Number One without a Bullet
Before I do something silly and completely reasonable and explain the meaning of the post title, I want to impart to you some of my infinite (and often misguided) wisdom. Getting to number one in the search results (SERPS) of any search engine is easy. Getting to number one in the SERPS for a word or a phrase that people are actually searching for is hard, extremely hard. Unless you're working a particular niche, results can be unexpected.
Expected and Unexpected Search Results
I was going to spend some time and give you a sampling of search queries, search results and on which search engines I found them on, but it would be incredibly time consuming and it wouldn't make any points. Search engine results can change from hour to hour and can be completely different depending on where the people are searching from.
The last time I mentioned my traffic numbers, in "My Bumpy Road To Success", I mentioned that I was getting 300 unique visitors and 500 page views per day. What I didn't mention is that those numbers were comprised of both social and search traffic. In less than a month, the numbers have changed enough to where I get more than 300 unique visitors per day from search traffic alone.
I attribute the increase in search traffic to several factors, the most important being the use of meta tags and meta descriptions in effective ways. Almost all of my search traffic used to come from Google in the US. Now it comes from all kinds of search engines in all kinds of places. I find my posts on the first page of the SERPS and quite often at number 1.
You Can Do It
Voiced by Rob Schneider when starring in movies alongside Adam Sandler, and sometimes in reverse, it's a phrase that I can use as well and with complete confidence. Here are some articles which explain how I did it in less than a month:
- What Are They Searching For?
- Gain Control of WordPress Meta Information and More with HeadSpace
- Make Retarded Search Engines Work For You
- Producing Quality Versus Quantity
Those aren't all of them, of course, but I think they're the most important ones right now.
Number One with or without a Bullet
The phrase, "number one with a bullet", hearkens back to the days when media companies only published lists in various magazines and not in or on other platforms. Being number one with a bullet meant exactly that — at the top of the list with a bullet (a dot or an image) in front of the list item. Someone uttered the phrase somewhere and the entertainment industries ran with it. Here's a sample:
- In 1978 and 1979, it was used as the title of a 2-part episode of "Hawaii Five-O", a television crime drama.
- In 1987, it was used as the title for "Number One with a Bullet", a crime/thriller/action movie.
- In 1990, it was used as the title of an episode of "21 Jump Street", another television crime drama.
- In 2006, it was used as the title of an episode of "Kidnapped", yet another television crime drama.
The funny part about it is that the phrase originally had nothing to do with weaponry. Since it was invented, it's been used thousands of times and in all kinds of industries. You don't believe me? Search for it on Google and you'll bring yourself to my next point.
"Number one without a bullet" is what you see on the first page of the SERPS, for whichever search engine you're looking at. Hence, the title of this post was formulated within the confines of my thick skull.
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I'm glad you cleared that up for me. I get what you are saying, but I wouldn't have a clue how to do what you do. Have a great day RT.
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It is good that you did this post. It is excellent. Glad to come back for more.
It also has to do with how competitive that keyword is. I am sure if you write about a more general subject like automobiles, it will not come up at top of the search engines.
Actually, if you write about a general subject enough, it will rise to the top. It doesn't seem like it would, but it does.
I think it's totally useless to compete for very popular keywords as the number of results will be huge and you have very little hope of making it to the top. And even then, it's not guaranteed to stay that way for long.
Much better to be unique and varied and then get keywords that are not so popular but still searched for often enough to get more hits and guaranteed to keep up at the top of SERPS for a longer time.
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You're right, Hari, and that's why I only target keywords once or twice. After that, it's all up to the luck of the dice.
I still get the majority of my search traffic for one word: "lesbians". No planning went into it, it just happened by accident. Not complaining though, it makes me smile.
Having followed some of the advice given on this site, I have suddenly gone from having my regulars only to a mix of the regulars and people who come from god knows where. Much of the new traffic comes from sites that appear to extract a few lines from a variety of blogs – they link back to me and don't post the whole article so that seems fine to me.
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Hi RT, I just checked and you're still #1 out of 567,000 on Google for Screaming Traffic. Nice accomplishment! My company is trying to climb to the top of the Google hill for the phrase "trade show displays". Perhaps the secret is to target screaming trade show displays" instead. Now I just have to remember to check Google in a few weeks for "screaming trade show displays". Only problem is that as you and the previous posters point out, if no one is searching for that, does it matter? If a tree falls in the woods, and now one hears it, does it matter? I say heck yeh! Nice post BTW.
Hahaha. Wow. That's a nice way to exploit google =P Nice find and cheers for the share.
I guess I should go after 'screaming hydrogen generators' and such.
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I don't really understand the meaning of the title ^^" But I do understand search engines some times are really slow in crawling. Well, the whole situation is still foreign to me haha..
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Thanks for sharing the info. I shall explore google furthermore!