As part of an effort to refresh UMPCPortal and bring it up to 2015 SEO standards I’ve been taking advice from various experts and looking closely at the quality of my site. Google Webmaster Tools has been instrumental to the process.
I’m currently doing two things:
1) Removing very old and very short content.
2) Optimising my keyword landscape.
UMPCPortal is over 9 years old and in 2014 had around 50000 pages listed in Google based on around 5500 articles, 1000 product pages, about 100 special pages and 20000 gallery images. The latter, I found out in early 2015, was screwing up my keyword spread, had very little textual content, was ad-heavy and clearly dragging down the site. The keyword spread was heavily biased towards manufacturers and brands which, as a niche technology site (ultramobile pc technology news, research, reviews) should not be my focus.
Like the books says, cross the chasm to a small island and build out from there. Or something like that anyway. [Ref: Crossing the Chasm]
I don’t know if many people out there are considering starting a new blog these days but there’s one thing for sure, the only way to do it organically is to focus on a tiny niche and build out from there. Some of you might have noticed my experiments with product blogs recently. I did the MyOmniaPro blog and now I’m doing the XperiaX10 blog. I definitely learnt a lot from the two experiences and see an advantage now in running multiple smaller blogs rather than one big one. The reasons?
Focused community. All the readers are there for one reason. It build quickly.
Easier SEO. Naming the blog myomniapro.com brought it to the top of a Google search for Omnia Pro within about three months. I’m currently testing with a sub-domain xperiaX10.carrypad.com in the hope that I get good keyword SEO from the domain name but also add to the value of Carrypad.com which I also own. If that works, I might do further sub-blogs.
Choose something you love, buy it, blog it. It’s so much fun to learn, to share and to get feedback on something you own.
Focused advertising. Through Amazon you can place highly targeted ads meaning better chance of clickthrough and conversion. Google is also able to determine the subject of your blog very easily.
Product-focused forums work well. Much better than forums that focus on a sector.
When the product dies, move on. If you don’t like the product, be honest, sell it and put the blog on ice. Move on to a new topic.
You’re not tied to a sector.
It’s easier to become an expert on a device than on a sector.
One disadvantage is management and time-splicing between multiple blogs.
WordPress MU helps to set sub-blogs up super quickly though so that shouldn’t be a problem. As far as time-splicing goes, focus on what you love but pay attention to stats. If you’re in it for the money, you need to attend to the things that are popular.
Hope those thoughts help you with your blogging plans. I’m off now to post my first impressions of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 – A device I’m really enjoying.
Oh, and by the way, I’m still running two big blogs because they’ve already got traction. I have no plans to spit them up as that would be too much of a risk.
