Hi guys and dolls, This is my first post at DigitalPoint and I’ve only been lurking about the forums since yesterday. That’s how impressed I’ve been with the advice I’ve seen here. Now I’m wondering if I can get a little for myself. I run a website: Eye On MOGS (http://www.eyeonmogs.com/). We’ve been running for about 2 months so I guess as far as Google goes we’re still in what has been termed here the ‘Sandbox’? That might explain our rankings, which I’m pretty sure are further back than page 4 on most of the keywords we’re interested (you’ll know what they are by checking out the site). We’re doing slightly better on MSN and Yahoo seem to hate us having only indexed one page last I checked! We actually started off well with 3,000 uniques within a few days of opening thanks to a Slashdot posting. However we seem to have failed to capitalise on this as now 2 months on we’ve dropped to around 30-60 uniques a day. We don’t have a massive advertising budget to work with – Around $200-300 per month. Having read around the forums here I think my plan of action is as follows (roughly!): • Write up a press release and submit to places like PR Web • Write up an article relating to MMORPGs and the secondary market, dropping Eye On MOGS in there with a link and submit this to article directories (manually or using a tool, I’m not sure which I think is best) • Post on related forums. The difficulty here is that the secondary market is a lot like marmite: You either love it or hate it. So we could end up with 50% of our visitors arriving just to mail us and let us know how bad we are • Keep the SEO on the site under review. I’ve done my best – but I’m a relative novice at this so I’m sure there are other things I have missed • Tie in our existing Google adwords campaign more closely with the website. That is make sure keywords an ad is targeted to are also the keywords on the page the ad links to. That’s it loosely. I’m not really sure what other options I have. Any thoughts? It might help you to know we’re trying to reach 1,000 uniques a day (we want more but this is a good goal to aim for that will make us smile). I’ve read here that this can take over a year , but some people seem to have managed it in a few months. Any advice is much appreciated, or any comments on the nature of Eye On MOGS. We’re always interested to here what people think of the whole business of paying real money for virtual things. Regards, Mike
mike ... welcome I'm not a gamer so don't really get the site and there's others here a lot better than me but my basic plan is build content & get links - I like the press release - I would be thinking multiple articles (5-10 would be good) - Look for free directories with pagerank to submit to Content -Add pages talking about each game or provider or whatever makes sense Budget ($200 to $300) I would personally be looking for private label articles to use as content and submit to article directories ... and looking for a small number of decent paid links ... and searching for low cost related PPC terms ...just my thoughts jay
I think you have a great plan. The content is the big draw and you seem to have a good amount of fresh content. Another thing you could do is to have some gaming pros write up tips for the big games and then use that to entice more users in. So you could advertise "Get free tips for XXXXXXX here", which would get the user to your site - where they would then see all the other stuff you have. Write this content up and put it out weekly in an ezine. Actually, tell the people who sign up that they will get to see new tips and tricks a week before this same content is put out on the site. Pluses: You get sticky content, and build a mailing list that you can then monetize by selling ad space in your ezine as well. Another thing you should do is to get the most out of your visitors as possible: Encourage them to bookmark the site. Add a conspicuous "Tell A Friend". Try to change your copy. Make it more personal. Make it clear that you are not a big corporation trying to make money off them, but that basically you are a bunch of game-obsessed guys - just like your visitors are. Perhaps even start a blog with your more personal and tangentially-related gaming anecdotes on it to show your more "human" face. People in obsessive communities love that kind of stuff - DP is a prime example! See if you can team up with any similar non-competing sites to recommend each other's sites to your visitors. You both benefit - and so do the visitors. I hope my random-ish ramblings help!
I have found trading links with similar/related sites helps to bring in a steady flow of traffic. It has also helped with my SEO efforts
Seems like a good plan! I'd suggest to write a chain of several press releases and submit them one after another, always with increasing contributions (or some free ones and then one with a big contribution). I've noticed that really helps with the results of each one. Don't forget to group and interlink them all, though.
On my Firefox , Your site PR is 4 .. It means you only need to wait for next PR update from google ..
Hi all, Thanks for the quick and positive feedback so far. Keep it coming! I'm curious about FireStorMs comment. I have teh Google Toolbar installed on Internet Explorer and it doesn't have any page rank for my site. I also tried an online tool that tells you (supposedly) what your PR is, but this also said 0. I'd be quite happy for it to be 4! But can anyone verify this? FireStorM what page were you looking at? Also do you all think its possible to attain and sustain 1000 targeted visitors a day one a $300 per month budget? Cheers everyone
The PR you see and the PR you actually have are different. G only updates visible PR very occasionally. Your real PR fluctuates much more rapidly. To be honest, it is not really worth worrying about. The real stats are the ones you get from your server logs: Who visits from where, spends how long on your site, comes back how often and spends what. Ten visitors who click a lot of ads because your site meets their exact needs are worth 1000 visitors who come and look and do nothing.
Seems pretty good, but room for improvement. You might want to think about joining popular MMORPG top site lists (xtremetop100.com, gamesites200.com ect). Also, try link exchanges with popular sites. If I were you, I would focus a little more on the study of MPOG gold prices (like gameusd.com and gameshoplist.com) as I think you'll spark up more publicity that way. I've read countless 'Virtual worlds provide jobs for China' kind of articles in medium to large news websites and gaming related sites. So you might want to jump on that bandwagon and analyse the markets, and email some popular sites if you notice anything major happening, rises and falls ect. I don't even think the 2 sites I posted aren't doing it well, and it'll be easy to match or beat them. That's the kind of thing that would get gamers coming to your site instead of rushing to IGE, as they'd be able to view the history of the currency. PS. I'd also remove the GuideFox banners as they went out of business a few months ago (Copyright notices from Blizzard killed them, yet MPS continues to make millions of $ every year?) and replace them with my affiliate banners at pimpmyguide.com not sure if I'm allowed to advertise it here, but it's good advice.
Hey once again everyone, Thanks for all the advice that you have given. It's much appreciated, I'm quite sure you guys have a betetr handle on this marketing lark than I do! I've taken on board all the commetary, and so far added a 'make this your homepage' link (only on the homepage and a 'Tell A Friend' form (again only on the homepage. Now I'm waiting to see how that goes. I'm going to look more into the MMORPG list sites as suggested, but I think when I looked before listing Eye On MOGS may have been a problem due to teh subject matter. We'll see. Also Blitz, thanks for the note on Guidefox. I've been meaning to get rid of that. Pimp My Guide would be a welcome addition. Check www.eyeonmogs.com/adverts.php for some more info. If you have an affiliate program then we may be able to talk about waiving the rates for now. Cheers, Mike