One of the things I’ve learned about people’s search habits on the Internet is that they often search for lists of songs about certain subjects, and I’ve taken this into consideration when writing articles for Gunaxin. Several of my articles routinely appear near the top of Google search results when people search for ‘songs about…’ However, writing an article based solely on search behavior is secondary to my own interest in these song lists, which isn’t so unusual considering the number of people who are also searching for these lists.
Sad subject, I’ll admit, but anyone who searches for ‘songs about suicide’ (hundreds of searches a day, at least) will see my article “Top Ten Songs About Suicide” near the top of Google results (also a search for ‘suicide songs’ does it). Tens of thousands of people have stumbled upon this article in the past year. It’s just a ranked list of songs that I picked about the subject.
The next big song list that frequently gets search results is “Top Ten Songs to Fight To.” I’m actually surprised this one has done so well over the past year, but apparently more people Google ‘Fighting Songs’ than I thought. Unlike the suicide songs list, the fighting songs are just ten tunes I found that are high-energy and would make a good soundtrack to an old fashioned fist fight. The list could be much longer but who has time for that? Regardless, I’m glad it’s frequently accessed.
The next most frequently searched list is for ‘gay songs.’ After my brother bought a Subaru Forester more than a year ago, he told me it was the top selling car for lesbians. That gave me an idea. I could write an article about the top selling gay and lesbian cars, so I Googled it. Too late. Everyone already wrote that article. Having already written other frequently searched song lists, I then Googled ‘gay songs’ and came up with some very lame results. Finally I found a very good list, from some Australian magazine, but the list was hard to find and the article was paginated. So what did I do? I grabbed the info, wrote and article, and credited them with a link. This is not recommended, and I’m not happy I did it, but at the same time, their information was very hard to find, which is obviously not ideal for people who are searching for it. Next, the Gunaxin article, “Top 50 Gay Songs – Which Do You Own?” rose near the top of search results for ‘gay songs.’ My ‘Gunaxin’ spin was to tell people to count the number of songs they own to see how ‘gay’ they are. Ridiculous, obviously, and some people took it seriously and blasted me for it, failing to note the sarcasm. The article got tens of thousands of page views, but I felt bad because it was just a list from another source. But what I also realized was that this article could be an entire website of LGBT songs and artists. Seizing the search engine opportunity, Gunaxin launched a new website, topgaysongs.com (though none of us are gay). Via Craigslist ads, I recruited a few writers who are passionate about the subject and wrote some articles. The site is virtually maintenance free and gets more than 5,000 page views a month. It makes revenue off of Google ads and Amazon associate links. It hasn’t made us rich, yet, but the number of page views are nothing to throw away. Now only if I can find someone to run it who actually likes those songs, because I certainly don’t. (Also, I briefly thought about launching other sites ‘TopSuicideSongs.com’ and ‘TopFightingSongs.com’ but didn’t see much potential beyond the single song lists.)
The next big article I wrote that I’m hoping will gain a top spot in the search engines is “Songs About Abortion – Pro-Life Edition.” I don’t know how many people search for ‘songs about abortion’ but with any luck, it, too, will rise to the top of Google.
Now, off to write more song lists, because the public is definitely looking for them!