I just launched a niche web host reviews site called, The Designer's Host. It has a focus on the best looking hosts, and provides user reviews based on host quality. I thought it'd be fun to track my first month of traffic increases and seo performance for everyone to see. Keep in mind, I'm not a pro. I've done little to promote the site so far, and it is lacking reviews, which are the main purpose. I'm not expecting major traffic right off the bat. So, perhaps this will be a fun experiment for beginners to see how well it grows. I'll be giving daily traffic updates via twitter around 12am PST, so if you want to see my visitor stats, please follow @designershost I will also keep an eye on this thread, so I can discuss the site, answer questions, and what have you. Info: Launched on July 1, 2010. Day 1 stats already on twitter. So far I've only posted in 4 forums with signature links. I've optimized all page titles on my site for "web host reviews" and page descriptions as well. I've setup a twitter account and am following 47 hosts and users so far, facebook, and rss. I think that's all for now, so follow the visitor stats on twitter, and let me know what you think by replying here. I hope this is a worth while effort, lol. Thanks!
Hey - fantastic idea. I like this for a few reasons. A) The process of SEO can seem so intangible sometimes that good hard historical data will be very useful. Whether you win or lose, I win by learning from your success and adding your techniques to my repertoire or avoiding the mistakes of your failure. B) I like the concept of your site. Web hosting is a pain to evaluate, I'm always interested in independent review sites for new hosting opportunities. C) I like how you are leveraging this journey to help push your progress forward. Way to attack this endeavor on all fronts! I look forward to hearing more about this.
Thank you very much. I designed it myself. In the footer you will see a link to http://bravewhale.com which is my co-owned company. I do web design and wordpress customization. And thanks to everyone else so far, for being interested in my idea and my effort to make public my visitor stats. @designershost follow me on twitter if you haven't already, to see keep up with my daily updates.
Thanks very much. I notice today's visitors have been far lower than the first two days. I'm guessing this is because I have been gone since this morning, and haven't made any new forum or twitter posts. It is interesting how even the slightest lack of effort will decrease traffic, at least in my case. I'm also really hurting for reviews. Not quite sure how I can fine users to write legitimate reviews for some of the hosts, without spamming forums and other sites. I'm thinking about making a landing page, optimized just for writing reviews, and seeing if I can draw in anyone who is looking to write.
Day five is almost over, and this is the saddest day yet. so far only 10 visits. It really looks like when I neglect any efforts such as forum and twitter posts, I lose a tone of daily visitors. Good news is, there is one new user review. I've also re-optimized some page titles to include keywords for writing reviews, in hopes to get some more user reviews. Also working on a newsletter, and TDH badges to display on sites.
It's been over a week now, and traffic has be really low. Still working on SEO, and page rank, which would move faster if I had more backlinks. There is little recurring visitors, which I'm sure is due to the fact that my site is seriously lacking reviews/content. however, that is only something that users can generate, so I'm not sure how I can get more.