Strategically Communicating

Today’s class about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was great. It’s really interesting to learn about it from an academic standpoint because I’ve only had first hand experience with it. I just set up a google analytics account for my blog, and I’m pretty excited to start experimenting with that.

Anyway, I thought I’d tell you all about my awkward experience with SEO and my personal blog. I started a daily photo blog called project365 in October. I post one photo (at least) everyday for one year. For the month of April, I dedicated this daily photo blog to Sexual Assault Awareness Month.  On April 11, I wrote about how pornography is a contributing factor to sexual violence. The post was titled, “Day 183: Pornography and Sexual Violence,” and the next thing I know all sorts of pornography-related search terms are leading people to my blog! I was horrified!

Apparently, the blog post was published right around when a pornstar who goes by the name Whitney Taylor was making her big debut. What terrible timing. Now, she comes up everyday in my google alerts. From the little snippets I read on my emails, apparently she’s the next big thing, definitely not someone I want my future employers think is me.

I ended up changing the title of the post to “Day 183: A Video Set-Up Justifying Sexual Violence,” and as soon as I did that fewer traffic looking for porn was coming to my blog. All together, 101 searches for “Whitney Taylor porn” have lead people to my blog, and that’s the number one term that has lead people to my blog.

It’s interesting to see how people get to my blog in other ways too. I love going through my stats and seeing what gets people to my blog, how many people, and how often. Learning the hard way has been an eye-opening experience, and I think that having a blog is the best way to learn all about SEO.

Now, I definitely think twice about the titles (and content) of my posts and what people will find when they google me. I can’t help some things, like the fact that there’s a porn star named Whitney Taylor, but I can avoid people looking for porn coming to my blog. They are definitely not my target audience.