A web site devoted to the Gary enthusiast since 1998.

Sometime last December when I was in Hong Kong, I decided to get serious about my blog. Prior to that I had done nothing in terms of promotion or marketing. Part of the process of taking my blog seriously was going out to learn all I could about blogging. Even thought I have been keeping this website as a personal website since 1998, I never considered it a blog. At first I just did all the HTML by hand, and only later did I install MovableType and WordPress.

Part of the education involved reading sites which dealt with the subject of blogging. I currently subscribe to over a dozen such sites, and there are tons more out there. Many of which can be lumped into the Make Money Online category.

For the most part, I’ve found these these sites to be completely devoid of actual information to help bloggers. They mostly tend to be fluff pieces or they just state what should be common sense. The article which pushed me over the edge is one from Problogger. The article is titles “Why Being a Better Writer Affects the Performance of your Blog”. No shit.

You can read the article yourself, but the rest of the article is just repeating the title over and over. Being a good writer is better than being a bad writer. If that wasn’t something you couldn’t figure out yourself, there is no hope for you anyhow.

Another winner type of category is the numbered list: “X ways to do Y”, “Z reasons to do W”. You have probably seen them. They to are usually just lists of common sense things.

What is seriously lacking is data. Hard data where someone tests something and then tries to determine what sort of results it got. Even if data is bad, it would at least be an attempt to try and get some truth rather than just spout broad platitudes.

The blogs about blogging genre has sunk to the level of the self help section of the bookstore for the world of technology.

I’ve massively cut down on the number of people I follow on Twitter. It was getting to be just too much noise. Following everyone who follows me just isn’t possible. I have created a bit of an ad hoc system of picking who to follow:

1) Do I know you? I don’t have to have met you in person, nor do you have to know me, but I should know who you are if I’m going to follow you. You could just be the author of a blog I follow. Even people who comment on my website, replied to one of my tweets, or have emailed me can make the cut. This is a pretty liberal standard.

2) Bots begone. If the Twitter account does nothing but send out updates and URL’s, its gone.

3) Do you have anything interesting to say? While I don’t want all URL’s, I also am not interested in nothing about “i’m going to the gym now”. You should have something interesting to say occasionally.

4) Have you used Twitter in a month? This shouldn’t be a big deal if all you care about it noise I guess, but I also don’t see why I should keep you on the follow list. It seems a lot of people got on the Twitter bandwagon and then jumped off right away.

I was following about as many people as were following me, around 500. I’m going to try to cut that to about 200.

From May 14 to May 20, I received 514 visits from search engines. Those 514 visits represented 358 different search terms.

I’ve been focusing on the term “travel blog” for SEO purposes because I really have no clue what other term to focus on. (My results for “travel blog” are getting better, but I don’t think they will ever be that good) I think my search engine results have increased as my content has increased, simply because there is more stuff to search.

I expect the search engine traffic to jump dramatically once my images are indexed on Google Image. There are fewer images than pages of text floating around the internet. I also need to step up doing more of the “seven wonder” posts. They get a lot of search engine traffic.

In addition to “travel blog” I’ve also started to put some emphasis on “travel photography” and “travel blog directory”. I do well in that last one, so that wont require a lot of work.

I have, briefly, made it to the first page of search results for “travel blog” on Google.

This is the highest I’ve seen it. I’m usually on the middle of page 2 lately.

I’ve also cracked the Technorati Top 10k. I think the two are related.

Here are my weekly traffic numbers since Feb. 2007.

Wallaman Falls HD from Gary Arndt on Vimeo.

I’ve contracted some people to help me get a few more of my new projects online:

- Desktop Wallpapers - I purchased a script which manages collections of wallpapers and have hired someone to customize the script to work with my site. The goal is to just leverage my photos to drive more Google traffic to my site, which has been lacking. I’ll also be watermarking the wallpapers with my logo.

- Moving off Flickr - I’ve installed Gallery2, which is an open source, PHP, application designed to manage photos. It will make it easier for Google to index my photos and drive Google image traffic to my site. From now on, all the photos used on my site will be linked from here. This should increase my Google Image traffic dramatically over time.

- Facebook Application - I am getting a small Facebook app written which will display a travel photo every day.

Hopefully, this will all drive more organic traffic.

I have also started applying to affiliate programs. They will be showing up on the above sites once they launch and then slowly on the main site depending on performance.

I get the vast majority of my traffic from referring sites, and direct traffic. According to Google Analytics, over the last 30 days I’ve gotten 63.9% from referring sites, 20.8% from direct traffic, and 15.3% from search engines.

15% is a pretty low number. I’ve managed to look at where the traffic for other sites which have lots of photography comes from (via ProjectWonderful). Not surprisingly, they get most of their traffic from Google Image searches.

I looked at my traffic to see how much I got from Google image search. Answer: zero. I got not a single visit from Google image search. Other guys with similar sites were getting about 1500 a week.

I realized the problem. All my images are hosted on Flickr. I don’t get the benefit from search traffic for any of the images I put on my site.

I went to the Google Webmaster tools, turn on enhanced image searching and began the process of putting copies of my daily photos on my site and using them instead of Flickr. To the user, there will be no difference. I’ll still be linking to Flickr, but the displayed image will be on my server.

It will consume more bandwidth, but I’m well below my bandwidth limit.

I wish I had realized this sooner. This would be a great WordPress plug-in for someone to write. Cut and paste a Flickr link, and have the plug-in automatically put a copy of the image on the sever and use that.

I installed WordPress 2.5 on the main site. Rather than wait for the scripts on the server to update, I just installed a plugin which will do the upgrade for me. It was pretty painless. No problems with the theme.

I don’t like the default admin page for 2.5, but I got a plugin which changes the admin page and it is really nice.

I think my WordPress theme, Vistered Little, has ceased development. This isn’t a good thing for me in the long run. I hope someone picks up the ball with development, especially since I’ve read that it is one of the most downloaded themes for WordPress. I’m half tempted to hire someone to make a “Vistered Traveler” theme for me.

So how did I do in Q1?

1) I’d like to get 350 RSS. B- I did come close however. I had 322 subscribers on April 1. My origainl goal was 300 and I went with 350 at the last minute. I guess this is a comprimise.

2) I’d like to get at least 3 mentions from either major media outlets or Technorati Top 100. B. Technically, I did come close. I had an Entecard ad run on JohnChow.com and a link from Problogger.com. 2 for 3.

3) Get above 1,000 unique IPs per day. Fail. This was an unreasonable goal in comparison to my other ones. I ended up with about 500, which is in line with how everything else grew.

4) Get into the technorati top 60,000 A+. I crushed this. I’m actually in the top 15,000

5) Have the photo sites I listed previously up and running and bringing in some amount of AdSense revenue. C- I got the Goolge Earth site up and am working on a Smugmug site to sell prints.

6) Be at least the first two pages of search results for “Travel Blog” on Google. A- I did get on page 2, but it fluxuates. Sometimes it is on page 4 or 3.

7) Widen my lead on the Bloggers Choice Awards. C I actually lost my lead. However, I am still close. I think I’m behind by 4. It is just me and this guy running the Hostel from Buenos Aires.

I got a lot of attention from other travel blog awards which I didn’t set as goals, but is still pretty nice.

My goals for Q2 are going to be much more focused. Things like Google Rank I can’t do much about anymore. I’m not even sure that is the best keyword to focus on. Technorati rank will move on its own. I don’t need to focus on it.

1) 700 RSS subscribers to my blog. This is a bit more than a doubling, and wont be easy, but I think with a few spikes, it is doable.

2) 750 daily users on average. This is more realistic.

3) 500 Subscribers on iTunes. This would imply I actually get the podcast out the door.

4) Work on marketing and joint projects with other bloggers. This is sort of vague, but I think this can help me in many ways. I’ve only recently started talking to other travel bloggers. Most of them are in the business travel or travel industry niche, not the adventure and travelogue niche. For such a big industry, the community seems very fractured and small online. It is dominated by big corporate players.

5) Get written up in some non-internet source. I have no clue to make this happen. It is more a wish than anything else. I think this is necessary in the travel world, however.

Really, I just need to keep plugging away and keep doign what I’m doing. Find ways to improve and get better.

As of today I have 313 RSS subscribers. Based on my growth patterns, I figure I’ve been growing at 2.3 subscribers per day since I’ve started promoting the site back in December.

Actually, that really isn’t an accurate reflection of where I am now. You can see more data for my RSS growth here.

In December, I gained a net 28 subscribers. In January I gained 47. February, 59. So far in March to date I’ve gained 75. The numbers are larger, but the percentage gain is probably increasing at a slight rate.

What is interesting is that since I’ve started promoting my site, I’ve had no mentions from any big site. If you look at the graph, you’ll notice two spikes back in June and October of 2007. Since December, the growth has been mostly organic and at a steady pace.

The biggest changes as far as I can tell have been making the RSS link prominent on the site, making it available to people who visit the site for the first time, and encouraging subscriptions in other forums I participate in. In fact, my rate of RSS growth has been greater than growth in page views and users on the site.

Compared to many sites, I think I do a good job in converting traffic to subscribers, but I can’t quantify it.

I think my goal for Q2 will be 700 RSS Subscribers.

Here is the break down of traffic to Everything-Everywhere.com from Jan. 1 to Mar. 23.

• Referring Sites - 67%
• Direct Traffic - 19%
• Search Engines - 14%

That is pretty interesting in and of itself. I have put more effort into link building than into anything else and it shows in where the traffic is coming from. What search engine efforts I have been making have been under the “Travel Blog” term. As you will see, that might be a waste of my time.

From 1/1 to 3/23 I have received 4,070 visits from search engines. Of the keywords used to find my site, three of the top for were variations of the domain name: “Everything-Everywhere”, “Everything Everywhere”, and “Everywhere Everything”. Those accounted for about 12% of all keywords. The remaining 88% were distributed over 2,681 keyword searches.

Here are the top 25 searches:

What are the lessons I should get from this?

1) Trying to focus on any keyword is a waste of time. The vast majority of searches came from thing I never planned on. There is no way anyone could or would focus on those keywords.

2) My bigger posts tend to do better, but not that much better. My Seven Wonders of the Philippines post did well among keywords, but not so well as make a big difference. As they are content most likely to get linked and get traffic from search engines, those are the type I should focus on.

3) Don’t worry about search engines. At only 14% of all my incoming traffic, it isn’t much to begin with, and with that spread out so far, it is hard to focus on anything. If I wanted more search engine traffic, I’m not even sure how or what I’d focus on. My best strategy is just to focus on link building and try to write good content. Let the search engines take care of itself.

Lets suppose you are someone with no friends. You are a recluse who never goes outside. If you were to die inside your home, your corpse would rot until collection agencies came to get your electric bill. Literally, no one knows you are alive.

Now all of a sudden, you win the lottery. You want to get some friends. You buy some nice clothes, a nice car, and start going to clubs buying drinks for everyone. Suddenly, everyone wants to hang out with you. It is costs you $10,000 a night, but you finally have friends. Lets also say that every night you go out and buy drinks, 200 people are willing to hang out with you.

Now, lets assume the money runs out. 190 of those 200 people never even bothered to remember your name. They want nothing to do with you now. There are however 10 people who sill want to hang out with you even though you aren’t spending money on them.

How many friends did you really have at the peak of your popularity? The obvious answer is 10. The other 190 weren’t really friends, even though they may have provided the illusion of friendship.

This is pretty much how you can look at most of the traffic from Entrecard.

During my stay in Melbourne, I was dropping between 150 to 300 cards a day. The price for my travel site (Everything-Everywhere.com) got as high as 300, which means I had 150 people from Entrecard visiting my site to drop cards. I’d say on average it was around 260. In the week since I’ve left Melbourne, I’ve dropped zero a day because I don’t have regular Internet access. My price has dropped to around 120, which it was before I started dropping again.

I went from 130 people visiting my site on a daily basis to 60. That means that 70 of those people were only visiting because I was dropping cards on them. They weren’t coming for content or because of what I was doing. They weren’t real traffic, they were the illusion of traffic. The illusion of traffic shows up the same on your log file, but they will only show up if you jump through hoops for them.

If you are a brand new site and have zero traffic, jumping through hoops to build up some traffic might be worth it. Even if you get a bunch of illusionary traffic, you will probably pick up some readers in the process. The question however is how long is it worth the time and effort to keep people coming to your site who otherwise would not visit?

Many Entrecard users have developed a Paris Hilton syndrome where having hangers-on and the size of your entourage are considered a sign of status….even if they will leave you at the drop of a hat the moment the money stops flowing.

Entrecard is not free. Time is the most valuable resource and the time you spend day after day after day dropping on the same sites just to inflate your numbers is time you are not spending on creating new content or trying to promote your site to new readers. Moreover, the more real readers your site had, the more meaningless the 300 (maximum) fake visitors every day will become. A site with 3,000 readers would be crazy to spend a hour every day to increase traffic by 10%, especially when the 10% doesn’t care what you are doing. A site with 30,000 readers would be certifiably insane.

I still keep Entrecard’s widget on my site, but I don’t organize my life around it. There is nothing wrong with the system, you just have to keep in mind who your real friends are.

I have achieved my goal of getting to page 2 of Google for the term “travel blog”. Here is how I did it:

• First, I read up on search engine optimization. I had no clue what Google looked for and so this was really a necessary step. Your rank depends on two things: the content of your site and incoming links.
• I got a Pro account on SEOmoz.org and used their tools to analyze my site. I was able to run reports for which sites are ranked highest, where I rank, how the content of my page performs, etc. This was invaluable.
• I made subtle changes to the page. You might have noticed that I changed the title of the site from “Everything Everywhere” to “Everything Everywhere Travel Blog”. Not only is a bit more descriptive for people to stumble the site, but it also helps having the keyword you want in the title. Moreover, most of the people who linked to me will link the term “Everything Everywhere Travel Blog” which helps dramatically in determine where you show up. A very small change, but important.
• If you look at the site, you will notice a few other small changes. Under the RSS button, I changed “Subscribe to my RSS feed” to “Subscribe to my Travel Blog’s RSS feed”. Under the Bloggers Choice Award button I changed “vote for me” to “Click to vote for Best Travel Blog”. I put that in strong tags. I added a copyright notice at the bottom and used the H3 tag. Google looks to see how the term is used. By liberally putting the term on the page in different tags (headers, bold, links), it will add to the score of the page.
• I moved my blogroll to a separate page. This did several things. 1) I can liberally add many sites if I want to do link exchanges without bogging down every other page. 2) By limiting outbound links on every page, I can better preserve my page rank. 3) If I get page rank nuked for having lots of links, I am isolating it to a single page, not the rest of my site. 4) I am creating a page with the term “Travel Blog” in the URL.
• I did a search on SEOmoz on the top 200 sites ranked under “Travel Blog”. Many of them were directories. I submitted my blog to those directories and put the tiny button at the bottom of my site. That gives me links incoming. I also added rel=”nofollow” to all the outgoing directory links so I don’t get hurt on Page Rank. They still get links and the image, but it doesn’t hurt Page Rank. I also get a small trickle of traffic from the directories. Only put nofollow on the directory links and will link liberally when needed in normal posts.
• If you scroll down, you’ll see I had a day where I posted like 400 links to websites. I did it on this site, even though the link I added was for my other site. That has probably given me over 400 inbound links, all with the term “Travel Blog”. My Technorati rank went from 70,000 to almost 20,000. I totally stumbled into that link list, but it worked and I didn’t have to worry about the Page Rank backlash by putting it on my main site.
• Most of this was one time work. It shouldn’t require a ton of attention now that it is up and running. To rank higher I need quality links, not quantity. That will come from content, not gimmicks. I will probably never rank #1 because there are sites which have “TraveBlog” in the domain name. Most of the first page are either sites that host travel blogs, or the blogs from the travel editors of big newspapers. Also, the age of a site is a factor, and my site isn’t that old.
• I may do something similar for when I launch the podcast. Getting on page one for “travel podcast” should be much easier. Only 4 of the items on the front page are actual podcasts. I will have to make sure and label it the “Everything Everywhere Travel Podcast”.

The whole SEO process was very educational. I am confident I could do this for other sites now. There are some subtle things I have yet to learn, but overall, it isn’t rocket science.

I’m making good progress on my Q1 goals:

1) My RSS subscribers is now up to 280 as of today. I’m still looking to hit 350 by the end of March. I hope the podcast will help in that department. If I count podcast subscribers from iTunes (and there is no reason why not), I’m guessing I might be able to hit it.

2) I’m on page 3 for Google for the search term “travel blog”. My goal was page 2.

3) My Technorati Authority is now over 200 and I’m in the top 30,000. I also have 66 Technocrati fans. (if I really pushed this, I could get in the Technorati Top 100. #100 is only like 240). Again, this is pretty much meaningless to me now. After pouring over my stats, I’m going to just focus on quality links.

4) Major mentions. So far, nothing.

5) 1,000 visitors per day. It is hard to do this and have lots of RSS at the same time. I think I might hit 500 on an regular basis by the end of the month.

6) 2 of the 3 site improvements are done. The third and big one should be up in 2 weeks.

I’ve spent a lot of my time in Melbourne working on things like search engine optimization for the site, building a site map for search engines, etc. It is mostly work which is only necessary to do once. Once I’m out of Melbourne, I don’t think I’ll have a lot of time to work on that and I’d rather focus on actually doing content, which has been rather light this month.

I’ve also begun to lay the groundwork for eventually adding ads to the site. I’m not going to do that for a while. I think it is silly to put ads on your site if you don’t have sufficient traffic (and I do not). The earliest I can see doing that is in 3 months. I’m very concerned about contextual focus of the ads. I’m going to really go out of my way to make sure everything is targeted to travel and not to “punch the monkey”. I want things to look like they belong there. So much of what makes web ads annoying are the fact they have nothing to do with what the focus of the site is. I’m going to line up affiliate programs with various hotel and airline companies, as well as sites like National Geographic and Lonely Planet.

I’ve been helping my friend Scott with advertising. He has a very popular site and runs a lot of Google ads. They really aren’t as great of a deal as they used to be and that seems to be the consensus everywhere I go.

The Where On Google Earth site is gaining some traction, but slowly. Its fun so I don’t worry too much about it.