Great to see this stuff, I'll see what I can write and have it go back to the original.


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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

>>Simu needs to get out of the industrial age, and move into the tech age.

I'd take the time to vote twice a day, but it's really hard to get behind a game advertising-wise that won't do the basics to help themselves.

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Player of Diggan, Ranger & Halfing of Aesry

Cool - I never read those forums, but is there a particular forum that I should look to that would have the most impact on the DR website?

Thanks!

Codiax.
Forged Weapons:
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Codiax#Codiax-Forged-Weapons

Good times.

Yanno, I looked back to see when I first mentioned SEO advertising and it was a few months ago (Post 563).

And while looking for that post, I saw a post when I brought up the idea in late 2011 about micro transactions (post 461) to which Solomon said the whole billing system would have to be changed before that was even a possibility. Which actually appears to have been easier than he thought, because, of course about a year later, we suddenly have micro transactions, without any major changes to billing. Anyhow, if that is any indication of time, maybe we will have a halfway decent SEO homepage within a year and a half.

Also, its disappointing that it seems like many good suggestions (like the ones I posted) have to be post a few times by multiple people before they actually get read or implemented.

Falker

<"You need backlinks. The most importatn part of SEO is backlinks (links from other sites, pointing to your site). There are free ways to do this.

<Reviews are a good one, write reviews on every game review site you can find, if the site allows it, add a link to your home page. This is free. One warning here, do NOT write the same review of the game on each of these sites, you need to write a different review for each one, this is very important. When you make your link to your home page, make it keyword rich link, don't name your link "dragonrealms", name it like, "Best MUD Ever" or "Text-Based RPG", whatever fits into your review the best.

<Offer player incentives for writing reviews on their favorite sites that include a backlink.

<Make sure your site is on every "listing".

<It can be difficult to get backlinks sometimes, but focus on getting 1 per month or something like that, trust me this will make your search engine results sky rocket."

Of course, this is the most important advice.

.gov and .edu
The most valuable backlinks are .gov and .edu - even though they're unrelated to gaming. And they are, of course, like really hard to get.

Industry
Possibly the next most valuable backlink comes from other industry websites. For example, if you search for "MUD GAMES" on Google, and whatever the results are, you take the websites listed on the first two results pages, contacted them, and got them to agree to put a link to DR on their websites...that's Google power right there. Also pretty hard to get them (sometimes competitors) to do that - but competitors aren't the only one's on the first few pages. Can also pay to have other sites put your link on their site (often not much money at all).

Also creating a list of 50 websites that are somehow related to gaming, not just MUDS (because backlink value is based on the linking website's "score" and part of that score is the appropriateness of the site linking back to DR (i.e., a pet website backlinking to DR is less valuable). So emailing (calling is best if possible) 50 or 100 gaming websites and asking for a backlink exchange is a good idea - although traded baclinks are worth "half" the value as if that website was the only one with a link to DR - so each site only get's half value/credit for the link because they both sites are benefitting, and obviously playing the system.

Press Releases
Other extremely valuable ways to get backlinks include $150 press releases (can use prweb.com). Every news agency receives and publishes your press release on their website automatically - most have to manually remove it, so the press releases just stay on the page in perpetuity in an ever compounding news roll. They are really valuable for bumping you up on Google's index, but less valuable than some other backlinks. Finding regular reasons to publish press releases is a good idea.

Articles
Yep, articles are great, and incentives for players to write articles is a fantastic idea. There are some "no follow" sites (which means backlinks published on that particular site adds no value, e.g., wikipedia, others.
1. DR can take those articles (even if they're on the DR site itself - maybe a player articles section) and list those articles on various "article dissemination" sites whose mission it is for bloggers to find your articles and publish them on their site because they need content. Not cost prohibitive at ALL, and some are free.

2. Backlinks from industry "reference websites" like Best of the Web Directory and Yahoo (huge value) and many others are important (likely DR has done this)

3. Backlinks from BBS "usually" have value as well - but you usually only get credit for one backlink for those sites, because links can appear in 50 "quoted replies" to an original post. When I mention BBS backlinks as part of a marketing strategy if, I mean if DR had players and staff honing in on a number of fan BBS, etc., and everyone posted a backlink during discussions.

4."On-site" DR articles are also good because Google likes to see regular, original, fresh content on sites (like DR). I think that Google considers 300 or more words to be newly added original content. Of course regularly posting new images also brings traffic from Google Images. At least a few hundred to a few thousand per month - which "may" convert to a couple of new customers or more per month.

Anchor Text
All press releases and articles, and even BBS backlinks should have strategic keywords written into the body of the text, and those keywords should be hyperlinked back to DR; those are called "anchor links". Anchor Text tells Google which keywords should perform better on the Google index. So if "MUD GAME" is an important keyword combination for DR's Google Index strategy, THOSE words would be a hyperlink to DR. There should be a handful of linked anchortext per publication (but not so much that external publishers start resenting it).

Joint Ventures
Obviously joint ventures between sites is good. Among other JVs like "co-registration" agreements, joint ventures can include exchanging backlinks - again good for only half the backlink value/credit because you're linking both ways (to each other).

Consistency Counts
If you get all your backlinks in one week and never add anymore, the initial impact will be very strong, but will fade relatively quickly. If you set a goal of 100 backlinks per month as part of your marketing model (and this is totally achievable without exorbitant cost), you are in the ballpark. Backlinks are "long tail" strategies, meaning if you are in a competitive space, looking for the most common keywords to perform for YOUR company on Google, it takes a few months before you see results, but you really see them when it happens, and the effect is long-lasting.

There's a LOT more to a backlinks discussion. Could fill a book - in fact, it does. Many books.. I just felt like pontificating even though this isn't my business - just know some stuff.