Doing My Research

FIRST, A LESSON:
I work as a project manager at a marketing agency specializing in web development. The other half of our business is Search Engine Marketing/Optimization. For those of you who don’t know, there’s a literal science to Google/Yahoo and the algorithms used in procuring placement in the listings. Most companies choose a set of keywords and pay Google/Yahoo/MSN on a per-click basis. The other side of SEM/SEO is organic search. Google actively spiders and indexes all the pages on the web so when a user goes to Google and enters a keyword, Google returns the most recently updated pages with the closest match to that specific keyword. (That part isn’t rocket science.) The true science is the behind-the-scenes work done to increase the weight an individual page holds in comparison to the rest of similar pages. This is done by tagging specific key words for your site. Not only can you give your entire site default key words and description text, you can give individual blogs META tags and descriptions.

For example, go to Google. Type in “nat attack.” What is returned to you is a strategic SEO move. (And the description text is excitingly bland enough to trick new readers into checking it out!) I’m the first return of 873,000 pages Google has indexed that reference “nat attack” in some place or another. There’s HUGE money to be made in SEM/SEO, but my knowledge mostly stops there. I play in the web dev side. Nonetheless…

THEN, THE APPLICATION:
6.3% of all my blog traffic comes from Google search. The majority of the keywords used are “natattack”, “natattackisthetnewblog”, “nat attack blog”, or some variation of those words. The people using those words most likely know what they’re looking for—I think they’re trying to get to this site. Reason would indicate they are, right? My fascination comes from the OTHER keywords people search—for the random combinations users string together, and the ability to see the patterns that begin to emerge. It’s like having the ability to look into people’s hearts and minds. It’s a strange power. It ALSO gives me a clue in to what people are interested in but no one else is blogging about—and they’re routed to my page since I AM the only (or most recent) one blogging about it.

So without further adieu, here’s a portion of the list:

• Sweaty back, Bringing sweaty back
• abc extreme makeover home, policewoman wheelchair
• shortie definition, shortie like mine meaning of shortie
• relationship between mike d and screech and neil diamond
• mcdroopy, mc-droopy
• hobbitville salt lake city, hobbitville salt lake how to get to, little people hobbitville, salt lake hobbitville image
• Ponyboy, ponyboy movie, stay gold ponyboy stay gold, how is ponyboy gold
• "yawning bunnies", yawning bunny
• zoltar banner
• 1940’s prom
• joey gladstone woodchuck
• how tall is heidi from the hills?, heidi's coworkers names, heidi's co workers at bolthouse
• "american idol lookalikes"
• Seekingarrangement, find sugar mommy long island
• when did barbie fountain pool come out
• “check out* bangs" 80s
• heart palpatation after eating
• abercrombie and fitch white trash
• zipperless girls jeans
• lyrics "saturday is a special day" lds children song
• ryan gosling and rachel mcadams march with immigrants
• sarah jessica parker gucci fanny pack (ha! I'm not the only one!!!)
• bachelor officer and gentleman accident, abc's the bachelor officer and gentleman what car he drives
• "young lawyer" "hate my job" blog
• "babysitter's club" tv episode download, babysitters club musical stoneybrook
• elliot reed look-alikes
  ....... and on and on and on.

On second viewing of this word list, it’s become readily apparent to me (maybe not to you) that I have a blog that’s all over the place. Calling people "nuts" is one of my favorite phrases. I just realized for the 814th time that I'm perhaps the biggest nut of all. A whole bowl of party nuts. Enjoy it while it lasts.