Trevor Cook has an interesting post reflecting upon one of the most highly posts on his blog – a post about ‘Gmail Not Working’.
‘it leaves me wondering whether one of the best ways of boosting traffic is to write lots of stuff about products, good and bad.’
In a sense what Trevor has accidentally found with his post is the power of the long tail and his suggestion isn’t too far from the truth of what a lot of successful bloggers are doing with their posting about products. Take a look at Gizmodo and Engadget as to big examples – both are posting specifically about consumer electronic products – each post on a different one.
Whilst they don’t post something good and something bad about each product – their model of generating traffic is obviously very successful.
It reminds me of a post I wrote months ago about a study that found that products and brand names were among the most searched for terms on the internet.
28% of all Google searches were for product names and 9% were for brand names. I guess it makes sense that if you want to tap into this need of web surfers that you actually do blog about products and brands.
It is true, because one of my biggest posts is about GMAIL is SLOW. I did a test, and it is true. Also, if you can build in articles about how to do something in Linux or MT or WP or whatnot, it works.
http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/03/gmail_is_slow_o.html
http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/05/google_zeitgeis.html
This is interesting to me because I’ve recently started a site that talks quite a bit about products (http://www.sweetdex.com/) and my main goal wasn’t to drive traffic. Still, I can’t help buy wonder how, exactly, I’d go about doing that.
I realize that keyword search-wise it’s a good model, but how would I go about getting links to my entries, for example? Lots of questions.
Hello,
Is this because bloggers and blog-readers are gadget geeks? Personally I like to be aware of the last electronic gadget, they are so fascinating.
However, I think that this phenomenon is due to the current state of search engine algorithms. I’m not sure that the result would be the same in a semantic web infrastructure.
Salutations,
Fred
[…]
May 24, 2005 Blogging about Products Filed under: On Blogs Blogging about Products […] In a sense what Trevor has accidenta […]
My view, having watched gizmodo for some time in comparison to other blogs is that their high level of site traffic has a lot to do with the fact that gizmodo is not simply cutting and pasting press-releases and spec-sheets, but is adding (often humourous) short editorials that are informative (behind the news) and entertaining, my theory (still testing it) is that bloggong is about making the news, not just repeating it.
Wonderful tip! Blogging for products is a good idea and this traffic is highly targeted. People are looking for more information about the products they are currently searching. They are open to buy and you are closing the sale after the end of the post.
Thanks a lot!