A few lessons from this program
Want to see one way Matthew marketed his site? Read this edited excerpt.
Andrew: How did quizzes help you build Mingle2?
Matthew: I created a quiz called “How Geek Are You?” If you answered a couple of questions, it would tell you, on a 100% scale, how geeky you were. It asked questions like, “Do you read sci-fi ” or “Do you play video games?” or “Do you code?”
The whole trick of it was, when you were done with the quiz, it would tell you, “You are 60% geek,” or “You are 10% geek.” And it would give you a badge. And a badge is just an image, basically. And I would give you a code so you could embed that badge on our blog.
When people embed that on their blogs, it also said, “created by Mingle2 – Free Online Dating” underneath it. So I was able to build tens of thousands of links every month with the exact anchor text I wanted to my home page.
What kind of quizzes do well?
The best quiz I ever created was called “How many 5-year-olds could you take in a fight?”
Any quiz that appeals to a user’s sense of ability–like: what can they do, how smart are they, how fast are they, or how strong are they–those are the quizzes that do the best.
“What X are you?” quizzes–like what X-Men are you, or what Lost character are you–those never go anywhere. I wouldn’t bother with them. They’re just kind of over-done. Ability quizzes are where it’s at.
(See more of Matthew’s work here.)
How would that help you with Google?
We picked a keyword that we knew people were searching for, that would result in signups. And we would point all our quiz-bate at that, using the badges. And then we were able to rank #1 in Google usually.
I actually ranked #1 for the keyword “dating,” outranking the Wikipedia entry.
[Thanks Chris Winfield for introducing me to Matthew!]
