Google, I Know my Place
By Ubertramp • Mar 9th, 2008 • Category: Travel Geekery
Although this graph may resemble a backpacker’s bank balance as they travel from South East Asia to Australia on the latest leg of their round the world trip, it is, in fact, the graph of ubertramp.com’s Google search traffic over the past few days. Still, on the plus side, at least I ‘m guaranteed and increase in search traffic from here on in.
I guess this serves as conclusive proof that I am Google’s latest bitch. And why? Well, anyone who has been checking on the site over the past couple of weeks has probably already gathered this – but I’ve been doing a bit of early spring cleaning.
It’s been a good 5 minutes since I last updated the site, and as such felt a bit more tinkering (read: getting completely out of my depth with what I see as highly technical web issues) was well overdue. And despite being subjected to the inevitable search engine ‘virtual crucifixion’, I have to say it could have gone a lot worse…even if I do still flinch at that graph.
Essentially, Ubertramp needed a re-jig. Content was being buried, it was becoming a bit of a maze, and something had to be done. Unfortunately, as good as Wordpress is (personally, I think it’s the best blogging platform out there) it’s very nature - that of a blog – it’s always going to mean that earlier stuff that you’ve posted will start to get lost under the pile of more recently posted stuff (unless you are a wizard when it comes to deep linking in your posts – and I ain’t the world’s best deep linker).
The ol’ Google analytics confirmed this for me and it was amazing the difference in page views etc from old to new articles. Stuff was being neglected, overlooked, posts were beginning to get systematically banished to the darker depths of the uber-empire, and I simply couldn’t have that.
I needed a way to introduce a more user friendly and easily navigable structure whilst still retaining the blog. I ended up putting another CMS on the site for static content and buggering about with it until I worked out a way to run both parts side by side…hence the torrent of error 404’s and 500’s and a few more numbers that I hadn’t even heard of until 2 weeks ago.
Anyhow, the errors are now on the decrease and I’m beginning to win the server battle it would seem – and hopefully, sometime soon, we’ll see a few more exciting (at least for me) changes around here. I’ll keep you posted - in the meantime, why not have a nosey around. And, please, let me know if you discover any dead ends/broken pages…i’m sure there are still plenty in there Ta!.
Ubertramp is the brainchild of freelance travel writer and inveterate cheapskate Nath Richards.
On occasion, he's been known to write for cash, food or friends - but never to flash for coins or publicity. If you enjoy his articles and want one for your own publication then drop him a line. Unless hungry, he's quite approachable.
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Hullo Nath,
Dead links, gosh where to start; 404’s on the feature topics(images) perhaps? Ha.
But hey, that’s not why I am here. I often drop by to have a look, and well, I saw the changes slowly evolving into this, your latest incarnation. It looks better, sure. But I am curious. Why the frontpage shift from “Hey this I like to share” to “Read what others have to say”? Lost for words? Lack of time? Taking a step back (for what it’s worth, I knowit can be hard to maintain a blog/site with an original tongue) What’s the direction you had in mind for Ubertramp?
And about God, uhm, Google, don’t think too much about it’s (his?) mysterious ways.
Cheers mate
Hey Conrad - thanks for taking the time to check things out - and for the comments also. Well, hopefully all the 404’s have now gone (I can’t believe I missed the front page ones!)
I take your point on sydicated content, but it;s not so much shifting the focus of the site - not at all, in fact - I’ve just added extra articles in addition to my own. Personally I think the more contributions there are (of quality) from many different authors with a bit of travel savvy, the better the site will be. OBVIOUSLY my own point of view is the only one worth listening to
but it’s only fair to give others the soapbox from time to time…
Your right about the time consuming aspect of a blog, and if done correctly it’ll simply eat up your life. I had to take a small step back from that - but without a doubt the blog will keep running as I maintain that it’s an extremely valuable part of the site as a whole. Hopefully, after all the fiddling has been done, I’ll get back to posting soon.
As for the direction of ubertramp - itll be the same as it always has: Aiming to provide a useful service to folks travelling on a budget. And with the new management system I know I can take this much, much further.
Thanks man,
Nath
ps. We’re still waiting for that darn blog of yours! lol
Hey - Found your site on google. So you’re not doing too bad! Haha… Hey - I went to the visa checker thing and selected Australia - the link was down
http://www.ubertramp.com/index.xml?action.set_referral,id.2010,country.Australia
check it. Thanks for the site - it is currently inspiring me to get on a plane!
Great website! I enjoyed the Google article, aren’t we all googles Bitch to some degree. Let me know if you need any travel articles about Costa Rica. I would love to do a link exchange with this website. I am going to give you a couple Stumble Thumbs up to get the traffic back where it should be. Cheers
J
Austin - Glad you found the site, and thanks also for picking up on the visa checker. I see what you mena. I don’t really know whats happened there as it was working when i installed it. hmmmm. I think possiblysomething to do with my access file redirecting it somehow - I’m looking into it but still pulling my hair out!
we’ll get there in the end…
in the meantime we still have the facility, but now on the individual ‘travel visa service by location’ pages.
Thankfully the searches are now picking up again and i’m sure they’ll soon overtake the previous mean with the new changes. I’m still in the middle of the SEO updates but i can see a marked improvement already…which is nice…
Ive just checked out your blog…very cool, and i mean that. Beautiful photos. I particularly love the Knapp’s Castle ones ( http://blog.curtishots.com/2007/09/05/knapps-castle-w-the-boys/#comment-66 ). U need to give me some tips - I now know that a great DSLR doesnt produce good photos when in the hands of an idiot.
Jonathan,
We are indeed all google bitches and Yahoo slaves, hey ho - what can we do? lol. Thanks for the stumbles - theyve succeeded in getting visitors back around the new pages and i’m sure are doing wonders in the world of the search engine ‘bots.
On the subject of travel articles, If you have some that you’d like me to check out with a view to publish then now is a good time to run them by me. Part of the new site is dedicated to sharing travelers tales written by likeminded travelers the world over, and now that we have a designated, structured home for them - where people can browse easily by both destination and category - please do share them with us all.
Check the bottom of the homepage and you’ll see the links to submit articles by destination and/or category, cut and paste into the form and away you go! Nice and easy, I just wish everything (including site building) was that easy.
To you both:
I’ll be sure to include links to your sites when i update my links page, but in the meantime feel free to add your sites here http://www.ubertramp.com/component/option,com_weblinks/task,new/Itemid,14/
Thanks
Well, the glitch with the visa checker has now been sorted and is back online. Hurrah! Feel free to click away again, Austin.
Hey Nath,
Don’t feel too bad, the exact same thing happened to me at StartBackpacking.com and I am still digging myself out! If your keyword density gets too high, which I did completely on accident, you can get pimpslapped by them too….doh!
- Greg
Greg, that doesnt sound too promising…
The thing is though, maybe I’ve just been lucky as things have now picked up considerably since the search plummet. They are almost at previous levels and still on the up. I think ive been fortunate!
Ive yet to do proper SEo and all that kinda stuff too, so naturally I’m looking forward to seeing the fruits of my labours in a few weeks.
The main issue I’ve had since the reorganize is the loss of page rank on all my internal pages - basically ive started from scratch. New URLs throughout didnt help i guess, and there were just too many to do 301 redirects on. Anyhow, even that hasn’t seemed to affect the site over two weeks on. It makes me wonder about this duplicate page penalty and also just how google page rank really matters.
Ah well, I guess I’d be more concerned if things were’t improving so rapidly!
Cheers mate
Regarding your Google problems, here’s a tip: You run Text Link Ads = Google takes away your page rank and keyword rankings. Sooner or later.
Thanks supaswag - I’ll bear that one in mind
…great name that, by the way