Boost Your Click Through Traffic with Just One Tip (Headlines)

On a lark, I got a marketing ebook and was told to write catchy headlines. Then I got another ebook about writing headlines. So, I’m going to be changing all the headlines on this site, save a few, just to see if it boosts the traffic coming into the site.

Unfortunately, the fact is, the incoming links to Riceball.com have been dwindling. I think it’s just that sites are going offline, so old links are vanishing. This has probably not only killed the authority of this site, but also put us into the category of a “spammer” site with too many outbound links.

Since building inbound links, especially to old articles, is hard, I’m going to try to boost the search engine traffic. The baseline is 44,383 sessions from Oct 1, 2015 to Oct 1, 2016. 122 sessions/day average.

The top 25 entry pages are:

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/d/content/django-18-tutoria-52-adding-user-profile<br />
/d/content/w32tm-sucks-computer-did-not-resync-because-no-time-data-was-available<br />
/d/content/django-18-minimal-application-using-generic-class-based-views<br />
/d/content/raid-5-parity-what-it-and-how-does-it-work<br />
/d/content/django-18-tutorial-5-django-registration-redux<br />
/d/content/django-18-tutorial-3-adding-account-logins<br />
/d/content/vlans-netgear-gs108t<br />
/<br />
/d/content/zyxel-zywall-usg-50-vlans<br />
/d/content/zyxel-zywall-usg-50-backing-configuration<br />
/d/content/netgear-gs108t-200<br />
/d/content/recovering-dropped-table-django-migrations<br />
/d/node/1455<br />
/d/content/smdr-logger-ip-office-and-other-pbxs<br />
/d/content/diy-fixing-ic-berlin-glasses-if-you-sat-or-stepped-them<br />
/d/content/make-meme-lol-cats-text-with-the-gimp<br />
/d/content/creating-email-messages-clickable-links-add-events-your-calendar<br />
/d/content/information-technology-workers-it-labor-union<br />
/d/content/base32-encoding-and-decoding-javascript<br />
/d/content/django-18-tutorial-4<br />
/d/content/radeon-r5-230-ubuntu-linux-13<br />
/d/content/restarting-wifi-openwrt-link-goes-away-vanishes<br />
/d/node/1477<br />
/d/content/vba-crc32-function<br />
/d/content/django-18-tutorial-2-polishing-app-static-files-css-js-etc<br />
~~~~

I probably won’t change these titles.

The rest will get new, obnoxious titles. Let’s see if the numbers improve.

This follows up on the last task, which was to throw out a lot of off-topic or marginal articles. We’re down to 553 articles. There’s easily another 100 articles of chaff and non-technical articles in there.

[Update: I edited maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the titles. Many weren’t good to start with, so these new headlines were better, if only because they more accurately identified the content.]

[Update, Oct 21: Traffic for the past two weeks has been, basically, the same as before. That’s the bad news. The good news is that this is happening despite deleting or hiding more off-topic and lesser articles. Overall, this should help the site.]

[Update, Nov 30: Traffic for the past month and a half is basically the same, and the top articles are still the same, more or less. So this thing about writing headlines might not mean anything at all. Many of the dead pages are useless – a kind of sad thought. On the other hand, the Django tutorials are popular. I just wish I had time to do more Django.]