Unlike many of my other websites, I haven’t spent anytime optimising the Eric Edelstein blog for the search engines.
And recently I was thinking the following question: What type of visitors are important to me?
Where do the visitors reading EricEdelstein.com come from…
1. Local regular readers
2. Local regular readers via RSS
3. International regular readers
4. International regular readers via RSS
5. Local new visitors who visit via the Search Engines such as google.co.za
6. International new visitors who visit via the Search Engines such as google.com
7. Local new visitors from other sources
8. International new visitors from other sources
The answer I’ve come up with for EricEdelstein.com is definately ALL.
Although I don’t monetize EricEdelstein.com through advertising such as google adsense, I do promote the Affiliate Network and Tshirt company’s I’m involved in. Theirfore the more traffic I get from new sources the better.
At the current time, the majority of visitors are South African (82%). The majority of these are also return visitors who already know about EricEdelstein.com rather than new readers.
The issue with having more return visitors rather than search visitors is that the traffic dries up pretty quickly if I don’t have time to write new postings.
So the more I think about it, the more I think for THIS particular blog, it’s important to have the Search Traffic, both local and international.
I wander how many of the South African bloggers are optimising their blogs both for South African search traffic, but also for international search traffic?
4 responses so far ↓
1 SHOUT.co.za // Jul 17, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Does this make sense in the world of blogging? Nielsen//Netratings today (10/07/07) announced it is to no longer rank page views and instead track time spent per person on sites. (http://www.nma.co.uk/Articles/34044/%20.html)
2 Dirk // Jul 18, 2007 at 11:15 am
I’ve been pondering this idea after reading Vinny’s blog about the global reach and influence a blog has. Do you actively measure conversion from this blog? You could of course easily set it up (you obviously have it with TS already). Obviously that’s ‘chance traffic’, since it’s not the main topic of your blog, but as you mention, the more sources the better. If you could convert your search traffic into new startup enquiries etc, all the better though. But mixed social/business blogs tend to have that problem of not being niche enough, thus a mix of search traffic coming through.
3 Catherine // Jul 18, 2007 at 8:31 pm
I think the key is to focus your target audience. If you are targeting just Saffas, then I don’t know if it makes sense to optimize for international traffic, unless someone from overseas is specifically looking for news on SA stuff. I don’t know, I’m a bit confused about this myself…
4 Robert // Jul 28, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Am I the only international one who goes and buys Eric’s online stock at eTshirts.co.za ‘cos I feel guilty about a typo?
I am glad to be in the mix. Just advertised the Tshirts on my Twitter! Got to do it bru. Ons is Suid Afrikaners. International or local, it makes no diffs. Support the people.
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