Boarding Area's Fall

Google can't do much with photos and Google will be sending you most of your traffic ....

Google sends me most of my (miniscule) traffic. That said, my best traffic day ever is the time I posted a picture of a raspberry tiramisu from SQ R to Reddit and someone posted the link to my blog.

Sure they can, assuming you've appropriately tagged, named and formatted them.

I was being simplistic. Obviously it will send you people doing an image search and tagging of photos gives G a better idea of what your text is about for aiding standard search.

But obviously a review that is photo heavy and word lite does not give G much to go on and a piece with more text would be expected to rank higher.

There's a lot more to it than that. Photo image names are used in SEO processing. EXIF data can be used but generally is not currently. ALT and TITLE tags generally are.

Text is still most important, but images with the proper information associated to them can have an impact on the SEO scores.

Great stuff, I appreciate the insight. I don't know much at all about SEO, other than using Yoast a little bit.

I just learned that red is bad in Yoast, yellow is better and green is best so I aim for green in every post now.

for some reason I have someone who lands in my site after searching "kamasutra video" and other terms of that nature

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I'm still amazed that BA allowed the "Delta Points Mileage Run" blog to go forward. The latest non-MR mileage run is today - 8.4 CPM. That may or may not be a decent fare for IND-RSW in F, calling it an MR is a bit of a stretch. If it were on the FT MR forum it would have been moved to the "Good Deal Premium Fares" thread.

That's not the only "kind of high" CPM find. I'd be embarrassed if I were BA to host it.

Just more repackaged FT content for those that don't know forums exist.

Following advice on the DP blog can be damaging to your wallet, stick with FT instead.

I wonder how much traffic to the blogs comes from direct searches, rather than via BA. Because they all write as if they are the first ones to write about how US Carriers are no longer flying to TLV…

I seriously wish they would all stop posting unless they have something real to post about, rather than just ensuring that they stay at the top of the BA landing page

yea, i find this to be the main reason why i stopped going to BA all together

Lots, or a little, depending on the blogger.
C'mon...some times there is a "h/t" included at the end of the post to show that it is someone else's work being copied.

I certainly don't think it makes sense for the site to have only one blogger "assigned" to each topic and allowed to write about such. There are differing points of view on the various topics in some cases which would make that less than ideal. And there are also days where it seems the exact same content is posted over and again. Those days suck.

It's still a business, and the business is driven by clicks and unique views. While we'd love to see some differentiation, it's still a couple dozen bloggers chasing the same affiliate incentives and Randy chasing the overall UV goal. I can't fault anyone for running a business. It just puts it on the reader to decide what they want to actually look at - I never hit the BA main page, at this point I know the 3 that I want to read and just go directly there maybe once a day.

I am thinking out loud here...don't read anything as inside information as I don't have any!

Why do so many bloggers go to BA, especially now that there are SO many blogs there? I was shocked to see Barbara Dellolis, the former USA hotel beat writer, to go there yesterday.

I understand there could be a bump in readers initially but then it tends to fall off if the content quality is not there.

I understand BA blogs get a break in hosting expenses, SEO related help, and share on some of the adv revenues based on clicks their own blogs generate (correct? Or is there like a general pool they also share too? Like a profit sharing plan?). I also understand they are free to to do their own affiliate relationships. Especially now that Amex appears to be out of the picture (and not back in yet) and the rest become so quantity based to maintain the cc clicks (cough).

Why give up your own unique URL and be master of your own domain instead of becoming just one among nearing 100 blogs?

I understand for part time blogs this can be a pretty good deal at BA. But for full time endeavors (like Barbara's) I think staying independent can make more sense and still maintain flexibility for future directions.

I also hear BA bloggers all get invited to BAcon conference and everything is paid for? If yes, that is a sweet deal indeed!

I notice a sudden influx of many bloggers at once and wondering if the BA ship is being primed for a sale. And then what? Would there be traffic and revenue minimums implemented?

Comments?