Just another little lesson I learned from blogging about items in the news: Recently, I wrote a blog post about an interesting story in Melbourne. There was a gay man called Tom McFeely running for the traditionally conservative Liberal Party in one of the seats in that city. I thought that what he was doing was courageously politically incorrect, and also proved that the Libs were not the bastion of homophobia that they were reputed to be. So I wrote a post about it with his name in the title of the post.

Needless to say quite a few people were searching for that name - Mr McFeely among them. Because my blog post was on the first page, he found the blog and commented on it.

So, if you blog about figures in the news then put their names in the titles. People will be searching for these names and you'll may well get some search engine traffic. Of course, it won't work for the really famous names, but it often works for those with lower profiles. And it's a doddle when you write about someone who's only just arrived on the scene.

This tactic could be really good for local SEO. If you blog about those well known only in your city, then you're almost bound to rank highly, simply because there's not much competition.

Remember that we all have egos, and chances are that many of these people will be searching for their names and end up reading what you have written about them. If you have something nice to say they may well show their appreciation by commenting. And if they have websites or blogs they may well send links your way, which is of course highly beneficial for SEO.

That's not to say that you should only ever be complimentary and supportive when blogging about local leaders, celebrities and newsmakers. Being critical can also help you SEO-wise. You'll still be adding relevant local content and probably ranking highly for searches for their names, and there may be other local bloggers and webmasters who might link to your views. Just remember to be fair in what you say, though. And clarify it's just your opinion so you further lessen your chances of copping a lawsuit.

I've been using some more keyword hunches related to topical news stories on my rant blog (Die Fluffy Wuffy Die!), and it's worked well. For example I wrote a mostly humorous post about the recent top rating episode of Packed to the Rafters, in which the much loved character Mel Rafter died.

I got in early with it, and ended up on page one for various specific searches including those for "Mel Rafter". I was also ranking for some simple terms including the name of the actress playing this character, Zoe Ventoura. I've now been elbowed out by a lot of news sites and blogs more specifically devoted to entertainment and my post has fallen down the list for these one name searches, so the traffic has pretty much dried up. (I'm not sure of how many hits I got but it must be around a hundred. Not a torrent by any means, but I suspect they're all new visitors, and I probably wouldn't have got any of them had I not been mindful of keyword selection.)

That said, I'm still on page one for those two names combined. (BTW, the reason I don't often link to these posts is because there's a chance that doing so might actually harm their rankings. Google takes note of interlinking between sites that are owned by the same person. They are not given as much weight as voluntary links from separate sites. So if you overdo it you can be penalized.)

The reason I've gone into such detail about this little episode is that it reveals some good lessons:
One, you've got to "strike when the iron is hot" and get in early with a topical blog post. Secondly, if you can make an educated guess about what people will be searching for and target those keywords you can punch above your weight for a while, and get some good targeted traffic. (And keyword tools are pretty much redundant here. They will give you data about what has been searched already. But here you're trying to predict what will be searched.) Thirdly, you can get a lot of geo-targeted traffic by writing about topical keywords that are related to your country - or state or city, for that matter. (Packed to the Rafters is an Aussie show, so probably all of those visitors I had were also Australian.)

Sometimes you hit, and sometimes you miss with your topical hunches, of course. But even a few hits over a few weeks could easily triple your blog traffic over that period.

In summary I should make it clear that I'm not endorsing that you only write such posts so that you can get traffic. That would be putting the cart before the horse, and make for a soulless blog full of short, unoriginal entries. You should only ever write what you would want to write anyway. Then you'll always have something interesting to say. But if you're mindful of the SEO aspects as I've described, you can get more traffic to those posts than if you weren't, that's all.