My Blog Post Went Viral and I Freaked Out

A few weeks ago, I published a sponsored post for Great Lakes Gelatin collagen protein. Sponsored posts don't often get a lot of traffic. Most blog readers recognize sponsored posts for what they are, advertising. I don't do sponsored posts very often but when I do, I try to make the posts about a relevant topic that ties into the product. At least that's the kind of sponsored posts I like to read.

I didn't name the product in the title, again, hoping to prevent people from not reading the post. Instead, I came up with what I thought was a clever title, In Pursuit of Happy Joints. After all, the product is supposed to reduce inflammation and I have rheumatoid arthritis.

After publication, I shared the post on all my social media accounts, as I do with all my blog posts. I participate in a couple of blogging groups and shared it there as well. I would have been happy with 500 views. A few days after I posted, I got those 500 views.

Then something extraordinary happened. The post went viral.

Yes, I did freak out. This kind of thing doesn't happen on a little blog like mine.

Last December, I shared my annual blog stats. My most popular post last year got 1039 views on one day. I thought that was crazy! However, nothing could have prepared me for what I discovered when I opened Google Analytics a few weeks after I published In Pursuit of Happy Joints.

My mouth hit the keyboard as I saw a huge jump in my page views. I kind of started to sweat. What had I done? I texted Marcia, my running and blogging guru, who told me to look at my visitor log for any kind of bot. When I reviewed the urls of the hits I got on the blog, there were no obvious patterns that would indicate a bot. None from Russia to speak of either. After I saw that, I felt somewhat better but I posted my concern about the growth of this particular post in one of my blogging groups. The big bloggers reassured me that this was nothing to worry about and told me to enjoy it.

Ok, then!

Now for those of you who have big blogs, this is probably no big deal. But my blog, while small yet with a respectable readership, has never experienced anything remotely close to this. So I did a little investigating, via Stat Counter and Google Analytics.

Here are my page views from Google Analytics for that particular post up until Saturday, March 2:

Last 30 days, page views:

Here's what StatCounter shows me for the blog overall in the first 2 months of 2018: (green is page views, blue is unique visits, orange is returning visitors)

Where did all these visitors come from? According to GA, 85% of these visitors came from Google via organic search and most are due to that one post. Which means that somehow they are finding my post while searching for something else on Google. This makes sense to me, because if you look at the bounce rate, it's quite high, especially for this particular post. My usual bounce rate before this was somewhere around 65%.

I also looked for "keywords" to see what people were searching for when they found my post. Unfortunately, Google does not provide keywords in an effort to protect the searcher's privacy. What's a blogger to do? According to one article I read, the author suggested that the blogger consider the "landing page" to see what the searcher is looking for.

In Pursuit of Happy Joints. Hmm. Let me think what people might be searching for when they found my post.

When I wrote the post, I did intentionally choose a provocative title. Marcia tells me that one of her all-time most popular posts is "Tale of a Slutty Brownie". A Google search of the term "slutty brownie" brings up quite a few recipes. So I googled "happy joints" and boom! there was my post on Google Search, page 3, sandwiched between dog joint supplements and low voltage jointing systems. I guess Google never knows exactly what people are looking for.

Still, not bad for a little blog with no SEO to speak of. For this hobby blogger, it was a dream come true.

I actually thought maybe people were searching for joints. You know, as in weed? Well, I searched that too and my post never showed up in search results there.

So what did I learn from this experience? 
-Choose your titles wisely. Try to reel the reader in. Keep in mind that the reader should know what you're writing about--don't sacrifice discoverability for cleverness. Sometimes just spelling it out in the title--like I did for another popular post, 7 Things More Painful than Running a Marathon, is all you need.

-Never underestimate what post is going to go viral. I am always surprised what posts are my most popular. It's not always the post that I expect. Posts with numbers in the title, like lists, are always popular. People love lists. A post I wrote about meeting Kathrine Switzer? While I thought everyone would be clambering to the blog to read that post, it wasn't a hit. I'm pretty sure the post you're reading write now won't fly off the charts. Or will it?

-Look at your stats. I realize that most of these page views for In Pursuit of Happy Joints are click and leave. They scan it and find that the post doesn't have what they're looking for, so they click through. But they are clicking on the link and going to my blog. Who knows, maybe I'll get some new readers from this. Of course, I would love it if everyone would stop and read every word I write. But the reality is that if you are interested in growing your blog, you need to think about your stats, which means actually reading the post doesn't always matter. No matter what, for me, quality posts are still my priority. It really was a win to have a well-written post go viral.

-Fame is fleeting. Yep, while that one post continues to fly high and boost my blog stats, posts I've written since have my normal readership. I'd love to have those page views for every post but that's not how things work. I got lucky. Based on this experience, I'm not going to change what I do. I still plan to write what's in my heart and stay true to my mission, which is to share my passion for running with my readers.

The little blog that could, right? What a fun experience! Have you ever had a post go viral? One that blew your stats out of the water? I'd love to hear what you learned from that. 

I'm linking this post with Tuesdays on the Run aka Marcia, Erika, and Patti as well as Running Coaches' Corner aka Debbie, Rachel, and Lora.

SaveSave