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Motorcycle Views Newsletter

Monday, March 12, 2007

It's a Two-Way Street

Over the past eight years I've written a lot about motorcycles both on the old site and on the Motorcycle Views site, forum, newsletter, and this blog. However, writing can be like riding down a one-way street. I want it to be like riding down a two-way street being able to see my readers waving at me on their oncoming motorcycles. I want to be able to stop at a watering hole and get feedback on what I'm doing right and wrong and have riders submit articles, pictures, comments, and discussions to help the total site grow. I need submissions.

This is not a site in a vacuum. Never was before and won't be in the future. It's a site that depends on you.

At yesterday's Polar Bear run, I had several people come up to me and talk about this new site. They liked it better than the old site. It still has much of the old content but it's much simpler to navigate and is not cluttered with ads. It was nice to hear people talk about the new site in such glowing terms. However, success of the new site depends basically on three things: Search engine placement, User Submissions, and forum growth.

Search engine placement is a complicated process. I'm doing about all I can to foster this process. However, search result ranking often depends on having other sites linking to a site. That proves that the site is important enough to others that many other sites want to link to it. It seems to have the effect of raising a site's ranking in the search results. So, if you happen to have a motorcycle site and like what you see here on Motorcycle Views, consider linking to the main site. As always, I will provide a link back to your site as I always did on the old site.

I have seven items on my Submissions page. These include User Reviews, Motorcycle Pictures, Tattoos, Haiku Poems, Forum Participation, Newsletter Subscription, and Blog Comments. Take a look at my Submissions page to see where you can contribute most to the growth of the site. Nearly eight years of doing this has made it readily apparent to me that "It all depends on you." I enjoy reading the submissions and processing them to appear on the site. Help me out by writing a great user review of your own bike, submitting a picture of you with your bike, showing me your motorcycle-related tat, writing a simple haiku, becoming active on my forum -- it's FUN, subscribing to my newsletter, and commenting on this blog. What could be easier?

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Walt,
You are correct is a two way street. Blogging is a very important part of the internet experience - most successful websites seem to be hooked into by or from a blog. The new trend in social networking adds a whole new dimension to the internet. Even WebMD just rolled out a new layout with a heavy addition of blogs.

Search engines are an odd thing really.

I have no doubt that your site will gain momentum. You’re an excellent writer. If your trying to hook through this blog and improve your search engine ranking – the fastest way is to mention someone else’s blog article in yours and send them a track-back.

Eventually you might look at running your own blog on the same server as your website. You will then be able to link the two together. Take a look at wordpress as it is free and well documented. It is all about the bling to start, then they come back and actually read.

Best of luck to you.