by Michael Dorausch, DC

Imagine, it’s the end of July, and you are backstage in Orlando, at a red-hot packed house Beyonce Knowles concert. The lights are flashing, the music is loud, and Beyoncé is singing and moving confidently across the upper platform stage.

Suddenly, something happens, and the singer takes an unexpected fall, heading face first down about a dozen stairs. Amazingly, she gets up and continues on, almost as if the fall was part of the artists choreographed performance.

The next day you are doing your ordinary rounds, checking various social web sites, online news broadcasts, favorite blogs, and RSS feeds. By midday you recognize a new trend has emerged and opportunity is practically jumping off of your LCD screen. The world has begun their search, and Beyoncé is the target.

Give the World What They Seek
Today, you don’t need to work at the New York Times or some other large newspaper, to cover news or state your opinion about current topics. A talented blogger can move swiftly, tying the topics of the day to the central message their blog or web site represents.

The following is an in-house analysis of a single (sub 600 word) article that resulted in a significant increase in traffic, that continued for nearly 3 weeks.

The article we are studying (Beyonce falls at Orlando Concert) was posted the morning of July 26, 2007.

According to log statistic reports, July 26 through July 31 showed a significant increase in visitors to the chiropractic web site with the keyword search phrases “beyonce falls” (1.5% of total web site traffic) and “beyonce fall” (.8% of total web site traffic).

The increase in visitors to the website, continued through the month of August. Looking at the “Search Keyphrases” screenshot, we can see that the term “beyonce falls at concert” came in at position number seven (other phrases have been whited out) with a search score of 409. Notice there are thousands of different key phrases (16,830) recorded for the month of August. Impressive that the Beyoncé search appears in the top 10, being that it was a single piece of content. By the way, the July searches mentioned appeared in position number 3 and position number 9, respectively, for that months statistical report.

The “Search Keywords” screenshot for August shows individual terms that were traffic drivers for this particular chiropractic web site. Notice the individual word “beyonce” has a search score of 1809, with the term “concert” at 1134, “falls” at 1084, and “orlando” at 722.

Notice how all four of these words were used in the article headline?

You Can Drive New Traffic
The topic of Beyonce falling down was tied to a message about chiropractic, the central theme of the web site. You can do this in your industry, and you can do it easily. I would imagine the same topic would have been equally successful for blogs or web sites focused on high heels (strong enough to take a fall), health insurance (never know when you’re going to need it), fitness (imagine taking that fall if you are out of shape), safety (tips to prevent things like this happening), and even the industry of search (showing step-by-step actions of user activity).

I’ll admit it was a great topic for the field of chiropractic, but there is an unlimited number of ways to connect topics such as this, to your central theme. All it takes is a little out-of-the-box thinking, a finger on the the pulse of what’s hot, and the ability to get your information out in a timely fashion.