Search Engine Weirdness

So, there's this thing called SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

This is basically an internet tool for those who sell or advertise product. They want an optimal search for their product at any given time. Even as writers, we want people to read our stuff. How do we do this? We "tag" our posts, or whatever we are "selling," with special search words, so that if by chance someone types in those words -- in my case, maybe my name, or book, or blog, etc, -- my listing, my book, my name or article, will come up.

Here's what I don't get. This last summer, I blogged for thirty days. All of those posts got decent exposure. Awesome. Great. Super fantastic.

But why-oh-why, did one post get more hits than the others? Check this out.

Really hard to see, but most of my hits are you know, twelve, fourteen, twenty two hits. But for the fourth day, the day that began with D, it's over two thousand five hundred hits! Why?

Somewhere, my tags were picked up by various readers, and someone liked this post, or someone shared this blog post, someone put this blog on a list so that this blog is read by zillions (okay, several thousand people) and it's still getting way more hits than it should.

I don't understand it. But if I did, I would make sure this happened to everything I wrote. It wasn't even a great post. I mean, I wrote it in a few minutes and of all the things to go viral, why was this it?

Anyway, remember: tags are important! And it's the very reason why I tagged this post with several words (at the bottom). You just never know what people are looking for. And maybe, they're looking for your words!

Writing Contest:

2012 Ladies Home Journal Personal Essay Contest.
Topic: What was the day that changed your life?
Words: No more than 2000
Due: December 7th
Details: Click right here to go to their website.

This is a great writing exercise. I entered last year, on a different topic, of course.
Though I'm not sure I have something to write about this, I think I'll still try. Why not?

Have fun and keep writing!

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