This year has seen mixed results until recently - the iTunes help page fell from prominence and we lost a significant source of traffic as Apple finally provided their own.
Traffic was not really impacted by the release of another 150 tracks and the addition of several new composers, nor by the addition of feature recordings like the Ride of the Valkerie and the 1812 Overture.
Most recently we have added my Rotary Club's My Donate button to the Donate page and put links into the how donationware works panel and that has brought the Donate page into the top ten pages in recent weeks.
But the really big change has been caused by Google's latest algorithm update, Penguin, which has had a massive impact on our rankings across the piece but particularly with Beethoven related searches. Evidently some less ethical sites have been demoted and we have bubbled up on to many more first pages.
This has coincided with a decision to have a go at promoting the site on Twitter. I have found a number of relevant #tags for music styles, forms and composers. I have combined these with You Tube videos and some direct links to MP3s to create a targeted campaign.
The net effect has been to quadrupled the number of visits and treble the volume of gigabytes downloaded.
As we come up to the tenth birthday of the site I am hoping to establish a donation income stream based on the enjoyment of the music I have created but even if I fail to achieve that it is wonderful to be able to share it with so many people world wide.
Traffic was not really impacted by the release of another 150 tracks and the addition of several new composers, nor by the addition of feature recordings like the Ride of the Valkerie and the 1812 Overture.
Most recently we have added my Rotary Club's My Donate button to the Donate page and put links into the how donationware works panel and that has brought the Donate page into the top ten pages in recent weeks.
But the really big change has been caused by Google's latest algorithm update, Penguin, which has had a massive impact on our rankings across the piece but particularly with Beethoven related searches. Evidently some less ethical sites have been demoted and we have bubbled up on to many more first pages.
This has coincided with a decision to have a go at promoting the site on Twitter. I have found a number of relevant #tags for music styles, forms and composers. I have combined these with You Tube videos and some direct links to MP3s to create a targeted campaign.
The net effect has been to quadrupled the number of visits and treble the volume of gigabytes downloaded.
As we come up to the tenth birthday of the site I am hoping to establish a donation income stream based on the enjoyment of the music I have created but even if I fail to achieve that it is wonderful to be able to share it with so many people world wide.