Web Mistress, Erotic Saddles and Keywords

Karin Kallmaker Business of Books, LIFE + STYLE

Editing,-I-love-it-day-2

The things that one discovers when running a Web site. First, you find out that K.G. MacGregor—and a number of other colleagues—know way more than you do about it, so you listen carefully and take notes whilst saying “Mm-hmm” at the right moments. Then you set up an analytical program on your Web site and pore over data for trends. Bounce, landing, exit… You click all the “what does this mean” links and yearn for chocolate.

Keyword Fun

After the dry statistics, there is the fun of the keywords. These are the text strings that people key into search engines that return your site as a possible source, and the searcher then clicks over. I’m not surprised by searches like “lesbian romance books” or “lesbian erotica lesbian romance” or even “night vision embrace painted” – that sounded like a reader who couldn’t for the life of her remember how to spell my name.

I smiled over “spark note Christabel” which brought several students to my site. How disappointed they must have been to find a gothic lesbian romance instead of free help with their term paper. I’m afraid they’re still going to have to read the original poem, just like I did. Who knows, maybe the idea that it could also be a lesbian story will spark, if you will, seeing the story anew.

More mysterious is “Algo Salvaje.” Sure, that’s the foreign title of Wild Things but what’s with the two dozen uses in just three days to find my site? Oh… maybe all those searchers are looking for information about the hit Spanish-language song.

My all time favorite, however, is “erotic saddles.” Since the person who keyed that and came to my site via the Tall in the Saddle page didn’t linger for more than a few seconds, I’m pretty certain that literary saddles weren’t what they were looking for. I really don’t want to think about it more than that!

Copyrighted material.