Tip - Random Keyword Rankings

I posted this on my site tonight, but I thought it would go over pretty good here as well:

In the past I have noticed that some of my sites are found when people type in some really random keywords in Google. Tonight I started ranking #3 (out of 136,000,000) for the keyword “pleased”. It’s not the most searched for keyword in the world, but it brought me enough traffic today that I noticed.

Like I said, this has happened to me a number of times on other sites. The problem is that these people might be searching for “x-box” and find my philosophy directory. Obviously they won’t stick around too long… so you are getting extra traffic, but it’s pretty much meaningless. But it doesn’t have to be.

If a search engine wants to send you some extra (although poorly targeted) traffic, why let it go to waste? Here is what I do.

Say Google sends traffic to my philosophy site for the keyword “x-box”. Instead of letting this traffic go to waste I create a landing page for these visitors. Let me stress that this is not a made for adsense site (in fact most of the time I don’t even ad adsense). It’s a 1-10 page site that gives some information that is actually useful to the visitor. If the traffic is for “x-box”, I would join an affiliate program that sells the x-box console and games, etc… The visitors find what they are looking for and in return you might make a few sales, everybody wins.

So next time you notice people finding you through irrelevant keywords, stop and think: What would Eric do?

 

There is really not much you can do. I am pretty sure you know your options and its your decision. Obviously what we are probably thinking is to cloak the referral to another more targetted page. Which I really dont think is a problem from a realistic point as there is no harm. Although many people are against cloaking in general, but realisticly it would be a wise move. Its your decision though.