The Mysterious World of Search Engine Optimization

I probably don't spend the time on this internet contraption that I should, given it's my primary marketing tool. But every now and then I do poke my head around the curtain to look at the behind-the-scenes portion of this blog. There you'll find all kinds of interesting data, most of it more interesting than useful.

Usually when you pull up the "Stats" tab on your blog's dashboard, Google Analytics defaults to a "what's happened in the last week" overview. So, if you haven't taken a look here in more than a week and don't care to expand the reach of the summary, then you tend to miss data points. From a social media marketing perspective, this is probably--no, definitely--bad business practice. Not knowing what sites are referring back to my blog, what URLs, and so forth makes it harder to sort and shape the content I put up here to bring traffic to the blog.

But, hey. I'm doing okay, right? I've got you three.

But if one day I want more than three people and the good automated folks over at vampirestat (don't go there unless you want viruses on your computer) checking in here, then I should pay attention to the "Stats" tab on a more regular basis.

It was in that vein of thinking then that I said the hell with it and changed my summary period from one week to all time. Now, I'm not one to get giggly over numbers, but my vanity finally peeked its head. I've lived in a blogger world where my page view numbers have crept along steadily, though only in small increments. But in the 'all time' summary, my graphs and numbers challenge those of Vince Flynn, John Le Carre, Stephen King and probably even CNN's homepage for what they get in five minutes of traffic. For the briefest of moments I felt like a celebrity.

And then I scrolled down to the Search Keywords listing. This is where you find information on what key words people used in various search engines that led them to your site. At first glance, they looked as I would expect.

"thejmparkhangout"   "book cover missionary position"    "catchy titles with innuendo"

And then I saw this entry: "blog peepee"

Uhh...peepee?

So, someone got to my blog by looking for blogs about peepee? Or with the word peepee in them? I knew at once which blog post to attribute this to. One from my early days on the JM Park Hangout talking about something in my book, The Missionary Position. The question that came to mind, however, was "Is this something I want? Do I want people looking for pee-pee to come to my blog?"

The answer, of course, is HELL YEAH, I DO! Hey, if someone gets here, I don't care how it happened. That's one more set of eyeballs on my site, and potentially one more reader for my book. I'm not proud. I'll take what I can get.

I think that's a fine place to finish up this posting.

So, on that note, I'd like to throw up a couple other random words in the bodily excretions category for the search engines out there to look at: pee-pee, poo-poo, puke, vomit, spit, Dirty Sanchez (okay, admittedly not a...well it kind of is a bodily excrement), booger, the runs, sweat, weird bowel movements, hemorrhoids (it's close), and, last but not least, corn poop.

Who knows what alternative minds I might bring to my readership!

Why I hate pee-pee

Maybe it's a story all authors are familiar with at some point in their careers. I don't know. I just didn't think it would be this early in mine. I guess for lack of a better phrase, I'll just call it the "Lost Edit." Sounds kind of ominous, doesn't it? Well, here's the story.

As some of you may know, I published The Missionary Position in late June to Amazon's Kindle, and then on Smashwords for multiple eBook platforms. It was a fine and decent 'product,' but I recognized it could use some improvements when I had the time to make them. But time was a mysterious anomaly at that point in my life. I understood it existed, but only in the abstract and then only for those souls fortunate enough not to be bogged down in the same quagmire of study as myself. That's how my first foray into publishing TMP went.

Funny how it's not until you're in the homestretch of a project that the glaring mistakes you were completely oblivious to before suddenly become glaringly obvious.  Prior to hitting the publish button for eBook platforms, all seemed fine. Then I pressed the button and BAM! It hit me like a ton of bricks. I had a tense issue - a past tense/future tense conflict. Maybe not a big deal to some, but it bothered the hell out of me and I knew I'd have to fix it before the print edition came out.

Fast forward to August. I should have been studying for my Comprehensive Exams in anticipation of finishing my Master's degree. But I really wanted to get the print edition of TMP published sooner rather than later, so I poured myself into it at the risk of floundering on my Exams. Distracted as I edited? Probably, yes. Did I do as good a job as I would have done if I'd waited until after exams and didn't feel the pressure of other responsibilities tugging at my coattails? Probably not.

And so came the pee-pee. I shake my head as I think about it even now. Poor old Monk. Why did I ever make him say it? It was fine in the initial draft and publication. Yes, the language was coarser (he said "dick" instead of "pee-pee", if you're wondering because you read an earlier draft), but in a moment of doubt over who knows what, I changed the wording in an edit with the mindset that I'd let it sit and then come back and read it over again later (before publication) to see if it resonated okay.

Well, exam time came and I got rushed. By this time I'd completely forgotten about the pee-pee change, and the next time I read over the passage was when the book was published in paperback form...

...and, no, "pee-pee" didn't resonate.

Shit. That was my initial thought. Four letters that pretty much summed up how I felt about pee-pee. I guess it's quaint since both belong in the toilet. There it was, set in print forever. Now I've got a three-year-old's version of what he calls his junk in my book. Worse, I did a blind edit where I took the print edits and put them into the eBooks for updates. Now EVERYONE's got pee-pee in their books.

You're welcome, readers. You're welcome.