My Google Analytics has shown me that my audience has yet to take off and that people are more interested in my homework post than my content posts. Google Analytics has shown me that no one is interested in my lucid dream blog content and that my main traffic is from my short essay. I was pleasantly surprised that I had eight recurring visitors but my Google Analytics shows that they didn’t hang around long. According to my Google Analytics, I need to up my marketing plan to get more of an audience. The marketing plan I talked about in my last Process Post for week 9 would fix most of the problems with my audience retention and my redesign plans would also help people be less confused with my site.
After reading the required readings for this week I found a solution to many of the problems I have can be solved using SEO. In the article 15 Reasons Why Your Business Needs SEO the author Sam Hollingsworth, says “SEO Builds Trust & Credibility,… is the Best Way to Understand the Voice of the Consumer,… Means a Better User Experience,… [and] Local SEO Means Increased Engagement, Traffic & Conversions.” All of these things are the things my website needs help with. If all of this is true my updated marketing plan will include learning SEO. I will probably not update my website any time soon as I now need to learn some new software and will make a big update later. By the time I update my website, there will be no more confusion about what my website content is and the right audience will be directed to my website because of this. Look forward to the update and I’ll see you later.
As an up-and-coming blogger, improving my SEO or Search Engine Optimization, will have a huge impact on my website’s success, especially if I plan to monetize my content. Having a good SEO means your website is geared towards search engines, thus appearing higher up on the results page. Our readings this week emphasize the importance of building your SEO, to widen brand reach and website visibility, as most consumers don’t look past the first few results (Hollingsworth, 2021). Until now, I have been focusing mostly on creating content and finding my footing building a website–something I have never done before.
But, this inspired me to test my blog’s SEO. When looking up “Fridays with Frosty” directly in Google, my site came up first! Thanks family and friends for that boost. This is huge for my site, as our readings say, “If you’re not on page one, you’re not winning the click” (Hollingsworth, 2021).
But, when you change the search terms, even slightly, to something like “Fridays Frosty” I disappear right off the first page of results. It looks like I still have some work to do.
This week, I used google analytics to try to improve my SEO. It says that 92% of my site’s viewers come via a direct search and are located in Canada. (Shout out again to the fam jam!)
But, 88% of the viewers on my site come through desktop, something I wasn’t expecting. This posed a problem for the way I integrate videos into my blog. My site isn’t user-friendly enough when you are on desktop. This had to change, because good user experience improves SEO. Our readings talk about this, stating “Google has learned how to interpret a good or unfavourable user experience, and a positive user experience has become a pivotal element to a website’s success.” (Hollingsworth, 2021).
My issue is I have been making my videos on TikTok, then saving them to my computer before posting, rather than just embedding the TikTok directly. This means that on mobile, watching the videos is fine, as they are already sized to fit the screen. On desktop however, the video size and vertical proportions are too big for the screen. You can’t see the entire thing. You have to do quite a bit of scrolling to even get to the bottom of the video. It doesn’t making watching easy. So, I needed to fix this for my larger desktop audience and hopefully, it would boost my SEO.
I had to redo all my video blog posts and embed them directly from TikTok. I decided I could also improve my website’s marketability at the same time, by creating a Fridays with Frosty specific TikTok. Up until now, I have been posting on my personal TikTok account. Once I reposted all my videos to the new account, I uploaded them to my blog as TikTok’s. Although it was frustrating to have to post everything again, it was worth it. My site looks way cleaner, and I have a head start expanding my brand over multiple channels (Check out my plans for that here).
Learning about SEO made me realize that I may have been using tags on my posts incorrectly. I have been treating them like keywords, and have since learned they aren’t the same. I decided to enlist ChatGPT to help me improve this. I imputed my most recent post, about Caitlin Clark (She’s awesome, check it out here!), into ChatGPT and asked it to generate tags for me (and it came up with the tags for this post too). It came up with some basic stuff, like “Caitlin Clark”, “Iowa Hawkeyes”, and “women’s basketball”. But it also came up with a few things I hadn’t thought of, like “basketball records”, and “TV viewership”.
I’m anxiously waiting to see if AI can help improve the traffic to this post, and my SEO, through improved tags. If it does, I will be going back and getting it to come up with tags for all my older posts.
The readings did demonstrate a few things I have been doin well in terms of SEO. They say good SEO “offers users the information they are looking for in fewer clicks, quickly and easily,” and “builds trust & credibility” which a positive user experience is part of (Hollingsworth, 2021). By splitting up my content into written and video sections, navigation is easier, making content faster to find. I have also made decisions about comment modifications that will foster a positive user environment. Read about those decisions here!
In the future, there are many things I could do to improve my SEO, with the help of analytics, like improving code so my website loads faster. But, those changes seemed daunting at this point and I would be way out of my depth. If I continue my blog, it will definitely be something to think about. Until then, I’ll just keep telling everyone I know to check out “Friday’s with Frosty” and hope it boosts my SEO.
Works Cited
Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 9). 15 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved April 9, 2023, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close
For as long as I can remember, my camera has always been my side-kick. Something about being able to capture a moment, an emotion, or a light in turn captured me. From the beginning of the semester I knew I wanted to create an online space for my photography. In reality, it was the reason I enrolled in PUB 101; while I didn’t lack initiative, I lacked the knowledge and tools to create and curate a platform for my photography. Finding a domain name and aesthetic was the first challenge. It was important to have a very visual, professional, and clean blog – a space where images could stand out. Eventually, after much thought, I settled on One More Klick.
One More Klick features a blend of photography, travel, and the outdoors. “Klick” is another word for kilometre, which was very fitting with both the outdoor and travel aspects of tis blog, marking the distance traveled, in addition to klick also being the phonetic sounds of a camera’s shutter. Since traveling, photography, and the outdoors are a passion of mine, I aspire to always challenge myself by going further, reaching higher, and persevering through the fear of the unknown. For these reasons, there will always be one more klick – whether it be one more photograph, or one more kilometre.
With the help of photographs taken during various travels
and adventures, my blog aims to share the stories behind photos, and provide
context. While some posts feature more
personal stories, they still hold some informative content – whether it be in
the form of tips and tricks, political context, or specific photography
settings to achieve a photograph.
Currently, the majority of the audience reading One More Klick consists of direct family and friends, with some page views coming from countries outside of North America. Some of the perks of traveling abroad include creating friendships and connections across the globe. Maintaining these friendships are even easier in light of the digital age. According to the 2018 Digital Media Report, there are over 4 billion active internet users across the globe, and there has been a 13% increase in active social media users since January 2017. The internet allows for greater connectivity, breaking the barriers of time and space. In just the touch of a finger, users can connect with anyone, anywhere. This immediacy has allowed me to connect with people from around the globe in little to no time. For example, I reached out to Hasham to ask for his permission to post his photograph for the Friends in Foreign Places blog post. Despite residing in Qatar at the time, within a few hours I received a response and we were connected once again.
This is especially useful for this blog, as I hope to expand
the audience internationally. Already, this
blog has most of its’ international traffic coming from the United States, with
other countries including France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Croatia,
Ireland, and Luxembourg to name a few.
It’s possible that some of the page views from the countries above are just bots, which are basically software that run automated tasks over the internet. This would become more apparent when cross referencing with the amount of time spent on the page and the bounce rate. Because I don’t know of anyone personally in Kenya, Sri Lanka, or Russia, I would assume that they aren’t actually real people reading my blog. If you’re reading this and you are currently in Kenya, Sri Lanka, or Russia, let me know!
With the goal of eventually creating a stronger following and international audience, having a strong social media presence would be a huge asset. Currently, Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram hold the podium for most popular social networking sites:
In his article Transmedia Storytelling, Jenkins (2003) highlights the importance of using a multitude of different social media platforms as opposed to restricting your content to just one. The advantage here is not only more exposure, but also meeting your audience where they are. With this is mind, I have created a Facebook page to share my blog posts. Having a separate page for One More Klick that is independent from my personal page means traffic won’t be restricted by my own personal privacy settings. Eventually, I will create an Instagram page which will feature different photographs linking them to their blog posts. If it weren’t for social media, very few people would know about my blog and even fewer would be reading it.
With blog posts being shared on social media, it was increasingly important for my blog to be responsive and mobile friendly. In Design Machines: How to survive in the digital Apocalypse, Travis Gertz (2015) criticizes the homogeneity of basic website designs. While I was trying to create a unique and customized aesthetic for my website, I ran into some serious challenged. While the desktop version worked perfectly, the layout didn’t translate well for mobile devices. As the majority of internet users access websites on their mobile devices, it was extremely important for my website to be responsive and mobile-friendly.
Social media allowed for networking and collaborations with other artists. My first essay 21st Century Nudes covered the topic of censorship of artistic nudity on social media platforms. This essay was inspired by Vince Hemingson, a photographer, filmmaker, and bestselling author based out of Vancouver, who’s beautiful photographs routinely encounter censorship. In wanting to share my essay on social media, I reached out to Vince for permission to tag him. Not only did he agree and share my article with his network, he commended my work and asked for my feedback and comments on his Artist’s Statement for his Nude in the Landscape series.
Already, creating this blog has allowed me to build concrete skills by learning how to use WordPress and Google Analytics, along with broadening my artistic and professional network. This blog acts as a live document, changing and improving as I continue to learn and create. I plan on continuing this blog alongside my adventures, and hope that one day it might flourish into something larger.
References
Gertz, T. (2015). Design Machines. How to survive in the digital Apocalypse. July 2015. Retrieved from https://louderthanten.com/articles/story/design-machines
Hemingson, V. n.d. Artist’s Statement: The Nude in the Landscape. n.d.Retrieved from http://hemingsonphotography.com/fine-art/nude-in-the-landscape/
Jenkins, H. (2003). Transmedia Storytelling. January 15 2003. Retrieved from https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401760/transmedia-storytelling/
Kemp, S. (2018). We are social – Digital report 2018. Retrieved from https://digitalreport.wearesocial.com/
After being rejected by GoogleAdsense (I am okay, I feel like it is because I have Adblock on so it will be something I need to fix in the future), I have been very interested in searching my own Google Analytics to view the audience I am reaching.
Amanda pointed out that my blog has an aesthetic to it that posting a bunch of ads in places that are meant to be open would ruin the image I have created. I definitely am more of a sponsored post person where I would rather review or promote something through a post than have ads all over my blog. Anyways, that is besides the point.
I decided to look at my Google Analytics for the first time since beginning my Pub 101 journey and see who is following me.
The first piece of information that came up was this graph explaining my bounce rate, the amount of users that have visited my site in the last week, and how long people tend to spend on my site.
I have a pretty high bounce rate, ranking in at 36.36%. Ellen just explained that this is actually really good as it means people are clicking on my work and click off. Which sounds bad but it means I am getting views! They are single page clicks and lands on my browser.
I personally have only posted a select few articles on my Instagram. I do have a pretty reasonable following, so I don’t understand why I don’t just post articles. I have the link to my website in my bio and have received quite a few clicks from it.
The duration time is pretty high as well, but I feel it is just from my peer reviewers.
A majority of my viewers are from Canada and the United States which sounds right. Even 1 from Spain! I had one from Ireland once but I believe it was my friend who is studying abroad there right now.
People tend to be active on my account during mid day and later at night. That is sort of the theme here… late night posting.
My home page gets the post views and my most recent posting on Nostalgia has received quite a few clicks.
I find it interesting that most of my sessions come from a desktop computer (and have gone down.) I believe this can change once I start promoting my articles on social media.
This chart helps me see when my users return to my blog and how consistent they have been. It seems high on days I post but not on days I don’t. I could change this by uploading maybe 3 times a week periodically rather than 1-2?
It is wild to me that we can leave our digital footprints so easily and trace them back with no problem. I find it interesting how people can be use this data to stay in tune with how their websites or businesses are progressing.
I would say I have thrown in the towel with my footprints in regards to how I only look at things I need to or want to. I am very careful with the websites and areas of the internet that I use and search for. I would say this would be “throwing in the towel.”
Overall, it was interesting to search my analytics and see what I need to improve on.
I want to try posting more than 2 times a week and see where it takes me… so, stay tuned!
All Images provided by my personal Google Analytics account.
Featured Image Reference: @ZshulesZ on weheartit.com
In last week’s lecture, we learnt about analytics, audiences and marketing. It was very interesting for me to see how the numbers in analytics translate into the audience online engagement to our website.
Looking at my blog’s google analytics, I notice that Monday and Tuesday seem to be the peak of traffic. And I think that definitely has something to do with the fact that our lecture is on Tuesday, and I tend to upload all my new posts on Monday night or Tuesday. The bounce rate of my blog is around 51%. People averagely spend around 5 min on my site. From what we learnt in lecture, the lower the bounce rate, the better. Because that means people are actually taking time reading my blog. That is definitely something I could improve on.
Another interesting thing that have come up in my analytics is where my audiences are located. Most of my audience are from United States, and the second most are from Canada. In the ranking of city, most of the visitor of my websites are from Vancouver, which is not surprising. But the second city in ranking is New York, which makes me quite happy since it is my favourite city in the whole world. I also get a few random users visiting from Spain, Belgium, Brazil, etc. It is exciting to think how someone across the world are visiting my blog. Another part of the demographic of my audience that has surprised me is the fact that there are more users are in the age of 25-34 than the ones in the age of 18-24. Since I fall in the category of 18-24, I’ve assumed that would be my audience’s demographic as well, but apparently it’s not the case.
I also notice that posiel.com of course is my main referral. But ever since I added my website address onto my own Instagram account bio, I’ve noticed an increase of incoming traffic from Instagram. In the future, I will definitely try and promote my blog posts on my social a bit more often, in order to drive up the traffic. I also get analytic report from my Instagram account since it is a business account. And it is very interesting to compare my website statistics with my Instagram’s.
In my opinion, these analytic statistics are so important because it helps us to understand our audience better, so that we could tailor the content better to our intended audience. But at the same time, it is quite a scary thing thinking about how every step we take on the internet every second is recorded and analyzed by others.
Nishita’s Blog is vibrant and eclectic gallery of multi-media art. The overall aesthetics are consistent, easy to navigate, and convey a style that seems to be very reflective of Nishita herself: on her about page Nishita shares her love of hip hop, which is ever-present in the style and colours for this blog. The pages themselves are purposely monochromatic: the dark background acts as the perfect wall, drawing all attention to the images of art. As Travis Gerts explains in his article Design Machines: How to survive the digital apocalypse, “nothing makes a drop of colour brighter than when it’s set against a wall of grey”. Most of the images are vibrant, and bright pieces of art, contrasting well against the simple and dark theme. With this in mind, I find the title of her blog really hard to read against the busy background – changing the font colour from black to white, or even to the same red as the paper garland would allow for the title of the blog to pop, and become a lot more legible.
While navigating Nishita’s website, the first noticeable graphics were the large Instagram icons on the right, under the blog tab. There is a main instagram page that is private, as well as public art page While this is a wonderful way of building a following and audience, I would recommend linking your blog to your Instagram, which would allow for a stronger use of this cross-promotion. In addition, I would recommend making the main page public to allow for greater audience and reach – especially as it is labeled main, which leaves me to assume that traffic would be preferably diverted here as opposed to the accompanying art page. If this is not the case, I would remove the main link altogether. This seesaw between personal blog and art blog speaks to the multidisciplinary qualities of social media, and the undefined rules of online networks, which are “bringing change to all forms of information” (Kissane).
The mixed modes of art is really wonderful: this blog truly highlights Nishita’s talent and versatility. When it comes to videos, however, I could be cautious with the auto-play. For example, the blog tab automatically plays the last video at the bottom of the page – a vibrant alleyway filled with colourful street art and vendors. At first, its hard to say where the sound is coming: I check all my other tabs to see if there might be an add somewhere, or a video that popped up. We’ve all seen those people I class, in a café, or in a library, who interrupt the silence with an unexpected video, and panic trying to turn the sound off. Similarly, I often find myself browsing websites in a public space, and exit the website immediately as opposed to taking time to find the source of the sound. Keeping this in mind, especially if this blog is looking at retention, lower bounce rate, and overall keeping track of the analytics. If the auto-play function is something particularly desired, perhaps the blog could have a pop up muted video, like in Lonely Planet’s landing page, so the user immediately knows where the sound is coming from. Similarly, having a preview of the post as opposed to the entire post would allow for reduced scrolling, and potentially more retention: the easier it is to find what you need, the better the experience for the user, which means a higher chance of returning to the blog.
These simple suggestions could help elevate the blog to the next level, creating a stronger sense of legitimacy, and foster a strong following. Overall, Nishita does a beautiful job of curating her website to best highlight her art. If you’re an art enthusiast, or an artist yourself, I recommend you check out her work here!
