Martha.net

Tales from a Messy Workbench!

Oceanfront Property on the Sea of Rains

And no, I’m not trying to sell you a house on the moon… yet. 😉

I’ve ranted talked about spam before and I’ll probably rant talk about it again, but Gnomegeddon’s post on an amusing spam he got and the XKCD comic on how to dominate news sites on the cheap got me thinking.

My referral traffic has slightly outpaced my search engine traffic for a while now and 98% of that (the WoW Insider spike aside) comes from people following links from my comments and forum posts. In fact if you look at this year versus last year, most of the traffic growth is due to those winsome wanderers.

The referral traffic also hangs around a lot longer than the search engine folks (2:16 vs. 04:58)… which makes me wonder if it’s worth chasing the SEO metrics at all. A quick glance at the search terms coming in shows a pretty big disconnect between what searchers want and what they’re finding. *sighs*

To be fair, I haven’t been anywhere near as diligent as I should be about making sure posts are SEO-friendly, but now I’m thinking the comment spammers (and XKCD) might have the right idea. Instead of tweaking the Google fishing nets, maybe I just need to start laying trails of Reese’s Pieces…

(And if you aren’t sure what candy has to do with luring things from one place to another… then I will feel very old. :()

Not that I’m going to start spamming anyone, but maybe I should take my pile of ‘to read’ SEO posts and guides and toss them out in favor of simply Being More Social™.

I would certainly be more fun… *eyes books with a sigh*

Martha Bechtel

5 responses to “Oceanfront Property on the Sea of Rains”

  1. Gnomeaggedon Avatar
    Gnomeaggedon

    Winsome wanderers FTW!

    I have a post coming up in a couple of days that if I play it right will give me days of spam deletion. I dare say some traffic monitoring site will be impressed… of course I will know better.

    You know, for a moment there, I thought your link to moon property was a link to the Mage Conspiracy document. http://tomeoftheancient.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/the-mage-conspiracy-document/

    Reply
    1. Martha Bechtel Avatar
      Martha Bechtel

      … That is a scarily coincidental TotA post– the moon and E.T. in one! Darn you gnomes, taking all the good in-jokes! ^_~ heh

      Or maybe I was part of the conspiracy and just didn’t know it. *checks her computer for keyboard gnomes*

      Every so often I have the urge to do a spam post that talks about nothing but the topic of the comments I get… so there would be lots about buying fake passports, how pictures of model horses are the most informative articles these people have ever read, and some things I’d have to run through Google translate to decipher.

      *pokes Akismet* This thing is seriously magic…

      Reply
  2. So what now? « Armaggedon's coming!

    […] Martha.net: Oceanfront Property on the Sea of Rains (Another unofficial response – but right on the money) […]

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  3. My Voice, Your Voice & Bill Hicks « Armaggedon's coming!

    […] I cried through this more than I did through E.T. despite recent suggestions that E.T. and I might be involved in some kind of conspiracy, which may or may not involve some very reasonably priced Real Estate. […]

    Reply
  4. Tome of the Ancient Avatar
    Tome of the Ancient

    Lol! It’s kind of suspicious that we’ve both had ET on our minds, could be something to do with this impending alien takeover by the Gnomes!

    I don’t mind spam too much as long as it’s entertaining. One I had was so good I had to check out the site and ended up baking their carrot cake, now that’s my kind of spam!

    Reply

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