The future of this Web site -OR- How NOT to move from Wordpress.com to your own domain.
Mar 2
Image © 2009 Paul Danger Kile http://dangerismymiddlename.com
The previous Wordpress.com version of this Web site had earned very high rankings in Google— at least compared to similar Web sites, but it’s not facebook. I really depended on that Google ranking. There are only two ways to take your Google ranking with you:
- Don’t let your URLs change. If you want this one to work for your Wordpress.com Web site, then you really need to pay Wordpress.com to use your domain name from day one.
- Use a 301 redirect to prove to Google, that yes, you really are moving, and that the new site really is yours. Unfortunately Wordpress.com would not allow me to do this.
Needless to say, my traffic here was devastated. People reading my words is what motivates me, and the lack of traffic indicates that people aren’t.
Why the ads? A number of organizations were satisfied that this is a valid form of media. (Thank you Ducati, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, DMG/AMA Pro, the AMA, and the rest!) But the Dorna rep said that they weren’t interested in helping anyone with a personal Web site. Those ads were an attempt to be more professional-looking.
Other reasons why my posting slowed down?
- The 2009 racing season ended.
- Most of my favorite racers, and their fans, are on facebook and willing to “friend” me.
Number two is the kicker. My readers are on facebook, so I have been posting to facebook.
There is only one way out of this mess. Move to facebook. Facebook apps are actually hosted on non-facebook servers, so I might be able to tweak this puppy so that it exists both as my Web site, and as a facebook app simultaneously.
The red line marks the point where I moved the content from http://dangerismymiddlename.wordpress.com to http://dangerismymiddlename.com. These are monthly statistics. Both axis on both graphs are different. The site reached 2,661 hits the month that it was ended, and topped-out at 4,742 hits the month afterwards.
These are weekly stats for the new site. Yes, moving without 301 redirects is that bad. Note: both axis on both graphs are different. The week that we reached 2,130 hits was a week where many people gave this page a thumbs-up on StumbleUpon.com: http://dangerismymiddlename.com/archives/3979
