Marketing the Website

[Molly O'Hara]

LOL - OK. I actually had my baby on the 22nd, a bit prematurely. It's a boy and his name is Elliot.

I also had a few initial problems, mainly because it turned out that I hadn't got enough milk for the poor thing. But things are going much better now, and lately he only wakes me up once in the middle of the night - (touch wood).


So I'm officially reporting back to duty now. Anything acute needed to be tended to, just point me in the right direction, please.

[Sandi]

Glad to hear you're both doing well.

Checking on those emails (re: another post) is a good move. Generally, we seem to have stalled over the holidays. I think perhaps we're below critical mass and need new blood.

Myself, I'm trying to finally get my MUD open this week, but after that I should have more time.

[Trip]

A few of our players have suggested it in the past, and it was never taken very seriously until I was at a conference not too long ago where a nice chunk of a discussion on web site marketing was about putting your self out on myspace and how significant the traffic from that site can benefit your rankings with search engines.

You have your profile page with a link to the website on it and of course liberally spread out keywords for the things your site is about. The more friends you have, the more of their pages link to your profile page. The more links your profile page has the better it's ranking with those keywords to google/etc. The better your profile pages rankings the more weight that link back to your page has in affecting search engines rankings of that page.

That being said, and not missing the opportunity to whore the mud out for some more players, I just put Deckeon up on myspace so if you'd like to join in a little linky action say "Howdy" at http://www.myspace.com/deckeon

Trip trip bo bip!

[nass]

Fyi, I run the SEO and online marketing divisions for a website agency. Yes, backlinks are vital, but especially backlinks from quality sites, using the terms that you want to be found under, for which your site also needs to be optimised. For here, I'd suggest you're looking more at "free mud" - "free quality muds" never gets searched on. You'll want to redo the homepage to make sure that those words are used, and ontology related phrases, and the constituents thereof, in an attractive, human-readible manner (pages made for search engines are absolutely laughable).

You'll have a hard time forcing webmasters to link to here from their homepage although that would be effective. Having affiliates is a common way to encourage that though, it can work as long as it doesn't belittle the site. If I see a mud or rankings site that's affiliated with a poker site I tend to go "ewwww".

[nass]

Ok, thought I'd suggest an alternative approach to the "affiliate" one. Speaking as webmaster for a mud, I avoid affiliates like the plague because I find them tacky, a tool used by marketeers.

I'd suggest that you have a watertight definition for what a free mud is, and a verification page on which truly free MUDs which have been verified to be so can be listed. It's a much easier ask to get mud owners to link to a page which lists and verifies their mud as truly free. Maybe some sort of badge/icon "verified". The definition I'd propose for free would exclude the pay-for-perk crowd because imo that's a misleading definition for free.

[Sandi]

If I follow you, I think that's a really good idea.

One of our strengths is also a weakness. The more exclusive out list is, the smaller the support pool. If we had a list if simply "free muds", we might see more traffic and more links. I'm afraid nass is right  - "free quality muds" isn't a likely search term.

[nass]

I wonder if there's any point. This site looks dead to me.

[Crystal]

Well that's entirely up to you.

[nass]

Don't get me wrong, I'd love it to be more alive and I think you should to the "verified free" thing - but I don't see a whole lot of postings or activity...?

[Crystal]

There is very little posting in the public section as we're not trying to necessarily be a "public forum" since TMS and TMC already cover that.

[GyncDoto73]

Does anyone know of a reliable source, or are you able to explain what the difference is between a marketing representative and marketing consultant is? Thanks in advance.

[AvaidaqueellA]

is select effect a gaming clan site or is it just a site where ppl can post about gaming things?  sry i didnt really understand the website.