Struggling with my digital identity

Do you struggle with your online identity? By that I mean calculating how to reconcile your vast interests into neat website packages so search engines and “the audience” can find and connect with your ideas.

I’m not railing against these things. I’ve worked as a web content specialist for over 15 years to good success. And I enjoy wrestling with subjects, keywords and site architecture to find a perfect package.

Like many industries and professionals, Web specialists exist to serve both the audience (or customer) and the business. I take no issue with this. I enjoy it.

But.

I’m struggling with my digital identity. 

Finding a ‘perfect package’ for each of my interests. I’m curious by nature and love to learn and experiment.

Perhaps the the issue is perfection? Or at least the attempt to perfectly present myself into neat boxes for search engines and people.

Am I a 2 dimensional cross-section that only fits inside my topic of interest?

Not at all.

My interests and curiosities overlap, inform each other and work together to the point where I’m more successful for having them all.

Yep that goes against what I know about branding, structuring websites and creating a marketing message.

Let’s take a few of my interests as an example. 

I like gardening, a few of my gardening articles appeared on this website for a while. 

But when analysing my sites keyword rankings, I noticed Google was showing my site for terms such as “gardening SEO”.

I have written about SEO on this site and gardening, but never together. In my mind they are two topics I keep separate. But for Google and other search engines those topics become related due to my site structure I.e. internal links, folders and frequency/depth of topic.

For reference: At the time the SEO pages were core pillars of this site and so were linked in both the main menu and site footer. Noted incase this site changes in the future.

That’s how search engines work and it’s something I take advantage of when helping businesses to improve their websites.

Of course the simplest solution would be to not worry about this and let it be. It’s only my personal site, not a client’s site that needs focus so customers visit and buy from the business.

Except, perfection.

So I’ve moved the gardening articles off to their own site.

This means my focus fractures across two sites. 

At some point in the future I’d love to regularly write about gardening. I’m saving date stamped photos and notes about my allotment journey to be able to write.

But that time isn’t now.

Balancing a professional identity

Then there is my “professional identity” – Vancano is my online tag, not what I use in professional settings.

I freelance under Pen9 Creative. Yet I’ve never liked having a number in my domain… perfection. So my freelance is being rebranded under Snowdensmith Digital. And I’ve moved most marketing articles over to there.

Fundamentally Vancano is my digital sandbox. The one place I don’t care if search engines understand it, or “the audience” gets what it’s about. None of that matters.

Until. The site starts ranking well and building traffic, the voice in my head pipes up saying I now need to optimise so their experience is better. 

Also, we all need to earn money to survive. So maybe I could start earning my living from Vancano as it’s showing promise. This thought leads to more splitting and refinement of content and sales pages.

I’ve even considered retiring Vancano and switching to something more “professional” for my personal blog such as Nate.snowdensmith.com – that way I’ll also unify my brands under one domain, but keep them separate by using subdomains.

I’m resisting that urge. 

Do you struggle with this?

A snippet of my many interests

I’ve only shared a couple of interests that I write about and have built websites around.

To give to a broader insight into some of my interests:

Synthmark – Cyberpunk short stories and art

Written In Love – memorial artwork 

Lotek Life – Gardening

Worldbuilding School – building imaginary worlds

Fantasy Map Market – making fantasy maps

We Are Dance – Branded apparel for dance schools

I would struggle to keep all of these on one website and be successful. Big businesses can manage it through subdomains and enough resources to maintain the content, but a powerful central brand is the core to their success.

This article is a ramble. But writing this stream of consciousness helps.

As does this…

I found the IndieWeb. Again.

Rediscovering websites that started early 00s and have kept their random, individual charm helps me settle the perfection devil. 

Websites such as Newgrounds and Neocities (a modern revival of Geocities) or even Itch (which is a modern site). They’ve kept the chaotic charm of the pre-centralised internet by allowing their users to hack html and CSS to create unique identities.

I’m a fan of ideals established by the fediverse, such as the liberty of a creating a decentralised web connected by protocols. And I love the principles from the IndieWeb.

I suppose my writing is rambling as a way to mull through my thoughts and come to the conclusion that I am keeping Vancano as my personal site. I’ll double down on the messy nature of a personal website and dive deeper into the IndieWeb.

I’ll be knocking off the polish and returning Vancano to my sandbox, you’re more than welcome to visit and I hope you do, but don’t be horrified if you find it’s a mess or even broken at times.

I also don’t promise to stick to a publishing schedule (never have) or to a single topic.

I do promise, with every good intention, to publish things that interest me.

Sure it’s narcissistic, but then perhaps that’s the core ideal?

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Visit my Now page to see what I’m working on.