Learning and Laughing in SEO

Good news for teachers and comedians! The latest monthly report of online activity from comScore shows exceptional traffic growth for education and humor sites.

bored cat wants entertainment via icanhascheezburger.com
The humorous Web site category saw 21 percent growth in August
according to comScore. Sites with funny videos topped the list.

The word coming out of comScore is really important for those in the Internet marketing industry to hear because it’s good to know that humor and education are extremely powerful weapons in our SEO efforts.

There were some particularly notable things I recognized about the best performing sites in both of these site categories.

When it came to the entertainment sites, all the top performers were video-heavy. Number one was the funny video site Break.com, followed by video-centric Comedy Central site. Video site wimp.com and video-heavy NationalLampoon.com rounded out the head of the class. Clearly, video is where the laughs are at.

As for the education-related sites… actually, funny story. In the education sector, leading sites included an assortment of sites dedicated to tools for educators, resources for learning about online degrees, and classroom solutions. I didn’t see any cross-vertical trends, and the industry growth is being attributed to the back-to-school season. But in the home improvement class of sites — the third-best-performing sector online in August — the winners were all focused on DIY projects and how-tos. The Internet community is eager to educate itself. [Probably because it’s cheaper to do it yourself than it is to hire someone to do it for you. — Susan]

cat instructs how to bake cookies
Educational, do-it-yourself and how-to sites also witnessed
significant growth last month. What are you teaching your visitors?

Lucky for content creators like myself (I’m usually only funny on accident) the comedy and education categories are at opposite sides of the content spectrum. So if humor’s not your strong suit, you can try the educational approach, and vice versa. But whether or not your intent is purely humorous or educational, videos and how-tos are still going to be some of the most attractive and engaging content there is.

Of course, if you’re real skilled, you can tackle both comedy and education. I’ll just be over here pretending I’m not jealous…

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.

Comments (0)
Filed under: SEO
Still on the hunt for actionable tips and insights? Each of these recent SEO posts is better than the last!

LEAVE A REPLY

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Serving North America based in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area
Bruce Clay, Inc. | PO Box 1338 | Moorpark CA, 93020
Voice: 1-805-517-1900 | Toll Free: 1-866-517-1900 | Fax: 1-805-517-1919