Better search results for your fictional blog

My last post about search engines and blog fiction said not to rely on them if your entire website is a fictional blog. I had an idea that, if we all work together, could help blog fiction writers get some search engine traffic.

Before we get to my idea, let's get some background on how search engines work. When you do a search in yahoo or google for the phrase "cats", yahoo and google will give you about 30 billion results. The order that those results come is not random. They will try to give you the most relevant results possible. Most search engines do this based on a combination of the number of times the word "cats" appears on your website, and the number of other websites about "cats" links to your site.

It's that last point that's important. The words someone uses to link to your website is remembered by google (and, other search engines). So if a few hundred people link to your website using the word "cats", then google will think that your website is about "cats" even though the word may never appear on your website.

As I explained in my last post about search engines, the problem is that the words people use to find your fictional blog, may never appear on your website. They certainly never did on mine. No one ever found my fictional blog when doing a search for the words, "fictional blog". To solve this, we should exploit the part of google that takes note of our linking words. If you have a list of fictional blogs, don't link to them by name. Link to them using the words: "fiction", "blog fiction", or "fictional blog" etc...

Let's look at an example. I'll use Fluffy's blogroll, from The Professional Pet Blog Fiction as an example. (Not trying to pick on him, just the website I was reading when I got the idea)
Her Blogroll currently reads:

• (Un)Dead Man Blogging
• Atyllah the Hen
• Horton's Folly
• Peep This Diary
• The Squeaky Boot
• Undead Flowers
• Wilf's World

Linking to those websites using those words doesn't help them at all in the game of search engines. If you do a search for "Atyllah the Hen" or "Wilfs World" their websites already come out on top. However, if someone never heard of "Wilf's World" they wouldn't know to search for it. They would, instead, search for "Blog Fiction" or "Fictional Blog". Here is how I would propose Fluffy should change her blogroll:

• Blog Fiction: (Un)Dead Man Blogging
  
• Blog Fiction: Atyllah the Hen
• Blog Fiction: Horton's Folly
• Blog Fiction: Peep This Diary
• Blog Fiction: The Squeaky Boot
• Blog Fiction: Undead Flowers
• Blog Fiction: Wilf's World

Now, the next time google looks at fluffy's blog, it will note that "Blog Fiction" is used to link to all those other sites. Now, the next time somebody searches on "Blog Fiction" those sites will appear higher on the list. If we all do this for each other, it will be easier for new fans to find our Blog Fiction. I will soon be changing my feed titles to reflect this change.

If you have a fictional blog that I link to, Let me know in the comments if there's a different phrase you'd like me to use when I link to your site.

Better Google Rank with Blogspot?

Just as an addendum to yesterday's discussion about blog fiction and search engines. If you are still interested in getting traffic from search engines there's something I noticed. If you want quick traffic to your blog you may want to use blogger. The evidence is anecdotal at best, but enough to consider.

I had Terran Resistance up for months before it started showing up in searches other than "Terran Resistance". However, this blog, almost immediately - as in within a week - I started getting search engine traffic. Since blogger is owned and run by google, it makes me wonder if google somehow favors blogger sites.

There are, of course, other plausible explanations. Perhaps this blog was more "google friendly". Or the keywords were better. Maybe it got backlinks quicker so that it went up in importance. Even with those other possible explanations, it still seems damn odd that the difference is a week vs months. I wonder if anyone else has noticed this.

Update: It appears that at least one other person has speculated on this phenomenon.

Blog Fiction and Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization or "SEO" is finding little tricks for creating your website so that it will be more friendly to search engines. By "friendly" I mean so that when somebody does a google or yahoo search, your website will come up instead of somebody else's. Most SEO concentrates of google since that's where nearly 60% of all web searches are done.

There are 2 basic ways to make your website more visible to search engines.
1. Make it easier to be searched by a search engine
2. Make it more important.(usually accomplished by getting other websites to link to yours)

There are entire websites, books, and seminars dedicated to teaching you the finer points of SEO. Therefore I can't really add anything new on how to do it. What I can say is that, based on what I've seen, if you have a website with only fictional content (like a fictional blog). Don't waste your time on it. Just let it happen.

Nearly 6 months went by after going live I got zero traffic from search engines on Terran Resistance. I then spent weeks, maybe months, learning about SEO. I made my forums and blog more searchable. I spent time on other forums and blogs creating links to my site and getting others to provide links. Now that I've done all that "optimizing" I now get at least 1 hit every other day. So you might think that it worked right? Well... let's take a look at the top 5 searches that brought people to my website in 2007:

1. women in combat
2. terranresistance.com
3. marine drills
4. fast marines
5. drills marine

Well, that'll teach me to write militaristic scifi. So it looks like people that find my site aren't finding what they are looking for, and people looking for a fiction aren't finding my site. Oh and 2008 isn't looking much better. No one looking up info about marines has found me, but I am getting some equally random searches:

• Kramble (1)
  
• Terran Miller (1)
  
• ramona steele (2)
  
• alex chou (1)
  

To a human, these searches make no sense. Searches that SHOULD be finding my website are, "fiction", "science fiction", "blog fiction", or "online writing". To a machine like google though, it does make sense. Google, and most every search engine is based on the words on a website. Therefore, the words that appear on my website like "ramona steele" and "marine drills", are the search words that bring up my website.

This is the problem with people finding online fiction. Search Engines can rarely bring you directly to a fictional story base on how they work. Instead people are more likely to find websites that have lists of online fiction. Therefore, if you're trying to promote your online fiction, don't worry about getting traffic directly from search engines - like I did. Find websites that catalog online fiction(like this one) and get a link on that website.