As I have my leg in plaster I am virtually tied to my computer. I decided that I might investigate the many programs available that are reportedly designed to increase the traffic to a website.

I looked carefully and found that most require a monthly subscription. Some as much as $40 a month!! I thought that was rather excessive for something that to my mind was slightly dubious and could result in issues with Google.

I found one ‘free’ program that was designed to increase traffic to a website by using targeted keywords. It takes the keywords and produces a webpage for each keyword.

You research keywords that are relevant to your website.  Once you have your keyword list you have to edit them to remove irrelevant ones and ones that do not make sense such as Publishing Self instead of Self Publishing.

It is then necessary to put the keywords into groups that have a similar context.  The next task is to produce a couple of paragraphs of text that each group of keywords fits into so that when each keyword of the group is inserted into the text it (almost) makes sense.

After editing the keywords that I had obtained for my test (I had searched Partnership Publishing) I was left with about 175 usable ones.  These I split into three context groups and wrote three versions of the text to fit around them. I was careful to keep it relevant to the keyword groups and the content of my website. The Traffic Hurricane sales pitch is that you can produce thousands of relevant pages easily. God knows what some of them must read like. With out careful keyword editing most pages would probably be rubbish.

One cornerstone of Traffic Hurricane is that it produces these ‘thousands’ of pages and they are all different keeping the search engines happy. It did not really work that way. I had three different context folders for the keywords. In reality this produced 98 pages using one version of the text (page content) 53 pages of the second version and 24 pages for the final group

The instructions recommend that you use a different domain name for the Traffic Hurricane pages. When the software produces each page it links it to your main website using a normal URL link in a prominent position. The reason for the separate domain name is ‘just in case’ the search engines smell a rat and delist the domain the Hurricane pages sit on.

The software was uploaded to my new domain folder and I followed through the process of producing the Hurricane pages. I have to admit it was easy to do. The default template pages Hurricane comes with were OK but not anything to write home about.

So after a little experimentation I had 175 Traffic Hurricane pages sitting in three separate folders. I was concerned that other than the keywords each page was not much different from another.

The next concern I had was that they looked to me a little like Doorway Pages. Something Google frowns upon.

The big killer for me was that as I had the Light version there were adverts controlled by the agent who supplied the software. They were large and obtrusive, they did not fit the page correctly and most were advertising Asian Women!!! Yep I REALLY want my website associated with that!!

On the bottom of the page was a large banner advert for the designer and main supplier of Traffic Hurricane. So are you going to tell me that having over a hundred pages with links back to the Traffic Hurricane designer is not going to get noticed by the Google web crawlers?

If you want a version that does not display the suppliers adverts then you pay $192 for the Pro version and you can add your own advertisements. I bet you a pound to a pinch of shit that there is still a banner advert for Traffic Hurricane on the ‘Pro’ version!

So would I pay $192 for something that produces hundreds of pages containing almost the same content and looks suspiciously like Doorway Pages? No I certainly would not! Have I kept the Light version running? No, once I saw the garish and unsavoury advertisements I had no control of as well as the sameness of the content I deleted it all and parked my new domain name.

Having such things coupled to my website was a risk that I did not want to take. So in conclusion the only way to increase traffic is by having genuine content and something people want to read.

Guardian Two Word count 23400 (Oh dear must get on with it!!!)

I have spent most of this week tweaking my websites (I’m a compulsive fiddler). I had been given some good advice from Steve Barancik of  http://www.shared-self-publishing.com. You can read most of our email exchange if you follow this link http://www.shared-self-publishing.com/clives-website-blog.html. There is a lot of Self Publishing information on his website so it is well worth a visit.

He was quite cutting regarding the original domain name I had chosen for www.partnership-publishing.com. It had not really occurred to me how important the domain name was.

Part of his “off line” mail is reproduced below.  I had asked him if he objected to my new site because after reading his advice I ended up with a website which I thought had a similar theme to his. As he had helped me in the first place I did not want to cause any offence.

Part of Steve’s email
“First, my headline response. I have absolutely no objections to your new site. In fact it’s funny to me, because for some reason I found myself googling (US) Partnership Publishing, and your single page on my site came in #4. That indicated to me what it indicated to you: the subject is under-addressed. I also think your notion of using your book as an example is nothing short of brilliant.

That said, I think you’re making one “mortal” error with your site, and it would feel wrong not to tell you. It’s your domain name! It’s a mistake of HUGE proportions to want to be the go-to site for partnership publishing and not to include the phrase “partnership publishing” in your domain name. PLEASE do not sabotage your efforts by going with publishing-for-mortals–that is, unless you intend to cover a wider range of options than Partnership Publishing. Even though you already own the domain name, I recommend chalking the expense up to experience.”

It is gratifying to think that people you come across purely by accident on the net can be unexpectedly helpful.  Dave Cantu the artist who produced the figure on my cover is another case in point.

Long may such encounters continue!

As you can see this website has a new look. I have changed the theme and split off the Guardian book pages.

I have split off the Guardian pages to make a dedicated website and rationalise the layout of this one as a general information/about me site.

There are now three separate websites.

This one of course
www.guardianscifi.com which is the new Guardian Book site
www.partnership-publishing.com a website dedicated to publishing, principally partnership publishing

Take a look and tell me what you think

I am afraid to say I have not done much on the writing front over the last week although I have jotted down a few ideas.

As a total aside I have decided to sell my lathe and my motorcycle.  I find that I am not using the lathe so much and due to ripping my Achilles tendon I am not going to be able to ride my bike for most of this summer. As the MOT and tax are due in September I thought it best to sell now at the beginning of the summer. If things work out then I will purchase a new bike next spring,

Guardian two word count 22400

I have not heard from the publisher at all this week (what a surprise) so I decided to email them. Guardian was scheduled to go to print last week. With only a week to go to Easter I needed to know what was happening.

I received a reply back that the files went to the printer on the 25^th. They’ve been through pre press and are in the process of being printed. The publisher has asked that the printers send 20 copies directly to me. The Publisher told me they will be getting an update from the printers shortly and will get back to me with a firmer date as soon as they have one. We shall see!

On another note entirely; now I have my new blog up and running I thought I would review the Qumana software I found to remotely write and then upload a new blog. When I checked on the net most of the reviews were dated 2006 or earlier. I also thought they were unfairly negative considering the software was free!

When you load it on for the first time you are asked for details of your blog. Once they are entered correctly (I had a bit of a hiccup as my blog is hosted by WordPress but embedded into Rapidweaver) If I did not have the added complication of WordPress being embedded the process would have been very simple.

Qumana then goes and retrieves any old blog files you might have. Once they are downloaded they reside on your local computer so as well as typing a new blog off line you can if necessary edit an old blog. Once the files are downloaded you are presented with a screen like this.

Blog Select Screen

Here you can select an old post to edit. I don’t normally edit old posts so for me this facility is largely unnecessary. Also you can from this screen add another blog or refresh the stored posts.

Once you press the new blog button you are presented with the screen shown below. You have a normal text editing screen with all the normal font and formatting options similar to MS Word. You are able to change the date and add HTML code if required. You can select a category from the list you have already active on the blog. The only drawback I can see is that you cannot add a category.

Add a New Blog

There are a few extra facilities such as adding and collecting images from various sources for the next post, which I have not used. However for a free off line blog editor I do not think you can go far wrong.

Guardian Two word count: 20600

There were a couple of  draw backs using Mobileme as a web host. PHP and MSQL were not available. This limited the blog software I could use as most require  PHP and MSQL to function.

Moving to Just Host has changed all that. I can now use any of the available blog software solutions. One requirement I had however was the blog should integrate with my existing web site and not be a separate entity.

After some research I settled on WordPress.  The main reason for choosing WordPress  was the availability of a plug in for Rapidweaver which made the WordPress blog sit with my Rapidweaver web site and look like the original Rapidweaver (RW)  blog.

The disadvantages with the RW blog were every time I added an entry I had to republish the web site and I could only add to the blog on my home computer.

Now I can add an entry from the WordPress web interface without having to re-publish my web site. The RW plug in then updates the blog on the web page. To make things easier there are several off line blog editors available that are compatible with WordPress. I found a free one called Qumana. I am able to type my blog entry, spell check and review it then once I am happy I just hit ‘Publish’. (That’s the theory anyway).

This is really a test blog to see if it all works as it should. So here is hoping you are reading this post. If you are not then it did not work!

I have not progressed with Guardian Two since my last post. I have spent my time fiddling with this blogging system. Hopefully I can get some more of it done tomorrow.

Cheers
Clive