In a recent Blog Challenge on testing your blog’s development, mandarine answered:
I have learned one thing: when I google “The happiest person in the world”, I come out #1! That’s pretty cool, huh? (And I am still #2 without the quotes).
Your blog challenge this week is to research what word or phrase makes your blog number one in Google search results.
There is one rule for this challenge. You can’t use your own name.
Sure, I could use Lorelle WordPress on Google and I’d be at number one. Well, of course. That’s obvious.
I want you to dig deeper and find the key words or phrase that pops you up at the top of the list, without using your name or blog name, and blog about it and/or give us the link to the Google search results to test them for ourselves.
Google search results will shift and change over time, so don’t expect you will be on top all the time, but we are testing for top search results for this moment in your blog’s SEO life.
So what words bring you to the top of the list?
This is one of many blogging challenges I offer weekly to help kick your blogging ass. For more challenges, see the Blog Challenge category.
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Site Search Tags: blog challenge, blogging challenge, seo, seo techniques, google search, google page rank, pagerank, google search results, google search terms, google keywords, keywords, search terms, search engine position
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network
Lorelle on WordPress 
33 Comments
I don’t know if this counts, but if you put “girls can’t” in the search box I am numero uno – but that is part of my web site’s title.
Put “John”, “Chow” and “Cult” in at the moment, and I’m at #1. Even ahead of John Chow! That’s gotta be going some.
Sorry, to be back again.
Just to be a bit more user-friendly: If you put in “John”, “Chow” and “Community”, I come out at #2 just behind John Chow, but ahead of John Chow MyBlogLog.
Woo-hoo!
But #2 was not your challenge, I know…
If you type in “sestina our seasons” I have four out of the top five page searches.
Sestina is a style of poetry and “Our Seasons” is a poem I wrote.
I had no idea… Just a few words/phrases I found are “senslis”, “desperately seeking venture capital”, “Setting up a conduit toolbar”, “netvibes in australia”, “Firefox vs IE in Australia”. Of course, these aren’t common search terms 😦
Considering I’ve been blogging for less than 2 months and have no page rank I guess this shows the importance of having a *.wordpress.com blog….
The search “mercedes ipod framework” (words in any order) lists my website/blog as no. 1 and 2. Even though the main topic is “web development”. When I search for “development with gwt and antlr” (words, not phrase), it’s no. 1 and 2, too.
“al udeid enterprise” (words) lists me as no. 2 and 3 (Al Udeid is an Air Force Base in Qatar).
Funny, but predictable …
Friendly Tip: If you’re not sure what keywords to try, it you’ve setup the Google Webmaster Tools, they have a section in there that tells you what keywords you rank highly in. Failing that, just check your referrer logs 🙂
For me, it’s my wildly popular “ultimate static front page that gets me at the top. Google is also ranking me high for other keywords, relating to the New York State January 2007 Math A Regents exam, and various searches relating to New York City buses.
The real fun is to find the strange ones you don’t expect. Or even the disturbing. Here are some fun ones:
Dannemora Jailbreak
Current Interior Conditions
Plattsburgh beach
DEC Head
Northway Jews
20 Year Bushman
Post titles. Need I say more?
Two word combinations are really the best – easiest to target and see results. Even if you don’t really try!
I’m #1 for “Last Leaf Designs” 🙂
If I search for “Karle Karle” without the quotes I’m number of on Google. Strange…
I have a training blog that typically gets the traffic of only a few devoted individuals. I recently started to talk about my diet a lot more. It’s a part of training for me and it’s not like diet in the popular context, it’s about nutrition and calorie balance. Surprisingly I found that my traffic went up considerably (for me). When I went to my stats I found a lot more search engine hits. It wasn’t that weightlifting became more popular, it was all the people that were typing in “diet” and looking for tips on weightloss. I was surprised. It is forcing me to stop using abbreviations for some common words and to dump some of the jargon that is only known in my small community.
Hey Lorelle … great question.
I just typed in motivational podcast into Google and returned the top result for my website. In Yahoo, I don’t make the top ten with the same search query. Funny how that works.
Before I tried any search terms, I thought about what I would want to turn up for in Google. I would really want to get hits from people searching for something related to my kayaking trip with Outward Bound in Chile. I realized that I have written almost nothing about that trip, though, because I obviously didn’t have internet access while I was there! I’m definitely going to write about my experience and refer to it more often. Thanks Lorelle!
Many business bloggers would consider this information to be a trade secret!
#1 for “i hate internet explorer 7”
🙂
This one is pretty huge.. I’m #1 for “access gmail”
As a matter of fact, I have just found out that even when I use google.com, it still skews the results with sites hosted in France. I am only #3 with “the happiest person in the world” on google.com/ncr (to avoid regional bias).
“band indonesia” is 1# in yahoo..but not in google 😀
The most interesting one that I’m number one for is wp_list_archives, but I’m number one for a lot of other search phrases
You did not say we could not use article headings in the query, so I have another one:
“a mathematical proof that god exists” => #1
(only number 5 without the quotes)
but the one I like best is definitely:
“changing the world in half a minute” — number one with or without quotes and thanks to you!
Mandarine: I don’t know who is having more fun with this. You or me watching you. 😉
For a while I was #1 for “pee blog” — and no, that is not my area of expertise. Thankfully that one has faded away, but now I’m #1 for “homework in kindergarten” which is a little bit better of an indication of things I sometimes blog about 😉
“Amazing circles” – no. 2
“Steve Jobs in Lego” (lol) – no. 4
=) Oyvind
Nice question! When viewing my blog stats I am not that interested in the number of visitors but more in how they got to my blog. The interesting thing is that most people don’t use the search strings that will list me as #1 (published below), they use other search strings that list me somewhere on the first or second page of the search results. So fortunately people still scroll through the search results 🙂
ma thesis blogging
ma thesis wordpress
ma thesis “software studies”
ma thesis blog software
(I also tried -master thesis blogging- which came up with nothing but I actually bumped into some interesting results for my research!)
thesis bill viola (I actually wrote a paper on Bill Viola, not a thesis)
boris noorderslag photos
I like the results since they reflect my blog quite well.
My favorite search string which results in a #2 position is:
“And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced”
🙂
PS: Mandarine, I love your search string results!
I’m top for ‘eclectisism’ – The article in question is completely irrelevant though so I’m not sure it will help my traffic very much…
Random array: “staples vs stitches during c-section”, “disney hot diggity dog”, “i wonder who sang that” and “persistently dangerous schools in texas”
I am #1 for Philadelphia blog consultant.
I am #1 for the word…. decrappifier
*sigh*
I wrote “melecut musim” in Google. And, hopla … my blog is on the top list … 😀
Found myself at #1 with the phrase ‘stressed out mother of 2’ (but then again, my blog’s name is Stressed Out Mother’s Life), ‘sun tech day klcc’ and also ‘ashley and hayley’ (my princess)
If you search for “american idol gives back carrie underwood” in Google it brings up my post on that particular tv edition.
🙂
swinger party
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What Keywords Rank You Highest?
Lorelle raised a blogging challenge for this week. She wants to know what search keywords (when used on Google) bring your site up to the top of the list.
Your blog challenge this week is to research what word or phrase makes your blog number one in Go…
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