SEO surprise

Today I searched Google for “NUJ” as a lazy way of bringing up the website for the National Union of Journalists. The results were a nice surprise:

At the top is the official NUJ website, as you’d expect. After that, the latest news about the NUJ. But after that, it’s the website for the Oxford & District branch of the NUJ.

The results immediately after that? This very website. And after that? The Oxford NUJ twitter feed.

I set up the Oxford & District branch website in January, not intending to optimise it for any search terms apart from “Oxford NUJ” or “Oxford and District NUJ”. I’m delighted that it’s so high up in the search rankings for a much more general term. And no, this isn’t Google’s filter bubble talking; I did the search using Chrome’s Incognito Window.

Lots of credit has to go to all the people who have contributed fresh, link-worthy content to the site since January. I’m especially thinking of Anna Wagstaff, who has both written a lot of content herself and persuaded a lot of interesting people to contribute.