SEO keywords study
Last term I noticed that I didn't do much digital marketing research related blog posts which is crucial since I intend to go for this field after I graduate. During my Korea trip two weeks ago, I had an interesting talk with a friend who works in a digital marketing company in Malaysia. He was mainly in charge of a lot of the Search Engine Optimization work with his clients and he stated that SEO only is worth paying for when you've gotten the keywords right. He stated that if I intend to grow my blog traffic further, I'd had to be smart with my keywords and not over complicate sentences. He even said that the page results we see on the first page are usually posts that have been ranked the top due to its organic content. However, when people start copying and reposting these content, it sabotages the organics of the post, leading to a rank drops.
It was really interesting to hear because I had no idea about all of this. I simply thought that well known online publishers or brands would rank on top simply because they were well known. So I checked back on my personal blog to study why some posts were doing better than others. My normal posts on my personal experiences got an average of 300-400 views while some review posts got almost 4,000 views. Till this day people are still viewing those posts! So I decided to study the top 4 posts to see what was I doing right and apply for my future blog posts.
4. DAY IN THE DESERT WITH D.A.R.K. - 1,506 views
This post was about my educational visit to Malacca which we also stopped by at their famous sand dunes. It was probably every Instagram addict's dream because the space was huge and every spot was so photo worthy. When I searched "Malacca sand dunes" or "Pantai Klebang desert" which was some of the main key words of the post, I could easily find my post.
Surprisingly, my photo appeared three times in the top searches on Google images and one photo was even the first picture that popped out!
As for the search results, it appeared on the 2nd page.
I noticed in this post, I mentioned a lot of the proper names of the locations and even mixed around some short food reviews of popular places to eat in Malacca. At the time of my blog post, Malacca's sand dunes were not a popular known destination yet so most of the traffic could be when it blew up over social media shortly after I posted it out.
*Possible reasons for increased traffic:
- Proper names of famous tourist and food locations mentioned
- Early mover in covering this up and coming trend before others
- Plenty of pictures linked to the topic
3. FRAGRANCE DU BOIS WORKSHOP - 3,076 views
This post was about my fragrance workshop at Du Bois in Starhill Gallery. I never thought this post would be such a hit simply because I never heard of Fragrance Du Bois before this workshop. Maybe an event was held after this post and people were interested?
I couldn't really find out why this post got the views it got, but here's my guess which I thought could be the reason.
Fragrance Du Bois is known for their detailed personality test which allows you to find our which nodes suit your personality. Not many blogs or online publishers have covered it and I found my post on the first page of Google Search with the key words "Fragrance Du Bois personality test". The search is quite long and detailed for me but I think that it could also be the reason for the increased traffic to that post. My post was also very packed with information, not just about the workshop and personality test, but I also mentioned about the differences of the types of perfumes.
*Possible reasons for increased traffic:
- Linked Fragrance Du Bois account
- Not many posts were done on this topic
- Packed content and information
- Shared on Raffles Kuala Lumpur's social media
2. WANDERLUST AT SOHO KL - 3,089 views
This post was just a very simple food review on a cafe I stumbled across. The photos were not even taking with my camera and it was one of the blog posts which I never expected it to get this much attention.
Right when I searched "Wanderlust Soho KL" my post was the first blog post that appeared. My post even jumped ahead the popular food review blog Eat Drink KL. I noticed that a lot of other food reviewers captioned their post as Wanderlust Solaris Mont Kiara instead. Eventhough that was the location it was in, their Instagram shows their name as Soho KL.
*Possible reasons for increased traffic:
- On point title
1. MOSAIC AT MANDARIN ORIENTAL - 3,912 views
The last time I checked my blog, this post was at 2,400 views and now it's almost approaching 4,000! It was also one of those casual blog posts on my experience which I never expected much of.
Mandarin Oriental is quite a popular hotel known for their buffet however not many food reviewers blog about buffets as much. My post appeared on the first page for "Mosaic mandarin oriental" and "Mosaic mandarin oriental review". I noticed that the top posts had either short, straight to the point titles or mentioned specifics such as all-day dining and halal.
*Possible reasons for increased traffic:
- Straight to the point title
- Lack of reviewers in this topic
- Detailed and informational
Overall, it was no surprise that my food posts got the most views due to my straight to the point titles. My key takeaways from this observation is keep the titles sweet and short, details and information is key, and if you're blogging about something that is trending, nice photos help. Since now that I've learnt the ways in increasing traffic to my website, I should start implementing them in my blog posts and hopefully get noticed by job recruiters maybe?
