Amanda Cargill

WomansWorld.com
WomansWorld.com (WW) readers love royal news. The Queen’s death, however, was news on another level, with keyword phrase “Queen’s death” shooting to the top of search queries within seconds of her passing. Big name media outlets claimed Google SERP’s top spots for this and similar keyword phrases almost immediately. Though there was ample traffic to be won, I knew we couldn’t compete with CNN. I decided to prioritize what I call the “second search” – e.g. What will people want to know right after reading the story that satisfied their initial search? In this case, I bet on “royal succession” as the second search, and aggregated an SEO article specific to this keyword phrase. We could be among the first to publish, I reasoned, and this would give our ‘little website that could’ an edge. The strategy proved effective. For three hours following the Queen’s death, the article ranked second in Google SERPs for keyword phrase “royal succession,” and it generated more than six times the average page views of prior royal news stories.