For example, this article about a $100 bonus for opening a Chase checking account was from January 2008, but was still attracting many visits. From June 2009 through August 2009, it was 3.3% of the landing pages, which is pretty high for an outdated article from a year and a half ago. Not surprisingly, the bounce rate was around 50%.

The problem is that even though that promotion had ended a long time ago, there were other similar Chase promotions, even ones that were featured on the same blog. So, in a nutshell, the plan I came up with was this:

1. Look at your top Landing Pages, focusing on the high Bounce Rates
2. Read the content of the article, see if it’s out of date
3. Search the site for updated content in the same vein
4. Add a link from the old to the new, make sure it’s clear and obvious

Consumerism Commentary has been running for over seven years, so it might seem like a daunting task to update all your old articles. But that’s the thing: you don’t need to update all of them, just the ones people are paying attention to.

Over the course of a couple hours, we added a little over 20 of these old-to-new links, and from September through November 2009, AdSense Revenue for the updated pages represented 3.5% of the total. Put another way, the site’s revenue is up 3.5% because of a handful of strategically-placed links.

If you don’t feel like you have the time to work up this strategy, or the skill to implement it, or to track it properly, I’ll be happy to help you. Send us a quick message and let’s talk about it.

My knee-jerk reaction was to think, “Uh oh. People are misspelling his name. Are we accounting for that? Should we put the more popular misspelling in the meta keywords? Are people finding the wrong Brian Ibbott?”

But of course, after thinking it through, I remembered that this is what’s happening:

1. People are searching for “brian ibbot”
2. Search engines are attempting to correct the misspelling
3. People ignore the correction and click the thing they want

(Thankfully, Google also attempts to correct the typo “covervillw”, which I admit I find myself typing sometimes.)

So don’t worry if people are misspelling your name: the good search engines are smart enough to know the difference. Of course, if there is a separate Brian Ibbot out there in the world, who also has a music podcast, our strategy might be different.

For more, see Vanessa Fox’s article: Google Misspelling Match: A Tale Of Two Searches.

(Coverville is a well-respected and popular music podcast for which I do some regular traffic analysis. The host has graciously allowed me to share specific findings with you.)