Good Places to Promote A Gun-Related Business/Website?

[GunXpatriot]

I'll pretty much avoid promoting my site in this particular thread.

What I've really been looking for, are good places to promote a gun-related business. But there's a catch. Simply dropping a link on a crappy website with poor (if any) Google rankings, is mostly useless and a waste of time in my experience.

Truth is, I've put a ton of work into producing content for my site, making a social media presence, as well as trying to contact influencers in the industry with almost nothing to show for it. Daily views have increased somewhat, but revenue is still lagging, to the point where I'm STILL at a net negative when it comes to my hosting plan/domain ownership. That's kind of depressing.

I think some of the biggest issues for me, has been establishing followed backlinks on major websites. This increases rankings for searches, but lack of these links from high-traffic and high-quality sites is definitely not helping.

What I need right now, are places where I can submit my gun-related website, and a place that allows followed links that will actually help my google rankings. Moreover, the site has to have significant traffic to the point where just by submitting a listing (or any other method), some amount of daily traffic to my site is nearly guaranteed. This is easier said than done, but I'm still on the hunt for options like this...

If you have a gun-related website and are in a similar situation, I would definitely consider working together to bolster both of our businesses! If you'd be interested, shoot me a PM on here.

I'm really hoping some of you have "cracked the code" on this. And hey, if you do have some awesome insider info and want to keep it confidential, I suppose you can PM me about that too! Thanks so much for any help you guys can give me!

[Doyle]

What about a mutual relationships with compatible non-competing firearms websites? I.E. if you are selling holsters, then a compatible non-competing business would be a something like a gunsmith that does Cera-coating. Etc.

Granted, those businesses are not individually likely to be high-traffic sites. But if you made enough of those mutual relationships then you'd get the same net effect.

[DaleA]

Some folk here list their web sites in their sig line. Is there some reason you can't do that? (Or at least mention it in your text?) I really don't know the rules about this so don't let me lead you into doing something wrong.

[RedHoundTargets]

I design and sell steel targets. I’ve been slowly expanding my offerings over the last year since I started my business and am at the point now that I have some variety to begin to stand out so I’m digging more into SEO.

Up to now one of my primary sales drivers has been (free) advertising on reddit’s r/gundeals sub. It’s a forum and will provide mainly for spikes in sales when you post a deal. I know that’s pretty much axactly what you said you don’t need right now but it has also been the catalyst (for me at least) to actually get people buying, which means people experience my products and customer service and tell others. Starts to get the name out there in a community (~156k users) already specifically looking to buy gun related things. It’s been the primary thing allowing me to cover my various costs as well as expand a bit.

If you’re doing interesting/useful blog posts and making sure that the H1 and H2 level text is descriptive, that should help drive both organic search engine rank as well as other get you on other link aggregators. Get ‘bodies through the door’ so to speak with interesting content that’s related to your product and at least some will look into the store section, too.

It sounds like you’re on the right track with contacting influencers, getting back links, etc. Have you done any paid google adds? I just started my first campaign literally 2 days ago and it has already driven traffic. I think I need to do smaller campaigns with specific search terms pointing to different pages but I’m working on that over time. It does mean spending more money but could be worth it because you can really nail down target groups who, depending on the search terms, you know are in buy mode. Clicks don’t necessarily cost that much. You probably already know about it but check out googles ‘keyword planner’.

As Doyle suggested, perhaps look into joining forces with businesses that are non-competing but of a related nature. Perhaps each could provide an exclusive coupon code to the other’s site.

I’d be interested in knowing what your website is. Im no expert but maybe I could give my topical 2 cents. I’d also be interested in seeing if our sites would jive to consider that mutual bolstering you mentioned. Don’t hesitate to pm me if you’re interested.

Good luck!

[GunXpatriot]

Originally Posted by Doyle

What about a mutual relationships with compatible non-competing firearms websites? I.E. if you are selling holsters, then a compatible non-competing business would be a something like a gunsmith that does Cera-coating. Etc.

Granted, those businesses are not individually likely to be high-traffic sites. But if you made enough of those mutual relationships then you'd get the same net effect.

To be honest, I've tried contacting dozens of businesses, but it seems like many rarely, if ever reply. Though I have formed some small mutual relationships, but they've been few and far between... I'm probably going to keep at it either way though.

[GunXpatriot]

Originally Posted by DaleA

Some folk here list their web sites in their sig line. Is there some reason you can't do that? (Or at least mention it in your text?) I really don't know the rules about this so don't let me lead you into doing something wrong.

To be honest, I actually did have it in my sig, but I wondered if it was hurting (or helping?) my SEO. I've heard conflicting reports. Overall, I didn't want to seem spammy, but I probably will add it again. I doubt it's going to hurt, and you have to figure I'll hopefully pick up a bit of traffic from threads coming up on google, things like that...

[GunXpatriot]

Originally Posted by RedHoundTargets

I design and sell steel targets. I’ve been slowly expanding my offerings over the last year since I started my business and am at the point now that I have some variety to begin to stand out so I’m digging more into SEO.

Up to now one of my primary sales drivers has been (free) advertising on reddit’s r/gundeals sub. It’s a forum and will provide mainly for spikes in sales when you post a deal. I know that’s pretty much axactly what you said you don’t need right now but it has also been the catalyst (for me at least) to actually get people buying, which means people experience my products and customer service and tell others. Starts to get the name out there in a community (~156k users) already specifically looking to buy gun related things. It’s been the primary thing allowing me to cover my various costs as well as expand a bit.

If you’re doing interesting/useful blog posts and making sure that the H1 and H2 level text is descriptive, that should help drive both organic search engine rank as well as other get you on other link aggregators. Get ‘bodies through the door’ so to speak with interesting content that’s related to your product and at least some will look into the store section, too.

It sounds like you’re on the right track with contacting influencers, getting back links, etc. Have you done any paid google adds? I just started my first campaign literally 2 days ago and it has already driven traffic. I think I need to do smaller campaigns with specific search terms pointing to different pages but I’m working on that over time. It does mean spending more money but could be worth it because you can really nail down target groups who, depending on the search terms, you know are in buy mode. Clicks don’t necessarily cost that much. You probably already know about it but check out googles ‘keyword planner’.

As Doyle suggested, perhaps look into joining forces with businesses that are non-competing but of a related nature. Perhaps each could provide an exclusive coupon code to the other’s site.

I’d be interested in knowing what your website is. Im no expert but maybe I could give my topical 2 cents. I’d also be interested in seeing if our sites would jive to consider that mutual bolstering you mentioned. Don’t hesitate to pm me if you’re interested.

Good luck!

I think the biggest difference with my site is that I don't actually sell things, but rather rely basically 100% on ad revenue. I do plan to expand that a bit, but my site's topic does mostly speak to ad revenue, rather than sales. I've thought about affiliate-type revenue, but haven't implemented anything yet.

You're probably right, I've too easily dismissed quick spikes in traffic, but it's also different because of the type of site it is. I'll probably keep at it though. Never give up!

I did try some Google ads, Facebook ads, but again, it's hard to get revenue when you're not relying on subscriptions or physical products to "close" on.

I have maybe neglected headings within my posts, and if you wouldn't mind giving my site a glance and suggesting how I might be able to incorporate them without being repetetive / spammy? If not, I totally understand, time is hard to come by unfortunately.

I think out sites might be different enough that we're not competitors, so I'll definitely shoot you a PM and see what we can work out! Thanks for your detailed suggestions man, it's greatly appreciated!

[jag2]

I have a couple of thoughts. First off, they don't know you or what you represent. There are a lot of "gun nuts" out there and you may do or say something they don't want too associated with. Are you the next Alex Jones?
Other point is what's in it for them? Its a business decision. Will they make money by linking up with you.
No judgement here, just things you need to consider.

[GunXpatriot]

Originally Posted by jag2

I have a couple of thoughts. First off, they don't know you or what you represent. There are a lot of "gun nuts" out there and you may do or say something they don't want too associated with. Are you the next Alex Jones?
Other point is what's in it for them? Its a business decision. Will they make money by linking up with you.
No judgement here, just things you need to consider.

Good points. That's true. Despite a common interest, guilt by association on other fronts is not uncommon, especially nowadays, though it's always been that way as far as I can tell.

As for smaller entities, I think we stand more to gain mutually, by working with each other. As for contacting larger sites, it's obviously a tougher decision for them, because they're basically giving away a favor for free...

[GunXpatriot]

Bump?

[Wag]

Keep digging into SEO. You need to get that right. Also, when you DO get it right, it can take a year or so to get into the top rankings.

Your meta tagging techniques will matter the most. But be aware, Google and Bing, et al, have gotten pretty smart about people over salting keywords. It takes a lot of thought to get this right. It's not like it was ten years ago!

Last time I had to do this, it took about eight months before our website moved from the eighth page of Google results to the first page (third on the non-promoted list).

I'm not too sure about Google adwords, but you may want to check that out. You're paying for clicks, as I understand it so it may be productive for you.

--Wag--