Breaking Free
How to Quit Your Job and Start Your Own Business
300% Increase In Traffic To BuyersVote.com Last Month
In: Marketing By: Brian Armstrong
4 Nov 2009Just wanted to give an update on how my SEO experiment went from this post a month ago.
For those who didn’t read it I setup a category on BuyersVote.com for the best halloween costume ideas of 2009. I did this because I knew it would be a popular keyword in October, especially toward the end of the month. And if I could make a good page targeted specifically for that niche keyword, it might get some traffic.
Well, it worked. I just BARELY got on the first page of Google in time for Halloween and managed to get the 9th or 10th place listing (which is still on the first page) for some costume related keywords. It was enough to triple the traffic to BuyersVote.com for a month (which isn’t saying much given how little it was before, but still, you have to start somewhere ;).
Here is the graph from Google Analytics.
Check out the keywords which drove all the traffic.
It’s also interesting to note that I think my page actually had the best content of any of the top 10 listings. Most of the other pages were made-for-adsense sites or crappy articles without many good costume ideas. It shows you that crowd-sourced content works, even on a small scale.
So what did I learn from this experiment? Primarily it shows this could be a good growth strategy for BuyersVote. With just a few good niche review topics like Ski Resort Reviews, Blogs for Entrepreneurs, or Mac Web Browser Reviews it could start to get some good organic search results. If I get just a few, that will be enough to start getting new contributors to the site who will generate new topics, and new search results, and it will be come a positive feedback loop to growth.
This is the hardest part about starting a site like this: critical mass. Nobody wants to be the first reviewer on an empty site.
Feel free to steal this SEO idea too (I didn’t come up with it) and apply it to your own site. Basically just pick a highly specialized keyword (so it’s not too competitive) that will have a lot of traffic coming up. Seasonal or holiday related keywords work well for this. Then if you generate a page targeted to just that keyword, it’s possible to get on the first page of Google, even if you have a relatively new or unknown site.
What do you think? What might be some other good niche topics to add to BuyersVote.com?
By the way, the site now has 405 items and 113 contributors, so if you haven’t already, please take a moment to create an account and add some reviews.
Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong
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Breaking Free is a blog for people who'd like to quit their 9-to-5, start their own business, and achieve financial freedom. It's written by web-entrepreneur Brian Armstrong. You can read more here »
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Witold Rugowski
November 4th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Well, traffic has increased, but so what? :) I mean – did this traffic converted into some content? Votes, reviews?
Brian Armstrong
November 4th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
It’s a good point…that’s the next step is to see how many became users, voted, etc. I see those things going up, but I don’t know what percent came from this traffic. This is more of a first step – with traffic I’ll be able to start testing user engagement.
College Town Menus (CTM)
November 4th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
I like how you showed your traffic graph. Great job showing how keywords can spike up in certain amount of time. This gave me an idea for my site, thanks. Its neat to see that majority of people start actively searching for halloween costumes up to 2 weeks before and go frantic 4 days before, but not much more than that.
You should do the same study for holiday related things:
Thanksgiving Recipes
Black Friday Deals
Football Playoff Predictions
Christmas Deals
New Years Cities to Party, etc.
Brian, I see that there are zero advertisements no where on your site? You could easily place Google AdSense on each category page, since it’s already targeted by the category and relevant items. Put it right side underneath Email Updates. Just curious why your not trying to monetize the site since it’s already residual and self-sustaining now.
I agree completely on your point of getting to critical mass. That is without question the most challenging aspect of user generated sites. I would LOVE to learn more from studies that have been done on how to most effectively decrease time needed to get there.
College Town Menus (CTM)
November 4th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
On a side note, I’m happy to see that the majority of people like my idea of the Swine Flu pig costume =).
Brian Armstrong
November 4th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Those are good topics. You’re right I’ll probably start monetizing it soon. It doesn’t have quite enough traffic yet to be worth it but soon. In addition to ads, I think there is a good opportunity for affiliate links. Many products listed there could be available on Amazon, for example. But it all depends on traffic first, so that’s where my focus is for now!
Haha, and yep Swine Flu was a winner!
Gordie | LifestyleDesign4U.com
November 9th, 2009 at 4:44 am
That’s great stuff, Brian. I think it’s great you got onto page one of Google for Halloween costumes. It should see an annual spike every year now. Well, done. Let’s hope you can do the same for other holidays and festivals.
Brian Armstrong
November 10th, 2009 at 4:12 am
Yep, or maybe costumes for 2010 next year. I think the next step will be to setup some badges where people can show off how well their product is doing on BuyersVote “96% positive reviews!”. This would be a big way to get incoming links.
Casey
November 4th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
As usual, great ideas. I am going to test out some related SEO possibilities soon that I think people will really enjoy.
Quick Credit Cards Online
December 11th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
I’m doing a similar program than this. good your you, it must be exciting. I just started yesterday for the keyword cash back credit cards and I am workin REAL hard. nothing yet though. Best of luck to you in business!
P.S. the first step to getting votes/sales is to get traffic, so if people are coming to the site because of your niche market they must be taking an interest to your business, and possibly be looking to vote/sign up