There are certain things we expect to happen with online posts. They’re not exactly rules but there are certain norms that tend to be true, all other things being equal. Blogging consistently over time will build an audience. Using post tags and filling out the description forms using key words is good for SEO. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are useful resources to connect you and your blog to audience members. Inbound and outbound links are good for SEO and connect you to the larger online/ blogging community. These are generally true most of the time.

Every now and then unexpected things happen. Call it a fluke, a glitch in the algorithm, or maybe you believe in luck. For some reason Google picked up on a pic of my wife and I at Cumberland Falls a few years ago and put it near the top of the image search for that term. My blog post that was a year or two old got thousands of hits in a day or two. Then it was over. For reasons I will never understand an LOL aggregator linked to an image of my new push mower. One of the most popular images I ever shared online features a Poulan Pro push mower sitting on my front lawn.

So here’s a head scratcher; Happy Monday #101 was posted back in 2014. Happy Monday posts get a category but nothing else. I quit tagging them after the first few. There are no tags, no key words, no excerpts or descriptions. I don’t do anything to increase their SEO, they are simply shared with my regular readers and Twitter followers. But this post from August 2014 been trending since January. February 2018 was it’s best month ever. Why? No clue whatsoever.

Monthly stats, Happy Monday #101

The only thing I can think of is that when people Google “Happy Monday” this one has been clicked on more often than other random Happy Monday posts. Because it gets more clicks in the search results it moves up in the rankings, leading to more people seeing it and clicking on it, and the cycle repeats. Out of 262 Happy Monday posts #101 has been viewed more times this year than any other. It is a good post, and a lot funnier than my lawn mower any day of the week.

If I don’t show it someone will ask.

Clark & Teresa Bunch, Cumberland Falls, 2008