Search Term Strangeness

Last night I sat down to poke through my WordPress stats as I sometimes do.  I like to check and see where most of my referals are coming from, what sort of search terms people use to find my blog, that kind of thing.  It’s handy from the point of view that I can see whether my blog is being found by the people who are my intended audience.  Looking over at Pots and Plots, my cooking blog, it’s obvious that people come there, well, looking for food.  That’s exactly what I intend.  I’ve done a lot of marketing toward that end, expanding my reader base and linking with assorted foodie communities.  Since January, I’ve built a slow and steady regular readership.  Nothing like the thousands of visitors a day that some food bloggers get, but for someone who posts 3-5 times a week and isn’t a pro, I’m pretty pleased with my progress of 80-100+ hits a day.

Shadow and Fang on the other hand…  Well, this is where I live.  While it’s predominantly a writing blog, I do talk about other things from time to time, and strangely it’s the other things that bring me the most visitors.  Taking a look at my All Time stats, the number one search term that brings people to my blog is “Gerry Butler”.  929 hits from that alone.  I adore Gerard Butler and have mentioned him a few times as the face for my heroes.  It’s this post that seems to get the most traffic on that search.  Following up with 720 hits is Captain Barbosa.  At 244 the next one is Jaws.  Those would be in relation to the pumpkins my husband and I carved a couple of halloweens ago.  But hey, these are both old posts.  What about the last year?

My number one post for the last year was the one where I question the moniker of tramp stamp.  Tattoos are clearly a huge topic.  Lots of people wind up finding me when they search for celtic tree of life tattoo (which is what I want). Not too far under that are searches for “the crud” or “what is the crud?”  Really?  You had to Google that?  People find me because they’re trying to find out what the crud is?  I mean, it’s a common illness–I get it every year–but seriously.  That’s not what I’m about.

The first actual writing related search that’s popular was my simplified version of PBW’s Novel Notebook.  After that we get into my series on Character Interviews and my Pantser to Plotter posts.  Cumulatively, I think all the smaller, writing related search terms DO make up more of the 20k+ visitors than Gerry or Captain Barbosa, but still.  It makes me wonder if I’m reaching the audience I intend.  I have to remind myself that the stuff I talk about here doesn’t have as wide an appeal as a cooking blog does.  And I talk about stuff other than writing, so it’s natural that people who aren’t writers are stumbling across me for those posts.  It just cracks me up WHAT winds up being so popular.

5 thoughts on “Search Term Strangeness

  1. Interesting – the same thing happens to me on my “mainly writing” blog. I was looking over my stats, and aside from “How to write a serial novel” (which I’m considering doing a series on now), the most popular searches to my blog are for my reviews of my Miche bag, and my foam kitchen mat from Costco. I find it insanely amusing that so many people want more info on those two items…

    I don’t have that problem with my tea or nail blogs – all the searches that take people to those sites have to do with tea or nails for the most part. But apparently the big draw for my “writing” blog is product reviews. Maybe I should do more?

  2. I don’t know about others, but I found and read your blog purely for the writing stuff. Seems like a good time to say how much I enjoy it – keep up the good work. I didn’t know you did a cooking one too – I’m really excited to visit that 🙂

    1. Thanks. 🙂 I think the folks who actually STAY are here for the writing…otherwise, really, what would a regular person get out of this?

  3. Well, I found you through this year’s LB&LI, so now you know I’m one of the stats that came from that clickthrough.

    And one (only one) of the valuable things I get from your blog are links to all those other cool things that I don’t have time to surf for. So it’s great to hear about your writing progress and ideas AND to get to other good stuff.

    1. Oh great! I really do love sharing links and I know my blogroll is bordering on ridiculous, but it’s the best way I know to organize and share them!

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