The Quest 2009-2010 Traffic Promotion Plan: New User Guide Content

Editorial Note: This is a new Site User Guide article which explains the Quest for the Ring policies and plans, for at least the next year, regarding traffic development, including for example how much and where we provide Quest content to other sites. This is NOT a basketball content report. However, there is important information here regarding Internet traffic. And there are several valuable opportunities for Quest visitors explained below, such as free advertising, link exchange, and several content support platforms offerred by Quest Internet.

Although this is apparently true for every single independent Internet site, the traffic to Quest for the Ring has not met expectations and is much lower than one might think it would be. We do have a non-trivial, fairly substantial amount of traffic. And we do definitely have visitors who spend quality time at Quest, which is a major achievement in itself, but the overall traffic counts and especially the returning traffic counts are much lower than we want them to be.

There is much evidence that virtually all independent internet sites have much less traffic than the average non-webmaster person might think, and have far more difficulty in generating that traffic.

The objective of the Quest for the Ring Traffic and Publishing Plan is simply to build traffic, especially returning traffic, while taking into account the realities.

There is a lot of evidence that building traffic is so difficult that for all practical purposes it is not possible, at least not possible for a good number of years:

FACTUAL BASIS OF THE QUEST TRAFFIC DEVELOPMENT PLAN
1. The “internet (or technology) bubble of the late 1990’s was followed by a bust much worse in real terms than even the ongoing “housing bust”. So the Internet has seemingly from day one always been a place where the actual potential is far less than the perceived potential. The gap between perceived potential and actual potential is so large (or huge even) that it is actually mysterious.

2. There are numerous scam type offers on the internet and via e-mails where the come-on is a false claim about how much a site’s traffic will go up if only it sends a little money to the scam.

3. Google and other search engine policies are substantially secret, made extremely difficult to understand with arcane and confusing terminology, and subject to continual modification as well. It is simply not reasonably possible to study search engine policies and “tailor” your site to maximize search engine response, regardless of what Google or any other search engine tells you publicly.

4. To the extent that search engine policies are not secret, they are generally difficult to understand, complicated to work with to produce higher traffic, and subject to continual change. Believe me, Google does not want you or I to know exactly how they do what they do.

5. There are several major “catch-22s” involved. The biggest one is that to the extent you spend large amounts of time building traffic, you are neglecting the content, which of course means you are less likely to see loyal, returning traffic from any traffic you generate. Generally speaking, the vast majority of the traffic you get from most traffic generating activities is one time only traffic.

6. Experience shows that direct traffic generation, such as through content placement on aggregator sites such as Yardbarker or BallHype generates much less traffic than most people would think. And again, such traffic is overwhelmingly one time only traffic. So the idea that you can spend a few months on traffic building and then sit back and watch your traffic grow is generally false. In other words, almost everything or perhaps literally everything you can do to boost traffic is nothing more than a quick fix.

7. Similar to (6) experience shows that any traffic that is generated through content placement on other sites is temporary traffic that generally does not come back and is not loyal. In other words, traffic generated in this way does not result in any continuing or long-term benefit, so that you would have to continually spend a lot of valuable time cross posting content in order to improve traffic counts, which in turn would reduce the quantity and very possibly the quality of the content.

8. Evidence shows that the overall traffic pattern on the Internet is extremely unequal to say the least: there are a tiny number of sites that get a huge amount of traffic, and a huge number of sites that get essentially no traffic at all.

9. Independent sports (and presumably other) sites that are linked to or “sponsored” by huge corporate sites, such as ESPN, get much less of a boost in traffic than you would think; even those sites do not get anywhere near 1,000 visitors per day, which is probably the benchmark for traffic to be considered substantial from the economics and advertising perspective.

10. Traffic seems to be much more dependent on what the site starts out with than many people would think. In other words, how many friends and associates the site owners bring to the site from day one is a primary determinant of traffic not only in the early days, but for many years after the site has been launched. In other words, a site owner can not depend on the Internet itself for traffic, but rather needs to have a following outside of the Internet in order to get more than a small number of visitors per day.

11. Judging from extensive review of traffic counter details, most Internet traffic is simple people looking for simple things, such as nice pictures or simple opinions. Although Quest is fiercely multimedia and sometimes relatively simplistic, it is generally fiercely sophisticated, fact based, and controversial wherever called for, which means simple people looking for a quick fix are not going to be interested. The Quest audience is clearly limited to people who take basketball very, very seriously, either because they make their living from it, or because they are the kind of intelligent people who always gravitate to the most sophisticated or “advanced” sites.

12. Due to the remarkably limited and problematic nature of RSS traffic counting, Quest is unable to determine the number of readers it has via RSS. Moreover, we are in the dark about the overall reader preference breakdown between internet site and various RSS options. Nor do we know what actual readership is via cross posting, which is another reason by the way we have severely cut back cross posting. For all of these reasons, although we know exactly how many folks visit the Quest sites themselves, Quest is actually unable to determine what its total readership is.

In light of the above and possibly other related facts, and with the need to reduce confusion and counterproductive time expenditure, Quest adopts the following Internet traffic and publishing plan:

2009-2010 QUEST TRAFFIC DEVELOPMENT PLAN, (Effective August 1, 2009)
1. In general, you can conclude from everything above and below that Quest needs its visitors to help us improve traffic counts, because we have concluded that it costs us more than it benefits us to spend a lot of valuable time on activities intended to improve traffic. Therefore, we request anyone who likes or who benefits from Quest content to exchange links, and also to give us a shout out on any Internet site where they think basketball people are who will like or benefit from Quest. Email questforthering at Gmail .com whenever you act to help the Quest, and we will subsequently help you out as well.

2. Quest will NOT any longer cross post a large percentage of content on other sites.

3. Approximately 25% of content MAY be reproduced on other sites, with an absolute limit of 33% of content.

4. The primary site for content sharing will continue to be http://www.sportstwo.com. Like all sites other than major corporate sites such as ESPN, SportsTwo is also subject to ultimately surprisingly limited traffic. There was discussion about moving to a somewhat higher traffic sight, but in the end it was decided that since the objective is to build traffic to Quest for the Ring, and since the objective is not met regardless of where content is posted, that it doesn’t matter much where cross posting is done. Although SportsTwo is not in the highest traffic tier among independent sports communities, it is not in the lower tiers either. Finally, even the highest traffic independent sports sites are still surprisingly limited in traffic, at least when you break down their traffic to actual relevant areas, such as a specific team forum. So more for the sake of tradition than anything else, SportsTwo has been renewed so to speak under the present Traffic Plan for most but not necessarily all cross posting.

5. Limited additional cross posting at other sites is under consideration and may be done on an experimental basis.

6. Quest may visit totally independent team forums once or twice a year. From now on, the conversations on such sites will be reproduced in real time on Quest, and not after a delay of weeks or months.

7. Links (without any content) to Quest content will be provided on certain sites that invite them, most notably Yardbarker, but only on an as time permits basis. It is expected that the percentage of reports for which links are provided will be between 20% and 50%.

8. Other than active forum discussions (see(6)) Quest content posted at SportsTwo and occasionally at other sites will be posted at those sites only after a delay of about 30 days, meaning that those who want or need immediate access will have to visit Quest even for the limited (see(3)) amount of content that does eventually appear elsewhere. This will completely reverse the bad habit we have sometimes had of posting content elsewhere and then not posting it on Quest until weeks or even months later.

9. The policies being adopted here represent a major cut back in time spent on tasks intended to build traffic. Quest is now 32 months old in terms of content and is now 26 months old as an Internet site. In light of the above facts, Quest will not, as was the case in many of the first 20 months of its Internet existence, spend large amounts of time on various things intended to build traffic. Roughly speaking, in the first 20 months, 35-40% of total working time was spent on such activities, with the other 60-65% on the content. Under the new plan, the amount of time that can be spent on activities intended to build traffic will be capped at 15%, with a target of 10%.

10. The cap described in (9) will ensure the continuing improvement in the quality and quantity of Quest content, something which as already occurred during the phase in of the change. For example, the Real Player Rating system was upgraded a year or two more quickly than it would have been had we been still spending close to 40% of time available on activities intended to build traffic.

11. Quest has decided, in other words, that given the choice between a very small amount of traffic and a moderate quality and quantity on the one hand, or a very small amount of traffic but a high quality and quantity of content on the other hand, that the latter combination is better for us. What this means is that the “chosen few” who do make the effort to bookmark and visit Quest, or at least to read Quest in an RSS or My Yahoo page or the like, will be treated as royalty more so than ever, as they will get the high quality and high quantity basketball content that is unique on the Internet and that (as has been explained) the vast majority are missing.

12. In conjunction with (11) and in conjunction with this plan as a whole, Quest is planning and in some cases developing new ways for treating our actual small audience base to even more features not found hardly anywhere else, such as Blog Talk Radio, an almost Real Time Real Player Rating database, and free or virtually free custom Real Player Rating and Basketball Winning Consulting Reports.

13. Quest continues to offer link exchange to any basketball site as long as it passes a basic qualification test. Any even half serious basketball site is invited to email Quest at questforthering at Gmail .com to get the link exchange. Such links will go somewhere in the top quarter of the Quest home page.

14. Quest continues to offer free advertising until at least June 30 2010. For details, see the User Guide article on the subject that is located here: http://thequestfortheringuserguide.blogspot.com/2009/03/free-advertising-program.html Any one who has a basketball related good or service that they would like to advertise for free is invited to email Quest at questforthering at Gmail .com

15. Quest has set up a “Ning Site” and invites participation in it. The address is http://thequestforthering.ning.com/

16. Quest has disabled the comment by post system and has established a centralized discussion page, where comments for any and all posts can be made. We are waiting and will apparently have to wait until the cows come home for participation in this. The discussion page is at http://thequestfortheringdiscussions.blogspot.com/

17. Aside from the basic discussion page described in (14) Quest also has established a relatively unique site called My Quest for the Ring, which is best described as a “public blog”. Anyone who has posted a few non-trivial comments on the discussion page can apply and be approved to be able to make posts on My Quest for the Ring which, were it ever to develop interest, would be an unusual, truely fun, and interesting basketball spot.

18. Those who outgrow My Quest for the Ring explained in (15) can get their own full scale site with any number of Quest features and with substantial support from the Quest Internet Service, which at this time has created and maintains more than 200 content rich Internet sites. Some of them are maintained and improved much more often than others of them.

19. The sites described in (15) (16) and (17) represent a truly comprehensive and state of the art social community system which, however, is so far lacking participation. Quest has done more than its duty in this area, and will simply have to wait indefinitely for participation. We can actually live with no one ever participating, and a case can be made that it is actually better long term if there is very little or no participation, since heavier participation would drain valuable resources from the production of primary content.

20. If someone wishes to post Quest content on another site, they should write to questforthering at Gmail .com with their proposal. We are more likely than not to gladly approve such requests as long as you follow a limited number of requirements, most notably a requirement that you credit and link back to the content posted.

21. Posting Quest content elsewhere without permission and/or without attribution and link back is an illegal violation of copyright law and will be contested legally. Quest actually spends a little time now and then to search for those violating our copyright. All Quest content is copyrighted in the year it is produced, and all copyright rights are reserved.
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The User Guide for Real Player Ratings, and for the Defensive Adjustments, is located here. You must consult the Guide in order to fully understand the ratings and the value of them, and to understand how to make the best use of them.