Kyle's Steve Jobs Article Experiment

Last Update: October 25, 2011

For those of you who have been following the "How Did Steve Jobs Die" article 'lesson' taught by Kyle, here is a real-world update on that whole process. I tried it out for myself and I have results to share.

Immediately after reading about what Kyle did with the Steve Jobs article, I decided to try it for myself with a few changes.

  1. I was writing to promote my website, which is NOT related to Steve Jobs. I made up a connection
  2. I didn't write to give information as much as I wrote to make it appear like I was giving information
  3. My article was shorter and much less informative, plus it changed gears part way through from biography to persuasive writing
Here is why this all matters, and what you can learn from my experience.

First, I want to share the differences between what he and I did, beyond what was listed above.

  • I wrote the next day, while Kyle wrote the same day that Steve passed away
  • I did NOT focus on details of Steve's life, while Kyle did (obviously people were looking for information about Steve if they were reading this article)
  •  My title was quite different, though I did use a similar search KW
The way all of the above information translates into real world success, or failure, is as follows.
  • The most popular search term was what Kyle used "how did Steve Jobs die". I used the less popular "what did Steve Jobs die from"
  • His article has been viewed 19,000 times. Mine a lot less: 800
  • Initially I was ranked right up there with Kyle's article on page one. Now he has climbed to the TOP of page one, while I have slid way back to the middle of page three.
Even though I mostly followed the same process as Kyle, I made a few mistakes:
  1. I used a title that included a secondary objective, which likely turned off both reader and search engine alike: "What did Steve Jobs Die From, And How He Could Have Reduced His Risk" (too long, eh?)
  2. I was self-serving, bending the article to fit my website about practicing a vegan diet. I know, it's a stretch. (if you feel like it, read the article and let me know if I made it readable or logical, or neither one)
  3. I did not embrace more than the man, Steve, in the news. I could have also used the news of the iPhone 4S, which had just been announced that day, along with iOS5, new iPods, etc. These are Keywords that might have kept my article more near the top of the rankings.
There are some final considerations which I think are of value to us as Internet Marketers.
  • It should be noted that I was targeting the same key 'idea' as Kyle, from the same website. It is my assumption that it would be very hard for me to rank high in this way.
  • While chose a different KW, when I look at the analytics inside Street Articles I see that most of my traffic came from the same KW as the title of Kyle's article. I *think* this is related to LSI. If you don't know what that means, it is time you found out. Search the forum or ask a 'guru' here at WA.
  • My article linked to a totally unrelated website. If I had a technology website I might have fared a little better. Since it is about nutrition, well you can see the problem there.
If I think of any other things I've learned from this I will come back and add an edit to the end of this post.

Finally, I am going to be writing an article about IM and posting it to SA. I'll be employing all of the things I have learned from Kyle's experiment as well what I discussed in this post. The purpose is to see what people are frustrated about with IM, specifically Article Marketing, and try to target those people. I plan to offer a much more organized discussion and some real solutions, while being highly KW targeted in the proper way, like Kyle did.

Cheers, and much success! 

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kyle Premium
Excellent post and it is actually quite revealing even for me to see the differences that you have outlined and ultimately the overall impact.

A few things that should be followed:

(1) A title that is not too big and keeps to the keyword
(2) Don't try to promote a product that is irrelevant, Apple products would have converted I bet
(3) Write info that people want to read, not what you think "algorithms" want to see
(4) Google really doesn't care all that much about density. Hit your term within the first paragraph and then just write naturally. If you key in on the terms a few time, great...if not, the content relevance will do the work for you.

Looking forward to your next post.
tcmark Premium
Interesting, thanks for sharing, both of you
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