How I placed first among 240 million search results

Earlier this week, while I was reviewing my blog’s analytics, I noticed an interesting search someone typed into Google and that had brought them to my blog:

happy birthday from me and or i and

What shocked me was that the search brings up 24 million results. And, cool story, one of my posts was the top result. And it’s only 6 months old.

So, how did I do it?

Well, this December marks 17 years that I’ve been blogging. I’ve learned a few tricks along the way to generate traffic and create awareness of old content. Here’s one particular trick I like to use that works particularly well on blogs with a lot of content.

Skip the keywords.

Or more specifically, stop trying to target popular keywords, especially if you’re in a saturated space. There are so many grammar blogs out there, that I’d never be able to compete on popular phrases. Going after the popular keywords is too much work for the headache that comes with it.

Instead, focus on quality content rich with good keywords, but not necessarily the most popular ones. Consider the long tail.

Long tail

In the above graph, the green represents the most popular keywords. The yellow represents less popular keywords, or the long tail. The funny thing is that long tail search engine results often account for more combined traffic than popular keywords.

My most popular blog post discusses the difference between sitting and seating. In fact, it’s so popular, that it garners 75% more traffic than my home page does. Visitors arrive to the post through a variety of search terms, not just popular ones:

  1. seating or sitting
  2. difference between seating and sitting
  3. difference between sitting and seating
  4. difference between sit and seat
  5. sitting or seating
  6. difference between seat and sit
  7. sitting and seating
  8. what is the difference between sit and seat
  9. sit and seat difference
  10. sitted or seated
  11. seating and sitting
  12. what is the difference between sitting and seating
  13. seat and sit difference
  14. sitting and seating difference
  15. seating arrangement or sitting arrangement
  16. seating sitting
  17. difference between sitting arrangement and seating arrangement
  18. different between seat and sit
  19. differences between sit and seat
  20. sitting seating

And those are just the top 20 search phrases. The list goes on forever.

I did with the post I referenced at the beginning of this post. I wrote the content, not even worrying about popular keywords.

So remember, stop obsessing over popular keywords. Create compelling, well-written content that has the information people want to read. The traffic will come on its own. Especially the more you write.

What tricks do you use to raise awareness of your old content? Let me know in the comments.

By Kim Siever

I am a copywriter and copyeditor. I blog on writing and social media tips mostly, but I sometimes throw in my thoughts about running a small business. Follow me on Twitter at @hotpepper.