Day 37 – 23 Days To Go
As core parts of the marketing strategy, the website, www.thepelicancode.com (including blogs) were launched to Google and two videos have been launched to YouTube, with more to come. The power of both platforms is the ability to measure and monitor the results that have been achieved and adapt strategies accordingly.
Results from Google
Anecdotally various technical parties have told me over the years that it takes 2-3 weeks for websites to start appearing in Google results. So armed with my Google Analytics account the following results were achieved:
- Google Analytics – The Pelican Code 5.10.11
The beauty about Google Analytics is that you can see what percentage of the web-site traffic has come from Search Engines – a very important feature for my strategy. Once the Search Engines start to pick up on the site and the blog we should with reasonable expectation, expect to see additional traffic coming through.
The results above were clearly disappointing for me in terms of any search engine activity. I could see the number of hits that were being generated with the spike in activity associated with my FaceBook posting to my own personal page.
The lack of Search Engine activity drew me to re-examine what I had done with my launch to Google. In double checking via my Google Webmaster Account (at http://www.google.com/webmasters/) I found that I had an error report relating to a Robots.txt file, which I knew nothing about. This file is a file that tells the Google Search engine robots which files on your web server they can access and which they can’t – this file is often used to stop the double counting of data – for example Google is said to penalise web-sites if there is duplicate content. So a robots.txt file can be set up to stop Google picking up on certain pages if there is duplicate data.
In true positive style, you have to look at the problem and say :
1) how do I solve the problem and
2) how do I turn the problem into an opportunity
The problem was first solved by submitting a blank robots.txt file which enables Google to access and index all pages (copy of standard file enclosed). This was uploaded to my main site at thepelicancode.com
The opportunity came about however, in that I decided to re-submit my sitemap to Google that day. The sitemap included all the up to date postings made on both blogs over the past 2 weeks, so the sitemap was larger. As a direct result of that action four days later I had more hits from the search engines – not substantial numbers at this stage – BUT growing and that is what I need:
- Google Analytics – 10.10.11
I’ll update you as we continue to see how the results progress and what works and what doesn’t work.
You Tube
In regards YouTube I had an experience over the last weekend which has made me realise something very important. I have a regular exercise session on a Saturday morning – a boxcercise session with good group of friends that I have known for about 6 years. You know he score – we box we go for brekkie we talk crap for an hour or so and we start the weekend with a bang. Given this was the fist time I had seen a number of friends since the launch of the YouTube videos, naturally I wanted to get their opinions.
In the local café where we have breakfast they do not have Wi-Fi so a couple of the guys tried to bring the videos up on their I-phones and myself on my android phone. There was a problem.
The screen sizes for the iphone made it VERY difficult to read the writing on my videos, whereas on a normal size screen they are okay with a mobile phone it is very difficult to read. Now because I needed to ensure the quality of the videos was high I did not include a voice over narration as I know from experience to get rid of the background noise of an audio track is very difficult and also potentially very expensive – even though I have used odesk in the past to do this. As a result the music and the visuals are the only stimuli within eh videos. Now whilst this may no be a significant problem it MIGHT be further down the track and here is why.
When you set up a YouTube channel, you can access the statistics from the views of your videos. We will take the first video, Was Shakespeare a Fraud? – You decide.
- You Tube Statistics – Video: Was Shakespeare A Fraud ? You Decide
Now 235 hits may no appear to be significant let’s not lose site of the fact that the video has only been up for a week and very little promotion has been seen – especially given Google has only just registered my site. But it is the profile of some of those hits that is important. By looking at the screen shot above there have been 36 views out of 235 from a mobile platform – that’s 15% of all views. So 15% of my target audience cannot get the best experience out of the video because the writing is too small on the phone. That was my mistake……lesson learned. The next video will have to be re-designed to accommodate both mobile and PC views and I MAY have to consider adding a vocal track.
Other observations which are pertinent – was Shakespeare a fraud is getting searched on on YouTube and the video is coming up (and being clicked on) and now since I have added the channel to my YouTube site, I am getting referrals from the other video The top 10 reasons why Shakespeare could not have written his own works. It PROVES that cross promotion works.
So lessons learned:
Adapt video content fro mobiles
Get the sitemap updated and submitted to Google regularly
Cross – promote everywhere!!
Till next time
Keep the dream alive – but make it real.
Tim Lea
Author of
The Pelican Code
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