Using Search Engine Referrals to Jumpstart Topics

If you’re anything like me, you probably check your blog’s stats regularly. I often spend half an hour every day reviewing daily stats for the numerous blogs I write for. I’m not normally interested in the pageviews and referral sources only. What I’m really intrigued with is the keywords that users have used to arrived at my blog.

Most analytics packages like Google Analytics, Mint and pMetrics track search engine referrals, and could tell you the top keywords that people use when they get to your blog. For example, for one particular science blog I contribute to, people referred by Google seem to be searching for the H1N1 virus, using various keywords like Swine Flu and the like. This would prompt me to write more about the topic, knowing it’s something that people like reading about. Of course, this is a popular topic today, and I’d be riding the trend if I wrote about H1N1.

However, even better for me is finding novel and unique keywords that people use on their searches. For example, I would never know how someone landed on my tech blog using keywords related to nudity and adult websites. Or perhaps it’s because I wrote about the adult website industry some time back, in the context of blogs and social networking. It’s not what I expected, but it’s intriguing. It made me realize how relevant that site could be in different niches.

Reading up on your referral stats could help you better focus the content on your site. If you find that your readers land on your blog or any specific posts within using the keywords that you are actually optimizing for, then congratulations! But you shouldn’t stop there. If you see some interesting keywords popping up, then you can also optimize for these keywords. Your site has already popped up as a relevant match. You can now follow through with this relevancy.

What best way to focus on these keywords than to use these to jumpstart new categories or topics. For instance, in my mention of referrals from adult-related searches, I could have probably written more about the dynamics between social networks and the adult industry. That would definitely be keyword rich, and would push up my site further in the search engine results. Then again, it was my choice not to, because I thought it would be too controversial. But my point remains. If you find an interesting and intriguing referral, try to do a follow-up. It might be a good way to jumpstart new topics that are interesting to new, prospective readers.