From Google Insights, a new service that tracks popularity of certain search phrases over time. See the chart here.
Over on Eileen Flanagan’s Imperfect Serenity, there’s an interesting post on blog publicity, “Blogging dilemmas,” inspired in part by Robin M“ ‘s recent “How did you get here?” post. Both bring up interesting questions about the role of blogs in community building and the location of that line that separates good blogging from mere self-promotion and pandering.
Readers will probably be unsurprised to learn that I use Technorati, Google Blog Search, etc., every day to keep track of the Quaker blogosphere. I act as a kind of community organizer and my searches are for interesting posts talking about Quakers (until reading Eileen’s post I hadn’t check my Technorati “rank” in months). Many people’s first introduction to QuakerQuaker.org is getting linked from it, and I suspect I’ve accidentally outed a few beginning bloggers who hadn’t told anyone of their new blog!
I have a professional blog on web design and analytics (with a somewhat off-topic but satisfying post on top at the moment) and separating that out has allowed me to use this personal blog, QuakerRanter, for whatever I like. Most regularly readers would say it focuses on Quakerism and cute kid pictures and while those are the most common posts, the most read posts are the minor fascinations I indulge myself with occasionally. Quaker plain dress is something I practice but don’t think about most of the time (806 readers in past month). My wife and I love to bust on bad baby names and unfairly unpopular baby names (627 visits). I’ve also detailed some outings to semi-legendary South Jersey haunts (317) and score high on searches to them.
The conventional wisdom of the blog-as-publicity tool crowd would probably say these off-topic posts are distracting my core audience. Perhaps, but they’re infrequent on the blog and long-lived on Google. Besides, I think it helps people to know I’m not just obsessed with one topic. Being a part of a real community means knowing each other in all of our quirks. I’m more tender and forgiving of other Quaker bloggers when I know more of their story: it puts what they say into a context that makes it sound more lived, less ideological. There’s certainly good reasons for tightly-focused professional blogs (I’d drop Techcrunch from my blogroll if they started posting kids pictures!), but as more people read posts through feeds and aggregators I wonder if there’s going to be as much pressure for personal, community-oriented blogs to be as single-minded in their focus.
We all have diverse, quirky interests so why not indulge them? I have seen blogs that try too hard to pander to particular audiences and boy, are they boring! A certain degree of idiosyncrasy and subjective orneriness is probably essential. Personality is at least as important as focus.
PS: I’m also interested in making sure I don’t loose the core audience with all my side trips, hence the “latest Quaker posts” at the top of the page. I have at least one request for a Quaker-only RSS feed and will eventually get that going.
PPS: As if on queue, the next post in Google Reader after Eileen’s is Avinish Kaushik’s Blog Metrics: Six recommendations for measuring your success. Parts of it are probably a bit technical for most QR readers but it’s useful for thinking about blogs as outreach.
There’s an interesting discussion in the comments from my last post about “Convergent Friends and Ohio Conservatives” and one of the more interesting comes from a commenter named Diane. My reply to her got longer and longer and filled with more and more links till it makes more sense to make it its own post. First, Diane’s question:
I don’t know if I’m “convergent,” (probably not) but I have been involved with the emerging church for several years and with Quakerism for a decade. I also am aware of the house church movement, but my experience of it is that is is very tangentially related to Quakerism. I really, really hope and pray that Christian revival is coming to liberal Friends, but personally I have not seen that phenomenom. Where do you see it most? Do you see it more as commitment to Christ or as more people being Christ curious, to use Robin’s phrase?
As I wrote recently I think convergence is more of a trend than an identity and I’m not sure whether it makes sense to fuss about who’s convergent or not. As with any question involving liberal Friends, whether there’s “Christian revival” going on depends on what what you mean by the term. I think more liberal Friends have become comfortable labeling themselves as Christ curious; it has become more acceptable to identify as Christian than it was a decade or two ago; a significant number of younger Friends are very receptive to Christian messages, the Bible and traditional Quaker testimonies than they were.
These are individual responses, however. Turning to collective Quaker bodies there are few if any beliefs or practices left that liberal Friends wouldn’t allow under the Quaker banner if they came wrapped in Quakerese from a well-connected Friend; the social testimonies stand in as the unifying agent; it’s still considered an argument stopper to say that any proffered definition would exclude someone.
I’d argue that liberal Quakerism is becoming ever more liberal (and less distinctively Quaker) at the same time that many of those in influence are becoming more Christian. It’s a very proscribed Christianity: coded, tentative and most of all individualistic. It’s okay for a liberal Friend to believe whatever they want to believe as long as they don’t believe too much. Whether the quiet influence of the rising generation of conservative-friendly leadership is enough to hold a Quaker center in the centrifuge that is liberal Quakerism is the $60,000 question. I think the leadership has an inflated sense of its own influence but I’m watching the experiment. I wish it well but I’m skeptical and worry that it’s built on sand.
Some of the Christ-curious liberal Friends are forming small worship groups and some of these are seeking out recognition from Conservative bodies. It’s an achingly small movement but it shows a desire to be corporately Quaker and not just individualistically Quaker. With the internet traditional Quaker viewpoints are only a Google search away; sites like Bill Samuel’s “Quakerinfo.com”:www.quakerinfo.com and blogs like Marshall Massey’s are breaking down stereotypes and doing a lot of invaluable educating (and I could name a lot more). It’s possible to imagine all this cooking down to a third wave of traditionalist renewal. Ohio Yearly Meeting-led initiatives like the Christian Friends Conference and All Conservative Gatherings are steps in the right direction but any real change is going to have to pull together multiple trends, one of which might or might not be Convergence.
Our role in this future is not to be strategists playing Quaker politics but servants ready to lay down our identities and preconceptions to follow the promptings of the Inward Christ into whatever territory we’re called to:
From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. Matthew 16:21 – 28.
There’s some interesting follow-up on the Cindy Sheehan “resignation” (see yesterday’s post). One fellow I corresponded with years ago gave a donation then sent an email urging us not to fall into despair. It’s hard.
Go beyond Democratic Party fronts like MoveOne and you’ll find the most of the peace movement is a ridiculously shoestring operation. Nonviolence.org’s four month “ChipIn” fundraising campaign raised $50 per month but the sacrifice isn’t just short-term – just try applying for a mainstream job with a resume chock full of social change work!
Michael Westmoreland-White over on the Levellers blog talks about “keeping going through the despair”:http://levellers.wordpress.com/2007/05/30/needed-for-long-haul-peacemaking-a-spirituality-of-nonviolence/:
bq. This is a cautionary tale for the rest of us, including myself. Outrage, righteous indignation, anger, public grief, are all valid reactions to war and human rights abuses, but they will get us only so far. They may strain marriages and family life. They may lead to speech and action that is not in the spirit of nonviolence and active peacemaking. And, since imperialist militarism is a system (biblically speaking, a Power), it will resist change for the good. Work for justice and peace over the long haul requires spiritual discipline, requires deep roots in a spirituality of nonviolence, including cultivating the virtue of patience.
Michael’s answer is specifically Christian but I think his advice to step back and attend to the roots of our activism is wise despite one’s motivations.
Sheehan’s retirement didn’t stop her from “talking with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now this morning”:http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/30/1343232. She talks about cash-starved peace activists and contrasts them with the tens of millions presidential candidates are raising, most of which will go to big media TV networks for ads. Sheehan says we need more than just an antiwar movement:
bq. Like, ending the Vietnam War was major, but people left the movement. It was an antiwar movement. They didn’t stay committed to true and lasting peace. And that’s what we really have to do.
More Cindy Sheehan reading across the blogosphere available via “Google”:http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=cindy+sheehan&btnG=Search+Blogs and “Technorati”:http://technorati.com/tag/cindy+sheehan.
And for those looking for a little good news check out the brand new site for the “Global Network for Nonviolence”:http://gn-nonviolence.org/. I designed it for them as part of my “freelance design work”:http://www.martinkelley.com but it’s been a joy and a lot of fun to be working more closely with a good group of international activists again. Their “nonviolence links”:http://gn-nonviolence.org/links.php page includes sites for some really committed grassroots peacemakers. This long-term peace work may not give us headlines in the New York Times but it’s touched millions over the years. If humanity is ever going to grow into the kind of culture of peace Sheehan dreams of then we’ll need a lot more wonderful projects like these.
Every web designer under the sun talks about search engine optimization (SEO), but it amazes me to see how often basic principles are ignored. I’m in-between jobs right now, which means I’m spending a lot of time looking at potential employers’ websites. I’ve decided to start a series of posts on SEO myths and realities that will talk about designing for maximum visibility.
I’m not going to focus on any of the underhanded tricks to fool search engines into listing an inappropriate page. Google hates this kind of tactic and so do I. You get visits for having good content. Good search rankings are based on good content and the best way to boost your content is to present your page in a way that lets both humans and search engines find the content they want. Part one is on website analysis and tracking.
Don’t assume that your website is easy to navigate. One of the neatest things about the web is that we have instant feedback on use. With just a little tracking we can see what pages people are looking at, how they’re finding our site and what they’re doing once they’re here.
My most advanced sites are currently using four different tracking methods. Most utilize javascript “bugs,” tiny snippets of code that send individual results to an advanced software tracking system. I put the code inside a Moveable Type “Modules Template” which is automatically imported to all pages. Installing a new system is as easy as cutting-and-pasting the javascript into the Template and rebuilding the site.
HitTail
This service watches search-engine links and makes recommendations for new keywords. I wrote about this service yesterday in Blogging for the Long Tail.
Reeferss.com
This is a simple simple bit of software. Like every other tracking system it keeps track of referrers: search engines and websites that bring traffic to your site. But unlike the others that’s all it does. Why care then? It provides a real-time RSS feed of these visitors. I bring the feed into my “Netvibes” page (a customized start page, see below) and scan the results multiple times a day.
Google Analytics
The internet’s gatekeeper bought the Urchin analytics company in April 2005 and relaunched the product as Google Analytics shortly thereafter. This is becoming an essential tracker. It’s free and it’s powerful, though I haven’t been as impressed by it as others have. See its Wiki page for more.
It’s easy to find out what people are saying about you online.
Google Blog Search
Google can also let you follow blog references or keyword mentions on the blogs. Google will also track beyond blogs of course. Type “site:www.yourdomain.com” into the main Google search page and you’ll see who’s linking to your site (or to the competition). There are lots of other services that track blogs and mentions – Sphere, Bloglines, etc. They all have different strengths so try them and see what you think.
Feedburner
The best RSS massager has always focused on ways to track your RSS feed. They’ve recently introduced page tracking software too. It looks great but I just installed it this week. I still have to see if it’s as good as Feedburner’s other offerings.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of this information. Most of the tracking services provide RSS feeds (See The Wonders of RSS Feeds for an intro). I use Netvibes, a customized start page, to pull these all together into a single page that I can scan every morning. Here’s a screenshot of part of my Netvibes tracking page – the full page currently shows fourteen tracking feeds on one screen:
With tracking you find out what people are looking for on the internet. This helps you create pages and services that people will want to find. You might be surprised to see what they’re already finding on your site. Some examples:
Analyzing one site, I noticed that few pages I thought were obscure were bringing in high Google traffic. I looked at these pages again and realized they did a good job of describing the company’s mission. I consequently redesigned the site homepage to feature them and I made sure that those pages contained direct links to its most important services.
When I started work for another client I looked at their site and suspected that they’re most important articles were not being seen – visitors had to click through about four times to get to them. Six months of tracking confirmed my hunch and gave me the hard data to convince the executive director that we made some small modifications to the design. Having this strong content linked right off the homepage helped bring in Google traffic.
A neat little service called Conduit lets users create their own browser toolbars. The new QuakerQuaker Toolbar gives you Google search, the latest QuakerQuaker posts and Guides to the Quaker Internet all from your browser. Try it out and let me know what additional links or features you’d find useful.
I just relaunched my personal blog a few days ago, moving it from nonviolence.org/martink to quakerranter.org. I plan to write a whole big piece about it in the near future. But my access logs just picked up something amazing.
An
important part of the redesign was an automatic keyword generator.
Posts were run through a script that automatically pulled out keywords
from the text. My 2003 article, Going all the way with Movable Type generated the following tags, which appear as links after the post:
Following the links takes you to similarly-tagged articles. At least
that’s the conceit. When you follow a tag’s link you’re simply doing a
site search for that keyword. A little htaccess rewrite magic is making
the result look like it’s a static category page.
“Fine and well” you’re thinking, “big deal.” Well, here’s what’s
cool. There are 225 entries on the QuakerRanter blog. Google’s just
gone through and indexed the site and is now claiming it contains 1300 pages.
Each tag is being indexed as its own page. Every time I mention any
interesting term, it becomes a page that Google indexes and delivers to
its searchers.
Which brings us to today’s cool piece from the access logs. In
December of 2004 a rather innocent post on Quaker Ranter became the
center of a mini-whirlwind on the political blogs when it mentioned
that I had gotten a call from a CBS News publicist interested in Nonviolence.org.
All political blogs get publicity calls from news and opinion think
tanks trying to suggest (or plant) stories but no one’s supposed to
talk about it. I only mentioned it because it was so unusual. One of
the blogs denouncing the liberal conspiracy my post revealed was the
somewhat slimy Little Green Footballs. After a few weeks the
denunciations died down.
But this morning, someone looked up littlegreenfootballs in Google and came to my site. Because of my automatic keyword generator, tags, and static-loooking links, I’m now the number two entry, on two three-year old posts, now relocated to a days old quakerranter.org. Cool.
This mixing and matching of content and rich manipulation of data is sometimes lumped together in the cool bu zzphrase folksonomy.
Note that none of what I’ve done is a tricking of Google. Every tag is
really going to a page with that content. These are “natural” and
“organic” search results in the lingo of SEO. I’m just presenting my information in multiple formats that appeal that the widest array of audiences.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think I deserve #2 status for
“littlegreenfootballs” and I don’t think Google will keep it there for
long. It’s a bit odd that they have elevated that particular term so
high and no others tags seem so stratospheric.
As of February 2007, Google indexes 3,540 pages
on QuakerRanter.org, a blog of only 239 posts. In December 2006 30% of
my Google visits were to one of the “tags” page. Reconfiguring the blog
in this kind of tag-intensive way has more than doubled search engines
visits, again in a very natural and organic way. Adding tags has simply
made what I’ve written more accessible to search engines. Very cool.
Shortly after installing this new system, my servers started
periodically crashing (about once/week). The problem would be multiple
MT-Search processes overloading the memory.
My guess is that a search engine spider came along and started
indexing all of the tags. Each link initiated a search query in Movable
Type. The built-in search for Movable Type is just not able to handle
this volume of traffic.
I installed Fast Search to solve the problem (tip of the hat to Al-Muhajabah). It took awhile: Fast Search required a MySQL upgrade at my host. After that I needed to install these plugin fixes.
Then it was fine-tuning the htaccess files. It was been more work than
I initially expected and the tag results now forward to a funny URL that Google doesn’t love as much.
As will be obvious to anyone seeing this, the QuakerRanter has been seriously redesigned and moved off the Nonviolence.org server. I plan to talk about the technical underpinnings soon on “MartinKelley.com”:martinkelley.com. In the meantime “email me”:mailto:martink@martinkelley.com if there’s any horrifying glitches.
h3. Update, 9/1/06:
My visitor logs picked up a very interesting new Google entry for my site that highlights the power of keywords and tags that are running on this new site. More over on Martinkelley.com in the immodestly titled post “I am the King of Folksonomy”:http://www.martinkelley.com/blog/2006/09/i_am_the_king_of_folksonomy.php.