ProBlogger: 2 Blogging Myths: Traffic Measures Success and Content Is King

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ProBlogger: 2 Blogging Myths: Traffic Measures Success and Content Is King

2 Blogging Myths: Traffic Measures Success and Content Is King

Posted: 29 Apr 2011 06:00 AM PDT

This guest post was written by Stephen Guise of Deep Existence.

Admit it. You think I’m crazy for dogging the two most commonly cited blogger goals—traffic and great content. Allow me to explain before you throw your mouse at the screen, please.

Busting the myths

Blog traffic is very important. With no traffic, how will anyone see your masterpiece on writing blindfolded for enhanced focus? Your blog needs traffic.

But traffic is not a valid measure of success. If traffic were a valid measure of success, every blogger starting out would be an instant failure for months, if not longer.

Success metrics must be applicable to people at all levels of experience. High traffic later on is a great indication that you have succeeded (like ProBlogger has), but it simply isn’t relevant to new bloggers who want to know how well they’re doing.

Traffic relative to experience and time online is also a moot statistic, because it has more to do with luck and/or marketing than anything else:

The better marketers will have better traffic—especially in the beginning.
I’ve seen horrendous blogs (messy layout, weak content, horrible grammar, etc.) with thousands of subscribers.
I’ve seen great blogs that are practically invisible online because they don’t know how to, or care to, gain exposure.
Time separates the wheat from the chaff (unless you never market your blog at all, in which case, good luck).

For a beginning blogger, it can be tough to see the big-time bloggers pull in thousands of visitors on a daily basis while you’re reaching for 50 on a good day. It takes time and effort to get your name out there so that you can get the chance to be fairly evaluated by web users. I know that many quality bloggers have simply quit because they equated low traffic with failure.

63,494 blogs were started in the last 24 hours (according to blogpulse.com at the time of writing) and many of those bloggers will quit in the first few months. The first few months are important.

We’ve all heard the classic “content is king” viewpoint as well as the opposing, “unseen content is useless” perspective. In reality, both have some truth—you need great content and you need to make sure people know about it.

However, saying that content is king gives the writer the wrong focus.

How to measure success at any level

So then, what is the best measure of success?

Success is measured by what readers think of your content.

I have only been blogging (on my website) for a month, and as such, my traffic is hilariously low. However, I am very hopeful for retaining and gaining new readers because of how I’ve been measuring my success.

When I read articles about content being king, I get the impression that we should write the best content we can create. The problem is that the writer’s opinion of “best content” doesn’t matter too much.

Content is not king, and neither is traffic: your readers are king!

Some might say that this is what “content is king” actually means, but that is up for interpretation. Saying that readers are king leaves no doubt.

Readers decide what they want to read, how much, and when. They determine which blogs soar to incredible popularity and which blogs bite the dust. They are king because they control the destiny of every blogger. So how do we cater to their interests? How do we know what they want?

You want to shape your content to your readers. Okay, but how do you do that?
You do that by listening to what your readers are telling you.
You listen by measuring the number of tangible positive responses (Facebook likes, tweets, comments, new subscribers, etc.) relative to the number of people who viewed a post (individual post views can be seen with Google Analytics, but make sure you’re blocking your own IP address views to prevent skewing the stats).

This approach is primarily geared towards people starting out such as myself, but it is relevant to all bloggers.

When you’ve “made it” and are getting tons of traffic, the positive responses in relation to your traffic (and increased traffic itself via reader sharing) will be pretty obvious indicators of how your posts are received. You have a much bigger sample size in that case, and precise calculations aren’t necessary. But I’m sure you’ll do them anyways because of how much fun they are.

Low traffic … but high hopes

I believe that I am going to be a successful blogger. It isn’t because of my traffic—on Saturday I had a whopping six unique visitors (ouch, weekends).

My readers, not my traffic, have been foreshadowing my success by responding positively. In the first week, a couple I’m friends with told me my blog was changing their lives. I’ll take that over 1,000 visitors.

My last post was seen by only 22 unique visitors the day I posted it, but from that it received seven Facebook likes. My subscriber count doubled from seven to 14. About 32% of the readers liked it enough to share it with their Facebook friends.

If I were attracting 2,000 visitors a day and maintained that 32% sharing rate (unlikely, but interesting), it would translate to 640 Facebook likes on that post, which could obviously boost my traffic substantially.

I’ve had other posts that were seen by a much higher number of people with a much lower response—that is a huge statement by the readers. I would be a fool to ignore it and write whatever I want.

As a blogger, you need to have a willingness to adapt your vision and content to the marketplace. Let’s face it: blogging is a business. You have to promote your product (blog posts), network with other businesses (bloggers), and create value for your customers (readers).

Consider the variables

It is important to note that there are many other factors that come into play here—the time the post was published, the length of post, topic interest, marketing, statistical variations, the influential power of who shares your post, and so on.

It isn’t an exact science because of the variables involved, but it remains the best measure of success for a blogger at any level. This is why I recommend allowing comments on your posts, or at the very least adding social sharing options, to bloggers starting out. Disable comments because it looks bad to have no comments, and you’ll miss out on a chance to get valuable feedback.

Even at low traffic levels, I’ve found you can still get a good feel for your winners and losers. For example, the aforementioned post with fewer views had a much greater response than every other post with more views on my blog. The readers have spoken.

Keep in mind that different posts will have different reactions. The popular post I mentioned has zero comments, but people were sharing it and subscribing as a result of it.

Another post I wrote on deep thinking was shared less, but has more comments. Both posts were successful based on the number of views.

I’d love to hear from you about your experiences, and get your thoughts and feedback on this idea. After all, if you’re reading this, your feedback is king!

Written by Stephen Guise. See my website for more deep thoughts and follow me on twitter!

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

2 Blogging Myths: Traffic Measures Success and Content Is King

“Two Email Marketing Strategies that Work” plus 1 more

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“Two Email Marketing Strategies that Work” plus 1 more

Two Email Marketing Strategies that Work

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 09:05 AM PDT

This is a guest post by Shaun at Ultimate Mailing List.

As I’m sure many of you know, building a mailing list can greatly benefit your business.

Bloggers harp on all the time about how much money you can make if you have enough subscribers, and how great it can be in terms of social proof. While this is true, what’s often left out is what you should do once you have your mailing list up and running.

This means bloggers are left paying their $19-a-month Aweber fees, with no real idea of how they’re going to make that money back.

I want to share with you two great ways to get your email marketing campaigns off the ground.

The first strategy will help you get more subscribers and build your authority in your niche, while the second will help you get more page views and affiliate sales—all in an ethical manner, of course. Both of these methods will also help build stronger relationships with your subscribers, and get them to trust you. This is vitally important, as the better your relationship is with your subscribers, the longer they will stay around.

So, let’s get into the methods shall we?

The short course strategy

The method

The short course method is pretty much what is sounds like: you set up a short course which your website visitor is enrolled in once they sign up to your mailing list. Over the next few days (usually seven, but the course duration can be more or less depending on what you have to offer), your subscribers will be sent a new part of the course. This is done automatically via your autoresponders, so you don’t have to physically be around for your course to be delivered.

What it achieves

Depending on the niche I’m catering to, I often prefer this method to sending out a one-off ebook in exchange for an email address. This is because it achieves a few objectives:

It helps build up a strong relationship with your customers in a short space of time. While it can take a while for subscribers to fully trust you, if you send them top-quality emails every day for a week, this trust is built up a lot faster.
A short course can offer higher perceived value then a one-off ebook, meaning you’ll get more subscribers.
It’ll get people used to opening and interacting with your emails. A subscriber who doesn’t open your emails is pretty much useless, so sending them daily emails (initially) will help them to associate your emails with quality. This’ll mean they’re more likely to open future emails they receive from you.

Why it works

With this approach, each email acts as a reminder.

While ebooks are good, many people tend to read the first chapter, put it down for further reading later on, and never get back to it. With an email course, however, they’re sent a new part every day, so they’re always reminded that they have reading to do. This means they’re more likely to read each part, and they’ll be reminded to go back to any part they miss when a new email comes through.

Another good thing about short courses is that they can quickly help you to establish your authority in your niche. If everyone else in your niche is offering ebooks, and you offer a course—something most other people will likely be charging for—people will look at you more favorably than your competitors, and they’ll be more open to seeing what you have to offer.

An example

You can see an example of this strategy at work here. In the sidebar, a seven-day course is offered to anyone who enters their email address. If collecting email addresses is your primary aim, you may want to make the opt-in box appear at the top of the page, though.

While it’s not essential, it may be a good idea to incorporate this next strategy into your seven-day course, too…

The further interaction strategy

The method

In this strategy, you’re looking to get your subscribers to further interact with you once they finish reading your emails. This is a method that can be applied to your existing email marketing campaigns, and although simple, it can drastically increase your website’s page views, reader loyalty, and more.

With this technique, you send subscribers short- to medium-length emails. In these emails, you will include a guide or something else that’s helpful to the reader, and at the bottom, include a link to more on this subject. The link will lead back to a page on your website, getting you more page views as you point the subscriber in the direction of further assistance. Note that it’s important to not include any ads in these emails.

This strategy can be applied to any email you send out for which you have additional information about the subject on your website. I tend to use it a lot in my autoresponder series, but it can be applied to any email you see fit.

What it achieves

More page views. As you will include a link back to your website, you will have more people visiting your site.
More sales. While you’re not selling anything directly in your emails, some of the pages you link to from your emails may promote affiliate products or have ads that you can make money from.
More visits to your hidden gems. If you have a big website, there are often articles that will be helpful to visitors that they don’t end up seeing. Using this method you can show people about your less-visible but just as helpful articles.
A higher open rate. If your emails are helpful and genuine, more people will continue to open and interact with them.

Why it works

I’ve been using this method effectively for quite a while now. It has led to me having top-quality open rates and a high percentage of clickthroughs—both are well above the industry average.

This method works because people don’t feel like they’re being sold to. If you constantly sell to people in your emails, your subscriber turnover rate will be very high. While people may open the first few to see what you have to say, after a while they’ll catch wind of your game and start ignoring your messages.

If you’re being helpful to them in every email, however, people are more likely to look forward to your messages and interact with them regularly. On top of that, they can make you sales if you have an affiliate offer or other monetization method in the linked page on your website.

What if you don’t have any extra information on your website?

I’ve often written emails for my autoresponder but not had anything to link back to. So what did I do? Well, I added the email to my autoresponder anyway, as the information was still valuable by itself.

The good thing about this method is it always gives you ideas for new subjects. You may want to make a note of any emails you send that aren’t further documented on your website, and in future, write an article or post about them. You can then go back and add a link to your emails (If they’re in an autoresponder) so any future subscribers will have that further bit of interaction.

Email marketing that works

So there you have it—two ways you can greatly improve your email marketing efforts. Using these methods will help build your authority, get you more subscribers, build up a better relationship with your customers, and get your more sales.

What other methods do you use to effectively build up your mailing list?

Shaun is the owner of Ultimate Mailing List, a site dedicated to help you build a responsive and profitable mailing list. Not sure how to build a list or want more email marketing tips? Then check us out.

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

Two Email Marketing Strategies that Work

31 Days to Build a Better Blog – Price Rise Imminent

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 06:13 AM PDT

It has been around 2 years since 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook launched and in that time thousands of bloggers have taken the challenge to improve their blogs over a month.

Since launching the eBook the price has always been $19.95 USD but on 10th May on the continued feedback of those who’ve take the challenge I’ll be raising the price to $29.99 to be inline with the other ProBlogger eBook – the Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers.

The reason for the price rise is simple – the feedback I get from those who take the 31 day challenge is blunt – for a 31 day program the advice is worth a lot more than $19.95. At the present price of 64 cents per day it is almost laughable how cheap its been.

So today I want to give current readers notice that on Tuesday 10th May the price will rise. So if you’ve been meaning to pick up a copy this next few days is your last chance at the current price.

At just under $30 the eBook will still be affordable at under $1 a day – but this is your last chance to get it at the reduced price.

This isn’t a scarcity play – I simply wanted to let readers know of the imminent price rise to give everyone a fair chance at the savings.

If you’re not sure if the eBook is for you check out the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog page for further details of what it’s all about.

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

31 Days to Build a Better Blog – Price Rise Imminent

ThePicky E-Newsletter - Bringing you the best

Posted by work smart 0 comments

ThePicky E-Newsletter - Bringing you the best

White iPhone 4 – Price Details

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 07:44 AM PDT

White iPhone 4 now available for purchase, you can purchase white iPhone4 from Apple’s online store, at Apple’s retail stores, AT&T and Verizon Wireless stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. The white iPhone 4 has finally arrived and it's beautiful," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "We appreciate everyone who has [...] Those who liked this article, also read these:

“WP Troubleshooting Tips From the Trenches” plus 1 more

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“WP Troubleshooting Tips From the Trenches” plus 1 more

WP Troubleshooting Tips From the Trenches

Posted: 27 Apr 2011 11:00 AM PDT

This guest post is by Dan Sheehan of DSConstructiontahoe.com.

I’m one of those types who believe when something’s working fine, it’s a good time to mess with it. After all, isn't that how progression and innovation happen?

My construction business had been slow so I decided to build my own website during some down-time.

I learned a lot about WordPress and SEO through my toying, tweaking, and dismantling of this website, and I think my tips might help newbies and seasoned WordPressers alike!

Google Webmaster Tools

If you haven't already, I highly recommend that you sign up for a free Google Webmaster Tools account. Much of the following post is based on the information you can get from this extremely important tool.

It is never fun to go to your Google Webmaster Tools account to find that the Googlebots have been discovering pages of your site that you never knew existed, or URLs that are non-existent. Or to find that your home page isn’t being indexed because there’s a trailing slash on the end of your home URL. The worst was when I found that both the www and non-www versions of my URL were being indexed—that’s not good for SEO.

Redirection and link juice plugins

Along the journey, I’ve tried many plugins. One thing I have tried to do is use as few a plugins as possible in an attempt to make my site as fast as possible (since Larry Page is such a speed freak).

I present here are a few plugins that I have found help my site play nice with Google, and are well worth the weight they add to my WP installation.

After changing my permalink structure four or five times and my domain name twice, I had a mess that Google pointed out to me under the "crawl errors" and "html errors" sections in the Webmasters tools.

Two plugins helped clean up a lot of this mess: Redirection and Link Juice Keeper.

The Redirection plugin allows you to place a 301 redirect on any URL within the domain. To tell you the truth, in many cases I had no idea where these bad URL's came from—I only knew that Google was telling me they were crawl errors. And the reasons as to how I got all those errors are beyond the scope of this post. When you use a 301 redirect, any PageRank from that homeless page transfers to the page you are 301-redirecting to.

Link Juice Keeper (or LJK) is what I use to basically clean up all the bad URLs for which I can’t find a page to redirect to. LJK automatically redirects all non-existent URLs and 404 errors to your home page. So after you go through and 301-redirect URLS that can be pointed to good, specific pages, you can let LJK pick up the rest—plus any others that pop up.

However, keep in mind that any of the subsequent redirections that LJK makes might be better replaced by a redirection to a more appropriate page on your site, so it’s good periodically to check for any new errors, and properly redirect them if possible, rather than just letting them go to your home page.

By giving a home to all these "homeless pages" you are preserving any link juice that those pages have within your domain. If a page with a bad URL can be found on the ‘net, then it has value—but not if it goes to a "page cannot be found” page. Why not make use of all those pages and have them become paths to the content that you want to rank for?

Anti-spamming plugins

Another great plugin I came across is cbnet Ping Optimizer.

Did you know that every time you make an edit to a post or a page on your WordPress blog, you’re pinging a bunch of update services like Google, Technorati, and many more? This action lets them know that you have some new content and that they should send over their crawlers to take a look.

That’s great … unless you’re like me, and are constantly correcting some spelling, or tweaking your pages on a very regular basis. Maybe you’re reformatting a post, and keep updating and publishing over and over until it looks just right.

While you’re consciously improving your content, you’re also making yourself out to be a spammer in the eyes of those update services. What cbnet Ping Optimizer does is control those pings so that you only ping the update services when you create something new (a post or a page)—not when you edit an existing post or page. If you’ve made a bunch of edits that have significantly changed the page or post, then you can go ahead and manually force-ping the services.

A Firefox addon that’s been helpful to me is SEO Doctor.

SEO Doctor provides great SEO-related information about the page that’s displayed in your browser. It will let you know, for example, if you are using two H1 tags (not good), as well as many other SEO blunders.

SEO Doctor told me that an important page on my blog was not being indexed because of a canonical link issue. In the end I found that the plugin All In One SEO was the culprit. Once I unchecked the Canonical URLs option, the issue resolved. I still love AIO SEO and find it invaluable, but without SEO Doctor, I’d never have found this problem.

Site Meter: a handy watchdog

The other day, I had noticed from my Site Meter account that Google was indexing my site with both www and non-www URLs.

Site Meter, unlike many other trackers, shows Googlebot visits, which I love. I was able to see that Google actually came to my site using specific keyword search terms! Tracing these back to the SERPs, I saw that there were both forms of the URLs in the search results. After an unrelenting research, I came across a website that mentioned the same WordPress problem. The author disabled the plugin W3 Total Cache and the problem was resolved.

I cleaned up my .htaccess file and reordered the rewrite rules and that seemed to fix it, but I’m skeptical. To be sure it does not happen again, I made the non-www URL (www is my preferred format) the link I use to check out my site from my desktop and bookmarks. So when I click the link, I look in the Address bar of the browser to be sure that the non-www URL resolves to the www version.

The last thing you want is to make Google unhappy with you. For the beginner I think it is important to monitor all these things vigilantly until the dust settles. If you do not think you need to monitor your site then you must be doing nothing to optimize it. If you are, you’ll have no feedback about the search engine, and your progress could be hindered.

These are my favorite WP troubleshooting tips. What are yours? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Dan Sheehan is a snowboarder, general contractor, and jack of all trades. His hobby with PCs has also turned into a small computer repair business on the side. Typically he works on something until it breaks and then he improves on it.

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

WP Troubleshooting Tips From the Trenches

What I Learned from an Indonesian Resort about Blogging

Posted: 27 Apr 2011 06:07 AM PDT

Over the last two weeks I’ve been lucky enough to have some time away with my family in Singapore and Indonesia. With our 3rd child arriving in early July it was our babymoon and a last chance to get away with our two little guys for a bit.

The bulk of our time was spent on Bintan Island (Indonesia) where we stayed at Club Med Bintan (note: the pics in this post are all iPhone shots I took at the resort over the week) – a resort which had been recommended by a couple of friends.

I’ve never been to a resort quite like this one before. We usually try to get a self contained apartment in the locations we visit which we can do day trips from – but with ‘V’ (my wife) pregnant and with two active little boys we thought we’d go for an all included option like Club Med which also had a kids club and plenty of activities on site so that we didn’t have to travel once there.

While I was at the resort to relax and do anything but blog – my mind (as usual) did stray a little from the task at hand and I began to think about what I could learn from the experience on Bintan Island that I could apply to my blogging.

A couple of things stood out – one of which I want to explore today:

A Culture of Welcome

As we were bused down the front drive of the resort the first thing we saw was 10 Club Med Staff in front of the lobby clothed in bright T-shirts waving at us. They knew we were coming and a welcome party was out to great us (and our fellow guests).

As we were helped off the bus (while the resort’s theme song played and staff clapped) we were then ushered into the lobby where we were given cold towels and a cup of tea to drink while the manager of the resort welcomed us and told us what to expect over the coming week. Her welcome speech was interrupted only by the staff around her breaking into applause and cheering at numerous points.

OK – so it was slightly cheesy and over the top – but right from the very first moment it was clear that we’d been noticed and were being valued and integrated into the resort.

This continued for the coming 7 days that we were guests. It started with a personal tour of the resort and continued every time we walked past one of the many staff in the resort – on every single occasion they greeted us with a ‘good morning’, ‘good afternoon’ or ‘good evening’ and on many occasions they engaged us (particularly our children) in conversation.

Staff joined us for meals, they went out of their way to learn our kids names and integrate them into the children’s programs and at the end of the week a ‘farewell’ party again gathered to make sure we and our luggage found our way onto the bus and were thanked for staying (and our kids were given personal certificates for graduating kids club).

Our last view of the resort was 10 or so brightly clothed staff standing in front of the lobby waving until our Bus turned a corner off the driveway.

I’ll be honest and say at first I found the personal attention a little over the top (I’m an introvert and went expecting some ‘cave time’) but what I noticed over the week was that the intentional welcomes and attention that staff gave seemed to ‘infect’ those who were staying there. I’ve never been to a hotel or resort where guests interacted as much or where the ‘vibe’ of the place was so positive.

The experience was in stark contrast to our last hotel in Singapore (one which we paid more per night than the resort in Bintan) where there was a real absence of any kind of personal attention, where check in took half an hour and where we spent half our time on the phone to reception trying to rectify mistakes with our booking.

As bloggers – what can we learn from this culture of welcome?

People don’t go online simply get information any more – they want to belong. I discovered this early in my own blogging (in fact it’s part of what attracted me to the medium) so the more you can do to welcome and integrate people into the community of your blog and into relationship with you the better.

While it’s not possible to greet every single new reader at the door in a bright T-shirt with a wave – there are ways to make sure people feel noticed and welcomed when they arrive.

Writing in a personal tone about real problems and issues that your readers face
Inviting comments in your posts
Using ‘Gravatars’ in your comments so people have the opportunity to see their own face on your blog when they do interact
Responding to comment
Inviting readers to contribute with guest posts
Interacting with readers in a personal way on Twitter, Facebook, Ustream or other social media

The list could go on.

This is all particularly important in the early days of a blog. When YOU yourself take the lead in this community building/welcoming what then happens is that your readers begin to pick up on it and interact on the same way.

YOU have the opportunity to ‘infect’ your blog’s readers with a culture of inclusiveness and welcome. What happens when you do this is that you start to see readers taking initiative in welcoming other readers and creating community on your blog.

How do You Create a Culture of Welcome on Your Blog

By no means do I feel like I’m the best at creating this culture of welcome on my blogs. I try but if there’s an area that I constantly feel I could do more in it’s this.

The challenge with growing a blog past the early stages is to find ways to give that personal attention to larger numbers of people.

So I’d love to hear how others do it? How do YOU build a culture of welcome on your blogs (big and small)? I’m keen to learn from you!

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

What I Learned from an Indonesian Resort about Blogging

ProBlogger: How to Select Good SEO Keywords

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ProBlogger: How to Select Good SEO Keywords

How to Select Good SEO Keywords

Posted: 26 Apr 2011 06:09 AM PDT

This guest post is by Jeremy Myers of TillHeComes.org.

The problem with good keywords is that they are usually not words at all. Good SEO keywords are usually phrases, that is, two or more words strung together in a saying or idea. When you enter keywords into your meta keywords section, don't use words, use phrases.

Why? I’ll give you two reasons.

1. There are too many single keywords

While you can use single-word keywords, you will be vying for position with the millions of other websites that also use the same keyword.

Let's say, for example, you are writing a post about how to prepare a manuscript for ebook publishing. While you could use the keyword "ebook," you will be up against the millions of other blog posts about ebooks, even if they are about ebook readers, ebook sales, or ebook marketing.

By lengthening your keyword into a keyword phrase, such as "ebook publishing," or maybe even "prepare manuscript for ebook publishing," you significantly narrow the field of competitive websites, which allows your page to rise higher in Google Search results for that phrase.

Reason 2. Nobody searches for single keywords

When was the last time you searched for something on Google using only one word? That's right: never.

If you are searching for ebook publishing tips, you don't search for "ebook" or for "publishing." Both are too broad. Instead, you search for the complete phrase, "ebook publishing tips." If that is how you search for relevant sites, then that is also how you should write and prepare your own pages and posts so others can find your sites.

Boost relevance using Google Insights for Search

One helpful site I use to search for relevant keyword phrases to use in my blog posts is Google Insights for Search.

At the top of the page, you enter the single keyword or keyword phrase that you’d like to write a post about. You can choose options including a geographical area of the world you want to focus on, or which timeframe you are interested in, and then hit Search.

Google Insights

Here is a brief video from Google about what Google Insights can do.

Let’s look a little deeper into how you can use Google Insights for Search to write blog posts around a central keyword or phrase. Let us say, for example, you wanted to write a post on the "top blogs." If you entered "top blogs" as a search term, and did not change anything else, you would discover that since 2004, the interest in searches related to "top blogs" has been steadily increasing.

This is good news! You have hit on a rising trend which might make a good blog post or, better yet, blog series.

Interest over time

But Google Insights also provides you with a list of related keywords and key phrases that people have been searching for on Google, as well as keyword trends: