Medicare Sherpa – First Anniversary of Unique Elder Affairs Community
Over the last year I’ve used my site Medicare Sherpa as an educational opportunity and proving ground to test and validate best practices for blogging, link building, keyword research, social bookmarking and social media. My research objective: What are the best tools to attract audiences searching online for answers about Social Security and Medicare Health Insurance?
Launch: I officially launched my site on April 28th, 2009. To date the blog has attracted 3,887 unique visitors, 12,625 page views, over 658 pages are indexed by Google and nearly30% of site visits are from Massachusetts residents. I’ve written 34 articles (at least 2 a month), linked my site to 62 local non-profit organizations serving the elderly, created a discussion board with 6 categories and 59 topics related to Social Security and Medicare, and created a directory of 350 Councils on Aging to help promote their events.
Search Engine Optimization Strategy (traffic): Nearly 72.08% of my traffic is driven by search engines vs. 13.8% driven by the brand name Medicare Sherpa. This is primarily due to the search engine marketing strategies defined above. Another 13.8% was driven by referral traffic which was primarily the result of the social media strategies defined later in this analysis. Over 95 sites referred traffic to Medicare Sherpa including Facebook, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Yahoo Directory, DogPile, Digg and many more. Those visiting from Massachusetts were 16.6% less likely to exit on entry, viewed twice as many pages (5.48), and stayed twice as long onsite (5:50) as other site visitors.
The Mission and Technology: Medicare Sherpa provides free, unbiased and up-to-date health insurance information, drug price research tools, Medicare Insurance research tools and assistance to Medicare beneficiaries of all ages and their caregivers. I am using Joomla as my blogging platform with JomSocial as my module for creating and managing an Elder Affairs Community.
Link Building Strategy: I’ve created a resource directory using JV LinkExchanger that creates unique URLs, meta tags and descriptions for every outbound link in my directory. These 62 outbound links are indexed and ranked by Google and are responsible for driving 173 page views with an average site visit lasting 2 minutes and 40 seconds.
Long Tail Search Strategy: Using Kunena Discussion Board (To Speak) I was able to create a unique “frequently asked questions” section that was perfectly tailored to be indexed and ranked by Google for long tail searches involving phrases in excess of 5 or more words. This section drew in 959 page views with most staying on site for less than 60 seconds.
Social Bookmarking & Syndication: My RSS feed is registered with Technorati, Digg and Delicious. These popular bookmarking tools allow users to bookmark and rank the value of the content they read and share that information with other users on the Internet. Syndication has played a vital roll in driving referral traffic from 95 sites.
Social Media Strategy: All my articles are automatically published to my Medicare Sherpa Facebook Fan Page (188 visits), Twitter Page (1 visit) and my Linked Page (22 visits). This “write once and publish everywhere” strategy has made it very easy to extend my reach and draw additional traffic from these sites. While I have a modest following in these “closed gardens” – 36 fans on Facebook and 8 followers on Twitter, I have identified that there are nearly 89,140 people on Facebook over the age of 64 in Massachusetts alone (another 29,780 between 62 and 63). Facebook provides many unique opportunities to target advertising including by birthday. I’ve also extended my reach by creating a Medicare Sherpa YouTube Channel (109 views) with educational videos from StaySmartStayHealthy.com.
Unique Educational Tools: I’ve partnered with DestinationRx to promote their Drug Price Research (227 views) and Medicare Plan Finder Tools (27 views). These tools represent additional editorial opportunities and methods for engaging and retaining site visitors (loyalty). I need to define an editorial strategy to drive promotion and utilization of these tools.
Geography: While I’ve been able to attract an audience from all 50 states, Massachusetts residents are the most engaged out of all visitors. I’ve reached 198 cities in Massachusetts while maintaining a 56% bounce rate vs. a site average 72% (stickiness = stay vs. exit). Nationally 82% of my site visitors are new vs. 56% of Massachusetts residents.
The one thing I’ve learned – I really admire the people that commit to writing more than one article a week. I have a full time job, 4 kids and a bit of a social life, but looking back over the past year – - I’ve witnessed many bloggers and blogging communities whose execution is light years ahead of my capability. They of course have the time, money and resources to drive that success.
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