Ordinary Gweilo

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What I learned today

One interesting aspect of publishing a weblog is finding out how many people are reading it, and how they found out about it. Unsurprisingly, most of my “traffic” comes from links on other Hong Kong weblogs, and a few posts that mention comments I have made. Shaky has linked to two of my posts, and the “Aussie Wine” still gets a few hits every day as a direct result! I have only just figured out how to do it, but I can now link to other people’s posts rather than just hoping that they will notice what I have written.

The other main source of traffic is search engines, principally Google. The interesting thing here is that you get to see the search term that was entered, so I now know that if you type “Hong Kong car tax” into Google, my short piece about Anthony Leung will be on the first page!

It has been known for people to deliberately try to get their sites high up in the Google rankings, and in the last few weeks the search algorithm has been changed to try and make this more difficult. One of the most common techiques was simply to mention certain keywords repeatedly, and apparently this is no longer so effective. Someone should tell Phil, because he is trying this technique in an attempt to get more traffic! Still, if it works, maybe someone will click on some of the other Hong Kong blogs as well.

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4 responses to “What I learned today”

  1. Phil avatar
    Phil

    Actually, I posted it because I thought it was funny. THe traffic thing was a joke and actually I was not thinking about it when I wrote it.

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  2. Ron avatar
    Ron

    Phil once asked me a question [at Blogger Fest] whether Typepad allowed us to type keywords?
    Well, I found out today that under every “new post” at Typepad, there is a link that says “Customize the display of this page” [or something like that].
    I tried it, and it allows, introduction, extended post, excerpt, keywords, formatting options, and the usual stuff like trackbacks and open or close comments. Selecting a future date/time for scheduled posts or changing a date of the post to reflect as if it were posted in past is also possible.
    I used the “keywords” box today with my article [Superstition] and immediately saw the sitemeter counter jump up [after about half hour of posting it].
    The search engines already seem to have indexed the keywords, but I am not sure.
    Will experiment when time permits.
    Cheers!

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  3. Chris avatar
    Chris

    Phil,
    I think it’s funnier if you pretend that you were trying to get more traffic by writing ‘Paris Hilton’ three times in one short post. That way both of us look smart!

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  4. Chris avatar
    Chris

    Ron,
    I haven’t played around that much with Typepad’s facilities, and neither have I (so far) made any attempt to attract people to this blog. Perhaps I’ll do that later, but I’m not even sure I want lots of people reading the nonsense I churn out. Anyway, thanks for the tip.

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