How to Use Google Trends to Spike Your Traffic

In a previous post, Google Trends: The Borg Speaks, I talked about the strange and sometimes disturbing movements of Google Trends.

In that post I had some fun using Google Trends as a radar of our bizarre cultural zeitgeist. But that is far from its only use. For one thing, bloggers have found a clever, perhaps less than scrupulous way to use Google Trends to gain a large bump in their site traffic, and thus their advertising income.

Now, I’m not necessarily advising this technique, but in the spirit of full disclosure of the black arts, I’ll tell you how to do it.

For this to work well, your site needs to already be a) reasonably popular in terms of traffic, b) already listed by Google, and c) indexed quickly by Google Blog Search after each post – quickly meaning a matter of minutes. If c) isn’t happening, make sure your blogging software is set to ping “http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2″ after each post. The faster your post is indexed, the better this will work.

Step One: Find It

Google Trends is updated frequently throughout the day. As it updates, wait for a newly popular subject to bubble up. Look for one without much competition in the search results – something new or uncommon. That’s not too difficult in a society which creates new “celebrities” on a pace of about twice a day. Sometimes a neologism will pop up, usually after being spoken by someone on a popular TV show. Grab it.

Step Two: Write It

Write a quick, keyword-heavy post on this hot subject. The content can be cribbed from Wikipedia, imdb, or AP News – it just needs to be relevant to the subject. The first couple of lines should be inviting to a searcher (i.e. “Everything you want to know about _____”, “Hot nude pics of _____”, etc.). Use the popular term by itself as the post title, for maximum keyword density.

Step Three: Ping It

The final step is to ping Google as quickly as possible and get indexed. If it works, searchers will see this post in the top few results for one of the most popular searches of the day. That can mean thousands of clicks. If you have advertising which pays by the impression, you just made some money. Even if you have pay-per-click ads, you’re likely to get quite a few extra clicks from people simply looking for somewhere else to go after they’re done with your page.

Now, that’s how to do it unethically. But do you really want to post solely for the sake of gaining traffic? If you were a store owner, do you just want to get people inside your store with a window display, or would you rather work on having satisfied repeat customers?

Then again, how unethical is it really? Isn’t this really just another form of what the Huffington Post does – re-packaging other people’s work and putting it in front of more noses? Don’t get me started; let’s save that for another post.

So there are open questions and gray areas. If your post is relevant to your site and to the subject, and you manage to add some value, then clearly you’ve served a purpose, even if you’ve marketed your goods in an manipulative way. And isn’t all marketing inherently manipulative? Doesn’t a consumerist, advertising-based society favor manipulative tactics over quality, innovation, humanity and all that other bullshit people still seem to care about despite decades of soul-crushing propaganda? 

I think the only way to answer these questions is with an experiment. Tune in tomorrow for a Google Garbage™ Special!

150 Visitors a Day in 2 Weeks: the Bootstrap Method

Today is this blog’s 14th day in existence. Despite a couple of traffic-killing holidays in that period, I’m happy to report that, thanks to you, we’re now averaging 150 160 unique visitors a day, and the trend is upward. Since I’m just bootstrapping my way up, I thought I’d share what I did, what I didn’t, and what I didn’t do but should have.

What I did:

Concentrate on content. I’m writing about things that interest me, and hopefully others, not just trying to fill space. If you want to write just to get popular and make money…well, good luck. If you want to be John Chow, go for it.

Post consistently. I’m trying to stick to 5 days a day, Monday through Friday. That may become impossible, but I’ll try.

Utilize every free service available. Google Analytics is pretty much mandatory (though it could use an averaging function). Submitting to Digg, Technorati, StumbleUpon – all free. StumbleUpon has given me half of my traffic the last few days.

Establish communication with like-minded bloggers. Social Change SEO is one I like a lot, as well as a few friends I’ve added to my links. I’m finding more all the time. Keep in mind, this is not a business transaction. I’d love a PR8 or PR9 linkback, but only from a site that makes sense, and certainly not by paying some scammer. 

Write link-bait. I backed into this technique when I wrote about my hatred for Twitter in my second post. I’ll be honest: at the time I was totally naive that people wrote controversial posts strictly to gain traffic. But when I saw people streaming in, I wrote a follow-up on more reasons Twitter sucks. Hey, I ain’t stupid.

Link to high-traffic blogs, when relevant. For example, the first line in my 2009 predictions post. Maybe I overdid it a little, but all of those sites received a ping that I linked to them, and some had an auto-trackback posted in their comments, which could lead a few people here. But remember, treat it like an nude scene: only do it if it’s integral to the plot.

Comment on related posts elsewhere. Let others know that you’ve posted your take on a subject, but again, only if you can add something to the conversation. Don’t be a salesperson. Apply the normal rules of human engagement.

Mention this blog on my social networks. Again, avoid salesmanship if you don’t want to be treated like one. These sites are there to let people know what you’re doing, and your blog is one of the things you’re doing.

Tweak the meta-tags. At the very least, make sure you have an accurate description. This is something I slacked on until just yesterday.

What I didn’t do:

Spam other blogs with unrelated comments.

Participate in in dicey linking schemes.

Write anything I couldn’t live with.

Connect with anyone I wouldn’t have in real life.

What I didn’t do but should have:

Ask for links. ”You don’t ask, you don’t get”. I need to get better at this. I really prefer things happen organically, but I also hate waiting. Slight conflict there.

Write a bunch of posts before launching, in order to “find my voice” first. I guess there’s nothing wrong with growing up in public, but this blog has just started to find itself in the last few days. It also would make regular posting easier if I had an archive I could pull one out of when I needed to.

Make it pay for itself. Just yesterday I reluctantly placed an ad in the sidebar, which I can’t even see myself due to ad-blocking software. Hopefully you can. I can’t ask you to click on it, as that’s against Google’s policy. But I think I can mention that I make money if you do.

Clearly, I’m still struggling with how/whether I want to make money on this. If just one of you signs up with my web host, I’ll break even. I recommend it, isn’t that good enough?

No? OK then, scroll down on the sign-up page and enter coupon code “GOTAPEX-ROX-A-LOT” for 3 months free, free domain registration, and only $6.95 a month. What else do you want?

What did I say about avoiding salesmanship?

Corporate Blogs Aren’t Trusted: Forrester Research

Do you hear that? It’s the sound of a crowd of marketers, strategists, consultants, PR flacks and “social media gurus” scrambling for cover.

A December 10th report from Forrester Research is making some people very uncomfortable. And it confirms everything I learned about corporate blogs as a media strategist.

(click for full size)

According to the report, only 16% of consumers who have read corporate blogs consider them trustworthy. That puts them below all other information sources, including wikis, online classifieds, message boards, even direct mail.

Dead last. More people would trust a random stranger to do an appendectomy than take advice from a corporate blog, no matter how cute or clever.

But of course, as Josh Bernhoff from Forrester notes, “Everybody thinks their blog is an exception.”

To which might be added, “everyone thinks they are of above-average intelligence”.

So what advice are the pros giving?

Debbie Weil, the author of The Corporate Blogging Book, takes the “I’ve been telling you this all along” approach, stating:

I wish more corporate types wading into social media would read my book ($6.49 on Amazon). Especially Chapter 7 on how to write an effective corporate blog.

Keep making lemons, Debbie. Keep making lemons.

Meanwhile, the Blog Council - there’s a Blog Council? – exercises their irony muscles (emphasis added):

What’s clear is that while there is a lot of work still to do, corporate blogs do work. The report specifically highlighted some examples of corporate blogs that are trustworthy — Dell, Rubbermaid, and Microsoft (all Blog Council members, by the way) — because they put their customer first and exist to help solve their problems.

The Blog Council: building trust in their own blog by shilling for their members. Well done.

Max Kalehoff, marketing VP at Clickable, states Forrester “gets it wrong”, because:

While the data selected to base the report are great for generating a headline, they’re mostly irrelevant. Blogs are a both a communications channel AND a medium.

[...]

Here’s an analogy: Do you trust telephones? No. But you may eventually build trust with the people with whom you talk and do business with via the telephone.

You’re right, Max: people don’t trust telephones. That’s why they invented Caller ID.  So we could screen out untrusted sources…like, say, your clients.

So basically the responses have been: “it’s the wrong question” or “it’s a flawed study” or “that’s not us”.

That’s fine for an academic circle-jerk debate amongst marketers and strategists. But in this economy, this report could actually cost some people their livelihoods. As such, it should be taken seriously.

So what’s a corporate blog/social media team to do?

Well, for a start:

• Don’t force (or allow) your writers to recycle press releases. Let the people you hired to be creative be creative.
• Start offering something anything of value. 
• Question why you’ve got a blog in the first place, and if the answer is “because we have to”, put someone else in charge. 
• Have enough guts to tell the Chief X Officer that they just don’t get this stuff. 
• Explain that always being in sales mode doesn’t work in this medium. The company is not paying by the inch or the minute.
• Challenge corporate insularity. Solicit contributions and feedback (positive and negative) from real people, and value it when you get it.
• Explain the concept of institutional mistrust to the hand that feeds you.

If you get fired for it, start a blog, tell your story, publish your cease-and-desist letters, get a publicist, and start a consulting firm.

Either way, you win.