For the last couple of weeks I’ve been asking you questions about the blogs we all run and your thoughts on those subjects have been really valuable to me. It has given me lots of things to think about and this week I got a final blog related question for you before I return to asking you questions about movies:
I’m writing about movies because it is something I love doing, but it wouldn’t mean much if people didn’t read or respond to it and in order to do that it must be possible for those people to find what you are writing. I have previously have given some tips on how to increase the number of readers, but was wondering:
What do you do to increase your readership and do you spend any time on search engine optimisation (SEO)?
I personally never looked at optimisation for search engines, but am wondering if it’s something which really is worth the investment of time. Interested to hear your thoughts on this.
I recently had to do a fair amount of research into SEO for an article, and it has made me be a bit more aware of it. I still write as I normally would, but I do sometimes go back before I post and see if I can change anything to make it more SEO friendly. Honestly, it’s a bit dumb to write exclusively for SEO, as Google seems to regularly update their search algorithms anyway.
Something that’s definitely far more important is hitting a niche topic that people are searching for, but no one has covered (to date that’s been my most popular post) and linking. I got a post up on Reddit once and HOLY COW! THE TRAFFIC!
I never wrote for SEO, so I don’t know if it has an effect.
So what’s your most popular article? Agree with you on Reddit traffic, had one of my articles on there as well and it was my busiest day ever.
Thanks for commenting 🙂
It was just a list of items that were being changed in an online video game. Funnily enough no-one had compiled it so I got the jump on it and it drew about 5 times more traffic than my previous best post.
That is nice!
I’ve never spent a single second worrying about SEO and such things. I barely know what it is. I don’t have ads and I have very little motivation to chase for numbers.
For people who want to increase their readership I think interacting with the blogging community, commenting on other blogs, is a good way to go. I do that too. But not for the purpose to get more visitors. That’s just a nice bonus.
I’m actually very happy with the readership I have. It’s a nice little community.
I haven’t either Jessica, but since moving the server and searching for plugins there were a couple articles which suggested SEO plugins…I don’t use them but it did make me wonder. To me it’s also about the readers and I do comment a lot on other sites too because in the end it’s about community. I’m also very happy with my readership, although I have noticed that moving servers has decreased them a little, probably because my old readers don’t get the articles in their wordpress reader anymore.
I’m completely unaware of SEO but I must find out more about it. As for Reddit, I like the sound of that. I’m not overly fussed about traffic, I’m just happy that the regular faces keep visiting my site. That’s enough for me and any newcomers are always welcome and a further bonus.
I was as well, that’s why I asked as I was wondering if I missed something. Yeah, the regular visitors is what makes it all worth it, because it’s nice to get to know them, including their taste in movies and views on things.
I do nothing with regards to SEO, but I do search for other reviews of the more niche films I review (on wordpress with a tag search) to find like minded bloggers and see what their take on stuff is. I feel its a good way to meet people since they are writing about the same stuff.
Interesting question Nostra 🙂
You are not the only one who doesn’t do anything with it Tyson. I usually check out the new posts with the movies as a topic in the WordPress reader, which allowed me to discover a lot of other cool movie related sites.
Thanks!
Interesting question, especially these days. While I think it’s important to write with SEO in mind, but not doing things like keyword stuffing your posts and the like. It’s just writing semantically so that search engines can make sense of your content. Making sure you have enough headings (using appropriate number of , , , etc), emphasising words, making sure your images are properly tagged and labelled. That’s important.
But these days it’s more to do with your interaction on the Internet – making a presence for your site, yourself, or whatever you’re trying to “sell”. Interacting on G+, other blogs, whatever your blog’s community is part of. Social interaction is becoming so much more important than on-page SEO.
Not saying that SEO isn’t needed, it’s just that the Internet is becoming so much more of a social experience. What with your search results in Google being personalised to your location and previous searches to people using Facebook as their “Internet”. You just got to do your best and write what you want to write.
Thanks for your insightful comment Jaina, I do consider you an expert in the field 🙂
And in the end it is about writing what you want to write about, most of us do this blogging thing for fun!
I don’t even know what SEO is 😛 I try to visit my favorite blogs regularly, I also have link to my blog on many movie forums and imdb boards I post and that usually leads people to my blog.
Don’t think it is necessary to know what it is as I have the feeling it’s more important for companies who wants to sell things. I think being social is the most important as a blogger.
As far as SEO goes I used it when I had my own business, but not for the blog. To try and make a movie review site by on the first page of google with your own SEO efforts would require too much time & effort, and to pay a company to do it for you is ridiculous for a non-money making operation.
As for my most popular review post on a single day it was for “Born & Raised”. A small film that appeared in the 2012 Miami International Film Festival (MIFF). My review was positive, and the producers posted it to their facebook fan page.
As for an actual review of mine that appears on the 1st page of google, that is for “The Diary of Preston Plummer”–also a film from the 2012 MIFF. I was literally the first person who reviewed the film–to the consternation of the filmmakers since it was not a good review. There was a good 3-4 month stretch where someone somewhere read that review from a search engine.
So what works for me in terms of getting new hit to my blog is to write reviews for smaller films in film festivals and art-house theatres, and then make the filmmakers aware. Obviously they will mention the good reviews and do nothing with the bad ones.
Yeah, so it seems to be useful if it’s for business, but otherwise not too bother with it. That’s good to know.
Some great tips concerning the smaller films.
I like what Stephen King said in an epilogue to one of his books. He said he writes for himself for the joy of it and if you the reader enjoy it then that is a bonus. I have roughly 3800 hits and nearly 30 subscribers. Be nice to have more readers or at least more comments on posts. I’m glad for those I get. Aside from tags I don’t write to get more traffic.
Well, I can say I enjoy writing, but I wouldn’t still be doing it if no one was responding to it 🙂
Never done anything like that, just hoped my site comes up if you search for reviews 😀
It seems like not many people bother with it when it comes to it.
I don’t write at all for SEO for several reasons. First of all, while I’d love to get more readers, this blog is a personal project and not designed for me to benefit financially. Also, it just seems like it would change the nature of my blog to spend time making sure it gets more hits that way. I’ve noticed that I seem to be getting more google search hits recently, but I’d rather get comments from engaged people who want to stick around then random people grabbing images.
In terms of increasing the number of readers, I just try to be involved in the blogging community as much as I can. I’ll step in and comment on blogs that interest me or participate in blogathons. I know there’s a limit to how much these help out, so I just get involved in things that I find engaging.
I know there are ways that I could be doing more to get more readers, but my primary focus is making the blog better. I feel like there’s a lot more that I can do with the writing and overall content. It’s getting where I want it to be, but I still have a long way to go!
Very clear reason not to do it. I do notice a lot of people grabbing images and I could do without them because they don’t add anything to my blog, they are not reading and responding…
Your blog is already very good Dan, although I might not comment all the time I do read most you write (except for the Survivor stuff)
I don’t really do much to attract new readers — I’m happy if they’re there, but I don’t really go out and hunt them down, you know? I comment on other blogs, I tweet, I post on Facebook, and I link my reviews on IMDb. That’s about it.
I used to work in SEO. The only way to win is to just play it honestly. Make your post titles make sense (e.g., title it “Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” instead of “What’s With All These Short Guys?”). Emphasize the titles of films and works that you’re writing about — just as proper writing style says to do anyway. Other than that… there is literally no point in paying attention to it. Google — and all the search engines take their lead from Google in the end — is constantly updating their algorithms to account for any “tricks”. The goal, as they see it (and it sounds right to me) is to have the search engine return results based on how a human would interpret the information. Which means that your best choices for handling SEO in your writing are the same as your best choices for making it readable to people. Which means you shouldn’t be making any changes for the sake of SEO.
I know what you mean. I think that being active on other blogs already helps in getting new people to check out what you are doing.
I actually do freelance SEO work as a part-time gig right now, but I don’t worry much about it with The Warning Sign. If I had a full-fledged website where I was hoping to get significant income, I would make a greater effort to maximize my SEO potential. As it stands right now, I just do the basic stuff like write headers with appropriate keywords (i.e. “movie review”, the film name, etc.) and use ALT image tags. The best thing you can do is just produce good content — that’s going to bring in more readers than throwing in random keywords here and there.
Great advice Eric! Thanks.
I’ve started to focus a bit more on SEO recently, but I certainly don’t write just to get good SEO rankings. I wouldn’t have any real idea how to do that. Plus, it seems a bit false.
Funnily enough, my biggest hits come from Wikipedia. Someone linked to my review of Shark in Venice from the Shark in Venice page. I’ve no idea who, but I’m eternally grateful.
Interesting that that has given you more hits. It’s something I’ve never heard of!
I’ve always been confused about how SEO works. A few weeks ago one of my old reviews shot up to over 8,000 views one day. I have no idea how that happened.
Yeah, it seems like something you would really need to spend time on and it doesn’t seem to be worth it if you are just blogging. Which review shot up? Did the statistics show any specific source? Page views like that are nice surprises though!