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sleightlysilas New user 29 Posts |
I thought building this website would boost my career in magic. Well, my website is killing me. First there was design, then content, then the whole wordpress thing, and now SEO.
On a quick side note, has anyone else noticed that as soon as you try to go pro, you actually spend less and less time on the actual magic? Anyone battling search engine battles for your magic websites? And would anybody here be proficient in SEO?
Sleightly Silas
Magician|Hypnotist|Visionaire www.SleightlySilas.com "...a little bit of magic, with a lot of something else..." |
MichaelDouglas Special user Portland, Oregon 766 Posts |
This is tooooo funny. I've gone thru the same headaches. The good news is that after focusing about 9 months of attention on web design, then content, followed by SEO, I'm now busier than ever. Hang in there Silas, if you've got a great show and have done all of the other stuff well, the business will come. Of course, this assumes that you're not off in some backwoods town in the middle of nowhere.
I've shared your frustration on the amount of time that is spent on the business compared to the time spent on the Art. We got into this because we loved the Art of Magic, not because we wanted to learn all about web stuff, marketing, etc. My hope is that as my site, and marketing and tracking sytems mature, that I can then focus more on the actual magic. I hope I'm not decieving myself. May some older wiser magician brother please tell me it ain't so. Silas, I'd recommend that you read and implement the strategies in SEO for Dummies. It was a huge help. There is so much behind SEO rankings. |
captain10 New user 14 Posts |
Have you considered hiring a website designer. That way you could concentrate on the art. Yes, I realize it may not be cheap, but on the other hand, how much time have you (or will you) devote to the website, when instead you could have been earning money doing what you actually want to be doing?
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sleightlysilas New user 29 Posts |
Thanks for the input Michael! I think I'm gonna grab a copy now!
I actually did hire a designer. Sadly, as artistic as he is, ( http://www.sleightlysilas.com you be the judge of that I suppose) he knows nothing about SEO. And an SEO guy will cost me almost 5 times more... Looking at that quotation just makes me think... I could fly with that kind of money... Or eat a thousand double cheese burgers... One thing I do love about it is the certain credibility you get just by saying you have a website. Glad you're website is doing you good buddy. Here's to growth and success.
Sleightly Silas
Magician|Hypnotist|Visionaire www.SleightlySilas.com "...a little bit of magic, with a lot of something else..." |
AndrewJ New user Travis County, TX 70 Posts |
Alright. I'm going to give this a shot, although I'm about to quit to my job and flee away from any who ever says "SEO" with a straight face again. That is not a joke or a plea, but a fact. If you depend on more than 50% SEO to get that site noticed then you better just delete it now.
Meta Description is very long. It insults other people before even trying to sell you. Shorten it and sell yourself better. That's going to take an intimate knowledge of what you're offering and some classic marketing. Remember that the Meta Description may ultimately get used as your page description in the search engines. Use nothing longer than a tweet. Mentioning YouTube in that area may be bad taste. Only neophytes and bitter magicians relate YouTube to magic. Where are your links coming from? Where they come from is important; the one in your signature is not going to carry a lot of weight. No rings of links. The engines really diminish the value of those rings. On that end, go ahead and link out to venues where you will be performing. Yes, you give up "link juice" but gain unspecified respect. Remember that curators gain a lot of traffic by linking out to others. At least link out to your venues and upcoming shows. A lot of your page tells us that details are always coming later. Curb that impulse just a bit. At least offer more of a teaser. Local is a growing factor in search results. The word "Singapore" appears once in an image. That image does not count. It appears five times in your code. All five instances of the word Singapore are in an identical block of text. That block is repeated five times. Look for ways to include "Singapore" in your news section or text, and in ways that would help your reader. Pretend Google doesn't exist, but that you need to repeat the word Singapore three times or else no human being would find you. Update. Updates almost always offer small but notable boosts of traffic. Wait. Your site will gain some value and prestige in the eyes of The Almighty Google over time, especially if you continue to give it life with regular updates. Give complete strangers a reason to link to you. You need to know your audience very well, then give them something they want. Share that elusive "it" with those strangers and ask only that they share it with their interested friends. |
silent shadow Loyal user United Kingdom 231 Posts |
Slightlysilas I think you got a bad deal on that website, get a new designer and start over, the information and photos is ok but everything else is not.
Jason
Magic or just an illusion? it's a free choice .... isn't it?
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AndrewJ New user Travis County, TX 70 Posts |
Quote: I'm not sure about that. The code is relatively low in the way of errors - 47 validation errors across all that content versus 35 errors & 2 warnings for the front page at Google. The front page of a popular youth-oriented close-up site has 63 errors. It's not like the front page is a complete mess, and nothing is breaking the layout.
On 2011-04-19 19:32, silent shadow wrote: It's a wonderful marketing site. It's a fairly competent site. There are links where they need to be. The footer does link out to the designer and photographer - even if I stand by linking out to venues as well. The Twitter and Facebook links stand out - and those do a lot more good for entertainers than for, say, obscure widget retailers. I believe that SEO is form of gambling addiction, and have the scars from working among those gambling addicts for nine years. It's a contemptible, disgusting perversion of marketing. SEO seduces a person into trading away a piece of his soul for the mere hope that Google will bestow a 777 and a #1 rank. Look, some people joke about their jobs driving them crazy. SEO is, at its core, abusing a search engine's service for your gain. Add that existing willingness to commit abuse to the gambling addiction that comes from years of it. Don't do that to yourself. Marketing existed before the Internet. It still exists without the Internet. The people who are going to succeed and crush the SEO gamblers will still be the same people who market most effectively to their audience -- not to Google or Facebook or iPhones. Those are only tools. The Internet did shake things up, with new tools and new trappings. Make sure you use your best tools. Don't trap yourself in perpetual supplication to Google just because "that's how it's done." |
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