SEO insights

The Novel Spaces blog has been running since July 2009, and a look at the pageview stats is revealing. What terms are people searching? Which key words are most effective at garnering those clicks? Here, standing out from the more than 1060 or so posts of the last five years, are the top 10 as determined by pageviews to date:

10. 4 Literary Agents Looking for Novels by Marissa Monteilh: 751
9.  So, It's Your First Convention As A Guest? by Dayton Ward: 820
8.  Q & A With Susan Schulman, Literary Agent by Liane Spicer: 1026
7.  Comma Abuse by Jewel Amethyst: 1091
6.  When's the Best Time of Year to Release a Book? by Marissa Monteilh: 1202
5.  Spotlight on the Caribbean Adventure Series by Carol Mitchell-Ottley: 1259
4.  Giveaway: Free Sex With Angelina Jolie & Justin Timberlake by Liane Spicer: 1271
3.  Naked Came the Stranger by KeVin Killiany: 3203
2.  So, Sex Sells, Huh? by Marissa Monteilh: 3561
1.  Looking for Pre-made eBook Covers? by Eugenia O'Neal: 7416

Interesting stuff. Take the top post, for instance. It scored more than double the hits of the one that's next in line. Makes one wonder: exactly how many indie authors are there out there anyway? Then it seems that anything with 'naked' or 'sex' in the title gets lots of hits (surprise, surprise) but I doubt our writing blog is what these Googlers seek. Although some tell us the day of the literary agent is over, the evidence seems to suggest that hordes of people are still searching for them. Advice seems popular too, whether on punctuation, conventions or the timing of book releases. And Caribbean adventures still rock!

I'm not suggesting that we take this information to heart and tailor our posts around these topics and key words. After all, a pageview is just that; it brings the human to the page, but does not guarantee said human will remain long enough to read or comment. (The average time spent on a page, I've read somewhere, is all of 15 seconds.) But it cannot hurt for us to try to use search engine-friendly key words in our headings so that our demographic can find us.

Then again, we wouldn't want to snub the clientele of that Russian porn site (2081 clicks) who came here looking for naked strangers, would we...

Liane Spicer is a writer with a warped sense of humour. You can usually find her procrastinating on Facebook or staring at blog stats in vague incomprehension.