Over the past two weeks, I actually did an experiment on my blog by posting a short post about the IT Show 2007 in Singapore. Since the IT Show 2007 was round the corner then, I was wondering if it would be possible to optimize that page for that keyword.
Here are the results!
So it works! Well, the figure might not be in the thousands, but hey – what can you do with an additional 900 visitors to a single page (which probably took half an hour to put up)? I was ranked in the top few places for these search terms in Google, for the past week. The ranking has dropped now, unfortunately, without updates to that page and strong incoming links to justify the placement.
Of course, this strategy might not be successful for anything and everything. I suspect that what contributed to the success of the positioning was that this blog is much optimized for Singapore traffic… and of course, the site must be spidered by the search engines quick enough for you to position yourself before the searches come.
(To check when the last time your site has been crawled by the Google spiders, use Google Webmaster Tools)
Optimizing for Search Trends
One very powerful way to get small bursts of traffic to a site is by optimizing for search trends. However, the tough part in this is really answering the question “What are the terms coming up next?”
While one could ride on trends that are obvious like “Christmas gifts” at the end of the year, “Mothers’ Day”, and such, these are also terms that thousands of other sites would be optimizing for. It might not be easy to ride on these (I say “might” because I haven’t had the opportunity to test it yet). 
So I figured that similar to search keywords, there are also niche search trends. Keywords for small trends that the big guys won’t be bothered to optimize for.
Unfortunately, it might not be easy to do a scientific research for such trends, since the numbers are too small for a keyword research tool to play with. I would say, the best way to identify trends like this really through experience and experimentation.
If you are interested in doing keyword research for search trends, one tool available in the market that can do this is NicheBot 2. With its new WordTrend feature, you can see a graphical monthly breakdown of search volume for a particular keyword over the course of past 12 months.
Hey Tan –
Another good method to increase traffic and site visibility is to use free advertising and link exchanges. A lot of bloggers nowadays are so amped up on ‘SEO’ and ‘viral marketing’ that they forget about this simple and efficient method. I have used a couple of these since I have been blogging and found that they bring in a good amount of traffic without requiring much upkeep or money (always an added bonus). One of the better services that I have used is http://adgridwork.com because they allow content targeting and work with both WordPress and Blogger. I’ve also dabbled with http://bla.st and found it to be a good directory as well. Hope these help.
-Nick
Thanks Nick for sharing those two other sites, I’ll check them out! 🙂
Good job! I am impressed. For you, it seems easy to attract search engine traffic. You just need to do an optimized post targeting some search terms and you get traffic to your blog.
Now, the difficult thing is to make all this traffic sticks. Get the visitors to bookmark your blog and return again and again. To do this, you really need to have good and fresh content related to the initial search terms. It takes careful planning and hard work to generate traffic and consistent growth of targeted traffic.
Let me know when you can execute part 2 of the experiment – getting the traffic sticks.
Thanks Shi,
Hahaha… Part 2 of the experiment is a challenge! It doesn’t only involve targeting a niche search trend, but also targeting the right niche search trend – trends that would attract visitors who are interested in the blog contents!
Woahz.. That’s a good one Kian Ann.
Anyway I’m using http://nichebotclassic.com. Not sure of the differences between the two. But I think one seem to be the paid version and the other the free version.
Regards,
Calvin
Yes, NicheBot 2 is a paid version, and what I really like is that it really integrates all the different keyword research tools like Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, and Nichebot’s own WordTrend.
Worth a go!
Great blog. Very well maintained. I should probably read more of your stuff to drive traffic to my blog 🙂
Thanks Kian.
Hey Joe,
Thanks! You have a wonderfully maintained blog too!
I love that quote you have at the top of your blog 😀
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