Google “chopstick instructions” and the flyte blog comes up third. Until a few days ago, we were number one, and still are if you include the quote marks.
What does this mean for you? It shows how you can drive traffic to your blog (or Web site). And, if you were a Chinese restaurant or sold Asian cooking implements, the power of driving qualified traffic to your blog.
It was a few Friday afternoons ago and I was a little fried. I read the miserable translation of the chopstick instructions on the chopstick wrapper (“Chinese glonous history?”) and found it funny. So I scanned in the wrapper and blogged about it.
I purposefully wrote a post title–which would become my page title–that should capture the interest of anyone wanting to learn how to use chopsticks, “Chopstick Instructions: How to Use Chopsticks.”
Within about two days I was number one for “chopstick instructions” and I find that I get a few people every day who come to my blog looking for chopstick instructions.
Now of course, I can’t take advantage of this audience. If any of them are interested in Web design and Internet marketing it would be a random occurance; certainly not worth the time of scanning in the wrapper and blogging about it.
However, it shows that there are people out there looking for help in certain areas of their life or business. What instruction manual or how-to can you post to your own blog to drive qualified traffic?
You need to get inside the head of your best customer or prospect, determine what she wants, and help her achieve it.
And, unlike your Web site that may have a certain structure, you can easily throw in how-to articles on your blog on anything you like, just to test the reaction. You can also write articles that might take advantage of current events, such as “How to Vote Twice on Election Day” or “How to Eat Your Kids’ Halloween Candy Without Them Discovering It.”
What are your best prospects looking to achieve? Now you have your writing assignment.
Brilliant technique! I think it could be quite helpful in that it also gives you a new way to brainstorm ideas for posts.
Comment by Dana Wallert — November 3, 2006 @ 10:38 am
You can drive great traffic without using search engines by creating and promoting truly original and useful content.
For example, I posted an interview with Adam Lasnik from Google today and over 2,000 unique visitors have hit the post so far with NONE of that traffic coming from search engines.
How? Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Techmeme, Del.icio.us and all the blogs that linked/posted.
I’m pretty sure the post will rank fairly well in Google for Adam’s name in the next few weeks and send even more qualified traffic.
Comment by Lee Odden — November 6, 2006 @ 7:46 pm
That reminds of years ago when I blogged about Mark Cuban’s blog. Whenever you googled Mark Cuban blog or other such terms, my 100 word post would show up on the front page. It was the only post I ever wrote about Cuban too. Weird. Now if I could just get posts I NEED to rank highly to show up, that would be cool.
Comment by Paul Chaney — November 15, 2006 @ 4:12 pm
That’s very clever!! I’m actually compiling a list of potential How to articles that are geared to small bus. owners – any suggestions??
Comment by Ayat — November 27, 2006 @ 1:03 pm
Hey Rich,
I love your Marketing podcast.
You are still #3 for Chopstick Instructions
http://www.google.com/search?q=chopstick+instructions
If you changed the title to Chopstick Instructions that might give you enough ranking weight to take it a bit higher.
I put together a WordPress Plugin that adds a subtitle to your Write Post page and puts the subtitle in line with your title.
This way you get the add the subtitle “How to Use Chopsticks” to the title “Chopstick Instructions”.
Check it out and common your thoughts.
Title Optimization: Balancing Understandable Titles & Targeting Your Keywords
http://seo.seocompany.ca/title-optimization/
Blog Titles: Code to Setup Titles & Meta Descriptions
http://seo.seocompany.ca/blog-titles/
The Page Optimization blog that I just.
Comment by bobmutch — July 17, 2007 @ 10:12 pm