I sometimes write about things that are old, obscure, and what I thought no one cared about. I was wrong.
There is something in SEO called “long tail searches”. The idea here is that the terms or words are so obscure they only show rarely and that’s why they are a long tail. I often get huge hits on articles I write that have obscure terms. It isn’t my plan, but I keep forgetting how often it happens.
What this means is that if you are thinking about it, probably other people are as well. What surprises me as well is that I also get incoming search terms which are quite complicated. These usually show up for a newish article that I write. People are looking for particular information and want to find it. Then they seem to want to read some of the articles that I have written.
This isn’t to brag, but rather I am surprised that I have a growing search engine referral. Since I am not selling anything the traffic doesn’t matter to me other than a vague indication of other people’s interest in what I write. Often I see search terms that only tangentially refer to the topic that I write and it makes sense that they don’t click. Other times I am right on the search term they want and I get lots of views but no clicks. That makes sense as well. Since I am an unknown site I don’t blame anyone for not clicking on a post.
However, for certain topics, they will click to read almost 100%. If their search term matches my content and I agree they will find their answer they click on it. Search engine users are pretty good at being able to tell if the information is there or not.
It is fun to see what I have written the search engine interest in it and how it changes each day. Having a website is a very interesting insight into commerce.