by prolificliving 85 comments

How to Turn Accidental Search Engine Traffic Into Loyal Readership



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accidental search engine traffic

Mismatch? Depends on how you look at it...

Sometimes the best opportunities for traffic and lead conversion go unnoticed.

When I found my hidden opportunity, especially after it had been staring me in the face for months, I felt compelled to share it.

I am sure you know all about why you need to work on bringing SEO traffic for your desired keywords.

But what happens when Google brings you accidental traffic? What should you do with it then?

What is accidental traffic?

Accidental traffic is when Google ranks you on the first page for a specific keyword(s) or phrase(s),  for which you had no intention to rank.

This translates into consistent, organic, steady, unintentional and accidental traffic coming to your site every single day!

This can happen especially if your content topics have some versatility.

For instance, at Prolific Living, I write about all aspects of living your life on your own terms. I do not focus on a single tiny niche on purpose.

I write about eating a vegan diet, keeping a yoga practice, traveling fearlessly around the world, and how to quit a lucrative job or how to stay motivated in a corporate job that you dislike.

I write about personal quests and struggles of being the best version of ourselves, from lacking confidence and courage, to facing our fears and turning our ideas into awesome actions.

After a while, you develop your brand and can veer off topic and, as long as you give great value and stay true to your overall mission, I believe you will succeed.

But I digress a little, so back to the accidental traffic:

How do you identify it?

By closely monitoring your site with any stat tracking software, like Google Analytics.

In my case, I have been ranking – quite accidentally – as number 1, 2 or 3 on the first page of Google for “green juicing”, “green juices”, “green juicing recipes”, “green juice recipes” and every variation of that particular phrase.

These are the incoming keywords to my site every day.

The traffic is consistently coming to a single post on the topic of green juicing and is yet to stop.

Organic Google Traffic screenshot

And what did I do about it? Nothing!

Nothing that mattered much, anyway.

I added some AdSense and affiliate marketing links.

I optimized the post a bit, but for the most part, I watched that traffic come to the site and leave, without taking much action, other than increasing my bounce rate.

The readers that came from my top Google ranking did none of the following:

  • Share the post
  • Leave a comment
  • Buy a product
  • Browse to other posts
  • Or, most important of all, join my mailing list.

Why?

Because organic traffic is not yet loyal.

Organic traffic comes to find one thing and one thing only: the answer to the keyword phrase in their search term.

When they find it, they consume it and are on their way out.

They are not interested in buying something immediately and are certainly not interested in signing up for a generic mailing list that does not directly benefit them.

6-Step Action Plan to Turn Accidental Traffic into Loyal Readership

This month and 34,000+ hits later, I finally decided to turn this traffic from random organic traffic into loyal readers, raving fans, and future customers.

Here is my recommended plan of action to do just that:

1.  Change the top-hitting post into a gorgeous landing page

For me, this took time and work. I had to figure out how to make a post look like a page and remove everything not related to green juicing.

I suggest you optimize your content, put amazing value into it, check the writing and make sure it connects with the readers.

Make it look like a professional website designed to represent exactly that keyword phrase. Leave your social sharing buttons and leave comments open and remove sidebars.

2.  Create a unique mailing list just for that subject

You want to create a unique mailing list with a beautiful opt-in form and give people reasons to join.

Create a gift to give away as a reward for opting in and start collecting emails right away. Add this opt-in form in two places in your post so that your random traffic can easily see it.

3. Optimize all your other posts on the topic

I have at least 2 other top-hitters on green juicing.

I made those posts all look like professional landing pages and I linked to them from the main post. I then added the opt-in form to all those posts.

Have 4-6 posts that provide killer value for free and it will position you as someone who knows the subject in and out.

Create a niche website within your site, in other words.

4. Write, write and write more content for your new list

I spent hours writing fresh content for 21 future emails; all will be a part of an auto-responder series that will be sent to this niche every other week and explore some aspect of green juicing, my best secrets, how-to, tips, things not to do, etc.

I worked hard to put serious value into each email’s content and kept them all short and sweet.

Where appropriate, I mentioned some affiliate links to products that I love and trust with a disclaimer.

5. Make a mini splash out of it

I am truly excited about green juicing all over again and I want to share it with my regular readership.

I made a short professional looking video where I talked about the amazing benefits of green juicing and why I loved it, followed by a mention of my free mailing list that gave the newbies to green juicing tons of great value.

I launched the newsletter in a blog post, so my current readers would also have a chance to join in.

6. Be smart and do not wait half as long as someone else (hint: yours truly)

Do this as soon as you see consistent, growing traffic to a blog post or a page that is being singled out by search engines.

Marketing Takeaway

My green juicing email list is already growing from all the organic traffic those posts get and the experiment is well under way.

The traffic continues to come in and now I am doing something about it.

Do you have any posts that are getting accidental traffic like I do?

What is your action plan to turn it into subscribers and customers?

This is a hidden opportunity. Don’t let it go unnoticed!

Share your fabulous thoughts in the comments below.


traffic generation cafe comment below

{ 85 comments }

Brian Lucas ( December 15, 2011 at 12:25 pm

This post totally confirms my intentions to do this on my site. I am an artist, so sometimes I get random visits from Google images. I have a few blog posts that have received consistent, steady traffic from avenues I had never intended. I’m going to get to work on converting this traffic to readers, customers, and clients. Thanks!

Ana Hoffman December 15, 2011 at 1:33 pm

Definitely worth the shot, Brian!

Steve November 21, 2011 at 8:12 pm

I’m glad I found this post. I have had similar thoughts about making use of accidental traffic, but you laid it out here. One extra bonus is finding your Green juice site, I mean Prolific Living.

AstroGremlin October 23, 2011 at 3:32 pm

I came here searching for juices for green men. Fabulous tip, one I have used, and accepts the idea that what the search engines believe about your site is reality, whatever you may think.

Farnoosh October 23, 2011 at 6:44 pm

Too funny – well, nice to see you here and glad you found this useful :) ! Ana doesn’t have much on green juicing but if you come to my site, I’ll teach ya a thing or two ;) !!

Jayne Kopp October 11, 2011 at 6:51 pm

HI Farnoosh,

It’s funny I read your post as I actually have a few ideas for accidental traffic as well. I seem to attract a lot of ‘troubled people’ looking for ways to apologize, forgive others and forgive themselves.

I even get emails asking for advice … and do my best to give them solid advice based on my own experiences. ((yikes)… there are all sorts of issues too, relationship, school, arguments at church, you name it… they seem to find me.

With that said, its all good and being that I am into personal development it’s just a little niche withing the broad scope of personal growth. :-)

I have been rolling the marbles around in my head to come up with an ebook or some sort of product.

I am not quite sure how to do the ‘landing page’ trick on my blog… do you have a suggestion for that by any chance??

Great bunch of ideas Farnoosh… after all it is a shame to waste decent traffic isn’t it?!

Thanks so much for the great read!

Jayne

Farnoosh October 12, 2011 at 5:56 am

Dear Jayne, hi!
So good to hear from you and know that you too are thinking about what to do with your accidental traffic.
As for the landing page, dear, I had to hire my younger (genius) brother for a few hours to pull the CSS code together for me on that – I try to stay away form code, even though I am an engineer ;) !
If you are interested in him helping you, come over to my site and contact me. So he did the coding but I made the post look like a page with using a larger font, larger photos, and then the email subscriber list from Aweber. All in all, that page took about a day to put together, maybe a little longer….
Hope this helps? Best of luck!

Cynthia Ann Leighton October 10, 2011 at 7:29 pm

Great points, Farnoosh. Redoing a popular post as a landing page with another list embedded within your site is absolutely brilliant. I’ll watch for opportunities to do that once I create a post that catches attention.

I’ve subscribed now at your green juice landing page! Hoping to get great health boosts by skipping the errors I see I made once-upon-a-time when I gave juicing a “go” without your specific tips.

Farnoosh October 11, 2011 at 5:32 am

Dearest Cynthia, welcome to my green juicing list. You can tell me how you like the emails that you will get – I have some 20 or so fresh new content that you will receive and I think you may have left me a comment too …. Good luck and keep at it and don’t give up on anything after ONE try :) ) Thanks for your comment.

Cynthia Ann Leighton October 11, 2011 at 8:14 am

Thanks!

I did try more than literally drinking once. I forced myself to try it a few times a week for a while. Some were good but I started dreading drinking them and simply stopped. Didn’t know it was so much more than a beverage, either.

Tracey Grady October 10, 2011 at 3:34 pm

Hi Farnoosh, thanks for a truly informative post.

I am aware of a very strong vein of accidental traffic reaching my site, via a post of mine which received a backlink from a very prominent website in my niche over two years ago. I have planned to capitalise on this by dressing up the post a bit and write supplementary material to turn into a free e-book for giveaway when a site visitor signs up to my email list. Reading what you’ve done validates this plan, and I’m excited to get started on it.

By the way, after reading this, I googled ‘green juicing’ to see your landing page and I’m impressed with the layout. Yes, it’s on the front page of google and it also stands out among the other search results as a practical how-to which drew me in immediately. Well done.

Farnoosh October 11, 2011 at 5:30 am

Dear Tracey, do it! I am going to create a green juicing product after my next product and I really believe that it can be useful now that I have the newsletter and a list – which is now well over 200 people, grown completely organically – and it’s a very targeted list… Also with the list, you establish yourself as the go-to person for that topic. Thanks so much for your interest and your kind comments and GOOD LUCK on your accidental terms!

Cynthia Bailey MD October 10, 2011 at 7:11 am

This is a brilliant idea. Yes, I’m #1 for Itchy Arms, Splitting Fingernails and a few other key search terms that I don’t actually sell many skin care products for. I just wrote a new post for itchy arms to hopefully give people ideas that help and that I can provide products for. I love your idea about making a splash about my highly ranked terms to help conversion. Very interesting! FYI, I found you on twitter and just look where my inspiration is headed…… Thanks!

Farnoosh October 11, 2011 at 5:28 am

Dear Cynthia, I can see your latest post is indeed about Itchy Arms!! It is amazing what accidental traffic we can rank for …. you are *VERY* smart to pursue it more IF it aligns with your overall mission of the blog …. You know I have noticed that future blog posts I wrote on green juicing have *not* ranked as high but it’s good to have more than one article and you can send people to it from that original post. So glad you enjoyed this, Cynthia. Thanks for sharing!

Noel Addison September 21, 2011 at 6:23 am

I’ve always been a fan of checking your traffic tracking results for these hidden opportunities. My reason for checking that though is to only find ideas for future posts. I haven’t really tried making a niche site within the main site and it might be about time I try it too.

Farnoosh September 21, 2011 at 11:57 am

Ideas for future posts are excellent too, Noel, especially from incoming keywords or search keywords on your own website, although sometimes they are the strangest keywords ;) !
Thanks so much for commenting and best of luck in finding a niche within your site!

Nik September 18, 2011 at 1:14 pm

Hey,

I got so many of these things and always ignored them. I now have a nice list of things to do for the next week.

Brilliant post. Accidental Traffic, I am going to Love from now on.
Nik

Farnoosh September 19, 2011 at 3:13 am

Hey Nik, so from now on, you will not ignore them, just like me. That’s all that matters. Glad you enjoyed the post!

Mitchell Allen September 15, 2011 at 10:38 pm

Farnoosh, this is solid gold. I love how your landing page looks like it was MADE for juicers…I guess we can say that the traffic is no longer accidental, eh? ;)

This post was so inspiring, I clipped it to Evernote, so I can not only be reminded of “Accidental Traffic” but also to drink more juice!

Cheers,

Mitch

Farnoosh September 16, 2011 at 4:29 am

Hi Mitch, no longer accidental, no :) ! It took me a few hours to polish up that page but I am very happy with it and it is definitely getting more steady results with the email list. Good luck and thanks so much for the kind words here. Oh, and here’s to green juicing :) !

Chris R. Keller from Profitworks September 15, 2011 at 4:10 pm

Interesting idea!

I will have to keep that in mind for the future.

Farnoosh September 16, 2011 at 4:28 am

Hi Chris, thanks. I am glad you found it useful.

Chadrack September 15, 2011 at 11:13 am

This is a billion dollar revelation, Farnoosh. I’ve been getting some accidental traffic like for months and never really know what to do about it and then you come around with this! Oh thanks so much.

However, about turning that blog post into a landing page. How did you do really? I’ve been playing with some ideas of including different formats of pages on my blog and I think this could just somehow help.

Farnoosh September 15, 2011 at 11:18 am

Chadrack, thanks so so much. I am so glad to hear your excitement.
So as I mentioned in some other comment replies, I use Thesis Theme and we had to do some manipulation on the CSS page, it would be too much detail for here and the Thesis forums were most helpful in pretty much letting us know how to do it. Hope this helps and thanks for your comment.

Chadrack September 16, 2011 at 7:30 am

Ok, that’s understandable. I’m not using thesis but I’m already working on something. I’m looking into the possibility of crafting a different page template to use for this. I’m already taking a look at wordpress.org tutorials on creating a page template. I think that may just help. Thanks for the reply.

Monja September 14, 2011 at 10:12 am

Farnoosh,

great post and ideas! very interesting what can all happen unexpectedly with google. I recently thought that I could check out google analytics more detailed: all the keywords there which bring me traffic are pretty amazing. i usually grab them and write a post or two for the best traffic generators – which will also increase in more traffic :D

Farnoosh September 14, 2011 at 7:31 pm

Hi Monja, that’s very smart. So you look at the keywords and add even more content around that. Very, very smart and another way to reverse engineer the traffic. You know, that information tells us so much about what our readers and organic traffic want from our site and as long as it is something we are passionate about doing, why not? Thanks so much for your comment!!!

Daniel September 13, 2011 at 8:36 pm

Wow, what a great idea!

I guess that’s one reason you shouldn’t always “niche it down”. If you keep writing good content and promote your site, you can get all kinds of great results.

I really need to kick it up a notch (or 3).

Farnoosh September 14, 2011 at 7:28 pm

Hi Daniel, it’s all of what you say, yes, but also sometimes with a bit of luck and SEO, you end up ranking well and the trick I think is to make sure that traffic lasts a while before you implement strategies that take time to put in place. Thanks and I am sure you can pick it up a notch no problem, I wish you the best.

Brian D. Hawkins September 13, 2011 at 8:13 pm

Hi Farnoosh, I mentioned in an earlier post that I have a high bounce rate (100%) on two of my leading search terms like “Hot Blog” due to my domain name HotBlogTips.com. Earlier today I changes my meta title and description and omitted the word hot. I didn’t consider capitalizing on the unwanted traffic. I’ll have to give it some thought because I can only imagine what someone searching for Hot Blog is looking for. Any ideas in that circumstance?

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 9:03 pm

Hi Brian, thanks so much for your comment. I am trying to make sure I understand your question clearly: Are you saying that you get unwanted and undesired traffic because your website name can be misconstrued? If it’s entirely undesired traffic, I would do everything to divert it and not encourage it. So depending on where they land and what the keywords are, you can do the opposite of some of my suggestions to not rank for that keyword anymore, starting with just removing the meta data from the post so it doesn’t index that high in Google when people look for those keywords. Does this help at all? Hope so and let me know, thanks!

Brian D. Hawkins September 13, 2011 at 9:46 pm

Yep, I think that’s the case Farnoosh. It’s hard to know what people are looking for with “Hot Blog” but I suspect it’s naughty. lol That might just be warped mind though. That’s the direction I started moving in though, trying to un-rank with those keywords. At least as far as the top search traffic. Thanks.

Amy Hagerup September 13, 2011 at 7:20 pm

Oh my goodness. This was so great! I have noticed certain articles getting hit but I didn’t know what to do about it. Now I do! What a great post. Love your voice and honesty too. Blessings, Amy

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 9:00 pm

Dear Amy, thank you so much. Yes, it is a smart way to approach it but make sure that the traffic has been coming to the site for a while – I would say at least 3 months solid if not longer, and then off to do something about it. Best of luck and you are most welcome.

Daniel September 13, 2011 at 5:04 pm

I, again visit this site and find another wonderful idea. I had been considering something similar to this but had to yet implement. I hadn’t exactly thought about the execution in traffic terms but instead turning a post into a landing page. The traffic would be the bonus and for some I see how this would fuel their desire to jump all over it. I don’t have the traffic but thanks for expanding on my basis which post I should monitor before converting to a post. I’ll add it in the scope. Thanks Farnoosh for the further thought provoking thread.

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 8:59 pm

Hi Daniel, you are so welcome. I am so glad you enjoyed the post and that it was helpful. Yes I would say my first priority was indeed to make sure the page on which they land is an optimized clean page and that’s why I changed it to a landing page, THEN I added the list building forms. Glad you enjoyed this again and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Lionel September 13, 2011 at 12:24 pm

Great tips. I thought the plan would have been to introduce the visitors to the rest of the information on your site, and to the general market you’re in. But what you did makes far more sense. The visitor may not be interested in anything else on the website, just the small sub-niche of green juicing. Give the visitors what they want, and a chance to get more value from a mailing list, then monetize the sub-niche. Brilliant!

Farnoosh September 14, 2011 at 7:26 pm

Hi Lionel, I tried hard and without much success to the former approach that you mention and at least in the case of green juicing, I failed. People only wanted information on green juicing and no one even wanted to join the general newsletter. Now it seems I have even more dialogue, emails, conversations and interest with the email list and the auto-responders and it seems to be the perfect response to this particular situation. So glad you enjoyed reading this and thanks much for your comment!

Ivin September 13, 2011 at 10:23 am

Ana, I’m not even kidding when I say, before I scrolled down to it I thought: ‘Change it into a landing page and build a list’. I’ve never thought of this. I’m SUPER excited, because that means I can FOREVER keep on building business.

Thanks for opening my eyes today.

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 8:58 pm

Hi Ivin, I actually wrote this post for Ana. So glad you enjoyed it and thanks so much for your excitement about the approaches I mention in this post. You CAN build your business forever, that much is certain. Good luck, and thanks for your comment, Ivin!

Chad Nicely September 13, 2011 at 7:27 am

Holy Smokes Ana!
What an awesome post! I’m actually ranking for a keyword for that I did not intend to do also. I am curious how you took a post and made it a landing page? Can you provide a link to that post, so we an see what you did? Awesome Job!
Chad

Chad Nicely September 13, 2011 at 7:29 am

Sorry Farnoosh,
I see that you wrote that post, not Ana. I was wondering why Ana would be writing about “green juice” but hey you never know! Great job regardless.

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 7:41 am

LOL. No worry, Chad. I know Ana doesn’t want to be associated with green juicing when this is all said and done so good thing to clarify :) !
As for turning a post into a page, it is in the CSS coding and I use Thesis and it took some code changes to do that, most of which I had to get my brother’s help on – he is IT “dept” on Prolific Living. If you use Thesis, the help forums will totally help you set that up right away. Thanks so much for your comment here.

Chad September 13, 2011 at 6:33 pm

LOL… well she looks like shes is healthy and in good shape, so who knows maybe she is in green juicing….Assuming that is a health drink? I would be too if you don’t have to put that green grass in there.

I’ll tackle that CSS, not my thing but I get by. Thanks for the reply!

Farnoosh September 14, 2011 at 7:15 pm

Good point. She is all of that and it’s quite possible she is into green juicing! :) Good luck with the CSS, Chad!

Ian Belanger September 13, 2011 at 6:38 am

Hi Farnoosh,

I had never thought it would be worth my time to try and monetize my “accidental traffic.” After reading your post, I will have to rethink my strategy.

Very clever Farnoosh! Thanks for sharing this with us!

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 7:40 am

Hi dear Ian, it may be worth it depending on how long you have been getting the traffic and what size it might be and then you can also test it by using the key words in Google search yourself to validate how you rank. It may very well be worth it. Mine is turning out pretty well and I highly recommend to at least keep an eye on it. Best of luck and thanks so much for your comment!

Jane September 13, 2011 at 6:37 am

Farnoosh, it is quite common sometimes to rank for unwanted keywords. I usually go back to that particular post which gets traffic for a keyword that I didn’t intend for and then optimize the post around that keyword. Thanks for the additional tips :)

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 7:38 am

Great work, Jane, you are already on top of it. I definitely do the same, optimize the posts that get high rankings etc., but if it is a lot of traffic over a long period of time, it pays to do even more with it. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts!!!

zamahsari September 13, 2011 at 6:23 am

I even never think that my blog receives an accidental traffic or whatever the name and optimize it to generate income or subscribers. It is good idea and thanks for sharing with us..

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 7:37 am

Zamahsari, I just invented that name: accidental traffic ;) because it was definitely not intentional but you can call it whatever you like, just keep an eye on your traffic. You never know what you might find, and thank you for your comment!

Mark September 13, 2011 at 5:28 am

Farnoosh,

Your idea about creating a mailing list specific for the sleeper topic is an absolutely excellent idea. I have had individual posts drive massive amounts of traffic to my site before, but I never thought about capturing it in this way.

That is such an easy thing to do…especially with autoresponders…;)

I am off to do that very thing now.

I look forward to your future contributions.

Mark

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 7:36 am

Hi Mark, wow, thank you so much. I think if it’s a small topic, it’s hard to do but if it’s a general topic to the point where you are getting the traffic already and won’t have to do a lot of legwork to grow the list, why not capture them? It’s such a targeted niche and it just grows. I have about 200 people on the juicing list now and it is growing naturally. Best of luck and so happy this was helpful to you!

Aj Banda September 12, 2011 at 11:45 pm

this is a great share! I never thought on how to catch those accidental search but thanks to your article for giving me an idea. :)

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 7:34 am

Hi Aj, awesome. Glad to hear it and you are welcome. Now go dig in your traffic stats and see what you might find as your popular keyword! :) You are most welcome and thanks for your comment!

Craig Sowerby September 12, 2011 at 11:13 pm

Hi Farnoosh,

I have never ever thought of getting “accidental traffic” Its hard enough keeping my usual traffic and subscribers happy than reaching out to the masses.

But you have made a very valuable point in getting more exposure and then monetizing that traffic. Also Hesham makes a very valuable point in receiving 250 – 300 daily visitors from an image on his site.

Craig

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 7:30 am

Hi Craig, I know it sounds like more work on top of all that we have to do – which is serious work in itself – but this can be a way to listen to what is happening and maybe use the direction that Google is already sending you traffic and do something valuable with it. You may or may not have this happening on your blog but what if you did? It would be nice to at least (1) know about it and (2) do something about it if it is a topic that you are passionate about …. thanks so much for your comment!

Jean September 12, 2011 at 9:26 pm

Very innovative approach that you had Farnoosh! That landing page looks incredible, everything about it just feels so welcoming. Its amazing that until you take the time to dig into the stats page, you never know what hidden gems there are to be found. Whats even more amazing about your deal is that the post was originally made in 2009, and is still relevant!

-Jean

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 7:29 am

Hello dear Jean, thank you for reading and for sharing your thoughts. I am so glad you like the page – you should’ve seen what it looked like before ;) ! I write ever-green content so the relevance is very key and I am glad you brought that up because that is going to make or break this whole strategy. If the content expired after a few months or a year, then none of this would apply. Thanks ever so much and yes, do pay attention to those stats!

Joshua Zamora September 12, 2011 at 8:11 pm

Hey Farnoosh what an amazing idea! I think the fact that “green juice” is a very targeted keyword makes this experiment all that more effective.

Goodluck!

Farnoosh September 12, 2011 at 8:15 pm

Thank you, Joshua. It really is hugely targeted and very popular right now. Trends show people being very interested in this space and it is still an untapped market. Incidentally, I looked high and low for top quality products and services to promote as an affiliate and I found nearly none that satisfied me. Hope you stumble across a cool idea for your website too and hope this post inspired you. Thanks for your comment.

Sylviane Nuccio September 12, 2011 at 4:23 pm

Excellent idea, Farnoosh. Isn’t it true that as internet marketers we need to put on our thinking hat and find ways to adapt to our readers. It’s our job, because if we don’t we just passing by great opportunities.

Farnoosh September 12, 2011 at 4:40 pm

Sylviane, beautifully put and not only once, we have to keep doing it over and over and adapt to new things that come our way. I think it’s really exciting to see how sometimes the least of our own predictions come to fruition and other things happen to us that we least expected. Thanks for your thoughts and keep shining as that internet marketer!

Allie | Ramblings of a WAHM September 12, 2011 at 3:03 pm

Farnoosh,

My mouth is agape!!! You took lemons and made amazing lemonade! What a novel idea. I may need to see my Google Analytics, just curious if I can make lemonade too. LOL.

RT RT RT. I want people to see this one!

~Allie

Farnoosh September 12, 2011 at 4:37 pm

Dear Allie, I love your excitement. It took me a while to get to my lemonade but there is so much room to play and I guess for now, I am going to be an expert in green juicing, it happens to be something I love and I am happy to accommodate this traffic. I’d be very curious if you don’t find something that is constantly coming to you. Almost every website starts to develop one and I am sure you will do great things with it. Thank you so much for your comment!

Ricardo Bueno September 12, 2011 at 2:34 pm

Well done Farnoosh. I dig the idea of turning that post into a landing page with a Call To Action to subscribe.

I don’t think people look at their analytics often enough to catch trends like this. But it’s important to look at your top ranking pages and posts every now and again to identify opportunities such as the one you’ve outlined.

Farnoosh September 13, 2011 at 8:56 pm

Hi Ricardo and thank you! You know, there is a trend among bloggers to not get obsessed with metrics and numbers and I do agree with it but being oblivious to them can’t do us any favor other. Glad you enjoyed the approach here and maybe you can replicate it on your end if it applies. Thanks so much for your comment!

Steven Davis September 12, 2011 at 1:58 pm

Really good post! I’ve had some very odd posts that have very strong search results. This is great food for thought.

But… what if the traffic really doesn’t fit with your sit

My blog has a schizophrenic audience – I write for game developers (on security issues like cheating and piracy)… and I get a fair amount of traffic from players who want to cheat and pirate.

It is tempting to go to the dark side sometimes.

Farnoosh September 12, 2011 at 4:35 pm

Oh that’s too bad. So there is undesired traffic and then there is traffic that is in conflict of your core values and I would think that yours fit the second category, in that you really do not wish to condone that “dark side”. At least, I wouldn’t. So in that case, ignore it, or make sure your message is crystal clear on the page which gets all this undesired traffic…. as in: you do not condone the cheating in the games, etc. Maybe say it loud and clear? :) Good luck, Steven, and thanks for your comment!

Steven Davis September 12, 2011 at 5:05 pm

I can’t stop the traffic :) – good guys and bad guys wind up doing searches on the same terms , the only real cost are some rather off-color comments which need to be deleted if they only offer vocabulary lessons!

It does play havoc with my analytics, a problem I’ve not been able to solve.

Farnoosh September 12, 2011 at 5:10 pm

Steven, I wasn’t suggesting that you stop the traffic so much as to not encourage the information on cheating, that is all. And you can manage those comments fine. Just add a comment policy as to where you don’t tolerate such and such and then you are good to go on rejecting off-color remarks. Good luck!

Chris Harris September 12, 2011 at 12:28 pm

Hi Farnoosh,

You and I are on the same wavelength- that is running a blog that does not fit narrowly into a specific niche.

Your ideas for how to handle traffic you did not intend to get are excellent and I will be keep them handy for when I spot such a trend on my stats.

Thank you for all your help.

Farnoosh September 12, 2011 at 4:33 pm

Hi Chris, yes, we do and it is going to be a constant source of challenge and freedom both. Keep an eye on your Google Analytics or on Site Stats (free plugin) and see what incoming keywords you have. All the best and thanks for reading!

Kathy September 12, 2011 at 12:21 pm

Hi Farnoosh!
You are wonderful to talk about this particular phenomenon about getting organic traffic without realizing it. Yes, it has DEFINITELY happened to me!

You are right about using Google Analytics. I waited FAR TOO LONG to implement Analytics to my sites. I regret it! I wound up putting Analytics on a particular site, and then forgot about it. Then, I read about it again, and thought, “Hmmm… I should check and see what I can learn!”

So, I went into my Analytics account and lo & behold, I noticed that several users had found my site through a keyword I would NEVER had considered!

I did EXACTLY as you said, and went back to the post – linked it to a new “page” and optimized it, etc.

It’s too soon to see what will happen…

Oh, another thing I did was make another POST – but a really long one (like you said, with lots of content). Then, I shared it/wrote an article and linked to it – just that post – and we will see what happens!

Thanks so very much for sharing this! I’m getting pretty excited about this potential! (But, you wouldn’t have guessed that, huh? ) Hugs, Kath :)

Farnoosh September 12, 2011 at 4:32 pm

Hi Kath, how nice to hear this story. Don’t worry about not doing it sooner or not paying attention. I do that and the truth is, when we do that, we just miss out on energy to do something useful NOW. Whatever decisions we made in the past were made to the best of our knowledge. So we have now and it seems you have definitely made great use of *now*. Very, very smart strategies and now just watch what happens with the traffic. I am sure it will be a pleasant surprise. And continue to implement new ideas on how to use the organic traffic if the first one just doesn’t work. Good luck and you are very welcome. Glad you enjoyed this post.

Danielle McGaw September 12, 2011 at 11:16 am

That’s pretty much what I was thinking with the Adsense. I’m going to use a couple of affiliate products but I think in the long run my goal is to have my own products. I already have one in mind and I think it might work well. But I am hoping to have several of my own info products going there.

Farnoosh September 12, 2011 at 4:25 pm

That sounds like a much more solid plan to me, Danielle, and I think you might even want to think about capturing the organic traffic with a newsletter and then add auto-responders so you have fresh content sent to them over time. Just a suggestion. Very excited for you and thanks for sharing!

Steve Roy September 12, 2011 at 9:30 am

Hi Farnoosh,
Good to see you here! This post was exactly what I was looking for. I receive over 10,000 visitors each month from 2 keywords and have been losing them just as fast as they come.

My bounce rate is very high and time on site is very low. I have tried tailor making the post to meet the needs of these visitors, but it hasn’t worked.

I’ll be trying out some of your suggestions and actually wouldn’t mind getting your opinion on what to do with my specific posts.
Thanks

Farnoosh September 12, 2011 at 9:54 am

Hi dear Steve, you have got to capitalize on that free and willing traffic coming your way! That is super awesome that you already get it and you know your keywords. These are some things that have worked well and I have now nearly 200 people on that newsletter without hardy doing anything about it. Best part is that it is a super targeted traffic and they consider me an expert in the field. You could do the same. Best of luck and please keep me posted and thank you for your comment here.

Hesham September 12, 2011 at 9:27 am

Really interesting stuff!

I had one of my blogs ranked on the first page, it was actually an image, and it was incredibily funny, it was an image for a shoe, brown shoe from the best kind you know :) , especially because it was the only men shoe between fancy women shoes, I have no idea why Google picked it up.

Anyways, this image was driving 250-350 daily uniqe visits to that blog, it was incredible and last for more than 2 years, it just diapear a few months ago.

I havn’t thought about creating a niche site for that one, however it would be a great idea.

Thanks for the inspiration Farnoosh.

Farnoosh September 12, 2011 at 9:59 am

Dear Hesham, that’s both interesting and frustrating. It goes to show you that we have just no control over what Google – or rather, Googlers!! – pick up and like but there has to be a way to capitalize on the traffic that just comes to us organically and without intention. At least, you noticed it and that means you keep a close eye on your traffic so perhaps, look at the second or third top keywords and also keep an eye out for a future top ranking keyword and then make sure that when people land on that page (or photo), it has an action for them to take (and give them top notch information)! thank you for your comment.

Danielle McGaw September 12, 2011 at 9:02 am

I love this idea Ana! I actually did something very similar but I had so much traffic coming in from a couple similar terms that I created a brand new site and already it is doing quite well and getting good traffic. I’m still working on the monetization thing but it’s getting there. :)

Farnoosh September 12, 2011 at 10:05 am

Hi Danielle, actually this is my story that Ana kindly featured here; thank you so much for your comment. I am very impressed by you taking that traffic and creating a niche site and how you were able to sustain it. The reason that I didn’t do that is because traffic is coming to this particular website – so not sure how to “move” the traffic over to a new site. The niche site, if it’s completely new, would have to be on its own and start over, right? I’d love to know how you “transferred”, if you will, the traffic from your site to the new niche site?

Danielle McGaw September 12, 2011 at 10:51 am

Sorry Farnoosh. :) I have to start paying attention to who is writing the article! LOL – so many guest posters these days!

I haven’t actually transferred the traffic (although I do plan on linking to my new site from the blog posts that were bringing that traffic in). But it is a topic that many are interested in (living without a job) and that there are many terms that can be used to get people there. It has been live for about 2 weeks and I have some search engine traffic (not a lot but some) and then traffic from social media. It’s not a money maker yet but I think it will be. Just a matter of getting the right affiliate programs in there (and I don’t think that adsense is going to play much of a role, if at all).

Farnoosh September 12, 2011 at 10:59 am

Ah no worries at all :) ! Just didn’t want people to start associating “green juices” with Traffic Generation Cafe and have Ana wanna chat with me ;) ! Just kidding.
So I did a search on “live without a job” on my Google and I found you, lady! You were #4 on page 1 of the hit and it was a direct hit. I then did it with quotes, and this time, you are #3 on page 1 so not bad at all. I would say think about a product down the line. Adsense just drives traffic AWAY from the site and unless you have TONS of traffic it is not worth it, my experience. Good luck, Danielle!

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