Because they just might have the impact you had hoped for…!
The other day I released a new WordPress Theme called Ipseity for public distro and I woke up 8 hours later and find exactly what I had hoped for (and then some).
Within 8 hours, the main key word search on Google that I was hoping to claim brought me the results that I had wanted: A Google search for the word “Ipseity” resulted in a top-10 return:
I even beat out Merriam Webster’s dictionary return! But, I’m not necessarily surprised. My intent and goal was to be a top-10 (I just didn’t think it would happen so fast).
More thoughts after the jump.
My Strategy and Purpose
But I had much greater goals than to just get good Google rankings. My intent and desire is missional. Ultimately I want to share Jesus Christ more than just a WordPress theme.
Here are some of my thoughts behind my strategy:
- I knew that I was creating a relatively unique WordPress theme. I hadn’t seen anything like it on the market so I knew it would get traction fast.
- Because of the “first to market” value-add that it would inevitably bring, I wanted to make sure the name was extremely unique. There are no other WordPress themes that carry this name (that I knew of at the time).
- But, in addition, I also wanted to make sure the theme was relative to the purpose of it (personal branding/identity/etc) and also had extremely “weak” Google search returns already, so that I could “own” the spot.
- Ultimately, this would drive a lot of “natural search” results back to the theme and my blog, resulting in a higher return on the other “key words” that I was interested in pursuing and increasing.
- With a greater return on the term “ipseity” it would naturally give me a greater market reach in terms of keywords such as “personal branding” and ” wordpress theme” both of which are extremely saturated already.
- Finally, the theme is just secondary to the much larger purpose which is to get people to consistently read my blog, not because I have anything extremely unique or extraordinary to share but because I love Jesus Christ and want them to be “touched” by some of that particular content.
- By adding value to the community it enables me to drive traffic to the real content, and much of that traffic will be from people who aren’t believers. By consuming this valuable assets it enables me to have more of a platform to stand upon so that I might speak into their lives about my other passions and interests.
- A tough balance between name-equity, weakness of google results, name-relevance to product, and return.
You might think that this is a little much in terms of the theme release but I beg to differ. It’s fun to build, develop, and share some of the talents that I’ve been given, but I personally feel called to make sure that I do it with excellence and that I don’t waste valuable time and resources on just gaining pageviews.
It’s not perfect, but nothing really is.
Jim says
rockStar
human3rror says
word.
Jim says
i'm stoked
human3rror says
like a fire.
brianfalexander says
When I search for Brian Alexander on Google my website comes up at number 8, but the top 2 that come up are relating to sex. Bad stuff, but at least I'm in the top 10 rankings.