Results of the Dumbest Writing in the Universe Writing Experiment

To conduct my own writing experiment I wrote an article called The Dumbest Writing in the Universe. It has been nearly 6 months since its conception and the data has taught me a few things that I will incorporate in to my next experiment.

Things I learned

Keywording - The Dumbest Writing in the Universe, or DWU from here on out, was not a success. Not in the monetary sense or page view sense. It was a success however in teaching me about keywords and we all know that keywords are important when writing for the web.

What I and many others like myself have to learn the hard way is keywording technique. The results of DWU showed me that I can use top ranking keywords but that won't necessarily bring in readers. How, how often and where keywords are used is the determining factor in page views.

For example, I selected 6 keywords that were at the top of the search engines and they were, Britney Spears, golf, poker, Maureen McCormick, superbug and January Jones. I used all of these keywords more than once except for January Jones. Using them multiple times did not bring this article to the top nor did it increase my page views.

I also received a comment by a reader that worked for an internet company that explained using keywords too many times in one paragraph can be seen as spam by search engines.

Titles - Perhaps the biggest mistake I made with DWU is in the title. The title does not reflect that the article is an experiment nor does it reflect any of the keywords.

DWU taught me that failing to properly title an article will result in low page views. In this instance I only received a whopping 284 page views. Had I used a title such as Britney Spears flogs Golf with Maureen McCormick and January Jones in local Poker room during the Superbug fest I may have garned quite a bit more.

Ad Alignment - If there is one thing DWU did right it was with ad alignment. The automatic linkometer AC uses loved that article as it pulled in some great google ads. If DWU had been a success in the keywording and title area it would have been a home run on the internet and in page views which is what AC (and us writers) should be looking to accomplish.

Not only did DWU pull in good google ads, it also pulled in quite a few articles listed in the "You May Also Like" box. Right now there are links to 10 other articles on AC that line up with DWU. This could be a good thing or a bad thing if the content itself is boring and readers leave the article to read the others.

Conclusion
Taking all these things into consideration it is safe to say that DWU was a complete flop. Out of 3 of the most important criteria it failed to meet 2 of them successfully. So now I'll be writing experiment #2 while working to succeed at meeting all 3 criteria.