Well, It's been a full month now since my last blog post so I apologize for not posting something sooner. Frankly, I would post more blog posts, more often, but I don't have a lot to talk about, well I don't have a lot I can talk about.
I thought I would write a blog about my website over the past year now. A little over a year ago it was really just a place for family and friends to chat with one another but that all changed in March of 2008 when I started writing my Geek Speak Articles. Now my website is 10% family and friends (and that's probably even lower now that I lost a family member that posted quite frequently) and 90% Geek Speak Articles.
Content Is King
Take a look at my visits graph from January 2008 to March of 2009. I started writing articles in March of 2008 and we can see what a big difference that made in my traffic:
Then in October of 2008 it all changed with my CSS Browser Hacks article which basically shot my website into a whole nother' echelon. I guess the point I'm trying to make is if you want to have a successful website, you need to give people a reason to visit it, and I've found that content is king. The articles that I wrote are the primary reason people visited my site and continue to be.
Search Engine Optimization
Another big contributor to my site's success has been the search engine optimization (SEO) that I've applied to it. Basically what this is, is using certain words and phases in my articles to try to rank higher in the search engines such as Google. If a user searches for the same or a similar phrase that I've used then my website will show up higher.
The graph below shows that people who visit my website and used a search engine has been rising steadily, especially after I started writing articles:
The Future?
The future of my website will probably entail having to switch my hosting options. Currently I have the cheapest hosting through 1and1 which costs me about $4 a month. At the rate my website is growing I'll have to upgrade or switch to another provider in the next year or so. Another headache will that, I will eventually need to stop using Microsoft Access as my database backend and use something more scalable (and works with classic asp, mind you).
And remember...content is king.
