MSO (MySpace Optimization) - The New SEO
Okay, so now that Myspace is the #1 site in the world, I think it’s finally time to embrace the space with a full marketer’s mentality. Despite the Myspace’s title being disputed, it’s hard to argue that there is an incredibly large market with a whole lot of potential. I haven’t dove in wholeheartedly yet, but from my very unscientific experiments on myspace at school there is an extremely high level of loyalty with myspace. My favorite stat is that myspace has 40 pageviews per visitors ON AVERAGE. That was a pretty amazing number to me.
While on vacation, I’ve seen two seperate instances of television ads that used Myspace URLs. I thought this kind of odd at first, but with increasing difficulty to both purchase (and then rank) new domains, it makes pretty good sense. Both the movie “John Tucker Must Die” and the TV show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia advertise Myspace Urls. This is in addition to thousands of groups dedicated to virally marketing and promoting various different topics, including one of my favorites, Entourage, which attempted a viral campaign via Myspace.
Benefits of My Space Optimization
Quicker Search Engine Rankings
“It’s Always Sunny” didn’t fair so well in the rankings, but “John Tucker” gets a #2 ranking for the phrase on Google with the intended myspace page.
No need for domain or hosting
Immediate audience with massive distribution
Drawbacks of My Space Optimization
No control over web host or downtime
Rather slow servers due to large volumes of traffic
No ownership of content
No ability to 301 traffic or content if it needs to move. If links are built, they can’t be redirected to appropriate areas.
Little way to track statistics and visitors (that I’m aware)
Search rankings are nice, but I really prefer converting traffic. The TRAFFIC is definitely there, now we just need to hope that myspace users start looking for more than friends and dates, and searching for more high dollar items that can be monetized (especially if they implement their own search technology after their search function contract expires). There’s definitely a ton of potential with Myspace, it’s only a matter of getting creative to harness some of the enormous viral marketing opportunities.
MySpace Optimization Resources
- Myspace: Good for more than just hanging out
- Getting to know Myspace
- MySpace gold at MarketingVOX
- Myspace marketing
- My Social Marketing
- Much more on “myspace marketing”
21 Comments Leave a comment »
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Daniel R
July 17th, 2006,
4:45 pm
Todd,
Good post, very creative stuff.
Are you going to be stopping by for SES San Jose?
But as for the high pageviews, I think those stats are very misleading. If you notice carefully, MySpace is ridiculously difficult to navigate, it takes 5-6 clicks just to change a simple item on my profile (and that’s if MySpace suddent doesnt log-out on me).
See the article below:
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2006/04/myspace-click-factory
Mr SEO
July 17th, 2006,
7:54 pm
That is why I am on your Myspace friends section.
Blazin
July 18th, 2006,
12:34 am
yes i just purchased a decent domain for myspace, now can you tell me how to market it, its hiphopmusic ok let me know thanks
Starked SF » Blog Archive » Talk of the Town Tuesday
July 18th, 2006,
12:12 pm
[…] See Stuntdubl on MSO (MYSpace Optimization). […]
Website traffic: in search of | DropShipArea.com
July 19th, 2006,
3:24 am
[…] MySpace attracts many webmasters. There are a lot of blog and forum posts. The one that comes to my mind is the recent post on this topic from Todd Malicoat with a few links on MySpace optimization: […]
John Andrews
July 19th, 2006,
2:24 pm
Hey Todd, have you identified any good MySpace optimizers yet? Any MySpace sits that stand out (beyond the obvious Dolce one)??
Is MySpace really an “opportunity” or just the buzz?
Jason Bailey
July 19th, 2006,
2:52 pm
Thanks Todd,
I’m just getting into making things happen on mySpace as well. It’s hard to ignore such a huge market. Thanks for all of the resource links, that’ll keep me off the streets for a few hours…
I did a little experiement last week to see the results of a simple buliten post to get a quick sense of the ease and earning potential on mySpace.
I posted the results on Lee Dodd’s New ‘Earners Forum’.
Everyone can have a look see if they wish:
http://www.earnersforum.com/showthread.php?referrerid=392&t=1742
IrishWonder’s SEO Consulting Blog » Blog Archive » What Is the Value of MySpace?
July 19th, 2006,
4:13 pm
[…] Recently I have read StuntDubl’s post about MySpace SEO (highly recommended, he provides a good sum up on all pros and cons there). Seems like this topic doesn’t fade away like some expected but only gets people more interested in it. Even those who at first grumbled about MySpace’s ugly design and screwed up usability now try to catch up with MySpace marketing. So what is the real value of MySpace? […]
Rich Marcia
July 20th, 2006,
10:02 am
Stuntdubl,
Are we going to do the Yahoo! Fantasy Football SEO League again this year?
Rich
» Monday Speedlinking - 24 July 2006 » $250/Day » Blog Archive
July 24th, 2006,
6:07 am
[…] Stuntdubl talks about MySpace Optimisation (MSO) - The New SEO […]
Jon Payne
July 24th, 2006,
9:36 am
Todd - have you or anyone you know of tried a third-party cookie based tracking solution for tracking traffic on MySpace? I would think that would work. You can insert HTML and CSS to customize your MySpace page apperance in some of the sections of the page. I also know you can do an image call from another site. That all makes me think you could use a third party cookie-based tracking provider.
I’d try it right now but their servers are down this morning. I would guess the best you could get though would be things like referring domains, total visitors, page views, etc. On MySpace I’d guess the majority of most peoples traffic is indeed coming from other pages on MySpace. Given their dynamic URLs and your ability to only modify your own page, I think it would be tough to identify if a few profiles within MySpace lead to most of your traffic, etc. Should work nicely though for differentiating direct traffic and also SE-referred traffic.
SEO ROCK
July 27th, 2006,
3:25 am
My space has taken a big market share now and is now one of the Top 10 most visited webites on the internet.
Their market is teens from 9 to 25 and upwards, and they spend a lot of time on the internet and their market share will keep on increasing.
My hats off to my space.
The Way We Were - Promocharger.com
July 29th, 2006,
7:09 am
[…] So usability is important, and I know I’m preaching to the choir here at TW. But whether doing A/B split or Taguchi multivariate tests, or going for deliberate crap usability to turn ridiculous pageviews while people are looking to gossip, find bands and get laid, we can all agree that usability is has an important impact on business. […]
Bill
July 29th, 2006,
10:03 pm
Great stuff as always. Care to comment about the promotion bots out there that will promote myspace sites automatically? Like Adderrobot and a few others? And what’s with these “trains”?
web
July 31st, 2006,
2:45 pm
Sort of like advertising during the Super Bowl.
They network controls the venue, but in return delivers massive eyeballs.
One Blog, Slightly Used
January 8th, 2007,
3:49 am
Myspace Marketing, In my opinion….
While randomly browsing google for myspace for marketing, I came across this blog post: “MSO, The New SEO.”
Myspace is hardly any good these days for even marketing. I believe it’s too late for any myspace marketing. Why? Because of a…
Optimizing your social media | Digg, Reddit, Netscape and MYspace | Joe Whyte - Seo Consulting - Rockyfied
January 17th, 2007,
12:38 am
[…] NOTE: Somthing I think most social media marketers will agree on is that people need to trust your profile in order for you to be successful. Todd Malicoat listed some great other resources for myspace marketing and I will repost them here. […]
SEO Consultant - Shimon Sandler » Blog Archive » MySpace Optimization
April 17th, 2007,
10:58 pm
[…] According to Hitwise data, MySpace moves into #1 position for all internet sites. Saavy marketers are optimizing Myspace. […]
Nick Jag
August 9th, 2007,
4:19 am
Todd, have a look at my blog, it’s entirely devoted to marketing on myspace, facebook, and youtube!
Getting featured is obviously one of the most popular topics along with seo for your profile. Find it all here:
http://www.nickjag.com/
IrishWonder’s SEO Consulting Blog » Blog Archive » What Is the Value of MySpace?
December 9th, 2007,
5:02 pm
[…] Recently I have read StuntDubl’s post about MySpace SEO (highly recommended, he provides a good sum up on all pros and cons there). Seems like this topic doesn’t fade away like some expected but only gets people more interested in it. Even those who at first grumbled about MySpace’s ugly design and screwed up usability now try to catch up with MySpace marketing. So what is the real value of MySpace? […]
Richard McDuff
April 17th, 2008,
2:08 pm
This is an excellent article. I have only been involved in Social Networking for a few months, and it takes a lot of hard work. I have been especially involved with Myspace and I am having a great time over there. If you look at Myspace in a global context, it still has so far to grow. I am talking to some guy in france, someone in the UK and australia before I have finished my morning coffee Thanks for the great article.
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