I’ve never had to worry much about page ranking, search engine listings and other SEO terms and techniques.  This was mainly because I’d either developed intranet applications that remain unseen to the web, or for other reasons like private web applications or the owner really just wasn’t concerned.  It wasn’t until the last few months when I experienced the Digg effect (on a very small scale, mind you), and subsequently being site linked to another page that I really got to thinking about how Pagerank actually works and how to go about increasing it.

We had two companies come in for meetings this week in regards to SEO and web marketing, and it was a definite eye opener.  I’ll be truthful here and say that I’ve always scoffed at the amounts these company’s expect for the work they do, and whilst I still believe its not worth as much as they ask, they definitely now what they”re talking about.  Luckily, the site we’re working on I Can Have It, wasn’t too bad and shouldn’t require much work (on our side) in the coding, content placement, keyword and back end areas.  Most of them are superficial changes which wouldn’t take any longer than half a day t implement which is good.  Of course there’s a lot of work over the coming months thats going to be put into Ad placement, Search keyword/Pagerank inflation and the like, so it’ll be interesting to see how much we get from our £x,000 bill.

I’ve also been watching this site, and its related reports on Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, and have been blown away by how many weeks I’ve been ranked #1 for weird search terms such as double plugger, weird thong, ‘Love all the pain away’ and the sheer amount of hits I’m still getting with the terms Perth Mall, Murray St Mall Webcam, Perth Webcam and many more.

So eventually when Shanco comes online and it’s wares are launched (when this happens, you’ll be the first to know), I’ll be paying close attention to SEO, Search engine friendly URL’s, link placement and affiliate programs/cross promotion.  Hopefully the bits I’ve learnt so far with HD911 will help with this.

It seems a few of my images (probably originally someone else’s) have been indexed on images.google.com, mysteriously within the last week or so I’ve started getting over 170 hits a day to a few posts effectively doubling my entire view history in the space of a week.  I was considering having a 2,000 hits party, but we might have to make that 4,000 now!

Kudos to you google.

I’m not a trainspotter by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a weird admiration of trains and all things transport. Same goes for cars, buses, boats and planes, its something that I find interesting whether reading about transport history, or about the newest fastest plane, train or mag-lev, or simply watching Top Gear or Fifth Gear on the televisision. But recently I’ve been watching a different kind of traffic. Something far more boring, and about as eventful as a small country town, and that’s the web traffic graph for this site.

You may remember a week or so ago I wrote a few thoughts about the release of the new version of Ubuntu, due to which I was riding a tidal wave of visits (in comparison to the previous time this blog has been open) for a number of days totalling over 400 page hits in 5 days (almost half the total hits since I moved the site to this new domain). Don’t laugh! This is good for HD911, any self respecting site probably gets this figure within an hour, or the likes of google whom I imagine hits this figure every nth of a nanosecond.

 Dismal Beginnings

Since the Ubuntu boom of late October things have dwindled completely, to a point where I’m averaging less than 20 hits a day now. Yes, like the impending recession after the mining boom, or the transport slump in the U.S since September 11 (why I can even attempt to compare this, I don’t know), my webgraph looks a lot like the recent stock performance of Northern Rock bank after their recent credit/lending crisis.

There’s only one reason for this too, I’ve got to pull my finger out and post some interesting content.  Time will tell, but I’ve got forces working against me, like my mediocre writing ability, these random darting thoughts in my head,  these bats in the sky, (Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?) or the damn snakes on this plane.  But let it be known, the vision of HD911 is to grow from its meagre beginnings to become something, and do this it will.  Someday anyway.

But its been interesting none the less.  We’ve recently launched three sites at work and its been interesting seeing the different interest in each due to product knowledge, advertising and type of the site.  For instance, our company site, new revamp, which has always been a solid performer has been on the increase ever since the launch.  No boom, just rising steadily.  Another, which has had a heap of marketing and a push in the past is dwindling now where as another with short term (I won’t say viral, but similar) marketing has gone from being a no name to having a huge influx of users on a daily basis.  I’ve also realised this Search Enging Optimisation (SEO) stuff is not for me, least not as a full time job anyway! I’m a doing man, and working in a position where you carefully lay the ground work for possible future gain is a little to unexciting for me.  It’s vitally important though.