I’m a huge fan of Balsamiq, which also is a self-described “Micro ISV“. One of the things they do well is communicate everything they are up to on their blog. Early on I decided I’d leave the official BrowserMob blog a bit more sparse so that it only had content that my customers cared about. The rest (marketing ideas, business status updates, etc) would be left for this blog. This is one of those posts 
A friend of mine let me know that Google recently did a toolbar PageRank update, which is the best place to get a basic idea of where your page rank sits. This got us talking about simple SEO optimization tricks I could do that wouldn’t take all my time. This is important for a micro ISV like my company.
The lists of things I have already done or plan to do for BrowserMob are:
- Use H1 tags near the top of the page, matching the TITLE tags exactly.
- Make page titles unique for all the important pages (pricing, contact, signup, etc).
- Use META tags for keywords and description. While not super important, they don’t hurt much either.
- Use important keywords (“load testing”, “performance testing”, “Selenium”, etc) in the page titles.
- Use some of the same keywords in the URLs themselves (ie: /load-testing-support vs. /contact).
These are the basics I can do quickly. Beyond that, the real push towards a higher PageRank will only happen with real work. My first guest post in support of BrowserMob was recently posted on Ajaxian. This drove 10X more traffic and signups to the site when compared to our last peak day.
More importantly, it’s now one of the most authoritative documents on the search “Ajax load testing”. While it doesn’t link to my business, it offers credibility that I know what I’m talking about (btw – awesome to see Dojo masters enjoyed the article). It also links to my business, so someone who is really interested in the subject not only learns about it, but now can also choose to check out BrowserMob if they want.
Going forward, my marketing plan will involve a lot of this type of activity. I want to get the word out there that load testing can be easier and more affordable. I’ll continue writing articles on the BrowserMob blog, but I’ll also be writing most guest posts on popular sites. I’ll also be asking industry experts to blog their thoughts on the business, product, and idea on their blog (good or bad).
Hat tip: many of these ideas formulated after I read Balsamiq’s excellent post on startup marketing advice.