I’ve always been a people pleaser. I can’t stand if I think someone is upset with me. Even if I’ve done nothing wrong, I still feel responsible. I simply like people to like me! At times, I’m sure I try too hard, and that might throw people off. I have learned that I catch more flies with honey than I do with vinegar.
Now luckily, the blogging world is mainly filled with like minded people. It’s my kind of business! Integrity is incredibly important in the business of blogging. Specifically mom blogging. Why? Because moms listen to other moms!
So where am I going with this? Well, I spent half the day today researching keywords and trying to find a way to get traffic to my blog from the search engines. You see, I don’t get a LICK of traffic from search engines. 99.9% of my page views come from other sites, social media and people who have me bookmarked and come direct (or through email or rss feeds).
The deeper I got into my search, the more I realized how inept my site is at reaching search engines. I can only access it if I type my site name DIRECTLY into the search engine. Forget about keywords, I’m lucky that I can pull it up using the words Family Friendly Frugality!
So I got stressed. I got frustrated. I came down on myself because I KNOW I am not a business person. I KNOW I am not as tech savvy as I could be (although I have learned a lot lately!). I feel like there’s this whole group of people sitting on the other side of Google that I can help, and I simply can’t reach them! It’s not a great feeling. The deeper I dove, the shadier techniques I found. There’s a whole slew of “black hat” tricks to juice up your search engine optimization. Bad things, that good bloggers should NOT do.
I knew I, in good conscience, couldn’t go that route, so I went back to my key word hunt. When I finally had typed just about every single combination of money-saving-shopping-online-frugal-family-friendly-save-money etc into Google Keyword Tools and realized there was not a magic formula that was going to get me to page 1, spot 1…I felt defeated.
I sat and reflected a bit on why I was so upset, and the phrase that came to me was “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar“. Now of course I’m not saying my readers (or potential readers!) are flies. It’s a metaphor!
As a mom blogger, I need to earn the respect of my readers and my community. Random drop ins from search engines would be great, but ideally…I’ll work my way up in this community earning the respect of fellow bloggers and of my readers. So when the search engines finally do notice me, people who drop in find a community of people here to help them. Not just me.
No I’m not starting a forum, but I am encouraging you to get involved in Family Friendly Frugality wherever you want to be. Comment when something moves you (good or bad!), let me know if I screw up a deal…or I post a great one!
I started this blog to help people who are like me. I don’t know everything, I’m still learning! I’m sure I’ll make a ton of mistakes along the way, and I hope you’ll point them out. I’m sure I’ll go on another key word hunt some time soon (I can’t give up finding that perfect key word! It’s on now Google!), but meanwhile…I’ll just be me. The people pleaser, the nice girl, the mom who just wants to help. Being nice might not get me to the top, but it will get me exactly where I want to be. With my integrity intact (and a few less gray hairs).
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Love it! I felt the same way too, it was so frustrating! But you're right, i won't be #1, but I will be where I need to be. I'm a new follower. you can find me at preemiesandme.blogspot.com
Preemie Mami
So I'm not the only one who stresses out about this stuff? Thank goodness! LOL I'm not glad you have stressed over it, but I was starting to think I was the only one!
I felt the same way too. The funny thing is, I'm a freelance writer and HAVE to use keywords. However, when it comes to my own blog, I just can't figrue it out! It's frustrating, but I believe that as your site grows maybe you will in the results 🙂
Following you and hope you can do the same!
Mommy Misc…
Freelance articles I write seem to rocket to the top of google! I think they have the support of the site I write them for though, you know?
Thanks Krissy for the support! Hopefully we'll both catapult to the top of Google someday soon!
This is a great blog. I have been working on a post about How to Blog and gain traffic. I am not sure where all I want to go with it and I am still drafting, but this is definitely some great info.
Also, I will likewise be working on my BlogRoll soon. I too, have come to realize that a lot of my referrals come from social networking, so I will be allowing people the opportunity to return the favor and list one another on our Blog Roll's as a way to refer people.
Let me know if you are interested. 🙂
This is a great post! I just did the key word thing about two weeks ago, and I have to say that it is great to see that I am actually getting traffic from the search engines now. I went up about 5 percent in search engine traffic since I did it.