The BackWoods Drifter

I wanted to let my readers know of some decisions I have made. The first was to take the Bolt Mountain blog back out, dust it off and put it back in full operation. In making that decision I have also decided to keep the subject of mountaintop removal off the Bolt Mountain blog. I do have a page there with photos but I’m not going to talk about it there. As I said in a post on that blog, I have to have someplace to escape to sanity. I’ve also given the Bolt Mountain blog the tagline of The BackWoods Drifter to tie it together with this blog.

As far as this blog - I believe I have decided to flex my story telling muscles - what few of them there are. I can’t say the stories won’t be related to mountaintop removal as far as heritage and culture is concerned but I can say they will take a more indirect approach. As a resident hillbilly and a neighbor to the coal industry I see a lot missing from our culture today as compared to just 20 years ago. Plus I see all that we stand to lose. I’m going to tell you about it.

On another note - for those into SEO, the BWD Gallery hit a Google pagerank of 3 in it’s first indexing. I’m kind of curious why it ranked so high and being so young. But apparently Google loves photos. If I had to guess it would have something to do with all of the photos having titles, descriptions, and tags. I don’t know what the reason but it is obvious a photo gallery will get you on the good side of Google - in a hurry. So if you go there and like a photo or not - leave a comment. It’s so hard to get good interaction these days.

First I have to apologize for dropping the ball. Last week on the Outdoor Bloggers Summit blog, Kristine issued a challenge entitled Write About The Good. I committed to writing a post for the challenge.

From the OBS - “… encouraging all bloggers to find one local, grassroots program that is supported by people who hunt or fish and write about that program on your blog.”

I couldn’t have committed to something at a worse time. To be downright honest - mountaintop removal has taken over my life at the moment. I’m reading the book Coal River, I’m three quarters of the way through the dissertation mentioned in the last post, and I have just started reading the FPEIS (Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement) for MTR.

I do still plan to write a post concerning area Hunters Helping The Hungry. But I’m just going to miss the challenge week by a bit. In the meantime please go to the OBS blog and check out posts generated by its members for the challenge.

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The second thing - I may be moving out of Blogger. The past week has been a nightmare on this blog as far as things crashing or just going insane. Before I joined the battle to stop MTR this blog was nothing more than a hobby. It wasn’t a big deal before but now I use the blog as a tool as well as being a hobby.

I think the problems last week just highlighted my reason for wanting to move the blog. This blog is not mine - it belongs to Blogspot and as such is subject to issues with Blogger. I’ve been wanting to put the blog on it’s own domain for a while but haven’t for a few reasons. There are quite a few blogs linking here, the blog has a Google pagerank of 3, and Technorati authority at 250.

You might think - So what? - That is what I thought to. I’m not trying to sale anything here so all the ranking counts for squat in the big picture. Except that now I have taken on Ol’ King Coal, all of the sudden the ranking really matters to me. People that come here reading a post about ginseng are exposed to MTR. Awareness is the key.

Right now I’m stuck in the middle of trying to make the decision. To move or not to move? That is the question.

A lot of the visitors to my blog arrive through search engines. With that in mind - I’m wondering for those of you that do blog - do you blog with SEO (search engine optimization) in the back of your mind? Or do you just blog without caring about keyword searches?

I think for myself it is natural to think about the keyword aspect of writing a blog mostly because I am a holdover from before the blog really became popular. In writing a personal webpage, it was very important to get the proper keyword saturation in order to have any hope of attracting visitors through search engines.

As I have gotten more familiar with where the visitors to this blog come from - when I write an informative post with keywords that are likely to be searched - then I try to give the people that found the post through a search engine the information they actually came here looking for or at the very least point them to where they can find it.

The last post for instance - in the future someone will find that post by searching for Ruger Single Six or something very similar. Although the post got a little silly I do have some information that would be useful to someone doing a search for that revolver, including the photo.

I don’t always think about keywords when writing unless I’m writing a post that will have a possibility of search engine visitors. In that case I do it without really thinking about it. If I write a post just being silly or a tag or meme or something like that then I think about keyword searches in reverse. I don’t want to put good keywords in a post about nothing.

I think it is important in establishing your authority on any subject if you know when and when not to use SEO.

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A new poll or two…

I have a couple of different stat programs on this site and although they both rank Google search as my main traffic flow, I’m curious to know the diversity of my visitors arrival path.

Please take just a second and participate in the polls. This is information I can use to improve this blog and hopefully turn you into a returning visitor - if you are not already.

Polls Moved To Sidebar

Thanks in advance!