Ok, yes.
The title of this post reminds me of, when I was about 11 years old, I got this idea to take out an ad in a magazine, as big a publication as I could afford, promising to deliver a "guaranteed" money making formula for only a dollar.
For their dollar, they received the formula: Place an ad in a magazine just like the one I placed that you have just responded to.
So, after having read just the first 3 chapters of the "search engine optimization" book (that I don't have a picture of) that I have; I am using a blog title that is likely to garner more traffic than some of the garden variety titles in that past may have.
I like to try to crystallize the gist of the the whole blog post in the title, often by using a pun or other device. This often took the form of a term that only 9 people on the planet would ever search for explicitly.
For a good example, look no further than the post of a couple days or so ago, where I talk about the "Open-Shut" video editor. This, though, an allusion to an instance of the Open Shot video editor crashing, used a term that only somebody who is searching for a free open source video editor and who had incorrectly heard the name of one referred to, would type in the box, explicitly.
If I were to have entitled it "Open Shot Video Editor Repeatedly Crashes," I would have attracted a lot more people to this blog. People who would then have to decide if my particular personal experience, recorded in journal form, of the Open Shot video editor crashing, was worth reading...
It was coincidental that, I was visited by Tim, my caseworker just before I had cracked open that particular book.
He brought up the very topic that I was going to read about right after he had left after a short visit.
That being using "lists" such as "The 100 top (anything)" or "5 Things You Must Know In Order To (anything)" or "The 10 Best (anything) for (anything)" is a scientifically proven way to drive traffic to a webpage.
So is putting a lot of work into organizing something, such as "20 Famous People Who Died Penniless," with the lot of work going into digging up and linking to photos, videos, and all thing related to those 20 people, so that your website becomes one stop shopping for celebrities who died penniless.
Tim, my caseworker, was telling me about how "trending" "top 5 lists," and such were right now and how it is easy to score a bit hit with the right one on social media.
The book then reiterated what he said, with the addition that, any well thought out and produced "how to" video will also attract steady traffic (which might flow for years to come), and, since whomever visits the page had probably searched for exactly what you are trying to do, like: "Making firearms silencers out of household objects," or whatever...
The last chapter is probably going to be entitled: "Or,...Just Write Better Stuff!"
So, all I can do today, since I'm in a pinch and must go out and play in an hour or so, is to make my title one that is of the variety that statistics have shown should get more hits.
And, to the masses who clicked on the information and came to this blog; who might want your clicks back: The "formula" is: Use a title like the one that I used that you clicked on to get here.
That is almost guaranteed to increase your page views.
I will check my stats tomorrow.
Video Killed The QWERTY Star
The upcoming chapters involve making a blog much more visible with photos and videos, captions, "buttons" etc. I know because I skimmed ahead.
All kinds of traffic is thwarted to web pages through pictures and other spectacles. What the sign and the dog are to the skeezer, the pictures and videos are to a blogger, is what my impression is....
The title of this post reminds me of, when I was about 11 years old, I got this idea to take out an ad in a magazine, as big a publication as I could afford, promising to deliver a "guaranteed" money making formula for only a dollar.
So, after having read just the first 3 chapters of the "search engine optimization" book (that I don't have a picture of) that I have; I am using a blog title that is likely to garner more traffic than some of the garden variety titles in that past may have.
I like to try to crystallize the gist of the the whole blog post in the title, often by using a pun or other device. This often took the form of a term that only 9 people on the planet would ever search for explicitly.
For a good example, look no further than the post of a couple days or so ago, where I talk about the "Open-Shut" video editor. This, though, an allusion to an instance of the Open Shot video editor crashing, used a term that only somebody who is searching for a free open source video editor and who had incorrectly heard the name of one referred to, would type in the box, explicitly.
If I were to have entitled it "Open Shot Video Editor Repeatedly Crashes," I would have attracted a lot more people to this blog. People who would then have to decide if my particular personal experience, recorded in journal form, of the Open Shot video editor crashing, was worth reading...
It was coincidental that, I was visited by Tim, my caseworker just before I had cracked open that particular book.
He brought up the very topic that I was going to read about right after he had left after a short visit.
That being using "lists" such as "The 100 top (anything)" or "5 Things You Must Know In Order To (anything)" or "The 10 Best (anything) for (anything)" is a scientifically proven way to drive traffic to a webpage.
So is putting a lot of work into organizing something, such as "20 Famous People Who Died Penniless," with the lot of work going into digging up and linking to photos, videos, and all thing related to those 20 people, so that your website becomes one stop shopping for celebrities who died penniless.
Tim, my caseworker, was telling me about how "trending" "top 5 lists," and such were right now and how it is easy to score a bit hit with the right one on social media.
[Sidebar] The photo above, I have posted here before, but this time, I clicked on the "properties" box while I was moving and sizing it, etc. and I added a "title" to the picture, as well as "alternate text" to the picture. This means that I have added the "photo search" by anyone as an ally in drawing traffic to this blog.
By the time the average post has sat here for a month it has gotten about 250 page views, the way things stand today. But now, I am adding alternate text and a title to photos, as per the advice in chapter 4 of the book that I'm reading, about growing readership.
The last chapter is probably going to be entitled: "Or,...Just Write Better Stuff!"
So, all I can do today, since I'm in a pinch and must go out and play in an hour or so, is to make my title one that is of the variety that statistics have shown should get more hits.
And, to the masses who clicked on the information and came to this blog; who might want your clicks back: The "formula" is: Use a title like the one that I used that you clicked on to get here.
That is almost guaranteed to increase your page views.
I will check my stats tomorrow.
Video Killed The QWERTY Star
The upcoming chapters involve making a blog much more visible with photos and videos, captions, "buttons" etc. I know because I skimmed ahead.
All kinds of traffic is thwarted to web pages through pictures and other spectacles. What the sign and the dog are to the skeezer, the pictures and videos are to a blogger, is what my impression is....
I'd say your blog is really good. And, the only other busker's blog I know of is by a rather dour guy in England who plays guitar too but "square" stuff like "The Third Man" and Chet Atkins, and he's clean-cut and his busking is just a "retirement job" as he's retired. He writes about some interesting people but they're not as interesting as the characters you deal with, nor does he write about them as interestingly.
ReplyDeleteI swear I've searched the whole internet and blogs by buskers are almost a non-thing. I don't think busking types tend to stick with it, and maybe the busking time causes most of them to either (a) improve to the point of getting a job playing in a bar band or something, or (b) gain the attention of relatives who are appalled and immediately take them in.
So as a blog showing the day-to-day life of a busker, and more interestingly, one in New Orleans, yours is The One. You've certainly earned something just by sticking with it.
I'm wondering if you could set up something with Cafe Press or one of those setups to sell floppy hats, guitar picks, an assortment of stuff that kind of fits your "theme".
Thanks for the kind words about a blog that I struggle not to make as boring as a geezer doing a jigsaw puzzle in his apartment and drinking coffee while his cat sleeps on the couch. It's an uphill battle.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking that I could take 10 years of blogging and then start working "at both ends," filling in the back story, taking stories in the past that came to some consequence, the meeting of Karrie, the first encounter with Lilly, etc and expand them a bit, and kind of revise the stories that aren't even coming to my mind right now, so forgettable they are...
Then, someone might be able to jump in any given date and follow it. It would mean putting a lot of re-caps, perhaps, like boiling posts down to a week at a time, with maybe one highlight; and of course, I would love to have little thumbnail pictures of all of the regular characters, that would take you to thier biography...
I guess you answered one of the questions I had in mind when I came to Starbucks, I was going to look for a "tribe," which, according to "SEO Step-by-Step" would be a whole group of buskers who blog about it.
It would be a good resource for people thinking about busking where they would be able to see how the guy plays, through videos that he posts, and then read about how much he makes busking and then adjust it to their own perceived skill levels, etc.
But, I suppose this is as much of a niche blog as I am a niche busker...and to think that I was once bent upon finding a young Chinese girl at the LSU music department and grooming her to be another Tanya...