SEO Blog

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post, title very much tongue in cheek http://www.metamend.com/blog/2005/07/12/hiltons-perverted-bedding-initiative/ Hilton’s perverted bedding initiative”. You’ll need to read the post to understand the joke, but really, it had less to do with Paris Hilton in particular than about Hilton Hotels, and online brand strategy and awareness. The web traffic in response to varied keyword combinations that people used to arrive at that post was interesting. I wrote a little bit about some of those combinations in a follow-up post. There’s been lots of other combinations since, such as “hilton vision”, “hilton vision statement”, and “hilton statement”.

Today, I received a call from a journalist wanting information about Paris Hilton’s web traffic. I took at look at the traffic to this blog on the matter. Unsurprisingly, there’s been an obvious uptick in Hilton related traffic since Paris was sent to jail.

Also, unsurprisingly, none of the queries had phrases like “paris hilton jail”, “hilton jail”, “paris jail”, “paris hilton gets out of jail”, “paris sent to jail”, “paris hilton” or “hilton prison” sent any traffic to this blog. I say unsurprisingly because I never wrote anything about “jail” or “prison” in my postings. Why would I? I was writing about branding. Of course, now, in the context of the young lady going to jail, that becomes a different question, as of course the words Paris+hilton+jail are forever linked on umpteen web postings. Who knows, perhaps this site will start getting “jail bedding” traffic as a result?

Last week I posted about Pamela Anderson, National Newspapers, and the Juno Awards coverage. It’s more obvious to me now than last week that Pamela Anderson’s cleavage is BIG news. Since then, Pamela Anderson’s Breasts have been The Story around here!

No, we’re not hanging out by the watercooler (yes we actually have one) talking about them. It’s the web traffic we’re getting on the subjects. Queries like “Pamela Anderson and her two best friends” - “Pamela’s Booby Prize” - “Pam’s Breasts” - to say nothing of all the straightforward Pamela Anderson, and Pam Anderson queries. It’s completely remarkable. The only other wildcard queries we get related to Paris Hilton, and that can be traced back to the posts about Hilton Hotel’s marketing Almost all other search traffic to our site, and this blog is search engine related.

Strangely, we’re also now getting queries for “Pam Anderson and Paris Hilton”

A couple of people I know down South asked me about the pictures themselves. Were they newsworthy in any way that they were put on so many cover pages? Nope. I’m posting copies of them below. It really must have been a slow news day. For the record, they all come from canada.com web sites.

I was just looking through our stats earlier, and noticed something interesting.

This blog is all about search engines, and search engine optimization. Among the topics mentioned frequently are of course Google, MSN, Yahoo! - just what you would expect. I also wrote two comments about Hilton’s Perverted Bedding Initiative. I don’t think I could have foreseen all the various queries related to Paris Hilton that we would be getting from the search engines. I knew that Paris Hilton was big. But she’s bigger than Google.

We get lots of traffic for terms like Google’s Vision Statement, Yahoo Strategy, and the like. The overwhleming majority of our traffic related to search engines. But all the Hilton & Paris Hilton related terms are staggering! Here’s a list of some which struck me - (I’ve left out the rude ones):

• Paris Hilton Brand
• Paris Hilton and the relationship to Hilton Hotels
• Hilton Blog
• Paris Hilton Blog
• Hilton Bedding
• Hilton Hotel commission
• Hilton Hotel in Paris
• hilton hotel gossip
• hilton brand
• hilton hotels
• hilton brand
• hilton hotel brand
• hilton brand awareness
• paris hilton brand awareness

The other day I wrote a blog posting about Google’s Sandbox. It got a lot of hits. On Monday I wrote about Google losing in court to Geico. It got the second most hits for any blog posting yet, even though I posted it late in the day after most people would have left work.

The busiest entry for this blog? Hilton’s Perverted Bedding Initiative, and the follow up posts.

If I had to quantify it in relation to search queries, I would say we get two to three times as many link referrals from “Paris Hilton”, but more overall search queries for “Google” related terms. From an seo perspective that’s a relief….

What I find interesting is that, as a percentage of traffic, people looking for Hilton related materials seem to surf in from other sites more than from search engines. However, people looking for Google related information arrive more frequently from a search query, or in response to blog pings. (I know, wrong vernacular, but I can’t get the right term in my head). Obviously, the stats seem to indicate that people looking for Google related information are more technical in nature.