Guest Writer: Tim Dungan (aka ptvGuy)
Not to be just another SOB, I had to come by and thank Liz personally for including me here in her collection of certified SOBs. I will wear my badge proudly. It’s such an enjoyable departure from the web development and public television stuff that I usually deal in.
Frankly, there are so many fun things about blogging that tend to get lost behind the business end of it. I hope you don’t mind if I share a few things here that I will never be able to write about on my own blog where I must maintain a certain air of “authoritative professionalism” (which is a nice way of saying “stuck-up, self-importance.”)
PageRank and search strings and keywords, oh my…
If you’re like me, then you regularly check your blog stats for all sorts of important information like who’s visiting your site, how often, and, especially, how they’re getting there. When search engines like Google send visitors your way, it’s important–and sometimes quite fun — to note the specific search strings that got them there. The idea, of course, is to analyze your keywords and optimize your content to get more visitors based on what they’re searching for and what draws them to your site, etc., etc. However, there are times when that isn’t such a
brilliant thing to do.
I, for instance, routinely blog about my own unique style of writing perfect code or what I refer to as “anal coding.” It, therefore, doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to figure out the kind of search strings that often manage to bring visitors to my blog (“Anal journey” is one of my favorites.) nor to assume that they probably left disappointed. Like this blog and the award that made it famous, that
was something of a purposeful malapropism — in this case, the use of a negative term as if it were a positive thing to strive for. I hope to be half as successful at it as Liz.
The thing is, there are always certain search strings in the list that simply make no sense. You’re left asking yourself questions like, “How on earth did someone find my website by typing those words into a search engine?” I’ve tried a few of these (No, not the anal ones.) and gotten 30 or 40 pages into the results without finding any mention of my site.
If we assume that our stats are not mistaken, then we have to guess that somehow for some unknown reason and for a limited amount of time every once in a while, the underlying search engine algorithms simply stop to daydream. Why not? It’s a complex system. Given the choice between daydreams and occasional hiccups, Iââ¬â¢m going with the daydream theory.It works for me. Then again, I’m of the opinion that PageRank is determined by who can flip a nickel closest to the wall, so what do I know?
Podcasting, the Ultimate Form of Ventriloquism
If you think about it — and it’s best not to–podcasting is about throwing your voice literally around the world. It’s a ventriloquist act. If your blog includes a podcast, then you too have the unique privilege of hearing your own voice coming out of cheap, tinny computer speakers. I guarantee that this will remove any delusions you may ever have had that you sound eloquent or suave or erudite or anything else other than nasally and annoying. Every time I finish a podcast now, I
go and give my wife a long backrub and thank her for tolerating that horrifying sound for all these years.
Another thing about podcasting is that one gets to discover certain habits about oneself that are better left unknown. For instance, I have discovered that I have a tendency to take in a particularly snooty-sounding, deep breath right before delivering a long, self-serving diatribe of a sentence meant to make me sound important. These are things we always notice about others and never see in
ourselves. It’s not pleasant.
And then there’s the kids…
I work out of my own home. Lucky me, huh?
This means that, at any given moment, my children are likely to burst through the door screaming at each other about who did what. We won’t even discuss what I’ve gotten to learn about myself from that. Suffice to say that I’m glad it’s not a live show and that I’ve been able to look up all sorts of information about how to edit an audio file prior to uploading it. (BTW, this has also saved the world from numerous bad puns, the odd moments when I burst into song, and even the occasional belch.)
Thanks Again
Anyway, thanks again for the award and allowing me a place to ramble for a moment. It’s good to be able to drop the professional persona once in awhile and just be me.
——-
Hey, Timothy!
Thanks for this lovely thank-you card.
You chose a way to say thanks that is so perfectly in keeping with the spirit of SOBs and everything about this blog. What fun and how nice that you would take time to do this on a Saturday. That means a lot to me.
Liz
I had to laugh at the search strings section. I too am one of those people that looks at my search data with great interest and attempt to track back the link through Google. I think I got to 50 pages of results once before giving up. It does make you wonder how these guys found you. Some of the search strings are, quite frankly, disturbing but I guess at the end of the day so long as someone is reading your posts then that’s gotta be good, right?
Okay, okay, Mike, I admit it! I went 50 pages too once. I wish now I could remember the search term that had me so curious.
This is one of my up-to-the-minute favorites
9 things about me
I knew that search string part would catch someone’s eye. The newest weird one in my list is “I wonder” (which makes me think that someone accidentally hit ENTER in the middle of a sentence.) Still, I’m left wondering how that could possibly get them to a blog about public television station web development.
Maybe it’s Google wondering about you. 🙂
At last, a fellow believer in sentient computer networks.
Hey,
I live inside your computer. I have no real choice in the matter. 🙂
In that case, you should know that it’s my wife and daughters repeatedly looking up pictures of Hillary Duff on the Internet. No, really, I mean it. They want to get their hair cut like hers. Honestly. Stop looking at me like that. It’s true. C’mon, you gotta believe me…
Whew! What a relief, because I was thinking that you’d look silly with a Hillary Duff hair cut.
Search strings are fun. I sometimes used to call my weblog “The Great Google-Trap Experiment” from all of the bizarre searches it came up with. (Favorite? I’m the top link for “70s crafts” linking to a site that makes crochet thongs.)
My mission at the moment is to get to the top link for “candice” in google. I’m onto the first page, now.
When I first started my writing blog, where I am ME Strauss as the “About,” about six weeks into my writing I got to be the number 1 ranked entry for the word me on MSM.
I was the most important me that they knew. I think it lasted for about 2 months. THAT was incredibly cool!!!
Search terms… you gotta love em. My strangest one presently is some rap artist called Peanut Butter Wolf…
Pretty cool rating so high for ME. That is a great accomplishment. My most common search term presently is “Five Minute.”
My name “John Richardson” is very common but strangely I rate in the number 2 position on MSN and position 11 on Google. Your name is number one in both!
I figured the search term “ME” would bring up Mary Engelbreit but she isn’t even in the top 20.
So much for keywords…
J.R.
Hi John,
Happy Saturday! I haven’t done an ego search in so long I couldn’t tell you where I come up these days. Back then it was exciting just to see my name there at all.
Peanut Butter huh? Skippy or Jif I wonder?
To get your name up to number one, just blog more often. Google loves bloggers!
Candice: That reminds me of a great blog I stumbled across on WordPress once. It’s called “What Not To Crochet.” (whatnottocrochet.wordpress.com) I have no interest in crochet, myself, but it’s well written and incredibly funny. I still go back there periodically when I need a good laugh. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine.
Okay, ptvGuy,
First you don’t want a Hillary Duff haircut and now you don’t want to crochet.
Hmmmm. Are there other don’ts we don’t want to know about? 🙂
John: I had the word “enter” cornered for a while after one of my web accessibility posts back in May mentioned the use of the TAB and ENTER keys for keyboard navigation. To this day, that single word is still one of the top search strings that brings users to my site.
Wow, if we type the word Enter enough here, with what’s already on this blog, I bet Enter my domain could become a popular Successful Blog search string.
I get searches for words in the comments all of the time.
What an interesting experiment this would be, the pusuit of useless keywords. To make your site into the defacto authority on ENTER, we would have to discuss all aspects of entry and entering. For instance, I can state categorically that no one else I’ve ever heard of knows more about “enter” than Liz Strauss and that her website, successful-blog.com, has the entire concept and implementation of “enter” down to a science.
BTW, just for a little extra Technorati kick, I’m fairly certain that Liz could also tell us something about using Ubuntu to get a Google Video of Pluto–starring emmy-winner, Tammy Nyp–off of YouTube.
Just sit back and enjoy the traffic now. ;>
Hi ptvGUY,
I could then ENTER a keyword contest and after I ENTER I might become the first to hold the ENTER title for the ENTIRE world!
That’s ENTER-tainment.
pvtGUY
Thank you, I hope you will RETURN for my RETURN engagement in which I with ENTER into and mildy hypnotic state. For your ENTERTAINMENT, I will use the state of hypnotic (just west of the Mississippi) to float southward to your USB port where I shall ENTER your computer in a very Houdidni-like fashion. There I will ENTER the stage and screen of your virtual world to tell the woefully sad tale on screen of a young girl who ENTERRED the world of virtual reality and was lost on the Internet, unable to find a port 22 to get out again.
It’s a 2.0 musical — the song changes any time you hit the ENTER key.
I’m thinking it might be called “ENTER at own Risk.” What do you think?