Bum Marketing Is Harder Than I Thought
So I'm about a week into my experiment and I actually have ranked for some long-tail keywords. The particular keywords I've chosen are high volume so they're naturally going to be difficult to break into. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this difficulty has been the rumored 'sandbox' that Google places new websites into when they're related to high volume (and therefore, high spam) topics.
I've gotten a trickle of traffic from Google for the long tail keywords and I'm on page four for both. I can definitely hear the rushing rapids of pages one and two coming up soon though. It just pushes me foreward. The funny thing about this is - I've only paid for a few websites to advertise my link. Other than that, I've been writing articles, posting in topical forums and manually submitting unique descriptions to directories (although none have kicked in yet). Oh, yes, and I've been paying people to post on the website's forum.
All this and I get page four for long tail keywords! Ouch. This could get rough.
So now I'm researching other bum marketing methods as well as just methods that just flat-out help you climb the rankings. I'm also trying to think of a few clever ways as well, like link bait articles or some sort of side service that gets people to back-link the site. It works well for my Myspace Layouts site. 
So that's where I am right now. I'll keep you posted on the status of this project.
Popularity: 6% [?]
August 13th, 2008 at 6:13 am
How did you find sites to text-link advertise on? Are these permanent links or just temporary rentals.
August 13th, 2008 at 6:14 am
…also how did you find the longtails?
August 13th, 2008 at 6:35 am
You can only do so much with posting on forums. With SEO you can do all your markup right (title tags, h1 tags, internal link anchor text, etc) and still not rank as high as you’d like.
You just need to get lots of links.
August 13th, 2008 at 7:37 am
@Geiger: I just Googled the keywords I want to rank for and started hitting up the website owners. Some of the links are permanent, others are rentals. Most are permanent though, thank god.
To find the long-tail keywords, I just checked my stats.
@Matt: Exactly. It’s tedious to sit there and ask a bunch of sites to add my link, especially since they don’t usually respond until a day or two later. In fact, I’m keeping an Excel spreadsheet of who I talk to and what the status is. Otherwise, I’d go nuts.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:29 am
can you share how much do myspace sites can earn actually )?
I saw them all over but never understand how profit can be it (probably because I’m not fan of myspace)?:P
August 14th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
@peter: I’m not a fan of myspace either. Depending on how well your site is ranked, you can profit anywhere from $5-200 /day. My site is right around the $5 mark. A buddy of mine has a site that does much more volume and he does $200 /day, so it just depends.
August 17th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Bum marketing is tough, especially without buying any links. I think so many people are using bum marketing methods these days that it is no longer as effective as it was. I look forward to seeing how well you progress with this project.
August 17th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
@VMOptions: It’s much tougher than I thought, actually. Just means more dedication is necessary, I guess.
August 25th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Nice post, would have never guessed the long tails would be beneficial.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Scott, I give you credit if you stick with this experiment. From my experience bum marketing takes a long time to materialize. Maybe I just was in the wrong niches. But I certainly look forward to your updates.
March 21st, 2009 at 7:16 pm
another of a GEM
Long tail KW are a good way to attract the starting traffic around your main KW.
Its like building a reverse tree. which adds up in SE.