This Dapp caught my eye a while back and I had hoped it would provide me a deeper insight into how my content is performing on a wider scale. While also pointing out any major flaws that might be hindering my content from being found outside of the platform and changes I could make.
Duplication Of Decentralization
In a lot of situations, this is an amazing thing to have going on regarding our platform. If one site, dapp, portal gets taken out or falls there always somewhere else to access the pipeline. It also makes users resistant to having freedom of speech silenced.
The downside is search engines find the duplicate content and need to determine which URL should be ranked. There seems to be some kind of threshold that triggers this check. Until it happens you can have quite a number of URLs to your content all out floating around there. At some point, the other ones that are determined to not be the best option are either delisted or hidden or so far down the ranking to never be seen again. I would often time find the “some search results were omitted would you like to run the search again.” When trying to work out what is going on.
This was an endless battle I fought with between my Engrave URLs and my Steemit URLs. Which by the way Steemit kick my ass in just about every instance. The Steemit site is a Godzilla when it comes to authority. Putting that into understandable numbers Ubersuggest a free site I use since I’m too cheap to pay for Ahrefs. Would rank the following out of 100: YouTube 100, Steemit 89, and my site 8. Ya, there was never a chance this actually takes quite a while to build up.
My biggest casualty due to this was the piece I felt would become a cornerstone and raise everything up. I was right it got around half my total impressions I ever got. It was also taken down quite quickly from google or hidden. Every time I would resubmit the URL manually my impressions would skyrocket and then fall like a brick after it got hit again. Thank you oh mighty Path of Exile | Synthesis League Overview I hope you did wonders for my Steemit pages. Even more odd turn of events the engrave version is showing up again at the time of writing this. Make up your mind Google!!!!!!!! Until then enjoy both and some cake while you’re at it.
While this is a known issue for many I did not until I took this journey. Many out there seem to wait around a week before posting entire articles elsewhere. The other solution is just to post a couple of hundred words of it. This explains why there are a number of Dapps posting on the blockchain with a couple of hundred words and a link to continue reading the post. This, for now, is not an option that I’m aware of.
Mobile Users
I suspected before I even started that I was not ideal for mobile users. I like to use a lot of screenshots and other than scaling them down there nothing else I do expect cropping. I’m sure when uploading to Steemit they do some more stuff to reduce the size and more importantly help increase the load time.
One time Google Analytics told me, my mobile users were having issues with text size on a number of pages. I had no idea how and my solution was to say “ok, I fix it” without doing anything at all. Shocking a few days later it tells me the issue appears resolved and this would not have any further impact on those links being searchable. I’d hate to think if any of my Steemit URLs were reported to have an issue but don’t.
I also found out as expected slow page load times for mobile users. I’ll admit I’ve never been a photo or screenshot editing kind of person. I go as far as cropping, some light text, and downsizing the image. This is something as a content creator I need to work on and improve.
I’ve not done any research yet in how I can improve the experience for this kind of users. I’m just hoping there are some free decent solutions out there to help me up to my game when it comes to editing screenshots to increasing my page load times.
Obtaining Traffic Referrals
As a content creator, this is always one thing I’ve wonder. Am I getting traffic from outside of our platform and can I get more of it? I also started to use a number of different social media platforms and other sites to share a link to my content. While some of them provide information it was not as deep as having a site with Google Analytics where I could have the bigger picture in one spot.
One of the first thing that caught my eye is I was getting referrals (link clicks) from platforms or to pieces of content I had not shared on those platforms. I was even getting them if I had not shared on that particular platform for a while as well. Now, these were not large numbers we're talking a couple a week. Still, I consider that progress to a site that was not very old that was struggling with issues of being show on search results.
I also learned quite quickly that Twitter was mainly my place to share and get traffic from. So these days that is where most of my efforts go. The downside during this experiment is our own ecosystem loves to show support those sharing Steemit website links. As such I got some unfollows and they performed much worse since they were a different URL. We got some amazing twitter hustlers out there. Since I’m no longer trying to get traffic to one over another I’ve switched back to just Steemit URLs.
Search Results
This one has been a joy watching them come in because my content has ended up in some interesting search results. As search engines try to work out where and how high your link should be ranked compared to everything else. While you can do your best to make it easier for it to understand what your content is about it ends up coming down to so many other factors that are always changing. According to google analytics, I ended up with a 2.1% click rate. There are possible ways to try and improve that through structured data but that’s far beyond what I can do.
As far as the searches I am 100% certain there is someone out there with a baby dinosaur looking into how to take care of it. I’m aware of this because my review on Ark Survival Evolved has a section on dinosaur breeding and taking care of the baby. I was saddened to say my review was not worthy of looking into for that person. I wish them the best of luck and please open a park one day that has never gone wrong ever!
There were also some people looking for some ummm “substances.” I am deeply saddened that I have possibly destroyed their lives with the discovery of my Drugwars.Io game content. There is however a chance as they never used my referral link. So in the grand scheme of things I might just be forgiven. In the future, I need to be careful where I wield such power.
Since I talk about in great detail lot things in games I ended up in so many different searches for those exact things. So my variety site was all over the place. I can see why some would just focus a single website on one game and make another site for another. That would more than likely help boost those numbers. That is however not the direction I go for creating content.
Finally, oh great people of the internet please stop trying to buy Path of Exile currency from the black market. I’m kind of disappointed how many times my content around that game was in such search since I use words like chaos orb, price, market, and buying. Along with many others regarding economics and other features of that game. If you are reading this now you know who you are.
Thoughts On Google Analytic
It scares the daylights out of me. I’m sure if I was running a massive site a lot of the data that it shares would be quite helpful. However, I’m just a tiny blogger not really looking to optimize for a particular screen resolution or operating system. Along with all other things such information could allow you to troubleshoot for.
Turns out I’m more of a Twitter stat kind of guy. Just give me the basics!
Final thoughts
I’m at least glad I gave this Dapp a try and hooked up google analytics to it. It gave me a personal feeling site and the opportunity to better organize my content while trying to learn some new stuff. Ultimately the war between my Steemit URLs and the Dapps has left it to Davy Jones’ Locker. For now, that is where I will leave it. A sweet farewell to the past four months trying to better understand that traffic and growth. I have much so much more to learn.
Information
Content is written by @Enjar. Screenshots are from my Engrave site and Google Analytics panel.