How to Get Traffic by Blogging about Future Events in Your Niche
Isn’t it great when you get a traffic spike? 
The image above shows a spike I recently received. I credit the increase in traffic to blogging about an important future event in my niche.
In this post, I’ll tell you specifically what I did. Also, I’ll give examples from other niches to help you understand the principles behind my strategy. Finally, I’ll share a way to take the strategy to another level.
Defining an Event
First of all, let’s look at what constitutes an event. An event is anything on the calendar where you can expect many people in your industry to be a specific topic.
My blog is in the trading card game niche. Every 3-4 months we get a new product, which gets players excited and causes them to go online for information about the product.
Every product is associated with a tournament a week before the official release date of the product. Joining the tournament is the only way you can own the product before it’s actually released. As you can imagine, many people take advantage of this opportunity.
With a little bit of thought, you can define events in your niche. Here are two examples from other niches.
If you have a NFL betting blog, the first week of the NFL season is always a big event because gamblers are excited about trying to win money. Therefore, there will be a huge spike of traffic for keywords related to the this event.
If you have a gardening blog, you had a great opportunity a couple days ago. Fall season just started so there was a spike in traffic for keywords related to fall gardening.
Setting Up Your Landing Page
Since you can predict events in your niche, you can create a landing page that targets those events.
Two weeks before the tournament, I set up a page on my blog that gave strategy tips for doing well in the tournament. I used relevant keywords for my title tag and headline.
I placed a link to the page on my header so every other page on my site linked to it. I used relevant anchor text for the link. This internal linking tactic builds link equity for the page and tells Google you consider that page to be very important.
Why create the page two weeks early? This time period gives Google time to index and rank the page. Google doesn’t work instantaneously. It needs time for its bots to spider your site and find new pages.
Let’s go back to our other two examples. An NFL gambling blogger could set up a page entitled “Betting Picks: NFL Week One Games”. The gardening blogger could create a page entitled “Fall Gardening Guide: Fall Plants and Flowers”.
My recommendation is setting up a page rather than a blog post. If you have a blog post as your landing page, it will look old by the time the event comes around blog posts show the date of publication whereas a page doesn’t. Of course, you do want to create a blog post to tell your readers about the page right before the event.
Also, the page can be a place to add links to relevant blog posts. For example, with the fall gardening page, the blogger could update it with a link and short summary whenever she creates a new post about fall gardening. This keeps the landing page updated with fresh content.
Change in Mindset
I had to change my mindset to implement this strategy.
I got into blogging because it allows you to cover the latest information about your niche. I’m used to giving my thoughts about events that just happened. Also, I like to blog about what is current, so it was hard for me to blog about something in the future. But now that I’ve seen the results of a little planning and preparation, I’ll be aiming for more future events.
With this strategy, you’ll have to prepare and plan ahead. Your landing page won’t get much traffic in the beginning. But your preparation will be pay off as the event arrives and your page ranks well on the search engines.
Performancing offers link building services to promote your event landing pages.
Blogging through a power cut: plan ahead to minimise downtime
Just as some computer users (not you of course) don’t do regular backups, it’s easy to take for granted everything we require to do our job as bloggers and so not plan for problems.
If blogging is your business, you’ll want to think about what to do when the lights go out.
Some basic things you’ll want to consider are:
- Computer equipment
- Internet connection
- Communication with others
- Maximizing productivity
- Use the cloud and keep it local
- Power restored
1. Computer Equipment
Are you prepared for what happens when your computer shuts down unexpectedly due to power loss?
Though modern software and hardware is generally very good at recovering after a power cut (there’s even an option on most operating systems to restart automatically after power failure) it’s still wise to prepare.
If you’re using a desktop computer, you’ll lose power instantly unless you’ve invested in a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). These vary in cost depending on how long you want them to supply power to equipment, and to how many items, but a small investment could at least give you time to save work and shut down the computer safely before all power is lost.
If you’re using a laptop computer, even directly powered from the mains, then you should be able to work from the battery pack, though you may notice a reduction in performance depending on your power settings.
Consider how much equipment you need to protect, what your budget is, and plan accordingly. If your area is prone to power loss, even momentary, then investing in this way will save you from hardware failure and software/data problems in the long run.
Don’t forget external hard drives and other devices that don’t like to have power cut when in operation.
2. Internet Connection
If you’re on any type of broadband connection and use a router or cable modem to access the Net, it’s likely you’ll lose use of that as well, even if you can still work from your laptop.
Most broadband users don’t have a dial-up account any more (you may not even have an internal modem on your laptop) but if you do it may be worth having an “emergency” number you can use to access important services (albeit much more slowly) if your main Net connection dies.
Alternatively, make sure you know how to access Internet and email services from your mobile phone. You should still have basic network coverage (HSDPA / 3G or even EDGE).
Consider installing and setting up a blogging application, or at least bookmarking the web address of your blog’s control panel, ahead of time so that you’re not trying to recall them from memory when you need them.
If the power loss is localized, consider visiting a friend, a library or an Internet café so that you can continue to work either from your own machine or elsewhere.
3. Communication With Others
If you work on a collaborative blog, or have other people you need to let know that you won’t be blogging (at full speed), ensure you have contact numbers / email addresses / Twitter access so that you can get the word out.
It may be obvious to you why you’re not posting, but not everyone will know what’s happened even if you tweet about it.
Don’t forget good old-fashioned means of communication — your telephone probably still works.
4. Maximizing Productivity
It can be frustrating not to be connected to the Internet 24/7, or to have access to your computer, but don’t forget that blogging is much more than that.
If you have limited or mobile access to the Net, do some basic housekeeping like cleaning and replying to comments or sending an email to another blogger.
If you have computer access but no Net access, brainstorm post ideas, write article drafts, create graphics and photos for articles, or brush up on your editorial calendar.
If you have no web or PC access, use a notepad and pen to brainstorm ideas, go for a walk and take some photos, or use the time to simply relax a little.
You may even find that the loss of power offers you some inspiration for a future blog post!
5. Use the Cloud and Keep it Local
Having data stored locally is great when you have use of your primary computer but no Net access.
Having data stored in the Cloud is great when you can gain access to the Net but don’t have use of your home computer.
If you work collaboratively, data stored online is great if you need someone to take work from you.
Find a balance between what you store online and what you store locally so that you can continue to work on something, or have someone else do it.
6. Power Restored
Once the power is restored you may well find that you need to do a few housekeeping tasks before you can get fully back to speed.
Your Internet connection may take a little while to fully function after a power cut. The router may need to run some diagnostic tests, or you may have to reset it.
You may find that your PC also has to run diagnostic tests, possibly repairing files damaged because they were being accessed as the power went out.
A lot of software (Word, for example) will try to restore the most recent automated backups but you may still experience some data loss.
Other software and data may have been corrupted — email folders, for example. Some software automatically repairs damage, whereas other problems may require manual assistance. Make sure you know how to diagnose and repair common software faults.
In severe cases, you may have to restore parts of the system or files from backup. You do keep regular backups, right?
Conclusions
There’s no doubt that losing electricity is a pain when you’re trying to blog, but it doesn’t have to be a disaster.
Plan ahead, and maximize your time during the event, and your blogging shouldn’t suffer.
