I love to see the search results the bring people to this blog. I search for information constantly and know well the joy of finding exactly what I was looking for and the frustration when every link is a dead end. For instance, you'd be surprised at how often people search for information about sleepovers. The person I felt the most sorry for was the one who was looking for "gifts for political science majors" and ended up here.
One simple blog rule is that the title of your post matters a lot. If the title of your post matches a common search phrase, people will find your site on a regular basis. Now, I honestly have no desire for this kind of traffic; I'm not tracking eyeballs, running Adwords or anything. The number of readers I have matters a lot to me; the number of visitors not so much. However, I do want search engine tourists to enjoy their stay and find what they're looking for.
I noticed a large amount of Google tourists recently and discovered that a lot of people are searching for "west wing cancelled". You guessed it - that was the exact title of my recent post on the subject.
Here's where the power of a blog amazes me, though. If you search Google for "west wing cancelled" right now, this rather small blog is the number one result, above MSNBC, Answers.com, CNN, and Ain't It Cool News. Sometimes, it's good to be reminded just how much the world of journalism and media has changed.
Quick side note: It turns out the cancelled can legitimately be spelled with 1 or 2 l's, so those who search for "west wing canceled" will never see my post!
I noticed this the other day. I wrote a single rant article about Crown Financial Ministries a few weeks ago, and it's in the top 5 results if you search for "crown financial" on Google. I think it's cool, because it's means us little guys can keep the big boys accountable.
Posted by: Nathan Smith | February 05, 2006 at 09:16 PM
Nathan: One of the downfalls of title-weighted search results is time frame. I wrote a post titled "West Wing Season Premier" two years ago, which received a lot of traffic this year. I kept thinking I should add an apology at the top of the post, or at least write a review of the most recent premier.
I liked your perspective on the "crown financial" class, by the way.
Posted by: Brian Bailey | February 05, 2006 at 09:28 PM
First result, or eleventh result?
Posted by: ... | February 05, 2006 at 11:01 PM
I've been looking for a good tracking device/system for my blog. What do you recommend?
Posted by: Jonathan Blundell | February 06, 2006 at 12:25 PM
My website is primarily links, not articles, but I've noticed the same phenomenon.
When the big tsunami hit Asia at the end of 2004, I compiled a long list of articles about Christian relief efforts and was in the top five listings for "Christian tsunami relief" on Google and Yahoo. My website received hundreds of visits from people using those words and similar keywords.
Last year I compiled a list of 154 articles about Christian disaster relief efforts after the hurricanes hit the Gulf coast. Same response: hundreds of people visited my website. The bookmark program that I use is similar to del.icio.us and generates an RSS feed which I featured on my home page for several months. If you are curious, you can see the list of articles here:
http://christianheadlines.com/bookmarks/tags.php/christian%20hurricane%20relief
Posted by: Barry Bowen | February 06, 2006 at 08:01 PM