Week Five Link Repository
Building Traffic to Your Blog
In addition to the links below, check the Blackboard site for Liza’s presentation and various handouts about customizing the design of your blog.
Google Analytics
We set up this account in class by pasting the necessary code into the “footer.php” file for your site. You should be receiving data now and be able to see that someone in Davenport, Iowa spent 4 minutes and 3 seconds perusing your blog on Tuesday night because she did a Google search for “crazy analytics stalker” and your blog came up. If you’re not seeing data, let me know.
Google Webmaster Tools
We also set up this account to ensure that Google is aware of your site’s existence. Google will send out its “spiders” to “crawl” your site soon (creepy metaphor, huh?) and index your pages. You can speed up this process by using the optimization tools found on this site. Unlike analytics, you probably won’t see data for a few weeks or a month because Google doesn’t know you exist yet. But check back regularly to see if you have data. And be sure that you have already followed the next link to…
Add Your URL To Google
Google is a great search engine, but it’s not psychic. Add your URL to its list of sites to be indexed by following the instructions. This will hopefully get the ball rolling so that you can get some data on your Google Webmaster Tools site.
Google Blog Search
Find bloggers who write about topics similar to you (a.k.a. the competition), but don’t look at them as competition. Add them to your Blogroll and engage with their sites by reading and leaving comments. Blog linking and commenting are a two-way street and you will probably boost traffic to your site if you do this.
Google Keywords Tool
Use this tool to find out which keywords appear frequently in your blog or related blogs. This will give you an idea of potential tags you can use for your posts to increase search engine optimization and make them easier to find by Web surfers.
Linkvendor.com
This site has a lot of useful Web site data just waiting to be harvested. Choose from the options in the left menu, type in your URL and watch the hours slip away as you find out everything from how many outbound links you have on your site (Outbound Links) and which words appear most frequently in your posts (Keyword Density) to how high your blog appears in search engine results for a given keyword (SERPs Position).
Websitegrader.com
Get a free “marketing report” for your site. Even if you leave all of the fields blank (competitors, keywords, etc.), you can get a nifty marketability effectiveness score. The report will also tell you if there are things you can improve about the content on your site to make it more easily “spidered” and recognized by search engines, such as adding Alt tags to photos (the little descriptive tags that appear when your mouse hovers over an image). My blog (See how I just plugged it there? That’s what you should do to build traffic! Plug away!) received a score of 91 out of 100, so that’s the score to beat.
Audio Assignment Stuff
You need two-party (you and the person you’re interviewing) consent to record a phone call in Illinois. Don’t be sneaky.
Freeconferencecall.net offers free recording when you create an account.
Grand Central is an awesome service that also offers free recording, but Google just bought it and you have to sign up to be issued an account now. Even if you don’t get to use it for this assignment, it’s worth signing up for.
Audacity
This is the audio-editing software you will be using to edit your audio assignment. You should already have fond memories of Audacity from your glory days in Methods, but if you skipped Methods or have a short memory, here’s the handout on audio editing.