Plum7.com - top 3 on Google Search within a month!

We started 'plum7.com' as a family project during the 2008 Christmas break and beta launched on Jan. 22. We are slowly building traffic by word of mouth and basic search engine optimization. At this point, over 50% of our visits are coming from organic search results (meaning not paid traffic) and referrals from sites like StumbleUpon and Digg.

Today, two weeks after our beta launch, we discovered that we have already achieved the top 3 position at Google search for "top 10 pop songs" for the weekly top 10 music page (with official videos, funny parodies, lyrics, karaokes, and line dance videos), beating big names like Apple/iTune, Google/Youtube, Time.com, video.aol.com, and about 22,100,000 other web pages!

We have helped CadPointInc achieved the top organic search results at Google, Yahoo, and AOL in 2007 -- it remains on the top today, and it's great to know that we can still do it! Of course, our work have just begun, and there are still a lot of things we are planning to do (and we are having fun!). We'd like to do a checkpoint and share with you the tools we have used so far (they are mostly free):

• Content Management System (free): Joomla with php and mysql database with basic template.
• Analytics (free): Google Analytics for tracking and analysis
  
• Revenue (free registration): Google Ad Sense, Amazon Affiliate, and many travel affiliate programs from Commission Junction (We have only gotten a few dollars from Google so far, and we need to seriously consider either optimizing the affiliate conversion or drop those programs... any comments?)
• Search Engine Optimization - keywords: very basic stuff like put meaningful keywords in page URLs, page titles, page descriptions, keyword sections, title of links, and title of images
• Search Engine Optimization - search submission: submit new pages to Google, Yahoo, MSN, StumbleUpon, and Digg. (We have not even submitted to the big directories yet!)
  
• Word of mouth: Email to friends/family, put links in signatures (email and web forums)
• Hosting: Servage.net $6.45/month for hosting with 510GB and $14.95/year Domain registration (with free Privacy, better than Godaddy.com)
  

Even though this is a very new site with a few weeks of history, (and pagerank of zero), we think our weekly top 10 music page was able to get to top 3 organic search ranking because:

• It's a content/information rich page with official video, funny parodies, lyrics, karaoke, and line dance videos,
• It's a keyword rich page with meaningful keywords in page URL, title, description, images, links while not 'spamming' or stuff keywords with density that's too high.
• It's a timely page with weekly top 10.
  

Page performance:

• 27% Home Page
  
• 31% Music Section
• 19% Travel Section
• 18% Dance Section - this is a new section with almost no promtoion
  
• 5% Recipes - we will probably drop this section
  

Here is a distrubtion of current traffic sources:

1. 47% from direct link and email - presumably primarily friends and family, a large perceentage came from Yahoo Mail referral.
   
2. 34% from search engine referral - 95% from Google, with one or two from AOL, MSN, ASK, Kvasir, and Live. Surprising even though we religiously submit every new article to Google, MSN, and Yahoo, we have zero referral from Yahoo Search so far.
3. 18% from StumbleUpon, Digg, Facebook, and other forums/blog referrals.
   

Concentrated yet wide range of international visitors. The picture on the left is a Google Analytics map showing distribution of visitors in Janurary. So far, most visitors are from California, but it is very interesting to find out that we are already getting visitors from 31 US states, and from 28 other countries ranging from all continents (ok... except Antarctica!).

Ok, that's it so far. We'd like to know your thoughts, suggestions, and questions. Please go ahead and click on the comment and provide your feedback. Thanks!!

Tip: Timing Newsgroup Posting to Optimize Results

There is no doubt that our audience is on many very diverse newsgroups such as Yahoo! Groups, AOL Message Boards, Linkedin Groups, Facebook Groups, etc. Some groups have thousands of active subscribers. Many service providers for these groups will send an email whenever a new post is added, either with a summary or the full message. This is an essential way for the service provider to drive traffic back to the site or to sell ads. Most services will send a daily consolidated email with all posts from the previous day. For message heavy and well read groups, consolidated emails are very popular, so people do not get bombarded with lots of message all day long.

If you take a look at the timestamps from this type of consolidated emails, you would notice that daily consolidated emails from Linkedin and Yahoo! Groups usually come at around the same time every day. This is most likely true for all such services since they are sent automatically on a regular schedule.

Being the top post for this type of email has many benefits. Obviously, the top 2 or 3 posts get the most attention. In addition, for LinkedIn, see the example in the figure (click the image to see the larger version), you will see that the poster name for the first post even appear in the subject line!

If we are building awareness and traffic using newsgroups in popular and high volume newsgroups, the trick is to time your posting so your post appears on the top. The exact method is slightly different for different services.

For example, for linkedin, the latest post appears on the top, and the rest are listed in reverse chronological order, therefore, you would want to time your posting right before the email deployment time.

On the other hand, for Yahoo! Group, posts are listed chronologically for the day before. So if you post at 12:01am on Monday (make sure you take into account the time zone!), you will be the top message for Tuesday.

Try it out, experiment, and let me know how this works out for you!

More Video Ads than Search and Banner Ads Combined?

According to a survey conducted in December 2008 by PermissionTV 67% of US Marketers responded identified online video as a "primary focus" of their 2009 digital marketing campaign in 2009.

This amazing number is 50% higher than Social Media, and about double of Search, Podcast, and Rich Media. Does this mean we will see more spending on video ads than search and banner ads combine? I don't think so. I think this represents what's on marketers' minds as the next frontier but it does not necessarily represent their actual budget allocation. According to eMarketer's projections in November 2008, 2009 spendings for Search and Display Ads are still by far the highest online ad format at $12 and $5 Billion, however, we can see that Video also shows the most significant growth from $587 to $850 Million in this study. This speaks well for companies like Hulu.com and Google (Youtube), especially during recession when more people are expected to stay home and surf the web. We can also see another related trend with all the mobile video updates on sites like Facebook.

Regarding the marketing objectives, a vast majority (71%) stated it would help build brand awareness. Other objectives includes: lead generation (47%) and enhancing loyalty/retention programs (44%) and converting customers (41%).

As to the tactics, the highest priority, with 63%, is to invest in a branded content/video destination. Viral video (39%) and interactive experiences (38%) are the next highest. Only 22% plan to invest in simple syndication.

Sources:
eMarketer: Marketers Eye Online Video for 2009
PermissionTV: Industry Survey Forecasts Adoption of Interactive Video in 2009

eMarketer: The Next Step in User-Generated Content

According to Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer:

With so much user-generated media populating the Web and mobile channels, content aggregation will become more important than ever in 2009. In the coming year, expect to see real-time aggregation tools that combine algorithmic approaches with human input—like a cross between Techmeme and FriendFeed.

Techmeme is an aggregation tool that uses algorithms to scan the Web for tech-related news stories. FriendFeed is also an aggregator, but it lets users set up custom feeds to pool content from other social sites.

These aggregation tools will develop from the ground up, much like the content itself. They could make it easier for consumers to find video and other content.

Furthermore, in a climate in which advertising is the main (some say the only) means of monetizing user-generated content, aggregators stand to earn more per visitor than the sites that actually carry the user-created content.

Source: eMarketer.com

Tool to Shrink PPT and DOC files

I just saw this tip from Techknowl.com, a German firm Balesio offers a software called PPTminimizer that can shrink PPT (Micosoft Power Point ) and DOC ( Microsoft word 2003 ) documents to about 98% of their original size in the native extension (not zipped or archived). The quality of the converted file is almost same as the original file.

This seems to be a handy tool to compress very large presentations for web viewing, and for downloading to mobile phones and USB drives. Techknowl.com readers can get a free download from the site, subscription to Techknowl.com is free, check it out!

Full article: http://www.techknowl.com/2008/12/shrink-ppt-and-doc-files-to-98-without.html
Free download for PC Advisor users: http://www.balesio.com/campaign/licensing/index.aspx?CID=pcadvisor

Top Online Purchase Categories During Financial Crisis

During the tough economic times, people tend to stay home more instead of going out, and naturally the Web use increase. According to comScore World Metrix, visits to financial news and research sites grew 10% to 8.8 million visitors in September, during the height of the financial crisis, from the previous month.

People wants to save money, get more for their dollars, so they would use the web to do more researches. So what are people buying online? According to Nielsen study released in November, top transaction sites are for Travel and Entertainment related sites are number 1 (Online travel), 6 (Hotel reservation), and 8 (Event tickets).

Credit card account management and home banking were the second- and third-most-popular transaction types for 2008.

Number 4 is clothing/shoes/accessories. Think Lipsticks. One of the top sellers at the Malls are Lipsticks during recessions, people need a pick-me-up, small purchases to make be happier.

Sources:
eMarketer: Online Banking During a Financial Crisis (12/8/2008)
New York Times: Hard Times, but Your Lips Look Great - Lipstick May Ben an Economy Indicator (5/1/2008)

Blogger Tip: How to add "Email Subscription Form"

Looking for a way to collect emails from blogger site visitors? Here are some good source I found:

• Feedblitz.com: This is a free (ad supported) service that enables publishers to collect subscribers and send emails for free.
  
• Feedburner.com (now part of Google): Primarily used to send new articles with a very light 'delivered by' footer, ability to export subscriber email addresses.
  

Here are a couple of nice posts on this subject: "how to add Email Subscription Form using Feedburner" and "Add RSS/Email subscription in Blogger".

Separately, Google added the "Subscribe to" feature which is different, it currently only supports 3 RSS readers: Google, Bloglinks, and Netvibes, and there is no email support.