Having been respectably put in my place by my boss’s perception on logo design (though I still stand by my opinion on it while agreeing with him to an extent), I have spent the last few hours hitting up the Sources I have linked on my blog to update myself on the goings-on in visual culture otaku fandom. I somehow wound up on a site that I have heard about in the past, Danny Choo, and pretty much had a mini mental breakdown. I feel like the biggest loser in the world right now. (^_^)v

For probably more than a week now, I have been considering and pondering the effectiveness of my blog in the search engines. IsShouKenMei has had a specific aim and goal from the day I kicked it off, and though I have remained fairly on target with the content that I produce here, I have seen signs of degradation in my blog statistics. Namely, the keywords that net browsers are using to happen upon this blog are not the type of keywords that should be representing this blog. I hinted at this on ISKM’s birthday.

What I mean is, this blog should not represent “little kuriboh” or “ikki tousen”. I wrote one entry about YouTube screwing over the well-known and incredibly funny YuGiOh parodist, LittleKuriboh. One. Now every day, a handful of people are hitting that entry, not finding this blog to be a source of LK’s videos, and leaving seconds after, having completely disregarded ISKM’s true purpose for existing. Same goes for the numerous variations of Ikki Tousen. I didn’t even write a blog entry about Ikki Tousen specifically. Yet, I get at least fifteen hits a day of people finding my blog through that keyword phrase.

This sounds like a good thing for my stats, but this is highly disappointing and frustrating. That is not what IsShouKenMei is about or should be the reason why people happen upon this particular blog. This has happened due to the links that appear in my entries and on this blog. The more I look at this blog, the more I see how overloaded and scattered my topic matter has become. Honestly, this has begun to gradually eat away at me the more I read up on things like proper Search Engine Optimization strategy and copywriting, and the longer I’m in the marketing world with the small, yet growing company I work for full-time now.

Another topic that has been nagging me in my spare time is my constant denial of my visual culture otaku nature. I could spend hours just taking news about Comiket, Wonder Fest, popular trends in Akiba, and the like…but because I work full-time, have the perfect girlfriend, and have my priorities straight for the most part, I do not indulge myself as much as I would like.

On top of that, my head wants to explode when I see how everyday bloggers who have simply followed their hobbies and interests have found themselves suddenly dominating their niche. People like Danny Choo, who is now living the ultimate visual culture otaku dream of having an anime made up after his website mascot, absolutely blew my mind. As much as I can’t help but be terribly envious of him, it’s not even about that. I care more about how he, and so many others (visual culture otaku or not), have built up their site or blog to the grand scale that he has it now…and enjoys every waking moment of it. Does he maintain it all himself? Things such as this and that plague me because I want to see if I have what it takes to take a firm grasp of a niche that I am passionate about and never let go.

I cannot shake the feeling that I should be attempting this as well. So, I have begun to take four major steps into heavy consideration to hopefully surpass my miscommunication issues. I am not recommending this to anyone in particular other than myself. They are as follows:

• Remove extraneous Blog Categories: I started this yesterday, weeding out the Categories that will probably never be expounded upon in the future. I went from 59 Categories to 52. This is still way too many; I still am not satisfied, which will cause this reduction to be an ongoing process affected by the execution of my later steps.
• Remove extraneous entries: IsShouKenMei was and is aimed to be a record of my progress through this life — accomplishments, failures, aspirations, completions, and the people directly affecting me — as they are told by me, an eccentric, yet level-headed individual dealing with reality through a storytelling perspective. Entries that do not have to do with that should be omitted in order to keep the expectations of those who enter this blog in the right place. Old entries, how ever precious they are as a sign of my maturity and growth in the art of blogging, should be deleted. This also means all my talk of otaku culture (in any respect), anime, manga, and the like should be removed. Of course, I’m not about to delete them, as they might be valuable to someone as information someday, which leads me to the next probable consideration…
• Move otaku fandom-related entries to a New Blog: This is a big deal for me. I have tried the dual blog thing before, and it resulted in me getting sick of my main blog (the one I had before this one). I also became very haughty about the content I was putting out on that second blog, but then eventually had it phase out as I got myself somewhat in mental order & began preparing ISKM. To be blunt: I’m scared of becoming overwhelmed by two blogs.

  Back then, I had lacking knowledge of how to manage my time and energy towards blogging to the point that the whole idea became a chore. I almost quit blogging altogether, but my Japanese club comrades really wanted to know what I was up to while I lived in Osaka. ISKM came from that will to make them happy, and for me to retool myself and stop expecting comments from anyone who treaded on my blog. I am happy to say that after a year running, I have maintained my integrity as a blogger who writes for no one other than me.

  I say all of this to prove a point that I am different than what I used to be, and believe I am now capable of more than I imagined. Erecting another blog with a succinct aim and mission that caters to all that stuff about hobby otaku fandom has the potential to reposition ISKM for higher relevancy when being searched for. This also could possibly cause both blogs to improve drastically in their own right if taken care of as content is conceived or made available by other sources. With an estimated 50% of ISKM’s content being anime/manga/game/otaku fandom-related, pruning my blog of that weight will help search engine spiders really see what ISKM is relevant to in terms of linkage and content. In the end, I don’t want what Danny Choo has. I want to dominate within my own niche.

• Remove irrelevant links: Thankfully, my blogroll is filled with people who are practicing “isshoukenmei” in their own lives in one way or another. So…all of them will stay most likely, as they serve an end-goal of having only links that pertain to my blog’s content. However, many of my other sections and their links need to be relocated to the potential new blog or just done away with. Links that have nothing to do with the content provided also mislead search engines and visitors expecting a certain type of content.

Through these four steps, I seek to implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy in the best possible ways I can think of to better my blog and not miscommunicate the purpose of its existence with clutter. Like I said in my birthday entry, though readership is all well and good, I would prefer to have readers that keep coming back to support the blog rather than just having a high number of chance hits that will hardly ever be the same person again. As I make an effort to finalize my considerations, there will be signs of change in my sidebar sections regardless. Here’s hoping for a stronger, striving blog for a stronger, striving writer…

I’ll put up some amusing image as a header later. Back to work with me…

Currently Listening To: KOTOKO – UZUMAKI – “UZUMAKI”