Experimentation

So over the last few days I have been experimenting with a system that automatically sends emails to people when a post is published on the website.  I know that some of these people have read the posts, yet it does not appear that this automatic feed is showing up as visits to the website.  Via google analytics I can see what the traffic to the site is, where it comes from, and a host of other things.  But my traffic has plummeted from almost nothing to nothing but me!!  LOL.  As most all of the people that might read my posts are on that email list, it would seem that it does not bring people to the site but rather just emails them the post.  Of course a main goal is to get people to read the posts, but it is also to get traffic to the site.  If I can't generate traffic to the site I will not raise up the search engines and get others that i don't know to see the site.

Sigh...  So I guess that I will have to find another way to keep people informed of new posts that will also generate quantifiable traffic numbers for the site.  Ideally there would be an email with a teaser and link.  Say the first paragraph of the post and a link for "more" if they want to read on.  This would allow for notification to go to those interested with a brief intro.  People would then have a choice as to whether they want to read further and it would generate traffic for the site if they did open the link.  Now where to find this...  Tricky business this website stuff...  ;)      

Search Engine Optimization

Just spent a little more time on Google analytics and webmasters.  I am starting to get some decent key word generation for "Sierra" and  "Leone".  In order to have a site show up in a google search, google has to index the pages and see what words it finds often enough to think of as keywords for your site.  For a while there it was random stuff like 'initial' or 'introduction', nothing that was directly pertinent to the site or that would bring traffic.  But as of this morning 'Sierra' and 'Leone' are at the top the list for the site.  I also tried to get the googlebots to index each page - but I don't know that this happened, only that I fetched the page as a googlebot would see it (which I would think they'd have to go there to do it).  Anyway, the keywords themselves are starting to be a bit more indicative of my own project.

I also did a search for "walking lion" and I seem to be number four on the list.  Nice.  I am not having much of any increase in traffic, but I was solely having direct traffic for the most part - meaning someone typed www.walkinglion.org into the address bar -, then I started getting a decent amount of referring traffic from facebook and blogger (where the site is hosted), but now I am starting to get search engine traffic.  This is of course a good sign, people other than my friends/acquaintances may be starting to see the site.  What I need though is to get on the "Sierra Leone" key word list.  This is going to be extremely difficult, but things like "Sierra Leone hiking", "Sierra Leone non-profit", or other such things may not be to far fetched.  This however will take time, especially with the hiking part, as I will have to do an awful lot more writing on the hiking part of my trip.  Anyway, its all a step in the right direction...  enjoy...