It has been quite a journey over these last four and a half years. Lots of highs, some lows and many unforgettable experiences and discoveries which have resulted in some 8,000 articles about Croatia’s premier island and a guidebook in two editions (soon to be a third…).
And the Total Hvar story is set to continue, but with a new home. As many of you know, in addition to this website, we also run Total Split, Total Inland Dalmatia, Total Croatia News and (I write these words from Germany), Total Munich.
Total Croatia News (www.total-croatia-news.com) in particular has done extremely well since its launch in July, entering the top 400 websites in Croatia, despite its youth and being in English. We now have 40 writers, including a former Croatian Prime Minister, and the site has an outstanding international reach, much more so than Total Hvar. As a Google News affiliate, it also has the ability to be indexed immediately, and our news coverage of Croatia has been picked up so far by Huffington Post, Washington Post, Lonely Planet News, Independent, Suddeutchsche, die Zeit and The Guardian to name but a few.
With such a successful website with less than 3,000 articles doing so well, what would happen to the Google juice if you added 14,000 original articles from Hvar, Split and Inland Dalmatia?
We are about to find out, as later this week, we will start the process of transferring our websites to the mother ship of Total Croatia News, with a special travel section which will initially house just Hvar, Split and Inland Dalmatia, but with plans to expand that later this year.
How will all this affect the most important people – you, the readers?
The good news is – not at all. If you have bookmarked a certain page such as the blog, you will be redirected to exactly the same place. If you manually type in the Total Hvar website address, you will arrive at the Total Hvar homepage on TCN, and if you Google for Hvar information, all you would have found on Total Hvar will be on TCN. The only difference is that the site will have the same look and feel of TCN, which many people have told me they prefer. I do too.
The benefits will be for all to enjoy. The increased Google juice will bring more traffic to the site, which will keep our sponsors happy, the fact that everything is in one site will make it easier to find things, and the strengths of one particular site – for example being number one of Google for the term ‘Dubrovnik to Split’ on Total Split which brings 600 visitors a day to Total Split each day for that search term alone – is something that will benefit other businesses on the site.
So no major changes, and you have to do nothing but continue to read – we are very grateful for your considerable support, and if you wake up one morning in a month and see a new look and feel for Total Hvar, you now know why.
2016 is going to be a great Total year. If you would like to follow Total Croatia News on Facebook, click here.
