Forum Moderators: phranque
I have a little community site, virtually dead after my hosting company wrecked the thing last year. Managed to move the site to a much better and more trusted host. Hosting is no longer a problem, perfectly happy on that side.
Now I have very little in the way of technical skills, site is built with a WYSIWYG that I love dearly. I am checking my meta tags, alt text, titles and descriptions, with text-based cross-linking and as much keyword density as I can cram in while remaining genuinely natural sounding, for the most part anyway.
Main product is a book with some specialist software to go with it, produced to my own design. Book, software and membership to private forum priced at $30.
I have some content, about 6 articles but am considering dumping these articles and instead really concentrating on the actual keywords people use to find the site.
For example imagine a horse-riding site but as most visitors will come via the keyword "black horse" - am considering making it a site about black horses.
Not actually horses or anything, in this case more the software. People search for that specific software so am thinking og a site dedicated to that type of software, little else.
OR a section that's 'funnelled' and virtually orphaned, actually changing the home page button to point to the start of the section instead of the main homepage (retaining a link to the actual homepage in little type at the bottom of the page).
I've decided the software is probably my best marketing position - I think. "Software with book" rather than "book that comes with software!" kindda thing.
I'm currently trying Adwords and finding it a real pain. As I described it on a MSN thread it seems more like vodoo than making business and advertising decisions! 2 week with Google and have managed exactly 1 visitors, averaging 33 cents but some keywords around 65 cents. No sales as yet.
I'm figuring making the site really interesting to those looking for that kind of software and concentrating on conversions is going to be easier for me than trying to draw big traffic, for now at least as my budget is tiny.
The main membership area and so on I cannot really touch, all custom and stuff but the public areas I'm happy to completely re-build if necessary.
So, any general pointers on the following?
Driving traffic apart from PPC
Best ways to advertise software - I've submitted it to download.com, still waiting to hear from them
Best design and layout for the site? A rough description?
Or any other general advice really?
P.
I average about 5 clicks a day from 123search, which appears to be genuine traffic when using keywords for the software only (went bananas with fraud when I used a popular generic term)
Whatever maijor changes I make I need to be pretty sure I'm doing the right thing, if only because the marketing has chopped and changed a lot as I'm finding my feet and making me look silly in front of the few members there (was initially $50 for both products, or $30 for software, $20 for book etc Have now decided to go for high value, one simple and low price)
In essence I'm thinking of going a stage further than simply a landing page built for Google and creating around 6 or 6 pages specific for the keyword and no navigation anywhere else.
You want black horses? Here's a site about black horses.
White horses? Here's a site about white horses..
Also what are the implications for duplicate content - on the same site? Same site, same domain, very similar articles but built around different keywords, eg:
"Black horses can be very frisky when young.."
"White horses ca be very frisky when young.."
Sorta thing?
P.
I would concentrate on building as much good quality content as you can for a start and avoid duplicate content.
I wouldn't even bother too much with keyword densities at the beginning - just make it sound natural. The big SE can often spot unnatural keyword-crammed articles.
I'm sure there are many threads on here about how to promote a site, so no point reiterating what's been said before.
I gave a lot of thought to my general site layout last night. Actually drawing out the current structure on paper is an eye-opener isn't it?
For a start I was shocked just how big my site is, while I was thinking "hardly started". Reading through the forums last night, re-finding Brett's 26 steps and other stuff has helped give me some ideas on structure.
Right now it's a mess simply because the navigation is actually too easy, if that makes sense. But too easy in that a visitor can easily hop from section to section, cept there aint much in the way of sections. OK, that's not very clear but if you saw the site you'd know what I mean.
It needs structure, that's what it needs.
There's little in the way of a sales 'funnel' but I'm not sure how one can do that and also stick to the 'no more than 3 steps from root' thing?
Also, what's the general skinny on directly comparing my products with those of others? I'm confident my own stacks up well for the price and was thinking of doing a table, directly comparing to 6 main competitors.
I'd imagine showing screenshots of their software would be against copyright but how about naming them?
For example 'Autosave - Mybrand Yes, Thatbrand No, This-Brand Yes, Someotherbrand No.." kinnda thing?
and if so best for credibility to link to them or not? And if so, open new window or let the surfer hop directly to their site and hope they prefer mine and hit Back?
My thinking is that if someone searched for that specific type of software then that's what their after or interested in and I'd like to give them all they need on my site, including data on other brands, than have them go back to Google and then get sold by a better salesman than me :o)
I can do that in general but what about direct, named comparisons?
P
stick to the 'no more than 3 steps from root' thing?
The funny thing about the old "three click rule" is that everyone spread it around -- but during the first decade of the web, no one formally tested it. Then in 2003 a little bit of a firestorm got set off by this: Testing the Three-Click Rule [uie.com] by Joshua Porter, a user interface engineer.
The results were surprising: "Our analysis showed that there wasn't any more likelihood of a user quitting after three clicks than after 12 clicks -- Hardly anybody gave up after three clicks."
Porter noted that users do complain about the time it takes to find information -- but his testing suggests the real problem is poor site organization, a weak Information Architecure.
A good Information Architecture, with really descriptive menu labels, can give your visitors the sense that they are going toward the information they want -- and then they stay with you. So if you can organize your content intuitively, then you may not need the old three click rule at all.
I just hope it applies to search engines as well!
Intuitive linking, gottit. I currently use buttons across the top but am adding some descriptive text links down the left hand side as well, with little calls to action and keywords in 'em.
Since mine is a relatively low cost product, $30 while most are $50, I've got the price splattered on the top and bottom of the homepage.
Is this good or a no-no?
I know for me it's a pain having to start a check-out or something just to find out the price of something..
P.
