ERT Year in Review 2006 talk

[Esopo]

This thread is a place to talk about the ERT Year in Review 2006, a report by Cd&
http://www.expertsrt.com/articles/Cd/yearInReview.html

I personally found a lot of this data interesting. For instance, I had no idea we were being picked up by About.com and Yahoo Answers... but then again, why wouldn't they? I find myself quoting ERT articles often and looking to them for knowledge. I'm pretty excited about all that has been accomplished so far and I can't wait to see the wonderful things that will take place at this site in the years to come.


On a related matter Cd& also provided a list of Sites that Support ERT:
http://www.expertsrt.com/static/friends-of-ERT.html

[COBOLdinosaur]

Thanks for starting this topic Esopo. 

A couple of things I would like to add about that page. There is nothing short term about the numbers.  Content that we have had up since the start, still has steady traffic.  Part of the growth we have been getting, and need to continue getting is from adding content.  Most of the content has legs and continues to generate visits long after the initial burst is over.

Some pages took months to get an audience, other were and instant hit.  There is a timing factor that it difficult to predict, so the pattern of growth is diffrent for each page.  All I have been doing is trying to present the best face to the user, which also means that we are spider friendly.  Then we just have to wait. There are a some pages that we could be doing better with, and I will try to improve the SEO, as we move forward.

The important thing is we are not being ignored, and we keep picking up new links, and new support.  A lot of the big "overnight success" sites took 2 to 3 years of slow growth before the reached critical mass and exploded onto the scene (Digg, del.icio.us, and wikipedia all went through that phase).  I am not saying we will will grow to that size, but we are reaching the point where having a link to ERT or an ERT icon on your site will be cool.  That is the phase I am trying to prepare the site for.

It may turn out that 2007 is the year when we "make it" or it may not happen until 2008, but given the pattern we have seen up to now, there is no doubt in my mind that we are on the right track and if we keep doing what we are doing:producing fresh, quality content; making incremental improvments to the presentation; and keeping ourselves SE friendly then we will continue to move up in traffic, and activity.  The PR6 we have will carry us through 2007.  I think getting to PR7 by the end of the year is possible, but a page rank that high is difficult for a site as small as ERT, but PR6 gives us enough top-10 SERPs for our audience to find us.

If you like the results of 2006... thank the Mentors who authored the content.  If you think the results could have been better, blame me; there are some things I could have done better.

[coral1]

Looks like a good first year to me.

And even better, I had fun doing something new and different (for me).
I still don't like all the typing, but I don't dislike it as much as I used to.   : )

[COBOLdinosaur]

I still don't like all the typing, but I don't dislike it as much as I used to.   : )

You need to get a voice activated interface and then you can just dictate and edit. ;^)

[Esopo]

Coral, are you on Linux?
http://volker.dnsalias.net/linux/speechrec.html

I used to have IBM's ViaVoice for Win about 8 years ago. It was pretty cool as a gadget but I ended up valuing my time better (typing is faster at least for me). Nevertheless, it was very useful and I can definitely recommend it to anybody that doesn't want to type.

[coral1]

Hahahahaha

I have Linux installed on a hard drive, somewhere around here. But mostly I use W98SE.
It only took 8 years to get it to run the way I wanted it to.

Thanks for the suggestions, but with my speech impediment (southern-country accent), it's faster and easier just to type it, than to edit a dictation file.  : D