[Build Backlinks Online] Foolishly Viral: Lessons from a Million Pageview Day

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Foolishly Viral: Lessons from a
Million Pageview Day'


Posted by Jacob Klein

There comes a moment in every webmasters career when the proverbial planets
seem to align. A moment when the standard cavalcade of what ifs, yes, buts, and
if/thens that claw at the soul of any self-aware web marketer are, however
briefly, appeased. For this humble webmaster, that day came April 1st, 2013; a
day for fools, some say.

It started as a simple gag designed to target what I assumed at the time to be
a very niche set of potential readers and influencers. I wasnt expecting much
more out of the prank beyond a few chuckles from those who were already within
our modest sphere of influence. But April Fools Day was fast approaching, and
after several revisions and second guesses, I just went for it.

[Yadda, yadda, yadda]

As the one millionth visitor rolled in, I was conflicted. This was a story of
great success, right? A fantastic win seasoned with the most exquisite of
spices: total unexpectedness. But with great successes come great expectations
for the future. Its hard not to wonder: was this just a fluke? A lucky draw? Is
this a pinnacle that will never be seen again by the likes of me? Determined not
to allow this achievement to become a one-and-done type situation, I did what
any analytically-minded Distiller might do:

I took notes.

These notes are the impetus of the takeaways Im about to share with you all,
the SEOMoz community. At the risk of turning this into a 2,500 word humblebrag,
Im going to refrain from rambling off share numbers or listing all of the links
we amassed that day. If we get hung up on those, neither of us will benefit on
our next endeavor. As a fatalistically future-oriented personality, I figure
what would be most valuable to you are the high-level strategy lessons that Ill
be taking with me forevermore.

Here are a few items to consider when putting together a piece of content that
you think has the potential of going viral.

A loose plan is better than no plan

Youre planning something big, arent you? This piece of link bait is about to
redefine the meaning of the word "viral." Sometimes web creators can be guilty
of over-planning, while other times were sorely lacking a real plan at all. Id
tend to err on the side of the former rather than the latter, but we all know
that time and personal energy are finite resources. At a minimum, here are a few
things Id have in order before I took another swing for the fences.

Get it done early. This gives you time to have others you trust give you their
opinions. Allow yourself several nights to sleep on it to make it tighter,
catchier, funnier, more relatable, etc. Good things come to those who value
think-time.Pick your targets. Who might link to this? Which user persona might
share this? Thinking about this ahead of time will help you shape your piece.
Have influencers contact info on standby.Find out if its already been done
before. No one likes a re-post. Well, except Reddit.

Give it the "Golden Test of social media. Would you share this with your
friends, family, or co-workers? If the answer is no, then go back to the drawing
board and make it so.

and most importantly.

Timing is everything critical

Like wind to a sailboat, it is surely possible for a skilled sailor in command
of an amazing machine to prevail against the will of the wind. But even an
experienced mariner would see more success with more favorable gales.
The success of the Game of Thrones April Fool's joke can be largely attributed
to timing. The season premiere had just aired the night of March 31, and the
bleary-eyed Knights of Westeros just werent prepared for a heart-crushing April
Fool's joke on their Facebook feed the morning of April 1st.

Hopefully youre intimately familiar with your own industry enough to understand
when the moons might align for your piece of content.

Take a second look at the calendar and ask yourself, Are we dropping this piece
at the best possible time for success, or are we putting this out the day after
our team just so happened to finish the project?

It only takes one (influencer)

Every journey begins with a single step, and every piece of viral content
begins with a single share. You all know all of that relationship building
Distillers and Mozzers have been annoyingly harping about for the past few
years? Now is your chance to cash in.

I sent an email out to a handful of other webmasters in the Game of Thrones
community letting them in on the joke and asking kindly for a share. These are
real relationships with people that we respect and that have built over the
years, so your mileage may differ. However, if youve really got something worth
sharing, I think youll find that your closest contacts will come through for
you.

In our case, we even joked around via Twitter to get things going:



Maximize your own relationships and try your hand at making some new ones. It
often only takes a single influencer in the right position at the right time for
something to spread like wildfire.

A certain percentage of your "readers" will not read

I am not a cruel man. When I decided on this particular prank, I was fully
aware of the angst and rage it would elicit from a community that I consider
myself to be very much a part of. I decided that the article couldn't just be a
straight up lie which read like a genuine news story. I had to give a few clues
along the way so that anyone who really thought about it would see right through
it as an April Fool's day joke.

Those who fell for it clearly only read the first two paragraphs, because
surely they would have balked after reading this gem:

"The producers also noted that, in an effort to maintain continuity, Warwick
Davis face will be digitally transposed over Mr. Dinklages in all future
releases of Game of Thrones on DVD and Blu-Ray."

Or this...

"We felt that Warwicks experience and star power was well worth the investment,
Weiss said. Well be seeing a lot less of the dragons and direwovlves due to the
new budgeting that will have to be done to compensate. But in the end, its a
small price to pay for this kind of acting gravitas."

If you believed those zingers, I've got some text link slots available on
whitehouse.gov that I'd like to sell you. There were several other troubling
discrepancies, as well. I'll give a few passes to those whose first language
isn't English. But as for the rest of you? No.

Lesson learned: a certain percentage of the human race will not read beyond the
fold. A smaller percentage won't even read beyond the headline. We already take
great care in crafting headlines, but this little social experiment reaffirms
the obvious for me. Just something to keep in mind.

Not all referrals are created equal

While the joke received nods from the likes of Huffington Post, Vanity Fair,
and Mashable, these links passed a surprisingly slim amount of traffic back to
the site itself. I know youre all rocking IDIFTLJ tattoos (I Did It For The Link
Juice). I am aware of the benefit stemming from these links beyond direct
referrals. But I was personally surprised to see that most visitors came from
social networks and not the heavy-hitting publications with literally millions
of subscribers. Take a look at the top 15 referrals to the article and note the
differing visit durations, bounce rates, and pages per visit (organic traffic
edges them all out).



For reference, here are the same metrics for organic visitors site-wide:



When another article mentions your piece in reference, the user treats it as
such. They might click on it for verification or to curb their curiosity, but
ultimately, theyre just looking to get back to their original Top April Fools
Jokes of 2013 list which was the article they were reading in the first place,
or theyll simply settle for the linking publications description of your piece.

The virility doesnt stem from the traffic entering via a link from The New York
Times (a common misconception, I think). That exponential, explosive power comes
from the users who share your piece from there. And a percentage of those
readers will be influencers who may link again from there. The copy-cat effect
is truly impressive particularly in the "entertainment news" niche.

The lesson here is that, in addition to being linkable and referenece-able,
your content also needs to be shareable in order to go viral. As powerful as a
link from a major newspaper might be, it will never get you the eyeballs (and
potential life-long readers) that a social powerhouse like Facebook will.

Which reminds me; Ive been meaning to tell everyone to

Bow before the power of Facebook

I have a working theory on Facebook and how its power to push content is vastly
superior to other social networks. If you look back at the list of referrals,
Facebook traffic cleanly decapitates any other social network. And this isnt for
lack of diverse social connections by the content creator. The post was shared
on our Google Plus page with over 13,000 encircled and also tweeted to our
20,000 twitter followers. Compared to the (at the time) 3,000 Facebook
followers, do a bit of math and youre starting to see the real relative value of
a single Facebook fan vs a Twitter follower.

I think this has to do with the way Facebook is integrated into our lives. As
marketers and web-savvy individuals, we all have our Tweet Decks fully loaded
with our Google Plus and Facebook notifications, causing our phones to buzz all
day long. But the average user with a Twitter account probably checks their
account most often when theyre getting notifications and may rarely take the
time to check a finely-tuned feed. The average Google Plus user? ...well.

Compare this with a Facebook user. She might check her phone/tablet/desktop
feed several times a day for updates from people she actually knows - family,
friends, and coworkers. A share on Facebook is not only more visible to friends
and fans, but is also perceived as much more of a personal endorsement from the
sharer.

Im sure others (myself included) have had great success on both Twitter and
Google Plus, so this point is debatable. But the relative size of Facebook
absolutely isnt. The potential to go viral on Facebook, or at the very least the
boundaries of that success, are simply more impressive on Mr. Zuckerbergs social
platform.



This all feeds upon itself as well, because after the dust settles and youre
counting your pageviews, dollars, and new Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus
fans, youre going to get much more residual value out of those 3,000 new FB page
likes than you will with the same number of Twitter followers.

I think part of the reason this particular piece worked so well on Facebook is
because users were apt to share the joke in an attempt to trick their own
friends, which is a process that works much more smoothly on Facebook.

Design content thats packaged with a shiny red bow and ready to be shared with
real people.

Theres always room for more outreach

No matter your perceived initial success, there is always room for more
outreach. Sure, I could have kicked back and watched the links roll in on
Linkstant (which I most certainly did). But with content that has an expiration
date, youll want to break out that little black book of contacts.

One of the most common link-types this article picked up were Top April Fool's
Jokes of 2013. These began going live as early as 8AM on April 1st. Some of them
included our link, while others didnt. I sent out a dozen or so emails to
various authors with a link to our post asking for consideration. Several of
them obliged and thanked me for the submission.

You could also, again, utilize your current relationships by pinging contacts
youve touched base with before.

Viral traffic converts at a much lower rate

Not all traffic is created equal. A user who does a few refined searches and
eventually lands onto your page for the correct answer to her query is much more
likely to convert. Whether that means signing up for a mailing list, purchasing
a product, or clicking on advertisements, these visitors are not really on the
hunt for content in the same way a search engine visitor might be.

These visitors have simply been referred to the site through Facebook, Reddit,
or some other site that has not qualified the user as needing your services the
same way Googles algorithm might. Literally and figuratively: theyre much more
likely to bounce.

Here are the bounce numbers from that week:



The AdSense ToS forbids publishers from sharing any real data, but heres our
Click Through Rate graph sans values:





I recently wrote about AdSense basics on the Distilled blog, but for those
wondering: CPC (cost per click) also took a hit for the following week as the
AdSense algo wasnt very happy about the reduced CTR. Google most likely wanted
to protect advertisers from what it interpreted as a drop in
qualified/convertible traffic.

Viral visitors bounced at a much higher rate as well: ~91% for the April Fool's
article vs a ~60% site-wide average.

Id expect e-commerce sites to see similar results from viral traffic (if not
worse). So, in some ways, it is mostly about the link juice and brand exposure.

Brace for impact! Monitor your CDN and server

Is your server ready for 1,000,000 visitors today?! Youd think that my little
site would have been crushed under the stampede of exposure, but just weeks
before, I had clairvoyantly set up a CDN with Amazons CouldFront. This took most
of the weight off of our main server and delivered content more quickly for
international readers. I was feeling great about myself. My Google page speed
score shrugged at 1 million visitors like so much dirt off of Jay-Zs shoulder.

And then I checked my CloudFront billtwo days later.



Considering that a normal day of CloudFront usage for us is about 80 cents, I
was shocked at first (see picture above for actual facial expression). But then
I started doing the mathif a normal day sees about 30,000 visitors and this day
brought about 1,000,000, then this day should cost about 33 times more than
normal. Needless to say, 33 X $0.80 should have left me with about $30 in
overage charges.

Something didn't feel right. So to my dismay, I went back to the page itself
and checked the image file sizes. For some reason, Id forgotten to downsize the
images within the article itself, so that these were each 250KB (!!!) each.
Needless to say, they could have easily been (and now are) 25KB each, a rookie
process I nearly always implement...on every article aside from this one.

In the end: a splendid $100 lesson learned, I guess! But more than that, I get
to share that lesson with you all who will hopefully avoid the same mistake in
the future. For those especially concerned about this, check out the WordPress
plugin Smush.it.
I also cant recommend Amazons CloudFront enough (in spite of the nasty bill
above). They charge only for what you use, so most sites would see major speed
increases for pennies a day. I have no doubt that the site would have simply
gone down had it not been on a CDN. I've seen a huge decrease in page timings,
more pages per visit, and lower bounce rates after switching to a CDN. Set it up
and just leave it off when you're not in need. You can always switch it back on
as the storm approaches.

Fortune favors the bold



Just ask Ser Barristan. At the end of the day, there is always an element of
luck underlying any great venture. What if a different Mashable editor were on
staff that April 1st? What if that "just one" influencer mentioned above called
in sick? There are several variables at play that are out of your control. But
this isn't necessarily an excuse for failure.

On March 31st, I was very nervous about launching this April Fool's article.
How would the mainstream media react? How would George RR. Martin feel about it?
Would my readers come for my head? Is this even funny? I was very close to
pulling the thing, to be honest. But at the end of the evening, I logged in and
scheduled the post for 1AM, April 1st.

In my experience, fortune seems to favor those who take chances. "Luck" comes
to those who do things that aren't completely, 100% guaranteed to work. If there
were zero risk to what you were doing and it were as easy as putting together a
blog post, then someone would have done it already. The barriers to entry on
content are so low these days that sometimes content creators just have to be
brave to get noticed. Bravery on your part also helps ensure that your
competition can't easily duplicate what you've done.

Residual benefits and great expectations

At the end your day of 1 million visitors, its tempting to kick your feet up,
count your earnings, and sip away at that frosty Miami Vice you've surely
earned. But don't get too comfortable. Your brand is now on the radar of several
major news outlets that you may have even spoken to personally (see the outreach
section above). Your social network ranks may have swelled, indefinitely giving
you more exposure for your future works. People are listening now, and much is
expected of you. Now may be just the time to make even more bold moves.

This isnt a post about how to get one million visitors in a single day. I find
those to be about as helpful and genuine as posts about how to make a million
dollars in a single year. This is an anecdotal post about how it happened in one
very specific instance. But hopefully youve been able to glean a nugget or two
of enlightenment that will save you some time and effort in the future...or just
net you a bit more beer whiskey money.

At the very least, I hope that a few of you put down your iPads, look out the
window pensively, and think:



Oh, and my sincerest apologies to anyone who may have had their day/week/life
ruined by the April Fool's joke. It was a very Joffrey Baratheon thing to do.
Seven save me.

Need further recompense? AMA below.
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