I was watching a video today from Matt Cutts, and he mentioned something called the “Katamari Technique”. That is something I had never heard before and decided to do some research. First I searched google for that phrase, and really nothing came up in the top 10 results that seemed to be a definition of Katamari Technique, so next I searched just for the word Katamari, and soon I was finding that there is a game called Katamari Damacy that was released by Namco, and there was a Wikipedia article about it. According Wikipedia:
The Katamari Game’s Plot
“The game’s plot concerns a diminutive prince on a mission to rebuild the stars, constellations, and Moon, which were accidentally destroyed by his father, the King of All Cosmos. This is achieved by rolling a magical, highly adhesive ball called a katamari around various locations, collecting increasingly greater objects, ranging from thumbtacks to people to mountains, until the ball has grown great enough to become a star. ”
A novel concept! So let’s say we are building a directory in a niche that is highly competitive. Say for example, we want to make a directory about Cats. Obviously, there are thousands of sites on the web covering this topic well. We will not be able to rank for Cats anytime soon. But using the Katamari technique we need to roll our ball, and see what kind of dust we can pickup!
Directories and the Katamari Technique
A directory can be a great way to start this process. We can start out by setting up some main categories such as breeds, grooming, veterinary care, etc. Then we can create some subcategories that are even more detailed. For example, we can find a more obscure breed of cat, and really build a category around that. Write some articles about caring for that breed, and post some cute pictures. Work on building up the content for that subcategory, and then get involved in some cat forums and share some information about the research you’ve done on that breed. Hopefully, soon you will be starting to rank for keywords related to that breed.
Repeat this process for other subcategories. Work them one at a time, and get a trickle of traffic going to them. Install the Disqus plugin, and get people talking on your site. Tweet about it. Post some links to your categories on Facebook.
Over time your proverbial ball will collect more and more dust, and you’ll go from being a small moon to a small planet to a one day a star on the web. Good luck with your Katamari conquest! (and we’re lucky, this article might even rank for Katamari Technique, an obscure strategy that was possibly first proposed by Matt Cutts. Here is the video where he mentions it:
Update August 7, 2019: I miss Matt Cutts. It was always fun hearing from someone who was able to see the Google data, and give some good feedback to the “average webmaster”. Now things are little more corporate, and just getting hits in the organic results is no simple task, as such a large percentage of Google’s search results are Ads now.
That being said, even without considering Google in the equation, you can start to lay a “footprint” for your users, and then create network of ever expanding content. Add links to keywords inside of articles you write, and that link to more articles. This increases the chances that a reader will drill deeper into your site.
Deep Links and Site Visitor Depth
Perhaps in 2006-2012, it was deep links that were in vogue, and everyone wanted to get directories to accept deep links, so they could get more and more content indexed on their site. And perhaps in 2019, the Katamari technique can still be applied, with the idea that you want to increase “visitor depth”. In other words, you want to make it easy and fun for visitors to explore more and more content, going ever deeper into your site. And the more trails, roads and interstate highways you have going through your site, the more you increase your search engine presence.
