David’s WebToolTime!

This is a rather odd post for me. I’m going to review something other than a traditional web-building tool. Here it is, my phpArcadeScript review. It actually is a web-building tool, just one created for a very specific niche. 

OK, we’ve all been working too hard! Just for kicks, I decided to build a little arcade site. This is a site that offers free arcade games of all types, including free casino games, card games, action games, plus hundreds of free videos, including a bunch of free funny videos. I just bought a huge game pack, so soon I will have literally thousands of free games and videos on there. This is site I built for fun, to feed my addiction to new tools and toys. But, this type of site can have hundreds or thousands of pages that get decent Google page rank, without much work at all. Many of these arcades have pr4 or pr5. We’ll see how the experiment works! Meanwhile, take the rest of the day off and go play a game!

If you like this site, and want to build one yourself, it was done with a program called phpArcadeScript. (What the heck, I may as well get an affiliate link for them, since I like the program.) It took me about 20 minutes to set up that whole site. The only mods I made to the standard template (as of July 2007 anyway) were a few color changes, spent ten minutes building a logo, and put the Adsense on top.

The arcade site builder did a great job of building in good search engine optimization. For example, here is the text from one of my Google listings:

REVENGE Arcade - Galaxians
This is a classic game re-done for online enjoyment. You are in a space ship, trying to avoid
being blown out to smithereens while shooting down enemy alien …
www.revengearcade.com/games/8/galaxians.html - 33k - Cached - Similar pages  

Notice the nice description, and that was built in, I didn’t have to do anything. Also, it uses search-engine friendly url’s, with the name of the game in the url.

The script is database driven using MySQL, and all the users, links, desriptions and statistics are stored in a database. To set it up, it is very much like a WordPress install. Copy a bunch of php files to your server. Create a database. Change a config file to point to your database. Log in to an install.php script, and the site is built. Then if you want, run a download script to install a bunch of games.

This is a list of features that come standard, for a lousy $30:

5 Star Rating System - Membership Area for Users - Ability for Users (and Guests) to comment on games - Built in Link Trading Management - Built in Tell-A-Friend Script - Most Played, Newest Games and Top Players Lists - Fully Functional Admin Backend - Manage Categories (add, edit, delete) - Manage Games (add, edit, delete, active/inactive) - Manage Users (add, edit, delete, ban users) - Manage Links (confirm links, edit links, delete links) - Manage Comments (edit, delete comments) - Category specific meta keywords and descriptions - Game specific meta keywords and descriptions - Support for DCR / DIR games - Easy to use HTML templates for your own unique design. Plus, it comes with over 100 games and a few videos. However, these flash games are available free just for the looking. (Most contain links to their origins.) I also bought a gamepack containing 2,800 games for $25.00.

Now, imagine if I can get a couple thousand pages listed and ranked in Google, how much link power that will be. It reminds me of the old blog-farm days, when it was easy to get thousands of pages listed using automated tools. A good use for this script would be to build a farm of about five of these sites, linked in a circle. Then work on swapping links with the rest of the gaming community, which is a real easy thing to do, since they almost all have automated linking programs, like phpArcadeScript has. With this kind of link power, you can use these sites to build links to your other money sites and get hundreds of backlinks for good Google love.

One thing I haven’t explored much yet is how to monetize a game site. Looking at some of the leaders in the field, it looks like they’re doing banner ads for mostly electronics, like cell phones, iPods, and video games. Plus, they are obviously selling links on high page-rank pages. I won’t know for a while how well this works. You can always sell links once you are getting several thousand hits per month.

Back to the script. There are a bunch of SEO features built into phpArcadeScript. For example, the links to the games rotate constantly. So there is ever-changing content on the pages, including graphics. Also, with the user interaction, you are getting changing “top players” and “latest additions” links. So the links to other site pages are continually being rotated. There is also an “add this game to your website, blog, myspace, etc.” script built in, to encourage others to put the game on their site, linking back to you.

This looks like a very viral way to create a website, and I’m looking forward to seeing results, hopefully soon!

As always, feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions. I’m here to help.

Meanwhile, go have some fun!

Happy playing,

David

The two gents at SEOBlogBuilder have split up. The software is now being maintained by Jeremy Miller, the original developer. Same great product, continually improving. Just a different name, now Content Farmer. Read our Content Farmer review here. I have not review this for a while, so look for an up-to-date review soon.

It is very easy to add an eBay RSS feed to your Wordpress blog, or to any site for that matter. eBay gives you the tool to build the feed. You can customize it, and use whatever search terms you want.

There are really two reasons for putting an eBay feed on your site. First of all, you can get affiliate sales for doing it. You need to first be an eBay affiliate, which requires you to sign up through Commission Junction. You can build entire eBay stores this way, althought there is an easier tool available to build an eBay store, called Build A Niche Website.

The other reason to put these feeds on your site is that they will provide changing content (more…)

Hi friends -

If your inbox is as polluted as mine, I’m sure you’ve seen that there has been a proliferation of PLR article providers in the last several months. Since the search engines, particularly Google, are fighting spam harder every day, marketers have found that article sites have strong advantages over portals. After all, providing a quality experience for your visitor is what it’s all about, right?

I have subscribed to about 20 different PLR article providers at one point of another in the last year. Generally, being the “something new, need to try it” geek that I am, I will sign up for everything I see, at least for the first month. The quality of these services varies widely. The worse I saw looked like the provider spun each article using a tool, and never proofed them. That may work great for search engine purposes (or not) but you couldn’t read it!

One of the first article providers I signed up for, is one I’m still using, ArticleUnderground. You can read my full Article Underground Review here.

Hi friends!

Hope you all had a great Christmas (or other!) holiday season!

Mike Paetzold just released his new  report “7 Tips To Make Your
Word Press Blog Search Engine Friendly”. If you have or have
considered using Word Press for your blog you need to check this
out now.

Mike is selling this for the very reasonable price of $10.

The report will show you how he has been able to get his blog posts
indexed in hours instead of the 4 to 8 days it was taking before he
made the changes.

Mike has a way of walking people step by step through this so that
even if you aren’t “techie” you’ll easily be able to do the same.

Check it out before he comes to his sense and starts charging what
it is worth!

7 Tips To Make Your
Word Press Blog Search Engine Friendly

As always, happy blogging!

David

Hi all -

Here is my new Rapid Niche Websites review. This is a tool I recently purchased that does a great job of helping you build niche Wordpress blogs. As you know, WP is one of my favorite site-building tools, and the RNW tools I added will help in that business a great deal! Read the full RNW review here.

Happy blog-building!

David

Hi friends -

 PG Insider has a few openings. If you need to know more about PGI, read my review of PG Insider here. One of the best strengths of PGI is the owners committment to seeing subscribers succeed. Several months ago they started the “$100 per day” program, which was a complete blueprint for all the steps needed to earn $100 per day in Adsense earnings.

Many people started the program, and posted their results. It was interesting to read these. A large number of the useres failed in their attempts, and posted their frustrations on the forum. But many succeeded, an it was fun to watch as they outlined what they were doing, and how it was working. Face it, earning $100 per day in Adsense earnings is a real challenge, and much more difficult today than it was a year ago, or even 6 months ago. You really need to diversify your income sources! PGI offers instruction on finding other sources of income, also.

PGInsider is  still relatively cheap, I believe it’s still $127 to join, and $47 per month after that. You can join for a month, and pull all the educational materials. Watch all the videos, and read the forum. Then if you don’t think it is worthy to continue the monthly fee, just cancel.

Good luck with it! As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me!

Happy building,

David

I recently wrote a new article covering Wordpress SEO for article sites. WP is a tool I’m using quite often to build article sites. It’s especially useful when you are building big sites and have a lot of articles for them. These are the topics I cover:

Introduction
Which Theme to Use?
Plugins
Configuring Your New Blog
Template Modifications For SEO
Other On-site SEO Ideas
Writing Your Posts
Meta Tags
Efficiency Tips
Where To Go From here?

Here is the article on Wordpress Optimization

And here is a recent blog I built on home improvement topics using many of the Wordpress SEO options. 

Happy building!

David

[Wordpress SEO]