For the past 4 months the most popular blog article on this site has been Montana Indian Tribes: The Blackfeet.
For the life of me I don’t know why!
I wrote this article back in March, 2013, and for a long time it sat in obscurity. Is there anything we can learn from this article to figure out why it’s so popular, and perhaps why your most popular articles are so…well, popular?
For the life of me I don’t know why!
I wrote this article back in March, 2013, and for a long time it sat in obscurity. Is there anything we can learn from this article to figure out why it’s so popular, and perhaps why your most popular articles are so…well, popular?
Most Popular Blog Article Stats
The blog article itself is only 711 words and yet it’s been the most popular thing I’ve written on this site for the past 4 months.
In August it got 109 views, making it my 7th most popular article on the site that month, behind Father De Smet’s Wagon Train West, which had been in the top spot all summer leading up to a historical anniversary in 2013. It had 643 views that month.
I don’t know what happened starting in September, but the Blackfeet Indian blog article just took off, stayed going for the next 4 months, and is still going. Here are the monthly totals:
Looks like it’s starting to lose some steam, huh? Here’s what the article looks like. I’ve made some numbered notes which are explained below.
In August it got 109 views, making it my 7th most popular article on the site that month, behind Father De Smet’s Wagon Train West, which had been in the top spot all summer leading up to a historical anniversary in 2013. It had 643 views that month.
I don’t know what happened starting in September, but the Blackfeet Indian blog article just took off, stayed going for the next 4 months, and is still going. Here are the monthly totals:
- September: 591 views;
- October: 1,156 views;
- November: 1,154 views;
- December: 1,386 views;
- January: 769 views so far.
Looks like it’s starting to lose some steam, huh? Here’s what the article looks like. I’ve made some numbered notes which are explained below.
7 Unique Features of Popular Blog Article
#1 – Link to Book: I added this after I saw the post was becoming so popular. It just made sense for me to point back to the book that I put the post into and expanded.
#2 – Blackfeet Flag: You’ll notice right away that there’s a picture of the blue Blackfeet tribal flag there right at the top of the article. Many keywords that people are typing to get to my site are for that flag, so this is a draw. I’m pretty sure I got it from Wikipedia.
#3 – Blackfeet Name: Right in the first paragraph I identify what the Blackfeet name means and where it came from. Many people are simply looking for this little bit of information for a paper or an article of some sort.
#4 – Piegan Keyword: Another name for Blackfeet Indians is Piegan, although that’s really just a separate band of the larger tribe. Lots of people come to my site from that word, perhaps wondering what it means or what the difference is between it and Blackfeet.
#5 – History: Really the meat and potatoes of this article is the amount of history it has. It covers about 400 years or so, from the Blackfeet’s presence on the East Coast until around 1800 when they were well into Montana. You can see a lot of place names and other proper nouns that are keyword gold.
#6 – Notes: At the bottom you can see two references that I used while writing the article, which honestly, was an article I wrote after a full day of teaching kids English in China, and then over probably just an hour or two in the evening. Those notes down there could be pulling in some extra hits, however.
#7 – Links: I used to have 3 different links pointing to other Blackfeet websites, but I took one of them down when I found out it was dead. The other two might provide helpful information to people visiting my Blackfeet article, but neither of those two sites link to me. I emailed one of them a few months ago but got no response.
The article looks good. It has nice paragraphs, titles, pictures, and isn’t too long. When you zoom out on your blog articles you’ll get a greater appreciation for how they can look and feel.
You’ll also notice that this article has 0 comments. Yeah, it’s been up for nearly a year and has been the most popular article on this site, but no one’s commenting on it.
#2 – Blackfeet Flag: You’ll notice right away that there’s a picture of the blue Blackfeet tribal flag there right at the top of the article. Many keywords that people are typing to get to my site are for that flag, so this is a draw. I’m pretty sure I got it from Wikipedia.
#3 – Blackfeet Name: Right in the first paragraph I identify what the Blackfeet name means and where it came from. Many people are simply looking for this little bit of information for a paper or an article of some sort.
#4 – Piegan Keyword: Another name for Blackfeet Indians is Piegan, although that’s really just a separate band of the larger tribe. Lots of people come to my site from that word, perhaps wondering what it means or what the difference is between it and Blackfeet.
#5 – History: Really the meat and potatoes of this article is the amount of history it has. It covers about 400 years or so, from the Blackfeet’s presence on the East Coast until around 1800 when they were well into Montana. You can see a lot of place names and other proper nouns that are keyword gold.
#6 – Notes: At the bottom you can see two references that I used while writing the article, which honestly, was an article I wrote after a full day of teaching kids English in China, and then over probably just an hour or two in the evening. Those notes down there could be pulling in some extra hits, however.
#7 – Links: I used to have 3 different links pointing to other Blackfeet websites, but I took one of them down when I found out it was dead. The other two might provide helpful information to people visiting my Blackfeet article, but neither of those two sites link to me. I emailed one of them a few months ago but got no response.
The article looks good. It has nice paragraphs, titles, pictures, and isn’t too long. When you zoom out on your blog articles you’ll get a greater appreciation for how they can look and feel.
You’ll also notice that this article has 0 comments. Yeah, it’s been up for nearly a year and has been the most popular article on this site, but no one’s commenting on it.
Popular, But Not Worth Talking About
No comments could mean no one is reading it. A quick look on Google Analytics shows that the page has 30 visits and a bounce rate of 80%. People are staying on the page an average of 1:02 minutes. Of those visits, 100% are new.
Boy, that’s not too reassuring, but it also doesn’t give me the real picture. 30 visits? We already know the page has 769 views this month alone, so obviously most of those are coming from sources other than Google.
Where are they coming from then? I don’t know. Aside from the 3 hits off of “blackfeet flag” I got this month I have no idea. Most of my visits come from Google, Kboards, and Facebook. I also get a lot of hits from crummy Russian sites linking to me for some reason.
Boy, that’s not too reassuring, but it also doesn’t give me the real picture. 30 visits? We already know the page has 769 views this month alone, so obviously most of those are coming from sources other than Google.
Where are they coming from then? I don’t know. Aside from the 3 hits off of “blackfeet flag” I got this month I have no idea. Most of my visits come from Google, Kboards, and Facebook. I also get a lot of hits from crummy Russian sites linking to me for some reason.
Your Blog Articles are Popular, Now What?
So what’s so special about the Blackfeet Indians? I guess people just want to know about them.
A month or so ago I wrote a post on the Marias Massacre, which happened in 1870. Since I started linking to it from the main Blackfeet article its views have shot up.
What does this tell me? Write a book on the Blackfeet Indians!
Obviously my visitors are interested in that. Sure, they’re a bit shy and don’t like to comment, and maybe they glance instead of reading, but I can’t help but think a short eBook on the history of the Blackfeet Indians would be a great idea.
And short term a post on the top 10 Blackfeet Indian books would also be a good idea, especially if it had Amazon Affiliate links.
Anyways, that’s for another day. Until then I hope you found some insight into how you can analyze your most popular article, and figure out how you can capitalize off of that. You can, right?
A month or so ago I wrote a post on the Marias Massacre, which happened in 1870. Since I started linking to it from the main Blackfeet article its views have shot up.
What does this tell me? Write a book on the Blackfeet Indians!
Obviously my visitors are interested in that. Sure, they’re a bit shy and don’t like to comment, and maybe they glance instead of reading, but I can’t help but think a short eBook on the history of the Blackfeet Indians would be a great idea.
And short term a post on the top 10 Blackfeet Indian books would also be a good idea, especially if it had Amazon Affiliate links.
Anyways, that’s for another day. Until then I hope you found some insight into how you can analyze your most popular article, and figure out how you can capitalize off of that. You can, right?
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