My website has a statistics page that, among other things, shows what people typed into search engines to end up here. Below are the queries that I’ve received so far this month.
|
1 |
15 |
41.67% |
grow rich stay rich |
|
2 |
3 |
8.33% |
grow rich stay rich seminar |
|
3 |
3 |
8.33% |
john spaith |
|
4 |
1 |
2.78% |
bragging quotes |
|
5 |
1 |
2.78% |
clapping toastmasters |
|
6 |
1 |
2.78% |
course grow rich stay rich |
|
7 |
1 |
2.78% |
grow rich stay rich company |
|
8 |
1 |
2.78% |
grow rich stay rich program |
|
9 |
1 |
2.78% |
my.spaith.com |
|
10 |
1 |
2.78% |
quotes on bragging |
|
11 |
1 |
2.78% |
spaith toastmaster |
|
12 |
1 |
2.78% |
toastmaster blog |
|
13 |
1 |
2.78% |
toastmaster jokes |
|
14 |
1 |
2.78% |
toastmaster project 4 |
|
15 |
1 |
2.78% |
toastmasters clapping procedure |
|
16 |
1 |
2.78% |
toastmasters folk |
|
17 |
1 |
2.78% |
toastmasters is it really helpful |
|
18 |
1 |
2.78% |
toastmasters spaith five box |
(Actually the stats above are lying a little. Insert Mark Twain quote here. I know Google search alone sent me a about three times more traffic than the above queries indicate, but let’s allow that the numbers capture the gist of things. )
In summary:
21 queries - Grow Rich, Stay Rich (GRSR) or some variant. (Background I wrote on GRSR if you’re new to the blog. It’s arguably a get rich quick scheme.)
15 queries - everything else
There’s a few ways to look at my traffic being this skewed. Some are cynical, others optimistic.
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Very Cynical: Way more people care about get rich schemes than public speaking
GRSR is hyper aggressive in marketing their training courses, which is how I found out about them in the first place. If I can make a ton of money with a real estate scheme, why do I care about public speaking?
-
Cynical: Search engines are black magic
I just Googled “Grow Rich, Stay Rich” and I’m on the first page! On the other hand, Googling “Toastmasters blog” doesn’t even put me in the top 80 currently. I was in the top 30 for a while. Even though I have a lot more content and more people linking to me, I’ve fallen. And it’s not like there’s that many TM blogs to knock me off. This completely breaks the way I understand PageRank.
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Neutral: Competition
Google guesses there are 320 pages that match “Grow Rich, Stay Rich” (note the quotes are needed). A search for “Toastmasters” shows about 1.7 million, “Toastmasters Blog” alone has +1100 even though there’s just a handful of TM bloggers.
-
Optimistic: I’m horrible at site optimization
Even though I’m a software engineer, I’m no good at optimizing this site. I sprinkle “Grow Rich, Stay Rich” all over the place since I keep coming back to that guy. But until this post, I’ve never used the words “Toastmasters blog” together. (This query is how I’m so sure.) I consider this Optimistic and not Cynical because at least I have control over it.
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Optimistic: This isn’t a Toastmasters blog
Of the last 10 posts (not counting this one, which is self-referential on Toastmasters), I’ve only used the word Toastmasters 8 times. 4 of the articles didn’t use the word at all. Not being a TM only blog isn’t such a bad thing though, since I don’t believe in Toastmasters for Toastmasters sake.
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Optimistic: Someone Googling GRSR will join Toastmasters
Most of us find out about TM because of some random fluke. I certainly did. My hope is at least one person gets into the organization while on their way to becoming a millionaire.
If you want to help change my queries to be more Toastmaster centric and have a web page, feel free to link to me and put “Toastmaster” in the link description :). Please don’t put “Grow Rich, Stay Rich” or my search balance will get worse. Which it will, ironically, given how many times I’ve put “Grow Rich, Stay Rich” in this post!
And if you have a club and want a little help to get more Google hits, I’d be happy to setup a link swapping deal. See the Cool Clubs link.
Speaking of stats - I’d guess I’m at a few dozen RSS subscribers / regular web viewers, though the numbers are a bit trickier to piece together. Thanks to all for your support of self indulgent pieces like this and I look forward to a happy 2008!
in 1-17-2008 @ 19:50:51
[…] The Grow Rich, Stay Rich Blog? Google guesses there are 320 pages that match “Grow Rich, Stay Rich” (note the quotes are needed). A search for “Toastmasters” shows about 1.7 million, “Toastmasters Blog” alone has +1100 even though there’s just a handful of TM … […]