Charlie Bit Me, A Lesson in SEO

The 55 second clip “Charlie bit me” in youtube got more than 6 million views worldwide. So popular is the video that it has inspired several spoofs which shows two not so cute grownups mimicking the innocent, unrehearsed acts of Charlie and Harry.

The video has been added about 9 months ago, the exact date is May 22, 2007. To date, it has received a total of 7,764 comments and has been “favorited “43,030 times.

To date, it has been the referenced in about 106,000. Search for it has reached a considerable amount of volume that statistics for its search has already made it to Google Trends (Google trends only graphs searches that has become popular through the use of a certain algorithm)

So popular is the video that the phrase “Charlie bit me” itself has been used by several webmasters and several venture capitalist to make money out of. In fact the mother of the boys commented, “I have noticed that the phrase Charlie bit me is catching on and people are trying to profit of it . . .”

Not to get left behind by bloggers and other business minded person the parents has started to realize the income opportunity that can be made off the popular phrase and the high volume of traffic that the popular youtube video has brought. The parents are making available to the public a “Charlie bit me” t-shirt series.

It is good that the parents has come to realize the income opportunity brought about by the video before others have catch on to this craze. This should be so considering that the short clip is starred by their kids and they were the ones who uploaded the video. It should be them that should be the first to benefit from the high volume of traffic and the popularity brought about by the video.

Without a doubt the video is certainly cute. The British accent certainly adds to its appeal. (Sadly most spoof videos of “Charlie bit me” are not so cute at all; in fact I would call some of them dumb)

If there is one lesson that can be learned from this “Charlie bit me phenomenon” or “Charlie bit me craze” that is that CONTENT IS STILL KING. No matter what other Search Engine Optimization (SEO) gurus say, in the end its still “The content stupid.” Most of “Charlie bit me” fans know about the video through word of mouth. It is quite obvious that people who do not know about the video knew about this through others and not by searching for “funny videos” over the internet. I doubt if the parents of these kid did some advertisement, tried to increase their back links, released several press releases, bought some articles are bought text link or google ads. The “Charlie bit me” video has become so popular because people liked the content. In fact they go crazy over it. It’s funny and it’s cute. Of course I am not underestimating the importance of SEO strategies and techniques, however in the end, high volume sustainable traffic to your site is mainly due to rich content.

Learn more about SEO and Charlie Bit Me visit the blog of Zigfred Diaz at www.zdiaz.com