How much would it cost me to...

...run a full page advert for this place in a Future Magazine (something like GamesMaster or a PS or 360 mag) and would Future accept the ad or would they view it as competition?

Soil her Sugar Puffs.

Send an email to the magazines and ask.

We could ALL send in letters/emails to gaming magazines. I know that Xbox World in particular have been asking for more people to send in letters recently, because they don't receive many. So they'd almost certainly stick at least one of them on the letters page.

I saw a full page ad for Ghost Warriors the other day.

Ghost Warriors?! Yeigh! How exciting! When's that coming out?

October 31st.

October 31st?! Yeigh! That's Halloween! What a coincedence!

When it comes to Ghost Warriors, there are no coincedences. Or refunds.

Can I go trick-or-treating beforehand and bring the candy into the cinema for a mid-movie snack?

No, absolutely not.

I doubt they would print it, unless it was right near the back of a magazine. Otherwise they will be possibly drawing customers away from the forums they have set up.

I'd chip in.

Advertising rates for magazines can be pretty steep. Doesn't someone here like KK work for a magazine or have something to do with them?

Has anyone worked out yet how to optimise this place for search engines? If we can get www.grcade.com to show up every time someone searches for 'games' 'videogames', etc (you know, all sorts of key words) in Google or any of the other search engines it would help to bring in some casual visitors who might decide to register.

Anyone here know anything about how to do this? I'll offer to do a list of key words... I just don't know the first thing about optimising websites for search engines.

Ask James to amend the forum link on the main page to point over here. Cheaper than taking out an add, and more subversive.

KK (as i discovered the other day, works for the BBC).
As for the search engine recognition (from what I remember) it's all to do with key words in the meta tags in the source code.

An article explaining it is:
http://www.apromotionguide.com/metatag.html

I would be happy to help unless someone with more coding knowledge wants to step in.

Cal wrote:Advertising rates for magazines can be pretty steep. Doesn't someone here like KK work for a magazine or have something to do with them?

Has anyone worked out yet how to optimise this place for search engines? If we can get http://www.grcade.com to show up every time someone searches for 'games' 'videogames', etc (you know, all sorts of key words) in Google or any of the other search engines it would help to bring in some casual visitors who might decide to register.

Anyone here know anything about how to do this? I'll offer to do a list of key words... I just don't know the first thing about optimising websites for search engines.

You'd need to sort out the meta tags for the site I think. There might be an option to do this in the admin panel or there's probably an add on for PHPBB3 which you can install that will allow you to do search engine optimisation (SEO).

Some related links that might be useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_ranking
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/ - Very good forum for anything website related. Questions are answered fairly sharpishly as well.

El Diablo Rojo 52 wrote:

Cal wrote:Advertising rates for magazines can be pretty steep. Doesn't someone here like KK work for a magazine or have something to do with them?

Has anyone worked out yet how to optimise this place for search engines? If we can get http://www.grcade.com to show up every time someone searches for 'games' 'videogames', etc (you know, all sorts of key words) in Google or any of the other search engines it would help to bring in some casual visitors who might decide to register.

Anyone here know anything about how to do this? I'll offer to do a list of key words... I just don't know the first thing about optimising websites for search engines.

You'd need to sort out the meta tags for the site I think. There might be an option to do this in the admin panel or there's probably an add on for PHPBB3 which you can install that will allow you to do search engine optimisation (SEO).

Some related links that might be useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_ranking
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/ - Very good forum for anything website related. Questions are answered fairly sharpishly as well.

I hope Garth and GreenGecko are watching.

Doug wrote:KK (as i discovered the other day, works for the BBC).
As for the search engine recognition (from what I remember) it's all to do with key words in the meta tags in the source code.

An article explaining it is:
http://www.apromotionguide.com/metatag.html

I would be happy to help unless someone with more coding knowledge wants to step in.

It's not like that any more, not with Google. It was a much abused system and while keywords do help - to a very tiny extent - they are not what gets you to the top in Google. It's quality of content, links to other sites (legit ones), and so on.

A list of keywords, like 'games, game, game reviews, review, reviews, ps3, xbox, 360, wii, nintendo, nintendo news, games stuff, games chat, chat, gaming...' will do more harm than good.

Oh, and see the links up in your address bar as you browse the site? They don't help either as search engines find them harder to index (or, in some cases, they can't do it at all).

Charles Manson wrote:

Doug wrote:KK (as i discovered the other day, works for the BBC).
As for the search engine recognition (from what I remember) it's all to do with key words in the meta tags in the source code.

An article explaining it is:
http://www.apromotionguide.com/metatag.html

I would be happy to help unless someone with more coding knowledge wants to step in.

It's not like that any more, not with Google. It was a much abused system and while keywords do help - to a very tiny extent - they are not what gets you to the top in Google. It's quality of content, links to other sites (legit ones), and so on.

Me and Slayer were involved in building link directories way back when. We must've spent loads of time just submitting the site to various directories and over time the page rank of the site went up, more traffic came etc etc. Then it got sold.

Charles Manson wrote:It's not like that any more, not with Google. It was a much abused system and while keywords do help - to a very tiny extent - they are not what gets you to the top in Google. It's quality of content, links to other sites (legit ones), and so on.

A list of keywords, like 'games, game, game reviews, review, reviews, ps3, xbox, 360, wii, nintendo, nintendo news, games stuff, games chat, chat, gaming...' will do more harm than good.

Oh, and see the links up in your address bar as you browse the site? They don't help either as search engines find them harder to index (or, in some cases, they can't do it at all).

F*ck. If you know how this works PM Garth and offer to assist. It just goes over my head, but you sound like you could at least point us in the right direction. We need to get this place 'visible' to search engines somehow...

Why do we want to advertise GRcade?

This is our special community. Outsiders aren't welcome. Unless they're being used for our monthly sacrifice.

Are you local?

Tragic Magic wrote:Why do we want to advertise GRcade?

This is our special community. Outsiders aren't welcome. Unless they're being used for our monthly sacrifice.

New people would be good. And if they're noob-ish, then they'll be told where to go, and they probably wouldn't come back.

Any forum needs new blood to cover the natural wastage of people leaving. And, as Jaxley said, if we don't like them we can scare them off pretty quickly.

I've done a couple of ads in trade magazines specific to my business and the costs for 1 full page four colour tends to be £2000+. I would imagine that in consumer magazines the price would be significantly higher.