I am a bit of a data geek.
One of the most fun things I have witnessed over the few months of writing the FUSSYlittleBLOG is that new people keep trickling in from all over the place.
And one question is, “How did they find me?”
And one answer is, “Google.”
There are two things I am thankful for to the geniuses at WordPress (and probably more). But right now I am thinking about two.
1) Somehow optimizing blog pages to perform well in organic Google searches.
2) Providing the data of which search terms resulted in traffic to the blog.
First, I’d like to talk about number one, before moving on to the significantly more fun number two.
The Internet is one heck of a big place. Honestly, I can’t wrap my head around it, and I don’t suspect that many people can. I imagine very few ever even try. My brother-in-law suggested that thanks to the Internet there are no more original ideas.
And when I suggested that I thought I truly had an original idea about a Freudian subtext to The Cat in The Hat, where the Cat and the Fish are locked in battle for the souls of the two young children, he simply told me to Google it.
And lo and behold, there it was.
So when I leaned that you can type something generic like “Regional Burger Chains” (without the quotation marks) into Google, and my little blog comes up as the sixth* result, my insides started to do little backflips.
People pay other people big money to do that sort of thing for them. And I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I have no idea how of the quarter million results that come from that query, I am number six. Six officially is very good, because in insider circles, it is considered “above the fold.” Crazy internet advertising people.
I do better if you type in Dyson DeMara. He is the winemaker who had an incredible influence on my own personal wine journey when he was the wine educator at the Robert Mondavi winery. If you Google his name, the FLB is result number three. And better still with “Don’t like martini glasses” (again without the quotation marks). I am number two* out of over a million.
I have done nothing to achieve these rankings, except write my fussy little heart out.
What is also interesting, and a good segue into thought number two, these are all things people actually typed into Google that landed them at the FUSSYlittleBLOG.
As it turns out, the vast majority of people who found me through a Google search were all looking for the same thing:
The Secret to Oddly Tender Chinese Meat.
It has become one of the most successful posts, not because of any one burst of traffic, but rather a slow and steady drumbeat of visitors who come almost every day. The text of the search query has a broad range:
The Curious: “Why marinate meat in corn starch”
The Suspicious: “What kind of meat do Chinese food really”
The Culturally Agnostic: “Cooking cornstarch tender meat”
The Incredible Hulk: “Cornstarch make meat more tender”
The Grammatically Incorrect: “How do Chinese get there meat tender”
The list goes on and on. I have dozens.
And then there are my favorites. For example, more than one visitor was looking for “Michael Milken, email.” They must have been doggedly searching for it, because I’m not listed until page four. But still, they came.
It’s also good to know that there are other likeminded people out in the ether. I received visits based on these searches as well:
“Berksire Pork, Albany, NY”
“I hate smores”
“cocoa on cappuccinos wrong”
I don’t suspect that any of these visitors became ongoing readers after stumbling onto a post that was relevant to their immediate search. However, if you did, I would love to hear from you.
* Google search results change all the time. At the time of writing this post (last week) these numbers were indeed accurate. Today on its publishing date, “Regional Burger Chains” has been demoted to the second page. Can I tell you again how glad I am not to be involved with search engine marketing?
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