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9:54 am
June 10, 2011
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QuoteEDIT: Ok...I probably shouldn't have posted this at 4:00 am. The post title in particular sounds a bit obnoxious to me now: "Hey, help me with this project so I can reap all the rewards!" LOL! That's not what I meant. I just know that a lot of us have never delved into a project like this before. My thought was just to be transparent with you guys and show you what I'm doing so we can all learn. That's all.
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I've listened to the SEO trainings: HERE and HERE. Although I've examined the competition, I'm essentially taking a "damn the torpedoes -- full steam ahead" approach. The competition is stiff, but I don't think unbeatable over time. I'm going to drive traffic/SEO the site per John's second training, but I haven't started that yet.
Here are potential key words to go after (particularly "smooth jazz"):
| Keyword | Searches (Phrase) | SEO Traffic (Phrase) |
| jazz festival | 18082 | 7595 |
| jazz radio | 8088 | 3397 |
| jazz club | 6608 | 2775 |
| smooth jazz | 6608 | 2775 |
| jazz music | 4438 | 1864 |
| best jazz | 1989 | 835 |
| jazz bar | 1332 | 559 |
| latin jazz | 1088 | 457 |
| live jazz | 891 | 374 |
| jazz rock | 730 | 307 |
| smooth jazz radio | 595 | 250 |
| jazz concert | 398 | 167 |
| contemporary jazz | 266 | 112 |
| jazz station | 217 | 91 |
Here's what it looks like so far: http://www.smoothjazzhub.com/. This is a very early "draft" of a site. We might not even keep it at this domain. Incidentally, I have a partner in this, and she's not 100% sure she loves the name, but she says it's growing on her. I want to get going and start throwing content up so I can at least start to visualize this.
My partner is an artist manager. We are going to set up a store for her artists, of which I am one (we have a company who can warehouse, ship, and build the store page for a reasonable price), and monetize this site in a number of ways. I'm pretty excited about this project. It's gonna be fun, and we have some good resources in the industry.
Although I am not vindictive, I might as well just be honest and say the #1 spot in Google is currently "SmoothJazz.com," who both my partner and I have worked with/for, and we both have our reasons to enter into a friendly competition with them. I think we can take them. 🙂
So...I am open for comments. Whaddya all think? At this point, I'm particularly interested in comments on key words and how I have (or haven't) related them to site title, the tag line, categories, article titles, and content.
6:37 pm
June 10, 2011
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Looks like you're ready to go! I think you've got this... 🙂
Hey Charley:
I wouldn't worry too much about your post title. I thought it was pretty obvious that you intended to take us all behind the scenes of your project in order to see how something like this would work (particularly given the transparent nature of all your past posts).
Seems like you've got the basics down, as far as building your keywords into the structure of your site (of course, I'm just a guitar player, so take my comments for what they're worth ;).
Thanks for doing this - I think it's going to be really helpful for everyone!
"Radio Nowhere? What the hell is that? We wanted him to be a lawyer" — My Mom
Okay, so she didn't like it. But you just might! Loud guitars, award-winning songwriting, and visits from the devil.
Check it out and pick up a free EP here..
7:32 pm
June 10, 2011
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Thanks, guys! So here's the update:
My partner likes the name, so we're going with "Smooth Jazz Hub." She has graphic and web design people, writers, etc. in the smooth jazz industry who have indicated they might be willing to donate some services. She also has potential investors. We are going to monetize the site in a number of ways. So, I'm pausing for a moment until we can have a planning telecon.
We are keeping the design in Wordpress. I'm in charge of the "traffic department," and she's in charge of the "beauty department." However, I told her, "If some guy offers you a free $5,000 whiz-bang design that's going to hurt us in the search engines, but John tells me sprinkling the words 'yellow megaphone' through-out the text is going to make us #1 in Google -- you know where my bias is!"
Neither of us can sleep. Ideas are flowing. And we know we're going to probably piss some people off... I'm not looking forward to that part, but the purpose of a free market is to improve life for everyone.
11:32 pm
June 7, 2011
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Awesome Charley. I foresee this being the most popular thread in teh forum in time. This is what the IC is all about.
My first reactions/impressions....
1. Site looks cool enough (might be able to be improved upon a bit), but it still feels asleep. Start creating social media channels and adding them. Especially add the social sharing buttons to your post. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google +. Social links and activity are really important right now and having all of those channels present on teh site gives some life to it. I'd also get comments going, maybe add facebook comments in place of wordpress comments (your call).
2. Add images and other media to your posts. Sooner or later you are going to get a human reviewer from Google coming across your page. Images add value and they are not something that you see in most scarper/low quality sites. You can buy cheap images at fotolia and istock.com and you can find creative commons images on flicker. It's usually easy to find something related on Youtube as well. This stuff also makes the site feel alive.
3. It's your cal on this but it might be worth considering leaving the add off of the home page and display it only on the post pages. I realize MMM doesn't do this, but it removes any doubt that the site has only commerce intent in mind and may help in the long run. That's totally your call.
4. I find light colored pages do better than dark, even though I personally like dark.
Otherwise, I think it's an awesome start.
If you feel like sharing, maybe post traffic and rank screen shots as time goes by. Be cool to see the growth.
You might also contribute your own blog post to the site under your name that your fans might find interesting and then send an email blast to it, asking them specifically to help by clicking the like/tweet/share button and/or leave a comment. Make sure the post has one of your primary keywords in it. This will help get a nice blast of social backlinks coming in. You might even just tell your fans about the site and what it is your doing with it and share the site rather than a post and ask them to click a like/share buttons on the home page. That would likely do really well for you.
Also... A few high quality press releases over time would likely help.
Great ob man.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
5:01 am
June 10, 2011
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Thanks, John. Your comments are very much appreciated. I will work on those, let my partner spruce things up a bit, and then I'll give an update. Also...I need to figure out wordpress a bit better -- like how to have the ad not show up on the first page, but have it show up when the blog links are clicked.
5:30 am
June 7, 2011
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My pleasure. Hope they helped. Just one guys opinions at the end of the day. The post specific side bar depends totally on your theme. If your theme doesn't allow it then there are various plugins that can do it. widget logic is a place to start. I have been using a company called ithemes.com for HardcoreTroubadour.com and they have some awesome flexibility. You can create "views" which allows you to tell the theme to display specific templates for posts, pages, categories, authors, etc. So for example with HCT, I can create ads for each genre by customizing the side bar to be category specific. It's pretty cool.
With all of that said, it's one of those things that would be really simple for a designer but a bit of a headache for someone who doesn't understand this stuff. You might talk to Scott James and see if he could rig it up. There are probably million ways to do it if you know what you want.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
3:07 am
June 10, 2011
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Quick question. In your training, you also discuss "mini-sites" as a way of going after medium competition keywords. If I also do that, is it a good/bad to have these pointing to my authority site? In other words, should I fear my authority site getting slapped because I have some mini-sites pointing to it? My question assumes the mini-sites are on different IPs, and there is not an obvious connection to my authority site.
EDIT: Never mind. I see you covered that adequately in the penguin safe training. Basically, you said, "Yes, but keep on different IPs." That's what my instinct was telling me.
7:13 am
June 10, 2011
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I think one thing I'd like to try is getting some mini-sites going while I work on my authority site. That way I have some quicker gratification, as well as a link source for my authority site. So, my questions are:
What settings would you use in Market Samurai? What level of traffic and, in particular, what level of competition would *you* use to screen key words worth going after? It's probably somewhat of a more subjective thing than an authority site that you have a passion for, or a long-tail keyword post that, by definition, has essentially no competition. When do *you* think it becomes worth it or not worth it for a "mini-site"?
10:32 pm
June 7, 2011
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Hey Charley,
I do usually link them, but you would want them on different IPs and you should pay attention to any footprint you might be leaving.
This is actually a matter of debate. Some people don't believe you should link them to your site, some do. The fear is that it could be looked at as a blog network by Google. But A few won't hurt. It's much more about when you get into the dozens that you need to make the call for yourself. It's a risk vs reward kind of thing. But like I said, I do it.
As for Market Samurai settings... There are a number of different strategies beneath the "mini site" umbrella. Some people go after low comp keywords, by exact match domains, and do very light SEO.
Others go after pretty competitive keywords with exact match domains, throw some automated services at it, rinse and repeat.
Others go white hat on their link building but use the mini site to go after keywords that are a little too competitive for just an article but for which an exact match domain and targeted site will do the job.
Your best bet is to try and do a couple of each and see what works best for you. You can really get one up in a day or two.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
5:14 pm
June 10, 2011
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Ok, we have a draft website artwork design. As I look at it, I'm kinda freaking out. I can't believe I'm doing this. For those of you who might be thinking, "I could never do this, and I don't want to do this..." that's where I was a year ago. I didn't even know my business partner or the people who are helping me now. I met them by using the methods in MMM 2.0. That's the truth.
Any comments on THE DESIGN? We are going to keep this in Wordpress. I realize that it's ultimately going to come down to content. This is just the framework, and I can see this is going to be a lot of work. I wish that an attractive cosmetic design would make all that go away.
I'm pretty excited about the project, and I would appreciate you guys keeping my feet on the ground. However, the really cool part about this is: I now realize that if I don't like the costs of other people's services, I can just become my own advertizer, press agent, program director, etc. 
8:15 pm
June 7, 2011
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Charley Langer said I now realize that if I don't like the costs of other people's services, I can just become my own advertizer, press agent, program director, etc.
Yep, that was the exact revelation that excited me about this stuff so long ago. I'm excited for where things seem to be headed for you man.
As for the design, I think it looks great. Very attractive and professional. However... That top section is quite large. It pushes the content way down on the page. Generally speaking this is a bad thing from a marketing perspective. If people need to scroll to figure out what something is about or to see the content, they often don't. With that said, there are a million exceptions to all the rules out there, so I'm not saying it MUST be changed. Just something to think about.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
12:19 am
October 27, 2011
OfflineCharley Langer said
Ok, we have a draft website artwork design. As I look at it, I'm kinda freaking out. I can't believe I'm doing this. For those of you who might be thinking, "I could never do this, and I don't want to do this..." that's where I was a year ago. I didn't even know my business partner or the people who are helping me now. I met them by using the methods in MMM 2.0. That's the truth.Any comments on THE DESIGN? We are going to keep this in Wordpress. I realize that it's ultimately going to come down to content. This is just the framework, and I can see this is going to be a lot of work. I wish that an attractive cosmetic design would make all that go away.
I'm pretty excited about the project, and I would appreciate you guys keeping my feet on the ground. However, the really cool part about this is: I now realize that if I don't like the costs of other people's services, I can just become my own advertizer, press agent, program director, etc.
Thumbs up on getting the ball rolling on your Authority site man. I'll be following along closely as I'm also in the process of setting mine up. Very cool site design choice. Just out of curiosity, was there ever any consideration given to purchasing an existing site from Flippa.com to fast-track the PageRank aspect? I'm starting from scratch personally...
The design rocks! Love it.
I'm an attorney and internet marketer, but I'm here to help my daughter build a career as an independent singer/songwriter. -- taysings.com, youtube.com/taysings
2:28 am
June 10, 2011
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John Oszajca said
However... That top section is quite large...If people need to scroll to figure out what something is about or to see the content, they often don't. With that said, there are a million exceptions to all the rules out there, so I'm not saying it MUST be changed. Just something to think about.
Thanks, John. That's a helpful comment. My partner was thinking the same thing--and you confirmed it--so we are going to do some revisions to be a little more efficient with space.
2:39 am
June 10, 2011
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Damien Rodriguez said
Just out of curiosity, was there ever any consideration given to purchasing an existing site from Flippa.com to fast-track the PageRank aspect? I'm starting from scratch personally...
Hi Damien. No, I've never done that. We like the domain name we picked, and the name is shaping the way we are designing the page.
I seem to be ok getting pages to rank decently just by going after long-tailed keywords and doing a bit of natural linking to things moving. That said, I am guessing that getting this site to where we really want it in the search engines is going to take some work. The cool thing about the SEO/Traffic strategy that John discussed in the last SEO training is: it really doesn't matter that much. I'm going to pull in a lot of traffic either way. I'm already seeing it work on a smaller scale on my own blog site. I have absolutely no doubt that I will have gobs of traffic in a couple years. I'm not in a hurry.
2:40 am
June 10, 2011
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Mark said
The design rocks! Love it.
Thanks, Mark! It'll get a few tweaks, but I think it's going to end up pretty similar to that.
9:28 pm
June 7, 2011
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Good stuff. Keep us posted on how things develop. I'd love to hear your traffic stats once they start to build up.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
5:31 pm
October 20, 2011
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4:20 am
June 10, 2011
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So here is the final design for the home page and the "draft" musician's shed. The musician's shed is the most complicated of the sub-pages, and is essentially a web site unto itself. Just wanting some feedback if you have a moment.
As you can see, this has turned into much more than a traffic strategy -- it's really a full-blown web business. The more my partner and I talked about it, the more we saw the potential, and the more it made sense to do a thorough web design, business plan, etc. The down side is that it is now taking much longer!
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