On Blogging – Pt. 3 More Questions

Just Trying To Understand

This is the third in a series that explores what little I’ve learned about the world wide web and my attempts to grow traffic on the internet.

Over the past four or five years I’ve read hundreds of articles and subscribed to services promising to show me how to increase traffic with SEO tips. The biggest result I’ve seen is huge increases in my incoming emails but not much I can point to regarding it improving traffic. A vast number say the same things over and over and pretend that they are offering unique insights. I’ve used an SEO plugin that evaluated every post. The plugins seemed to follow the usual set of rules as well.

Areas I intend to cover going forward include:

  • SEO best practices
  • Using social media
  • Issues with WordPress and other hosting options
  • The echo chamber
  • Paid traffic services
  • The technology con
  • Paid traffic and “influencers”
  • Traffic data reports

Who Am I

This site is my hobby TheIntentionalTraveler.com (Intend2Travel.info). I was a photographer, I’m retired, in my seventies and I live for travel. Six continents, over 80 countries and more islands than I can count and every one of the worlds oceans. I started a free WordPress site over four years ago to let friends and family see where I am and where I’ve been. It was free and had nothing to do with money. As people visited and subscribed it may have started to become about validation. Fame and money started becoming a possibility but it was still my hobby.

Today I manage two additional free websites, a paid WordPress site (I ran out of room) two online store sites (only marginally successful) and almost a dozen social media sites along with two Etsy outlets. After all that, I confess that I understand very little about how to succeed on the web and it starts to seem like an addiction…

About Hosts And Names

WordPress – The Good and The Bad

There are lots of options for hosting and building a website. I’ve used three different website builders; WordPress, Wix and Google. Since I started with WordPress (before Gutenberg) I’m most comfortable in that design environment. When I started our first eStore I used Wix and that required learning their site management and design from scratch. I did learn a number of things in the process:

  • Do your research before deciding
  • Pay attention to potential traps (more later)
  • Pick a design platform and stay with it
  • Watch for loss leaders and high cost upgrades

WordPress

There are actually two WordPress major options. WordPress.com is a for-profit hosting service operated by Automattic. WordPress.com launched in 2005, and is the largest WordPress host in the world. It is powered by WordPress, with some additional plugins and modifications added on.

WordPress.org is an open source project that has evolved in incredible ways over time. While it was developed and is supported by skilled, developers, designers, bloggers, and more, it has no organized support system. It does allow you to pick any web hosting service that allows the install with most providing 24/7 support.

WordPress.com advantages

  • Single source option
  • Free beginner plans
  • Good support as well as a large user community
  • Good templates and add-ons ($)

WordPress.com disadvantages

  • More expensive and smaller storage capacity
  • Site subscriber issues**

**Wordpress operates a subscriber plan where they keep control of blogger email addresses, preventing you from managing email campaigns yourself and making it more difficult to move with your subscribers to another platform. It also makes it very difficult to leave WordPress with your subscribers and go to another host and system.

My recommendation would be to find a host that supports WordPress implementation like BlueHost, SiteGround, GoDaddy, NameCheap and more and stay away from WordPress.com.

Domain Names

I’ve made a number of mistakes in registering domain names and have actually had to walk away from a couple because of cost and control. Because there can be issues with transferring your domain name from one plan or host to another and the process can take time, I now set up sites using two domain names. If I can, I register my own name and point it to the hosting servers (this can get complicated). That way the domain name stays under my control and I usually get a better price for renewals. The second domain name is the one I use in promoting the site and I keep control of it and just forward traffic. Most of my domains are registered with Google Domains. In the long run Google is the least expensive with an average of $12. WordPress.com starts for free with a paid plan but renewals are at Least $18 each year.

I’ve Experienced A Recent Change in Traffic

This is information from the previous articles. Just in the past six months my travel site experienced some good traffic growth. Following is a chart showing results reported by Google data along with the contributions from other search engines.

Looking at the data it raises some interesting questions:

  1. The Google impressions show major changes in growing, peaking in May and falling off again.
  2. The percentage of clicks per impressions also grow (from about 1% to 1.5%) with a peak in June and falling off again.
  3. The percentage of Google clicks to all other search engines starts at about 27%, grows to almost 57% and drops back over 3 months to 27%.

What do I make of this?

First, Google clicks seem to correlate somewhat with reported total impressions but do show growth in the percentages indicating a deviation of about a half a percent (same bell shaped curve) which suggests an anomaly.

Second, various search engine contributions as a percentage of total search referrals seem to remain constant when averaged over two months of results. The only exception is the Google contribution. Google’s share starts at just under 28% of total search referrals, grows to almost 47% in May and drops gradually back to under 28% (the bell curve again). Statistically it should have stayed at under 27% in alignment with the additional 5 other search engines.

Todays Featured Poster Iguazu Falls

A couple of hundred miles WNW into the rain forest from Buenos Aries is one of the worlds natural wonders. The Iguazu River, near the place where Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil touch, drops over the edge of a fault line and plunges into a series of gorges and fault layers producing one of the world’s greatest waterfall complexes.

These giclée prints are available in several sizes, custom printed for each individual order on archival, museum grade paper using fade resistant inks.

VISIT THE GALLERY

Join us as we visit historic treasures, natural wonders and vibrant cities set against backdrops that are endlessly changing and visually magnificent. Celebrate a world of travel experiences with these posters that are perfect for framing.

Visiting Helen, Georgia

A Dying Town That Saved Itself

On the surface it’s difficult to believe but Helen is the third most-visited town in Georgia, with Atlanta number one and Savannah two. Even more difficult to believe for a population of less than 1,000 people!

A town in Indian country and part of America’s second gold rush, Helen first gained success as a logging town. By the 1930s, the timber company and the sawmill abandoned the town of Helen, and the town began to die. Its first rebirth started when the Federal government created the Chattahoochee National Forest, creating some tourism and new lumber opportunities in the 1950s.

Late in the ’50s and early ’60s, Helen again began to die. With the town again in trouble, local businessmen created a plan to revive the tourist business.

Turning Helen Into A Destination.

Those businessmen and town leaders got together in 1968 and proposed turning their town into a recreation of a Bavarian alpine village complete with chalets with gingerbread trim, cobblestone alleyways, and old-world restaurants and shops. It quickly became a destination city known far beyond Georgia.

The Helen of today celebrates its created Bavarian heritage with a number of German and alpine- Bavarian festivals each year. Since 1972, Oktoberfest has been an annual tradition in Helen, providing one of the best known celebrations of German culture anywhere in America.

Stop By For Lunch Or Stay A couple Of Days

Today the town offers up a number of good restaurants like the Haufbrauhaus that serves authentic German cooking. Helen boasts a couple of wineries of note along with great hiking trails and tubing on the stream that flows through the town. And don’t leave town without picking up some Bavarian souvenirs.

On Blogging – Pt. 2 Questions

Just Trying To Figure Things Out

This is the second in a series that explores what little I’ve learned about the world wide web and my attempts to grow traffic on the internet.

Over the past four or five years I’ve read hundreds of articles and subscribed to services promising to show me how to increase traffic with SEO tips. The biggest result I’ve seen is huge increases in my incoming emails but nothing I can point to regarding improving traffic. I’ve used an SEO plugin that evaluated every post. A vast number say the same things over and over and pretend that they are offering unique insights. The plugins seem to follow the usual set of rules as well.

Areas I intend to going forward and cover include:

  • Traffic data reports
  • SEO best practices
  • Using social media
  • Issues with WordPress and other hosting options
  • The echo chamber
  • Paid traffic services
  • The technology con

Who Am I

This site is my hobby TheIntentionalTraveler.com (Intend2Travel.info). I was a photographer, I’m retired, in my seventies and I live for travel. Six continents, over 80 countries and islands and every one of the worlds oceans. I started a free WordPress site over four years ago to let friends and family see where I am and where I’ve been. It was free and had nothing to do with money. As people visited and subscribed it may have become about validation. Fame and money started becoming a possibility but it was still my hobby.

Today I manage two additional free websites, a paid WordPress site (I ran out of room) two online store sites (only marginally successful) and almost a dozen social media sites along with two Etsy outlets. After all that, I confess that I understand very little about how to succeed on the web and it starts to seem like an addiction…

I’ve Experienced A Recent Change in Traffic

Information from the previous article and starting at the end and working forward. Just in the past six months my travel site experienced some serious growth. Following is a chart showing results reported by Google data compared with the contributions from other search engines.

Looking at the data it raises some interesting questions:

  1. The Google impressions show major changes in growing, peaking in May and falling off again.
  2. The percentage of clicks per impressions also grow (from about 1% to 1.5%) with a peak in June and falling off again.
  3. The percentage of Google clicks to all other search engines starts at about 27%, grows to almost 57% and drops back over 3 months to 27%.

What do I make of this?

First, Google clicks seem to correlate somewhat with reported total impressions but do show growth in the percentages indicating a deviation of about a half a percent (same bell shaped curve) which suggests an anomaly.

Second, various search engine contributions as a percentage of total search referrals seem to remain constant when averaged over two months of results. The only exception is the Google contribution. Google’s share starts at just under 28% of total search referrals, grows to almost 47% in May and drops gradually back to under 28% (the bell curve again). Statistically it should have stayed at under 27% in alignment with the additional 5 other search engines.

SEO On The Website

Most suggested SEO efforts focus on 4 areas in post creation. Two or three years ago when I was using free WordPress hosting I made a mirrored site in an effort to understand what practices produced results. Each new post was added to the mirrored site.

There are millions of articles about using SEO:

  • Titles – Pick words that have meaning in the article. Insert call to action words in every title. Select words like you’re picking high value tags.
  • Headings – Use section headings like you pick titles but don’t repeat words that are in the title.
  • Tags – Use a hashtag online search site for relevant high popularity tags. Don’t use tags that are already in your titles. Always try and find at least 6 tags, Regularly use the hashtag # symbol. Use no more that 12 tags. Don’t use the #. Use as many tags as are relevant regardless on quantity. Never use more than 4 tags.
  • Alternative Text – Use these to tell the web crawler what’s in the pictures. It also helps to comply with requirements for blind visitors.

While search engine traffic was growing slowly, there had been some growth and I applied many of the SEO suggestions to the mirror site and none to the original site. After six months the traffic on both sites showed little difference.

There are a number of videos on YouTube featuring Google engineers with good information on selecting tags worth watching.

Using Social Media To Improve Traffic

Most discussions regarding SEO put some emphasis on setting up social media accounts to bring traffic back to the website. The focus is on the established names:

  • facebook – Create a dedicated page for your website (you need a personnel facebook page before you can add a business or site page) and either manually add a post on each new posting or set up an automated link.
  • Twitter – Add a twitter account for your website and either manually add a post on each new posting or set up an automated link.
  • Instagram – Add an Instagram account for your website and either manually add a post on each new posting or set up an automated link. Instagram can also be auto linked to a facebook page.
  • Pinterest – Add a Pinterest account for your website and either manually add a post on each new posting or set up an automated link.

My experience regarding additional traffic from links from these social sites has not been great. They represent only a little over 1% of the total traffic and out of 20 referrals 12 have come from Twitter, 4 from facebook, and 2 each from Instagram and Pinterest.

To set up auto-posting to social accounts IFTTT.com has some good applets you can add and there are a number of plugins available for WordPress. These may be difficult to deploy to free WordPress sites.

What Does Make A Difference?

After four years I’ve found that the only real thing that does show results and increases search traffic is the frequency of posting. There is a direct link to frequent posting and search engine traffic. Also subscribers become a significant source of traffic once you get above 200 or 300*.

Another area I explored was joining groups. Facebook has a number of travel groups and I have worked three different groups (more later)*.

*This has a huge impact on what I call the “echo chamber effect” which I’ll get to soon.

The Needles On The Isle Of Wight

The Isle Of Wight Is A Popular Holiday Destination For The English

Almost any reference to the Isle of Wight includes the iconic Needles and the famous chairlift taking you up to view the Needles Rocks and the colored sands in the cliffs behind the beach. The famous landmark has much more than just beautiful views. The areas attractions include that great chairlift ride, going from that overlook above the Needles past those colored sand cliffs to the beach. The beach includes concessions and paddle board rentals and if you want to get closer to the Needles take one of many boat trips. One option is onboard the High Speed “Summer Rose” or “Wild Rose” offering 15 minute high speed trips under the 400 foot chalk cliffs in Alum Bay with views of the gun slots, smugglers caves, Needles Rocks and the Lighthouse. These boats operate from Easter until fall, running every 20-30 minutes starting daily from 10:30 am at £15 per person

There is also the sand shop where visitors make their own colored sand souvenir jars using sand collected from the cliffs at The Needles. A 3D Cinema adding surround sound and an added feeling of motion.

There are a number of options for getting to the Isle Of Wight. You have choices of car ferries at Southampton, Portsmouth and Lymington with frequent service. Available fares include cars, individual passengers allowing you to bring your bike with you. For faster service there’s the Red Jet from Southampton into Cowes, the Wightlink catamaran from Portsmouth to Ryde or the Hovertravel hovercraft from Southsea to Ryde. All island arrival locations connect to public bus service.

If you’re traveling without a car the visit to the Needles can take some time. By ferry from Southampton to Cowes costs about £25 per person round trip. The biggest problem with going without a car on the 20 minute ferry is that once you arrive at Cowes it will require a bus trip of over an hour and a half to get to the Needles.

It’s much easier to travel as a passenger traveling from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight because there’s a train station at both ends. You’ll arrive at a sandy beach in Ryde and you can travel down to Sandown or Shanklin by train in about 20 minutes.

Todays Featured Poster • Normandy Beaches

Sunset at a very special beach. Erected in the surf at the invasion beach designated Omaha, this memorial is dedicated to the allied soldiers who stormed the beaches on June 6th, 1944 in Normandy France. Still today it remains the single largest seaborne assault ever, involving 156,000 soldiers being put ashore that day along with an armada of countless sailors at sea and airmen in the skies over the English Channel.

These giclée prints will soon be available in several sizes and styles, custom printed for each individual order on archival, museum grade paper using fade resistant inks.

Join us as we visit historic treasures, natural wonders and vibrant cities set against backdrops that are endlessly changing and visually magnificent. Celebrate a world of travel experiences with these posters that are perfect for framing.

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