If You Have Anything to Say about Brett Favre, Now Is the Time

Brett Favre, an American football player, has endeared himself to fans and enraged them over and over again, as he retires, and then comes out of retirement to play.  His name is, according to, US publication SBNation, “gold.” What does Mr. Favre have to do with SEO? If you have a sports-related or current events site or blog, then he may have quite a lot to do with your optimisation efforts.

This same publication writes, “I don’t buy for a minute that Favre is retiring.  It shames me that a man can pull the same trick, now three times, and generate buzz every time. But site views are king and Favre is instant blah blah blah.  So add me to the shameless.  This little wretched piece will attract someone. Quota filled.”

Make no mistake: it is not wise to keyword stuff “Brett Favre” into a piece on home furnishings or designer bags, or whatever will fit the scope of your site.  But this piece does underscore the importance of what is known as QDF, or “quality deserves freshness.”  This simply means that if you do have content pertaining to current trending words, it is worth your while to provide fresh items related to them.  The edge of having fresh content can put smaller sites and blogs ahead of larger, better-established ones in search rankings.

An example of this is when a blogger posted about Tiger Woods’s return to golfing.  The topic was relevant to his site.  He saw an instant uptick in traffic to his lesser-known blog, even ahead of sites such as the Golf Channel, where one would suppose golf fans would turn for information.  Why?  Even though those sites had content related to Tiger Woods, he had fresh content related to trending phrases, such as “Tiger Woods Masters” and “Tiger Woods Masters Celebration.”  Search engines comb through sites for the latest updates to interest and engage searchers of trending topics.  In this case, using these targeted keywords was a good method for increasing traffic.

The key to incorporating trending topics and trending keywords into your site is to make sure that it is pertinent.  A blog about search engine optimisation, for instance, would likely not use terms like “Brett Favre retiring” in their normal postings.  Except, of course, in this case, where it is relevant to our topic.  News that is related to the subject matter or theme of your site or blog helps get you noticed.  Never forget to back up the initial hits with real, substantial content.