A Short Term Plan for Da Blog

I recently decided to go hunting for ways to increase traffic, considering my anemic numbers on the polls. (I have started to receive a small trickle of hits since the post below, but you haven't been voting!) This was the first hit on MSN Search. Point 5 reads:

Post often when you first start your blog. As time goes on you don’t have to post everyday but try not to ever go longer than a week without posting. Your blog will start looking like a ghost town and your visitors won’t want to come back if you don’t update it on a regular basis.

In case you haven't noticed, I've taken some big breaks in new posts in the past. That, in retrospect, was a no-no.

Looking back on some recent hits, I've noticed that a significant number of recent hits have come on my Upfront series, thanks to Google hits. You'd be surprised how high Da Blog can rank on Google's blog search service. Suppose someone heard that Patricia Heaton was appearing in a new Fox show and wanted to learn what the blogosphere was saying about it. A Technorati search for "fox upfront patricia heaton" turns up 35 results and Da Blog's own upfront coverage isn't among them. But Google produces about 73 - and Da Blog places 40th.

Obviously I need to get Technorati to start paying attention to Da Blog beyond having a meaningless listing for it. Technorati says that they'll automatically update their records every time I post since I'm with Blogger. But they also say that I last updated three months ago. Considering that was before March Madness, that's a problem. But surely I have "blog news" posts older than three months, right?

But this also hints at a way to continue to get Google traffic. So you'll see me make more "comments on the news" at semi-random intervals based on whatever strikes me. There will be some biases (sports, TV business, politcs) that will become evident fast. This will be a short-term solution and it's quite likely that I'll burn out, but I suspect this will become a stalwart feature of Da Blog for a long time to come.

And it starts... tomorrow (today as you're likely to read this).