Over the weekend, the streets of Manila were pretty much empty. Which is a rare case to consider. The malls had no people. Sunday lunch out was pretty much dead — a whole nation was glued to the television watching the Pacquiao vs. Hatton fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. With 8 seconds to spare in the second round, Pacquiao landed a stunning left blow into Hatton’s lower jaw sending him to sleep, and a TKO.
But Pacquiao wasn’t the only winner that evening — dozens of Filipino bloggers cashed in from page views netting thousands of dollars from the search engines:
- “Pacquiao Hatton fight” “Pacquiao Nike” “Pacquiao Shirts” were some of the most valued keywords in the past week.
- A 17 year old blogger cashed in $200 (that’s almost the starting salary of a fresh graduate in the Philippines) blogging about the fight.
- Instead of posting links to ustream, bloggers were embedding the video onto their sites, and using URL shorteners to hide the source.
- Even I broke my daily traffic record on my personal blog when Nike’s PR sent me exclusive photos of Manny Pacquiao apparel.
The truth is, the Manny Pacquiao craze is but one of the seasonal strategies bloggers in the Philippines look forward to. Months before, posts are made to announce the fight, and then are optimized later on for back links. One thing that bloggers can take home from this is the strategy involved in knowing seasonal events that can yield high traffic. Back home, posting annual bazaar schedules are always a good idea for catching the traffic wave. Do you have access to seasonal events that can yield a high amount of search engine results?
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