Zoombug

Keyword Goldmine

Back in March I mentioned that I put a blog onto BabysittingGroup.com while I developed the application. The purpose was to build up traffic to the site and it’s starting work. Traffic is still low but growing every month.

I’ve been monitoring the traffic using Google Analytics and it’s providing a goldmine of information about traffic sources. Two of the more interesting are:

1. I receive as more search traffic from Google than the other search engines combined
2. The 26 search terms people used when they found the site

Without this I would have limited keyword advertising to only 2 or 3 keywords. While I’m not ready to start keyword advertising yet I now have a few extra terms plus a number of variations that people used.

Marketing update

In my last post I mentioned that I had setup a blog at BabysittingGroup.com to begin generating traffic to the site. As the site had been stagnate for a while it took Google a week or two before they finally indexed it again. Since then I’ve begun receiving traffic from them. It’s not much (only 1 to 2 visitors per day) but it does prove that you can build traffic where none previously existed in a short period of time.

I’ll continue with the marketing by posting more articles to the blog. I’m a little behind on my self imposed schedule of a new post every 3-5 days but I have a couple of articles in draft. With a bit of work I hope the visitors per day will hit double digits in the next month.

Marketing a new site

Over the last two weeks I’ve started working on BabysittingGroup.com again. The site will host an application to manage babysitting co-ops. On Saturday I launched a blog on the website with posts about running babysitting co-ops and the development of BabysittingGroup.com. This is the first step in pre-marketing of the site.

Pre-marketing is an important step in launching a site that is often overlooked. My objective is simply to increase awareness of the site and generate inbound links. This will naturally move my site closer to the top in search engine listings. It’s really important to start this process now as you will rarely end up at the top of search engine listings overnight. By doing this now I’m hoping to have a good supply of parents wanting to sign up and test the site when it enters public beta.

Coming soon…

At Zoombug we’re working on an application to help you manage your babysitting co-op/group. Development is underway and the application will enter public beta shortly. Until then we going to be blogging here about

• What a babysitting co-op is
• How to start your babysitting co-op
• How to run your babysitting co-op
• Development of BabysittingGroup.com

Cheap books

There’s a cheap bookshop in Sydney at the end of the Devonshire tunnel near Central station. They seem to specialise in books that are close to end of life (i.e. the book covers the previous version of … or the title just didn’t sell well). A couple of guys from my day job went there at lunch to get some books. The store rarely has books I’m after so I decided to skip the trip. After seeing what they returned with and how much paid I stopped in on the way home and picked up the following Apress titles:

• Beginning Java SE 6 Platform
• Pro Apache Struts with Ajax
• The Definitive Guide to Grails
• Begining EJB 3 Application Development
• Begining JBoss Seam
• Begining J2ME Platform

Total cost: Less than $40

Considering each title would normally cost $50 to $80 I’m pretty happy.

It’s a shame they didn’t have anything about Spring and that Theo got the last one about Hibernate. Hopefully the books will help me decide which Java framework I want to use.

Revamped website

For over a year I’ve been using Drupal for the Zoombug website. As a web development/consulting business this was the perfect choice for an information website. Since the start of 2008 I’ve been moving the business away from client work to a micro ISV mixing Web 2.0, SaaS and open source. This requires a new site that will allow me to have a two way conversation with users. As a blog engine Drupal is serious overkill so I’ve decided to revamp the entire website.

For static pages and the blog I’ll be using WordPress. Zoombug Labs will moved from a subsite to part of the main site (at http://zoombug.com.au/labs). The Trac’s will move to http://zoombug.com.au/labs/PROJECT while Subversion will remain a at http://svn.zoombug.com.au/PROJECT.

For now the site will use the default WordPress theme but this will change in the next couple of days.