Please don’t ever, ever write a blog post like this.
I guess I should clarify why I’m writing a blog like this. Minka Kelly and Rafael Nadal are not going to discuss the NYC hurricane in this blog. In fact, I didn’t even know who Minka Kelly was until just now. Rather, the point of this blog is to show how you can use trending search topics to your advantage in blog posts and on your site.
A couple months ago I wrote a blog post that mentioned Urban Outfitters and a PR disaster on Twitter. Without intending to, I created a strong keyword optimized blog post that resulted in our website getting hit for search terms related to the event.
I’ve seen this happen on several other sites that I write for, and it’s always exciting to see how we can create good, real content based on ideas that people are searching for. However, I must warn against posting exclusively for the purpose of ranking for a keyphrase. Write real material, based on your relevant thoughts and genuine interpretations on the topic.
Minka Kelly, Rafael Nadal, and the NYC hurricane
These are three of the top search terms right now, according to tools on Google, Yahoo, and AOL (I can’t find Bing’s trends–not sure if they have that tool). What you can do is use these search engine tools to find out what’s popular, and see if you have anything you want to say about those topics that relates to your industry.
Don’t simply write about something because it’s popular; write about something because it relates to your expertise AND it’s popular. I always encourage our clients to find out what people want to know about, and write about it.
In addition to using the search engine tools that track popular searches, also check out what people are talking about in discussion forums. Google has an easy way of designating a discussion-specific search. Once you discover what questions people have about your industry, take the time to answer these on your blog. It pays off to know what your audience is looking for.
I’ll let you know next week if our site gets hit for any of these completely irrelevant search terms. I doubt it, because this blog post really has nothing to do with Minka Kelly, Rafael Nadal, and NYC hurricane, which is why I’d suggest making sure your post is on topic and keyphrase targeted.