blog would actually have done just fine if I had posted them on the main site. Hmmm.
My last blog: Husband Abuse: Abused Husbands and Men in Abusive Relationships
Its really so easy to make a blog but handling it is a big problem.
I started my first blog when I am in college but it only last for a couple of year It just like an online diary then suddenly I just stopped. I am planning to make a new one I will try to make what you just said posting at least once a month..
I'm interested how you remove posts and do redirects. I'm trying to do that on one of my sites. Do you write something similar and redirect to that?
My last blog: Plastering, wishing I was plastered
That's what I try to do. I'm not always successful because some things can't be rewritten, especially time-sensitive issues.
I was thinking of culling some of my posts – and using them as the basis for another blog. I'm prepping for this by un-publishing them in WordPress. Eventually I will delete them and add them to another blog.
Is the right way to do it? If they are changed to drafts I assume they are not indexed by Google, and hence won't incur a duplicate penalty when re-posted elsewhere. Is there a better way?
Changing them to drafts makes them disappear from the blog, so of course they wouldn't be indexed anymore. You could also move them to the trash can where they get deleted after 30 days. There is no right or wrong way to do it and as long as it takes any post to be completely indexed, it wouldn't matter if both existed at the same time for a week.
Many people have made the crossover from social blogging to blogging for profit – and as long as you are providing original content and good information, there's nothing wrong with it.