I read every blog over the weekend. A lot of them are really excellent. I also measured the traffic as measured by Alexa. If you go to Alexa you can download a 'toolbar' which will measure the traffic of any site you visit. The measure is the rank whereby the simple No 1 means the most visited site on the web (I think that might be Google) and 10 millionth means the 10 millionth most popular website in the world. It is rare for a personal blog to be in the top 1 million. Anyway here are the top ranking blogs by traffic. There are other blogs which I think are just as good - or perhaps even better in terms of content. But these are the top ranking at the moment:
01. Maxine Erasmus (2.7)
02. Rich Taylor (3.3)
03. Vron Frydel (3.6)
04. Matt Clifford (4.1)
05. Ben King (4.5)
06. Kayleigh James (4.7)
07. Dale Gornal (4.7)
08. Andrew Giddings (5.2)
09. Seb Farris (5.2)
10. Julie Cordier (5.3)
(another excellent blog but with less traffic: Jenni Koetsier (7.2).
Any blog below 10 (million probably has no traffic at all).
Most readers of these blogs are probably other students on the course, so the first years are getting a lot of readers simply because there are more 'eyeballs' available. Factors like position on the page is probably significant. The top ranking blogs are probably because I have recommended them on the messageboard as useful blogs. There is a lesson there, if you get a recommendation (a 'link in') from another blog (such as the Winchester messageboard) that will give you a lot of traffic. Also if you post 'linkbait' on your site, such as useful notes or exclusive 'how to' guides (as both Maxine and Rich have done) then this will get you traffic.
Beyond this there is the whole question of 'off page' search engine optimisation. The key to this is:
(1) Submit your site to the Google directory, the Yahoo directory and all other web directories. You especially need to submit your blog top the DMOZ directory. A listing there will lead to a huge leap in traffic. The snag is that you might have to wait a year or more until you are registered there (human directory quality assessors will read it - one reason why DMOZ sends so much traffic is that only quality sites are allowed in - but many of your blogs are good enough certainly. So the sooner you do this the better. It is getting harder and harder to be allowed into DMOZ, so if you wait it might never happen.
(2) Leave messages on other people's blogs. You should go round all the blogs in all years and leave a message - a bit more than 'hi - great blog' (this is called 'comment spam' don't do that) - then you will normally automatically get a link back to your site. The person whose blog you visited will almost certainly go back to your blog - out of curiosity if nothing else. Go to blogs in the journalism department at Columbia School of Journalism in New York, and other leading UK journalism departments such as City University and Cardiff University. The blogs there can be interesting/useful anyway. The students there will appreciate your comments and are likely to visit your site. This will build your traffic. The people who do this sot of thing will tend to learn a great deal about journalism, make contacts ... and all these good things will automatically lift traffic to your site and create a virtuous circle. I am thinking of doing a "cull" of blogs with traffic under 5 millionth (maybe at Christmas) so we get down to a core of key bloggers. The other blgs we can just then keep going because they are for assessment for course modules. If we had the top 20 blogs (from all years) on the front page all of those would get a lot of traffic because the front page of Winchester Journalism gets up to 500 visitors a day (and growing all the time) and you would all get a slice of that.
(3) Create "linkbait" that your target audience will want to link to, or tell their friends about. The classic thing is Rich Taylor's notes on Joomla. When you make this linkbait, then you need to go round other websites and blogs telling people that you have made these notes. Leave comments on blogs pointing out that you are offering this material. You can also log on to Wikipedia and leave a link there. I am doing this myself for the first year Journalism Now material.
(4) Explore websites that are about search engine optimisation (SEO) - there's lots on the web, and sites with titles like 'how to get more traffic to your blog'. SEO is a key skill in the new form of journalism that is emerging and you are lucky enough to be there right at the start of it all, so you have a huge opportunity to become the first generation of journalists (or information brokers or whatever it is that journalists will become in the future). If doing SEO on your blog became a bit of a hobby, then that would be good. I am aiming to create an environment of friendly o-operative competition to see who can get the highest Alexa ranking (and then - a little further down the line - the best Google Page Rank an d best Search Engine Return Position - SERP - but more of that later). Obviously at the WINOL Xmas party we can have an awards ceremony for the highest ranking blogs.
MEANWHILE....
I have also read all the first year Journalism Now pieces - excellent, with a few quibbles here and there on my part. Everyone has passed that part of the course - 25 percent of the credit for that introduction to journalism module - some with very high marks, some by a narrower margin. But no absolute disasters. It was all about technically accurate English and these pieces are pretty much completely free of errors, though the sylistics are weak. You are moving on to style now with Evans, etc. Please note that this feedback was given within days of you posting up the material. The feedback was instant (we need that to be noted at some point) as is the feedback on work for WINOL (year two and three). The actual marks you record we are not allowed to tell you until well in to the New Year, because it has to be brought together with everything else.
ALSO...
I worked all weekend on the Joomla CMS system (2nd / 3rd will understand what this means). The template has been largely de-bugged and greatly improved. In technical terms we are good to go for a full written version of the WINOL site as well as the scheduled TV bulletin. Ian Anderson is guest editor again this Wednesday. FIRST YEARS - can we have a couple of volunteers to film an interview with Ian Anderson if you have any time on Wednesday, during he day.
No comments:
Post a Comment