Editor’s Note
A tradition like no other. Every Friday afternoon, we gather together and play a game that we call “Keyword Friday.” We spend our days doing keyword research and choosing the best options for our customers. To make this research more fun, we’ve created a game to bring people together from across departments and end our week on a high note.
Answers from Senior Account Manager Dan Heil.
Q1: What is Keyword Friday (KWF)?
I better get this right because I have to explain the game each week to new players. KWF is a game where we collectively come up with a keyword and then guess the average monthly search volume of that term. If you don’t work in Organic Search that may not sound like a ton of fun … but trust me it’s a helluva good time. Whoever is closest wins; Price is Right rules are NOT in effect.
Q2: How did this tradition start?
Honestly, I can’t remember the exact time. But it was 5+ years ago; I was an outreach specialist in our Labs department. My manager, Keith, really came up with the game because he would ask all these random keyword search volume questions. Then we thought it would be fun if we played a game. A lot of the people that play every week now have done so for years at this point.
Q3: How has the pandemic affected the game?
It’s funny because in the beginning we were worried about keeping it going. No one knew what to expect. The game really was geared towards being in the office. All the way down to me walking around asking people to play and pulling each person’s answer out of my Syracuse Chiefs toy helmet.
However, we’ve actually grown quite a bit during the pandemic. We’ve had so many new people join the company and, as we all know, this last year we’ve missed a lot of personal interaction with each other. I’d be remiss not to thank the core crew (Kevin, Garrett, Jim, Jace, and Andrew) that has helped us run this every week, but also built so many cool automated functions to improve the experience. I really think it’s better than ever now!
Q4: What are some highlights from the game?
There’s so many highlights, from getting people at the airport to play to meeting families of co-workers who join in to play. We’ve had our VPs/department heads be off by millions and brand new employees hit their guesses right on. I think that’s the best part about the game. There’s no real skill, it comes down to one guess and some hope!
We’ve also developed our own scoring to gauge just how good people are at Keyword Friday (or more interestingly … how bad). We’ve really leveled up the experience even though we haven’t been able to all be in one room together.
Q5: What do you enjoy most about the game?
The best part by far is the people. We are lucky to work with so many great colleagues. Having a time for all of us to come together at the end of every week really does make a difference. I know for me during the last year, it’s been one of the only ways to really interact with a lot of my friends from work. For years, it was really only 15-20 people at most to play. We’ve had many weeks of twice that now and it continues to grow!