Paris Hilton Tops the List

The most effective method of increasing visitor traffic to a blog is to write about subjects that are the most talked about at a particular time. To do that is easy. Consult the headlines. Currently, the headline grabbers are the Democratic campaigns of John Kerry and John Edwards, tension in Haiti, Catholic sexual abuse, Rosie O'Donnell's lesbian marriage, and many others. So, any of many popular subjects can be blogged to attract readers. Unfortunately, to research and write about an individual subject is time-consuming and only people interested in that particular subject will be pointed to your blog.

However, there is a shortcut.

By consulting any of a variety of lists which compile data associated with readers' interests and including within your blog the key words and phrases which reflect those popular interests, readers will be directed to your site. For example, the Lycos 50 Daily Report lists the 50 most popular key search words for the previous week. If I include the top five (Paris Hilton, Janet Jackson, Anna Kournikova, Britney Spears, and KaZaA) in a blog entry, there's a good chance that many people will be directed to my blog. By the way, it doesn't hurt to throw Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan into the mix.

Unfortunately, there's a down side. The people who are looking for Paris Hilton are probably not in the least bit interested in the content of this post. Therefore, although you would see an increase in visitation by this technique, the results are not necessarily an indication of the quality of your writing or your site. With this in mind, it would seem that a prudent blogger would concentrate on producing high quality writing and not be overly concerned about the number of visitors. Call it the "If you build it, they will come" philosophy made famous by the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams.

In conclusion, any sly technique to boost readership in the short run won't necessarily have any lasting effect, but it provides promise of increased visitation if the site is sufficiently engaging. Hopefully, with good content, transient peaks on the traffic counter will translate into a general increase in the site's popularity. And it never hurts to be Instalanched.

With the name dropping I've done in this post, I expect some hits. Too bad that they're not here for my engaging commentary.