August 30, 2007
Firefighter Blog Recent Observations, Traffic Etc.
I have been playing around with the direction of this blog since it's beginning. Originally the idea was to post on firefighter injuries and deaths as a tribute to heroes. The blog was started just as blogging as a communication platform was taking off. I'm not sure if this was the first firefighter blog but it was one of the first.
The traffic numbers have always been low, enough that I could look at the traffic logs and see where each visitor was coming from. Often I'd follow a link from a visitor to his or her area, investigate the referring site and then research the fire service in that area and post a blog on the local fire departments or points of interest.
Enough to keep an ageing retired firefighter occupied and frankly a very fun hobby.
Along the way I have kept up with the gizmo's, widgets and gadgets that make content richer and more appealing to the eye. Firefighter Blog has maintained the top search spot on Google, Yahoo and MSN Search for years now, not because the content is absolutely material but because of optimization techniques learned from running my search marketing business.
Some things I have learned recently have changed the way I view this blog a little. I have learned in order to get "hits" I have to blog an event just as it happens. Google loves fresh blog content. I have seen some of the posts from this blog on Google Blog Search within minutes of publishing. Google sends 90% of the traffic here. Yahoo! a little, ASK.com less than 1%, the rest is from referring sites that link to one of the posts. An example is a game forum site called DarkFall Online. They linked to one of the Greek Fires satellite posts and as a result sent hundreds of visitors here. Who knew, as much as my kids play online games I had never heard of that one.
Another is a news forum in Turkey that also referred hundreds of unique visitors.
An ego boost and possibly a glimpse of the future for this blog was when CNN.com and Washington Post referrals showed up on the logs. Both sites linked to Firefighter Blog from their front news pages for the keywords "Greek fires" or "Greece".
Firefighter Blog was listed under "Greece Blogs." (trust me it's there) The Washington Post was one of the first newspapers to give blogs a space and voice on their online pages. The New York Times has dabbled in the practice as well. Old media in general has been slow to embrace blogs as a resource but we see this changing.
Event blogging by locals is here.
Efforts by local blog coverage of the Angora Fire in Lake Tahoe and the Zaca Fire near Santa Barbara provide blueprints for event blogging. Local blogging of the Castle Rock Fire near Sun Valley Idaho (Sun Valley Online) is another superb example.
Numbers. The Angora Fire brought 4,500 visitors on the second day of the fire. Google picked up one of my posts with a fire map.
The Zaca Fire brought under 1,000 visitors a day on average.
The Greek Fires brought 9,000 clicks the second day of the fires. Google decided my satellite maps were worthy. Google also indexed Greek fires content from Firefighter Blog (mostly satellite images) in every European Google search engine.
In contrast to U.S. fires and local blog coverage there is very little blog coverage from Greece and what can be found has little to do with fires and much to do with blasting the government.
So where does the blog go from here? As far as making money from the little ads sprinkled here and there forget it, I disabled all ads. The day of the 9k visits one person clicked an ad and I netted .34 cents, a waste of space.
Ads may be displayed here on a CPM basis. The demo's excite some brands so I may sell a banner here and there in the future. The blog was never intended as a money maker but I'd like to be able to cover my Direct TV Football Sunday Ticket and a pizza or two from this blog.
I'll keep plugging on blogging larger incidents and firefighting items that interest me. If the site returns to the days of 5 to 30 visitors a day I'm OK with that.
In the meantime if anyone needs an incident blogger for their publication(s) drop me a line.
The traffic numbers have always been low, enough that I could look at the traffic logs and see where each visitor was coming from. Often I'd follow a link from a visitor to his or her area, investigate the referring site and then research the fire service in that area and post a blog on the local fire departments or points of interest.
Enough to keep an ageing retired firefighter occupied and frankly a very fun hobby.
Along the way I have kept up with the gizmo's, widgets and gadgets that make content richer and more appealing to the eye. Firefighter Blog has maintained the top search spot on Google, Yahoo and MSN Search for years now, not because the content is absolutely material but because of optimization techniques learned from running my search marketing business.
Some things I have learned recently have changed the way I view this blog a little. I have learned in order to get "hits" I have to blog an event just as it happens. Google loves fresh blog content. I have seen some of the posts from this blog on Google Blog Search within minutes of publishing. Google sends 90% of the traffic here. Yahoo! a little, ASK.com less than 1%, the rest is from referring sites that link to one of the posts. An example is a game forum site called DarkFall Online. They linked to one of the Greek Fires satellite posts and as a result sent hundreds of visitors here. Who knew, as much as my kids play online games I had never heard of that one.
Another is a news forum in Turkey that also referred hundreds of unique visitors.
An ego boost and possibly a glimpse of the future for this blog was when CNN.com and Washington Post referrals showed up on the logs. Both sites linked to Firefighter Blog from their front news pages for the keywords "Greek fires" or "Greece".
Firefighter Blog was listed under "Greece Blogs." (trust me it's there) The Washington Post was one of the first newspapers to give blogs a space and voice on their online pages. The New York Times has dabbled in the practice as well. Old media in general has been slow to embrace blogs as a resource but we see this changing.
Event blogging by locals is here.
Efforts by local blog coverage of the Angora Fire in Lake Tahoe and the Zaca Fire near Santa Barbara provide blueprints for event blogging. Local blogging of the Castle Rock Fire near Sun Valley Idaho (Sun Valley Online) is another superb example.
Numbers. The Angora Fire brought 4,500 visitors on the second day of the fire. Google picked up one of my posts with a fire map.
The Zaca Fire brought under 1,000 visitors a day on average.
The Greek Fires brought 9,000 clicks the second day of the fires. Google decided my satellite maps were worthy. Google also indexed Greek fires content from Firefighter Blog (mostly satellite images) in every European Google search engine.
In contrast to U.S. fires and local blog coverage there is very little blog coverage from Greece and what can be found has little to do with fires and much to do with blasting the government.
So where does the blog go from here? As far as making money from the little ads sprinkled here and there forget it, I disabled all ads. The day of the 9k visits one person clicked an ad and I netted .34 cents, a waste of space.
Ads may be displayed here on a CPM basis. The demo's excite some brands so I may sell a banner here and there in the future. The blog was never intended as a money maker but I'd like to be able to cover my Direct TV Football Sunday Ticket and a pizza or two from this blog.
I'll keep plugging on blogging larger incidents and firefighting items that interest me. If the site returns to the days of 5 to 30 visitors a day I'm OK with that.
In the meantime if anyone needs an incident blogger for their publication(s) drop me a line.
Mikeswebmail @ Gmail dot Com
Labels: fire bloggers
