Online Money Dot.com

Darren Rowse recently published a post where he listed 42 blog posts from all over the internet, with the title “Blogging is like…”.

Is blogging really like any of these things? Sure is its, but what´s the real reason behind these posts, that compare blogging to something totally unrelated to the topic of the blog? Is it just for creative purposes? Is it to have a more catchy title?

The reason behind these posts titles is one: receive search engine visitors, from niches other than the one the blog is about. Notice how these comparisons have nothing to do with the blog´s main topic, and are an attempt to capture visitors, and hopefully readers, that normally wouldn´t find the blog.

And does this work?

You bet! Especially if the blog doing the post is considered by Google as an authority blog. Check out some of these examples taken from Darren´s post:

• There is a post on the list titled Blogging is like Alcohol. If you do a Google search for like alcohol, you will find that post in first place. The blog that wrote the post is about the Business of Blogging and the New Media.
• If you Google conga line, you will find in sixth place a blog about website design.
• If you search sales meeting, with over 10 million results on Google, in seventh place you find a post from a blog on real estate. And notice how the post doesn´t even have the keywords “sales meeting” in the url.
• And last but not least, a SEO blog that comes in third for a Google search of traditional Indian food.

As you can imagine, these blogs will be getting visits from these posts, and they will most likely be “new” visitors. When a blog has grown so much that it is already very well known within its niche, one way of finding new readers is with these kinds of tricks. Some of these new found visitors will become readers, even if their main interest for surfing the net is something else. Another possibility is that these visitors just click on your ads when they find the blog. Search engine visitors are known to convert better as far as clicking on the ads.

When a blog reaches a point where it is already on the front page of Google for its main keywords, it needs to find “new markets” to continue to grow. Like I have said before:

more visitors = more readers = more money

This doesn´t mean that we should all go out and start doing these kinds of posts. It´s important that you gain “authority” within your niche first, before you go out and try to get readers looking for other things. Also, like with any other SEO trick, this one should be used with moderation.