The Secrets of My Success: What Makes SearchWarp Popular?
Posted: Friday, December 10, 2010
by Bruce Horst
WryteStuff
I write this installment of "The Secrets of My Success" after a month of setting new traffic records almost every day. Website traffic levels are a common measure of the success of a website, and to be sure, I find the popularity of SearchWarp to be very gratifying.
Many wonder how SearchWarp got to this place. I wish I could tell you how to create your own SearchWarp-like website in 3 easy steps, but I can't. The rules of the game are different now than they were 8 years ago when I started down this path, and they've changed many times in between. I'm happy to tell anyone who wants to know the nuts and bolts of how we've gotten to where we are now, and I'm also happy to give my best advice for how others can do the same, though since the game has changed, my advice is more like guiding principles rather than steps to follow. I've written before how to write articles that attract a lot of readers, and I think I'll write about that again next week, but this is about creating a popular website, which is different than writing popular articles.
There is a saying among website developers, that "content is king." I fully subscribe to this notion. If you want to have a popular website, then having unique and compelling content is your top priority.
“Once a website has a lot of traffic with great, new content being added constantly, links come easily as people naturally want to link to great content. And that's where we are today.”
Links are Queen
If content is king, then I believe links are queen, and the only way to succeed is a great marriage of the two.
Have you ever written an article which was picked up by Wikipedia? Or the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Matt Cutts, a college website, or made the front page of Digg or fark? When this happens, everyone seems to want to link to your website. This is what I've seen on SearchWarp.
If you've been following my story, you know already know that SearchWarp started out as a search engine. This was at a time when it was required for website owners to submit their websites to search engines to get listed. I had partnered with a company which provided the software modules needed for others to create their own websites which submitted their users' websites to search engines. This was a strategic decision at the time, but only in hindsight do I have any idea how important this was.
When I partnered with the search engine submission company, they distributed their software to hundreds of website owners who then installed the software on their websites, with each installation linking to SearchWarp.com.
Other software developers wanted to sell their own search engine submission scripts, and many of them copied the list of search engines found in the original modules, including the mechanism which submitted websites to SearchWarp. Within a very short period of time, SearchWarp had thousands of websites linking to it, and thousands of website owners submitting their websites to SearchWarp every day. Even today we get a few hundred websites submitted to SearchWarp everyday, despite our message which says, "SearchWarp no longer accepts website submissions."
This is not exciting stuff, but it's how SearchWarp became a popular destination for website owners who want to promote their websites. I've had several other search engine websites which were promoted the same way, and most of them have been sold off over the years. My current record holder for the highest-selling website I've ever developed was a search engine that sold for a little more than 50% of what I paid for my house, so even without SearchWarp, you can see that this little idea was very profitable.
Once a website has a lot of traffic with great, new content being added constantly, links come easily as people naturally want to link to great content. And that's where we are today. We've never done any link-building campaigns simply because we've never needed to. The bottom line is, if you want to build your website into a popular writers' community, you're going to need to figure out how to get a lot of natural links to your website.
The secret here is to: Find a way to make people want link to your website, naturally.
Was your last article, on SearchWarp or your personal blog, the type of article that Wikipedia would link to? If not, ask yourself why.
You probably already understand that SearchWarp is monetized primarily with Google's advertising product, AdSense. Now I'm going to tell you something you probably don't know.
In 2005, I went to New Orleans (a month before hurricane Katrina) for a conference which had scheduled an evening to "meet the Google engineers." I actually skipped the entire conference and instead paid for an exhibit-hall-only pass, which was $25. With this pass, I was allowed to go the the meet the engineers event.
While at the event, I found a Google engineer who didn't have many people around him, so I introduced myself and asked him a few questions. It was obvious to me that this guy was incredibly intelligent, so I decided to ask him as many open-ended questions as I could.
This guy told me things that sounded so simple, most people would think he was making things up to hide the truth about Google's highly secret ranking algorithm. I'll tell you what he said to me, but just so you understand how important this is, I'll start by telling you that when I followed his advice, AdSense revenue on SearchWarp increased $300 per day. Do I have your attention now?
This is what he said in a nutshell:
Google measures end-user-experience. When someone uses Google search and clicks on a link, Google attempts to measure how good the user experience is for that person. I don't know how they do this. My guess is that they use some combination of information from the Google toolbar, time spent on the site, and maybe if the person hits the 'back' button on the site. Regardless, what Google is looking for is to provide links for their users so that they have the best user-experience possible.
This was great news, because my goal was and still is to make SearchWarp the most fun and useful writers' community website as possible. Ranking algorithms change over time, but if the goal is to provide for the best end-user-experience, and Google wants to reward great end-user-experience with more visitors, then Google and SearchWarp can exist together in great harmony.
I then asked this guy what his best advice would be for me and my site. He said, "that's easy" and he told me how time and time again Google engineers have seen how page load time has the biggest effect of anything in end-user-experience. He told me that if he was me, he'd invest in the fattest pipe and the fastest servers I could afford. This would ensure the best end-user-experience.
Ok, I've been laughed off of message boards and called a name which rhymes with 'boron' for believing this advice. It's so simple, it can't possibly be true, can it? When I got back from the conference I started working on moving my servers to a location with a 25 mbit/sec connection instead of a 3 mbit/sec connection. When the move was completed, traffic to SearchWarp jumped and revenue increased by $200 a day. A month later I installed a new, faster server for SearchWarp, traffic increased again and revenue from SearchWarp increased another $100 per day. Who's laughing now?
Before you get too excited, I think you need to have a large site to see such dramatic effects. Page load time probably doesn't have much of an effect on a regular size blog with only a few hundred pages, you'd probably need a site with at least 50,000 pages to see such a real difference.
Incidentally, after I got home from this conference I also searched for the name of the guy I was speaking with. It turns out that he is indeed top-level engineer at Google, and he's a lawyer. His name appears on almost every patent I've seen from Google in the past 10 years. This is really impressive considering that Google is barely 10 years old.
My Secret: Find someone who is successful in the way you want to be successful, and let them be your mentor.
If you want to be successful, I can't stress this advice enough. I constantly find myself without knowing anyone who has even attempted to do what I want to succeed in. I've been known to fly across the country for a 15 minute meeting with just the right person, though it doesn't usually require a plane ticket to find a mentor.
You'll probably need a different mentor in business than you would need for life-skills. And if you're religious, you will probably need a different religious mentor than someone who would mentor you in life-skills. I'm fortunate that I've even been able to be mentored by some who are members of SearchWarp. The bottom line is that you probably won't succeed in an area if you can't get advice from someone who has already succeeded in that area.
The really cool thing is that because of the Internet, you may find a mentor on the other side of the planet who quite possibly could be the only person in the Universe who can give you the advice you need. Yay, Internet!
This brings me to my next point. Probably the greatest thing about running a business on the Internet is that all the information you need to start and run a business can be found, of all places, on the Internet. Good judgement is required, however. There are a lot of people who offer advice on making money on the Internet and the only success they've had is taking money from people who want to make money. The fact remains, though, that all the information you need is available online for free. If someone wants to charge you for this information, chances are it's not worth it.
My Secret: Read Constantly
Long ago I started constantly pouring over the forums at WebmasterWorld.com. This website is a unique message board which does not allow self-promotion. Self-promotion tends to introduce all kinds of whacky advice, so steer clear of those types of websites. If you want excellent advice on starting and maintaining a web business, I can confidently recommend you look for it at WebmasterWorld.com.
I probably read at least 4 hours a day, which is pretty good for someone who is dyslexic. I own an iPad, which you'll find me reading from at night before I go to bed, and in the morning when I first wake up. I'll often find something on my computer that is interesting, then I'll switch to my iPad and lay down on the couch to finish reading it. Sometimes I'll find myself waiting in line, like the car-rider line at my son's elementary school, and I'll whip out my iPhone and start reading from it. Read, read, read. That's my advice. Now what are you going to do with it?
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More commentsVery good and informative article Bruce, thanks for sharing.Thanks Dave, I'll share whatever I have!
Bruce,
Thanks you for writing this article, very interesting great advices, where have you been when we started our website?
Thanks I may have to read more, more... and ask you more questions, and more questions
Thanks again
Jose C
Thank you Bruce! Every time I get an email saying you've just published an article, I click right over here. You've never disappointed me!
Very interesting article Bruce. I always enjoy reading informative articles such as yours.
Nothing succeeds like success!
That's an easy question. Read, act. Read, act. Read and act some more, etc. Thank you for your advice!
Thanks Bruce this is the most informative post I have read for a long time. I spoke to a guy who is dating my friends girlfriends daughter he is very talented at Web design and IT. When he told me how much he was earning for a closed site, which he hosts himself on his home computer with Google Ads I was very impressed. Thanks for sharing this secret information now and the recommendation to read the forum. Festive greetings.
Another great article Bruce. You are really a very informative writer. Keep on going.
I have read this informative article two times and I want to say "thank you" Bruce for being so straightforward (any more secret recipes ?) about the beautiful side of the Internet. A lot of people are trying so hard to build their websites (in vain) and the guru is charging a few thousand for a day's crash course. Sounds bullying to the dummies.
Very successful story PLUS SearchWarp is a unique writer's community site.
I want an IPad lol Thanks for the great read!
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