Sometimes we’ll shrug it off and think it’s just co-incidental, other people may use these songs as a “sign” that they should (or shouldn’t) do something… I don’t know how good an idea that is, but despite how you react, doesn’t change the fact that this strange phenomenon has happened to me on more than a few occasions and I’ve heard a lot of other people make similar comments too.

The reality is that this isn’t some strange mystical force driven by fate and destiny to determine what songs should be played at what times – it’s all to do with our subconscious.

Have you ever been in the market for a new car, decide what make and model you want and then strangely start noticing there seems to be more of that particular car on the road than any other. It’s the same thing.

Some psychologists would say this is based on the principal of Priming – where an early piece of stimulus influences your response to a later stimulus. For instance if a person reads a list of words including the word table, and is later asked to complete a word starting with the letter “T”, the probability that subject answers table is higher than for non-primed people.

Other new-age psychologists will call this the “Law of Attraction” most commonly associated with motivation books like “The Gift”. Where, basically, if you think positive thoughts, you’ll be much more likely to notice opportunities that occur around you that may otherwise have been missed if you were too busy thinking about how crap your day has been.

But regardless of what you want to call it, or how you wish implement this in your day-to-day life, doesn’t change the fact that if we’re thinking about something (consciously or subconsciously) we’re going to start noticing things around us that relate to those thoughts.

So, why have I just spent the last 300 words prattling on about music, cars and psychology on an SEO blog?

Because it doesn’t matter what business you’re in or what your website is about – if you’re aware of this concept and can tap into the mindset of your prospective clients, you’ll have a much better chance of converting them.

Let’s say that you sell blue widgets. If you’ve optimised your site well, and/or have some pay per click ads running, the search engines will do half the job of getting your product in front of the eyeballs of anyone thinking about purchasing some blue widgets.

Now it’s time to start thinking about what’s going through the head of this potential customer.

• Why are they looking for blue widgets?
• Was there something wrong with the red ones they had so they’ve decided blue is going to be better for them?
• Do widgets wear-out really quickly and need to be replaced?
• Are the blue ones cheaper, or better quality, or different in any way (other than colour) to the other widgets?
• Will the client even know why they’re looking for blue widgets in the first place, or is it the type of product that they’ve just heard someone say “sounds like you need a blue widget for that job”?
• Do blue widgets have a good/bad reputation?
• Are there other products that people will often try before deciding that maybe a blue widget is probably best?
• Is this purchase going to cost them a lot of money?
• Is this purchase essential or just something for fun?
• etc. etc. etc.

These are just a handful of possible questions and I’m sure that you’ll be able to think of many more that pertain to your products and services.

Once you’re aware of how your product is perceived in the marketplace, the questions people commonly ask about it, the problems people have with it, the concerns they might have about spending the money in these tough economic times etc. etc. You can start to address these issues in your website and ad copy.

If I’m shopping for a non-essential, luxury item, the thought is always in the back of my head “Do I really need this?” – so if I then happened to stumbled across a website that said “Sure you may not need this item, but imagine how much more fun your life would be if you did buy it… plus, if you compare how much you’d spend on [insert random item you buy everday] – our product isn’t really all that expensive in comparison”…

I’d be a lot more likely to buy that product because they seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. They knew that I wanted to buy the product (otherwise I wouldn’t have been searching for it in the first place) but also knew what barriers could potentially be stopping me.

Many businesses think they’re already doing this quite well by putting words like “Cheap” or “High Quality” in their ad copy, but just by using generic terms that could relate to any product really doesn’t cut it.

To do this properly requires detailed product analysis, market surveys, research, testing and should be an ongoing process. Then once you have this information, it’s important to understand how and where to put the most important details so as to catch the attention of your prospective clients.

For the initial impact, you usually don’t have a lot of space to get the most crucial reasons to buy your product.

• If you’re going to do this in PPC ads, you only have 3 lines of text (with 25 characters in the title of the add and 35 characters… including spacing.. for each of the following two lines).
• In the organic search results, Google will only show 65 characters of a website’s title tag and 156 characters in your meta description.
• To broadcast info about your products on social networking sites like Twitter, you need to concisely explain the benefits of your product within 140 characters.

Fortunately once you get people to your website, you’re only limitations are the amount of content your prospective client is willing to read.

You can make the process even easier by structuring the content well, using headings to break-up the info into it’s relevant parts, use formatting like bold text or italics to draw further attention to the most important parts and try and keep all the best content ‘above the fold’ (so people will see it first-up without having to scroll down the page too far or click to various sections to get to it).

When people find you in the search results, see your ads or end-up at your website, it should just be like hearing a seemingly random song that co-incidentally relates directly back to what they were thinking. If you can do this effectively, I can assure you your conversion rate will increase substantially.

My iPod knows what I’m thinking…

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Basically Ben comments on a thread over at WMW which indicates that social media is a waste of time and doesn’t yield a great deal of SEO value.

I both agree and disagree with this.

But before continuing, it’s important to understand what SEO is and what it isn’t.

In previous years SEO was all about doing keyword research, applying a few tweaks to the site and then getting some inbound links and presto, you’d be
ranking at the top.

As the Internet and search engines have evolved, many companies are now starting to use the web more effectively, (many still haven’t, but that’s really a whole nother post) so competing with such sites requires better quality content (and more of it), an intuitive and easy-to-use site navigation, regular updates to keep people coming back and a site that looks reasonably aesthetically pleasing.

Now I’m not saying that you can’t rank well without these things, but it only takes 8 seconds for someone to develop a first impression and if your first impressions aren’t great, then you’re fighting an uphill battle to convert that visitor into a sale.

As a result of this, some SEOs started encouraging clients to improve their site’s design, layout, content etc. because all of this would make for better conversions at
the end of the day. This extended the craft of SEO into online usability, which technically isn’t SEO, but it helps immensely with the whole process.

The same comment can then be applied to marketers who focus on viral material or linkbait. These types of promotions, if done well, can drive substantial traffic and work wonders for (or destroy) a brand, as well as attracting links in the process. Once again, not technically SEO, but also a useful means of gaining traffic with the added bonus of some links. Now, one could then go on to argue about the SEO benefit gained from such links, and I’ll agree that some social media links aren’t particularly helpful in passing link juice (take blog comments, twitter, wikipedia and everything else that utilises the ‘nofollow’ attribute). But the goal for a viral campaign is really more about gaining awareness on a global scale, so it really can’t be measured using the same metrics as conventional old-school SEO.

Which leads me to using social media for business purposes or to help promote a particular site or product. This also isn’t specifically SEO, and can be a huge waste of time if you don’t do it properly. The whole purpose of social media is to share and connect with others – to be social. The challenging part then becomes – how does one be social, while still trying to promote a website?

Blogging is a great way to share and demonstrate your knowledge in a certain area. Take this SEO blog – I try and discuss various SEO related topics that I think people might be interested in and share tips and information that they can help people improve their rankings. By sharing this information, I’m hoping it also shows I have a reasonable knowledge of the industry and if those readers find the SEO process too challenging, they’ll hopefully employ my services to help them out.

The key is to provide information that is interesting and helpful and written with passion. If you can achieve this, there is certainly a benefit to start blogging. The same then applies to other social media tools.

Take Twitter for example – if you only share information like “making a cup of coffee” or “replying to some emails”… it isn’t particularly engaging, nor does it give anyone a reason to follow you. But if you were sharing info about your industry by making comments like “just read this great article about….” or “new legislation for… what does everyone think” etc. You’ve just turned the tool into another platform where you can demonstrate your knowledge while connecting with others who also share a similar interest.

The problem is that most businesses and website owners will do one of three things with social media:

• they’ll create profiles on all the latest social sites and then think “well, that’s social media taken care of… hey, why aren’t I getting any traffic from it?”
• they’ll create a blog/twitter/facebook account but forget that they created it for business purposes and start making posts about the weather or what they had for breakfast that morning… and then wonder why it isn’t helping them with their branding
• they’ll create a blog/twitter/facebook account and spam the crap out of it by pushing their brand and website to anyone and everyone which just pisses people off

So, to sum-up, I think that all forms of online marketing (be it organic SEO, viral, social media, pay-per-click etc. etc.) all has its place and can be beneficial if used properly. Not all of these are technically SEO, but still important when marketing in the ever-changing online world.

Most importantly though, goals need to be set for each marketing method and different metrics need to be applied to measure the performance of each campaign. If you try and track the performance of social media using SEO metrics, you’ll find that it doesn’t yield brilliant results – but that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile – it simply means that social media is different to old-school organic SEO and subsequently can’t be measured in the same way.

The blurred line between what is SEO and what isn’t

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The interesting thing is that the reason beer commercials are so good is because legislation prevents them from demonstrating their product being used for what it was originally intended. For instance:

• Beer advertising and marketing materials should portray beer in a responsible manner
• Beer advertising and marketing materials should not portray persons in a state of intoxication or in any way suggest that intoxication is acceptable conduct
• Beer advertising and marketing materials should not depict Santa Claus (not important for the point I’m going to make, but I just wanted to include this one)
• Beer advertising and marketing materials should not convey the impression that a beer has special or unique qualities if in fact it does not
• Beer advertising and marketing materials should contain no claims or representations that individuals cannot obtain social, professional, educational, athletic, or financial success or status without beer consumption; nor should they claim or represent that individuals cannot solve social, personal, or physical problems without beer consumption
• Beer advertising and marketing materials should not contain any lewd or indecent language or images
• Beer advertising and marketing materials should not portray sexual passion, promiscuity, or any other amorous activity as a result of consuming beer
• Beer advertising and marketing materials should not refer to any intoxicating effect that the product may produce
• Beer advertising and marketing materials should not depict the act of drinking

The list goes on and on, but basically the only way to advertise beer is to not advertise beer.

The motoring industry also suffers similar restrictions and in many parts of the world, (among other things) you cannot give the impression that cars are capable of being driving at high speeds. That’s the key selling point for a sports car – the fact that it looks sexy and goes fast.

Imagine what it would be like if you couldn’t demonstrate your product when advertising? Let’s say you made blue widgets… you could tell people that you make blue widgets, but you couldn’t show people what a blue widget does, how it is used, what it is designed for, how it would make your life better if you purchased said blue widget… etc. etc.

It would certainly make you be more creative with your marketing.

You’re probably thinking that this isn’t really an issue for most online marketers because our main aim is to rank for specific keywords that generate traffic and convert well into sales. While watching a beer advertisement might be funny when we’re flicking through the channels on TV, it’s not as likely that someone will do a search for the worlds largest domino effect to create a huge pint of Guinness when they simply want to decide which beer to buy for a party on the weekend.

But we would be insane neglect such advertising because of the viral nature it has – due to the humour and entertainment value of beer ads, they find their way onto YouTube, blogs, people’s inboxes and rss feeds. This not only re-enforces ones brand and drives traffic, but most importantly (at least from an SEOs perspective) it creates links which then help make your organic rankings sky-rocket.

So next time you’re reviewing your online marketing campaign and thinking how well it’s performing – just imagine how much better it could be doing if you had an advert that may not relate directly back to your product, but was virally doing laps of the world building you traffic, links and exposure without you having to lift a finger to spread the word.

Not demonstrating your product could turn-out to be one of the best marketing campaigns you ever run!

What if you couldn’t demonstrate the product you’re advertising – A story about Beer

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Sure, venturing is a very crucial step and without venturing you will never achieve anything, but often the simple act of venturing will get you no where unless you have a plan as to where you want to get to and how you anticipate getting there.

Chances are, the journey will take you down different paths than you had originally planned and your destination may even change as your plans evolve… but without a plan you probably wouldn’t have ended-up getting anywhere.

So why am I placing my philosophical views about an old adage on an SEO blog? Because creating, maintaining, promoting and marketing a website is a very big journey for some businesses and it’s a venture that can bring much gain – if done properly.

The first thing that most businesses, bloggers or any other prospective website owner should do is clearly decide what the purpose of their new website will be. Perhaps you already have a website but can’t concisely describe its purpose or intentions. Don’t be dismayed, you would not believe the number of people who are keen as mustard to get a website setup, but have no idea why.

Most websites will have at least one (if not more) of the following goals:

• To help sell a product / service or simply ‘make money’
• For branding and awareness purposes
• To demonstrate or improve ones ‘authority’ in a given area
• To streamline customer interaction (by having FAQs, address and directions, case studies etc.)
• Or in the case of a personal blog it could simply be for fun

Having a website ’simply because everyone else has one’ may be a good catalyst to taking the plunge into the online world, but it certainly shouldn’t be the sole reason you have a website.

With each of the goals mentioned above, comes different types of content; different ways of structuring the information; will require information to be updated more or less frequently; and most certainly will require very different methods of promotion and marketing.

Once you’ve established the purpose of your website, the next thing to determine is: who is the site designed for?

Even though many businesses believe that their product is perfect for anyone and everyone, in reality, most products have a very specific demographic that they are perfect for. Not identifying what this niche or demographic is, will end-up costing you A LOT of time, effort and money because you’ll be trying to push your products / services / brand / reputation to people who couldn’t care less.

So hopefully once you’ve reached this point, you have your goals and target audience defined. Building the website, writing the content and promoting your services online should be much easier… but there’s still one final crucial element to having a successful website and that is testing and measuring.

Like I said earlier in this post – the journey and even your destination may change. Perhaps you thought you had a product designed for single women aged between 18 and 28 who work in a professional corporate environment, like to go to the gym during the week and enjoy a night-out with the girls drinking daiquiris and dancing till the sun comes up on the weekends (yes, when you profile your ideal clients, it should be as specific as this).

But after a few months of measuring your conversions, you discover that these aren’t the people making the most purchases – change your approach so you’re marketing to that newly discovered demographic.

Without testing and measuring you probably wouldn’t have discovered this and would still be scratching your head wondering why no one is buying anything even though you now have a new spiffy looking website.

So to avoid conversations like this:

Client: “I setup a website a year ago because everyone else had one so I thought I should too, but it just doesn’t seem to be working”
Me: “What isn’t working about it?”
Client: “I don’t know… I just thought that by having a website something would happen”

Make sure you plan; then do; then test; and repeat… until you have the most productive website that transforms all your goals into reality. It will take a fair bit of planning, a lot of hard work, more time than you ever anticipated and testing till you’re blue in the face, but if done well, the results will be well worth it in the end.

Sometimes venturing won’t gain you anything

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In the off-line world, you’ll usually notice traffic increases for a number of reasons:

• It could be because a particular area has become increasingly popular – the ‘cool’ place to live
• It could be due to the area offering ideal living conditions – nice sized yards, friendly neighbors, a great community, low crime rate etc.
• It could be due to excellent facilities – close to shops, public transport, schools and hospitals
• It could be thanks to affordable pricing

There are plenty of other reasons, but the list above gives you a pretty good idea why certain areas are better to live than others and that means that the traffic to those areas increases.

Now, why am I talking about regional economic growth on a SEO blog? Because the exact same concepts apply in the online world.

Image is important

When you drive through a sought-after residential area you’ll notice the houses all look rather nice, they are well maintained and the lawns are well manicured. If there was a run-down, poorly maintained house that needed a new paint job, some windows fixed and a whole lot of other work – it would really stand-out from the rest (and in a bad way).

Don’t let your website be that run-down looking house – keep the design fresh, make changes to the design (at least) every couple of years, make sure everything works (no old broken links floating around) and keep the content up-to-date.

Reputation can go a long way

The ‘cool’ areas to live are popular because people know about them – they aren’t tucked away at the back of a town that no one has ever heard of and the same is true for websites.

If your site is sitting not being noticed by anyone, you’ll never become the popular online destination that people want to go to. The best way to gain exposure and build an online reputation is through social media… the more you interact (as long as you aren’t insulting… unless that’s how you want to be perceived) the more popular you’ll become.

Bad Neighborhoods

It’s never a pleasant experience walking down the street in a bad neighbourhood – you’re constantly checking over your shoulder, you don’t feel comfortable or safe and one wrong move could end-up being quite costly.

Websites that link with bad online neighbourhoods also fail to make your users feel comfortable – if there’s lots of pop-ups, links to adult sites, pharmaceuticals and gambling pages, more advertising than actual content etc. your website will become the street that people don’t want to walk down.

Great Facilities

In the list above I also mentioned that areas within close proximity to a selection of useful facilities will always attract people because they know they won’t have to go far to get everything they need.

By incorporating online tools, links to useful sites, having a really easy-to-follow navigation structure and making use of sitemaps you reduce your clients need to search around and go elsewhere. Turn your website into a place handy to all the facilities your users would want.

Plan Ahead

When an area becomes too popular all the traffic can start to cause congestion. If you don’t want this to happen with your website – do what your local government planners should do and plan ahead. Find a web host that is capable of supporting decent amounts of traffic or a hosting plan that can be easily upgraded. Make sure you’re using your own domain name and that all the domain contact details are kept up-to-date so if you have to move, you can do so without running into unnecessary challenges.

Same, Same but Different

As you can see, there are a lot of similarities between the online and offline worlds (there are also a lot of differences), but if you try and keep things simple and apply everyday logic to your website, hopefully you’ll be able to create a location that people will want to ‘virtually’ live at.

Web traffic – an offline example

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Some supermarkets in Northern Europe are connected to bakeries by hundreds of meters of pipeline. The pipes carry the aroma of fresh bread to the stores’ entrances. Without even realising it, passers-by are struck with hunger and drawn inside the store.

Another example I heard about is at a major British bank that introduced freshly brewed coffee to its branches with the intention of making customers feel at home. The familiar smell relaxes the bank’s customers, not an emotion you’d normally associate with such an establishment.

All of these are examples of Sensory Marketing. A marketing method that targets your senses – sight, smell, sound, touch and taste to promote a product or service (as opposed to conventional marketing which usually relies on sight and sound alone).

Taking Sensory Marketing Online

Now you’re probably thinking – how can I possibly incorporate the different senses into a website when people can’t smell it, they can’t touch it, they can’t taste it… at best they can see it and perhaps by adding some audio to the site they will be able to hear it (which in my opinion can detract from the experience), but that’s about it.

Ok… so maybe it’s not possible to evoke the senses physically, but you can certainly appeal to all of these senses in an emotional and virtual way.

Take books for example. Authors have been capturing the imagination of readers for centuries and this is done through vivid and captivating descriptions. A good author can describe how cold it is on a winters morning and as you read it you feel a slight shiver. They can describe the pungent smell of a rotting corpse so well that it almost makes you feel ill. Another example is a recent blog post by Kimberly from Learning SEO Basics – she had me rather hot under the collar with her article Learn SEO Copywriting: mmm Make Love to Me.

Words can be a very powerful thing and if used correctly you can create a very strong impression that appeals to peoples senses and emotions. Once you have the reader mesmerized by your words, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to then lead them to inquire about your products/services.

The next most powerful tool to words is imagery – as they say ‘a picture tells a thousand words’. Adding some great pictures to your website not only makes the page look more interesting, it strengthens the emotional message being delivered by the surrounding words. Not to mention providing much needed stimulation to those readers who tire quickly of long blocks of text.

The other thing that people often forget is that it can be possible to ‘touch’ a website. Once again, not in the conventional sense, but lets look at websites, blogs and other social media sites that:

• invite comments / feedback
• have you vote, respond to polls or submit content
• run competitions
• run awards that get users involved through nominations and voting

Anything that requires the user to interact with your site allows them to touch it and add their personal mark to your page. If you don’t run a blog or social media site, try something completely different – maybe have a flash game designed that somehow relates to your products or services. The moment someone starts to play, they are virtually ‘touching’ your site (not to mention the link-bait value if the game is good… but that’s a whole nother post).

These are just a few suggestions and ideas of how you can appeal to your reader’s senses and emotions through your website. While I technically haven’t done anything particularly sensational in this post, hopefully the ideas have been enough to get you thinking of how you can improve your online presence.

Taking Sensory Marketing Online

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The online world is no different

When we do a web search, we’re presented with a list of possible options and the only thing that we have to help us choose which website is the most relevant is the site’s title and two short lines of text.

For the non-HTML or SEO savvy, the title of a webpage is (appropriately) called the ‘Title Tag’ and the two lines of text below the title is most often stored in ‘Meta Description Tags’ which are usually located at the top of your website code. If your site doesn’t have a Meta Description Tag, then the search engines try their best to sum-up what your site is about from your content. For more info on how this works, you might find Matt Cutts’ video on website snippets useful.

Before Google ever existed the search engines would often use this Meta data to help determine the relevance of a website, but now that the search engines have evolved the Meta data doesn’t have any direct impact on the optimisation of a site – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.

The Meta Description is your websites ‘book cover’

It’s in these two lines (150 – 160 characters) of text that you have to do what a book cover does – you have to draw people in and make them want to click on your website over-and-above all the other sites listed on the page.

This is where you have a chance to briefly explain why you are different from your competitors, add a call-to-action to encourage people to click. Mention prices, model numbers, product manufacturers, special offers – anything that you think will attract someone who is searching for you and your products.

Turn your Meta Description into a Purple Cow

To borrow a quote from Seth Godin’s book The Purple Cow:

Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are boring. They may be perfect cows, attractive cows, cows with great personalities, cows lit by beautiful light, but they’re still boring. A Purple Cow, though. Now that would be interesting.

This is exactly what you want to do to your Meta Description – make it stand-out from the other descriptions by being so interesting, so outrageous, and so note-worthy that anyone looking at it won’t be able to stop themselves from clicking on your site.

If Meta Descriptions won’t help with SEO, why bother?

Even though I said above that the Meta Description tag isn’t something that the search engines currently use to determine how well your website will rank – it can still help your search rankings.

From some fairly thorough testing, we’ve found that user usage data, click-through and bounce rates can affect where your site sits in the search results. It’s the search engine’s job to provide its users with the best and most relevant results, so if you have a compelling description that attracts far more clicks than the sites above you, then it gives a very clear quality signal to the search engines which in turn can result in improved rankings.

Some Useful Tools

So now that you know what a Meta Description is and how it should be used, you’re probably wondering how to go about adding or improving your tags. These tools and articles may be useful:

• SeoBook’s Free Meta Tag Generator
• SeoBook’s Video on Optimising Meta Descriptions
• Google’s Tips On How To Write A Good Meta Description
• SEOMoz’s Making the Most of Meta Description Tags
• All in One SEO Pack Wordpress Plugin

You can’t judge a site by its Meta

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I fall into the category of Generation X (although some could argue that it’s more like the MTV Generation)… I work with another Gen X, a Baby Boomer and a Generation Y.

Because of this reasonably broad cross-section, it’s made me aware of how different generations purchase products and the things that motivate different age groups.

* as a side note, the following statements are based on observations I’ve made – this doesn’t necessarily make them accurate or correct – it’s just what I’ve surmised from personal experience.

The Baby Boomer’s
People falling into this category often have a strong sense of loyalty to their community and will happily purchase locally. Referrals from friends or family will usually guide purchasing decisions and the quality of product/service usually outweighs price.

Generation X
Whilst displaying some of the characteristics of their parents (who likely fall into the previous category) Gen X people tend to be more willing to shop around to find the best deal. Whilst quality is important, price is almost equally as important.

Generation Y
This generation are more motivated by self-image. If a product/service will help make them look good, then they’re more likely to use it – service and quality don’t have much bearing. They also place little value on things that they could otherwise gain for free… eg. music, movies, software – all can be easily pirated, so why pay for them?

How does all this apply to SEO?
The Baby Boomer’s are all retiring, purchasing their luxury cars and going on cruises. They aren’t likely to be promoting a new website or be needing search optimisation services. Our main market is Gen X and will eventually be saturated by Gen Y’s.

As this shift happens, being a well trusted company that promotes the highest quality of service will virtually mean nothing unless your seen as the ‘popular kid on the block’.

How does one gain this type of popularity?
The great thing about the SEO industry is that we’re seen as the rockstars of the marketing world. We get to play with linkbait, social media and go to conferences where it’s expected to party-on afterwards.

So simply by socialising with other SEOs and being good at what you do can be a good starting point in being ‘cool’. But there’s still work that needs to be done.

There are a lot of companies that have done a great job in establishing their branding offline. Many of these companies pump considerable money into magazine, TV and radio advertising and this has helped them appear to be popular amongst the Gen Y’s.

The good news is that these companies probably have Baby Boomer’s and Gen X’s in upper management – people who can be sold on quality of service. Getting these businesses added to your portfolio now will establish yourself as THE online marketing place that all the popular companies use. It’s this type of reputation that will appeal to the Gen Y’s.

Don’t get me wrong – getting these popular and well established businesses onboard isn’t going to be easy… but if you start working towards it now you’ll be securing your continual growth as the generations change.

How to sell SEO to Generation Y

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Let’s use the most recent holiday – Halloween as an example.

Janet Meiners from Marketing Pilgrim explains how Halloween is big business with $5-7 billion in total spending in the US with the average adult coughing-up $65 on the holiday. If you check the Google Trends to see how the holiday ranks for traffic, you’ll notice that it starts to gain popularity around September and skyrockets at the end of October (funnily enough right when Halloween happens):

So as you can see, people start searching for ideas a month or so before the actual event. Rebecca from SEOmoz sums it up best in her post Plan for the Holidays Nice and Early By Analyzing Search Trends when she says:

if you’re doing SEO for Halloween-related terms, you would want to start building content and links towards the end of the summer so you’re more visible to searchers when they think to start doing research

The same applies to Christmas search traffic!

A lot of places have begun targeting Christmas related terms already and people have started searching for gift ideas – so if you want to take your share of some of this seasonal search traffic now is the time to do so. Here’s what Google shows for Christmas related search patterns:

What if I don’t have an online store that sells conventional Christmas gifts?

A lot of people who read this probably won’t have nice e-commerce stores selling things people would want to give as Christmas gifts. I sell SEO services and I can assure you that my family member’s eyes wouldn’t light-up if they received one of my articles on ‘how to perform effective keyword research’ or ‘a guide to social media’.

But just because no one would buy your services as a gift doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. There are countless ways you can create great baited articles based around the festive season. Examples could include – making a list of the naughty and nice blogs in your industry; a list of online tools, widgets or plugins that would help Santa organise his elves more efficiently; SEO Mistletoe – which SEO guys and gals would you like to see smack lips… etc. etc.

Each season offers a world of possibilities to further promote your business and connect with your clients in new and interesting ways. So what are you waiting for?… Christmas?

All I want for Christmas is more traffic

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One of the many things that stood-out to me from the book was this excerpt on creativity:

too many people believe creativity is a talent with which some people are born and the rest can only envy. This is a negative attitude that is completely mistaken.

He goes on to say that one way of generating new ideas is to pick four random words (his book has pages of them listed at the end, but you could just as easily flick through a dictionary or use one of many online Random Word Generators). You then take these words and use them as inspiration for new ideas.

To give a very quick example of how you could apply this concept to create linkbait for your site, I’ve just clicked on this Random Word Generator… and it came back with the word: criterion

The word ‘criterion’ is defined as A standard, rule, or test on which a judgment or decision can be based.

This gives us plenty of options to work with:

If you’re in the service industry you could write a standard specification or manual for the tasks you perform and how you go about performing them. If you take the SEO industry as an example, SEOmoz’s Search Ranking Factors or Aaron Wall’s SEOBook give anyone an introduction to the industry and specify the things that are important to focus on. Aaron’s made a living from selling his e-book and SEOmoz (at last count) had gained over 23,000 inbound links to their Ranking Factors page… actually, now you can make that 23,001.

If you work in an industry that can use tests to determine if a client should use you, then this is another great viral method. Tests such as financial calculators to determine if you can gain a credit card, loan or mortgage. Health or weight loss calculators to determine the number of calories you can consume and which foods and exercise to assist this. Even if you don’t have any tests that relate directly back to your industry, a fun quiz can be just as good. Look at some of the great viral quizzes (and other viral ideas) on Just Say Hi.

The great thing about using this technique is that it pushes you to think outside the square by making you come-up with ideas based on seemingly unrelated random terms. It also helps keep your content fresh and different from all those other sites in your industry, which in itself will help you generate more links.

These are just a few examples of how you can take a simple word (or words) and then use them to come-up with some viral, linkbait ideas for your site. It might take some practice, but it does work!

How to have creative linkbait ideas

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