EzSEO Newsletter # 234

 

Hi Again

I have been on holiday for the last two weeks to the UK.  We spent a few days in Cardiff where I used to work (and was a student).  That was really great.  Wow, Cardiff has certainly changed a lot in the 10 years since I was there.

We also spent some time travelling around West Cornwall.  Its a place I use to go as a kid with my parents, but I haven’t been back since.  I cannot say it has changed much, not because it hasn’t, simply because I didn’t remember any of the old haunts.  It was like visiting for the first time again – really beautiful.

Funnily enough one marketer told me to bring my Winter Woollies when I told him we were coming over.  We did, but we ended up going to Primark and buying a stack of short sleeved shirts.  Sure, outside it was a little chilly, but in shops and hotels, the temperature was unbearably hot.  I guess we are just used to cooler temperatures in buildings over here as we don’t often use heating.  Anyway, enough of my holiday, let’s get on with this newsletter.

It is a short newsletter today as I am still playing catch up with the work I missed during my holiday, but I wanted to share with you the results so far (in terms of traffic & inc0me) of the site I have been converting from an HTML site to a WordPress site.  Also, I’ll tell you about the new way I plan websites.

In this issue:

1. Converting a site to WordPress

2. Planning a website

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1. Converting a site to WordPress
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Over the last few months, I have been working on a course to show you the exact steps I take in converting an old html website into a WordPress "blog", while trying to preserve rankings and traffic & existing inc0me. 

I finished the videos for the course this week – there are currently 21 but I may add one or two others as I start creating the PDF document to accompany the videos.  The videos are all quite short – bite sized pieces to the puzzle that you can follow along at home.

While I have not completely finished the conversion of the site (the original had around 200 pages if I remember correctly), I have converted around two-thirds of the pages, so I thought I would give you some figures that you can relate to on how successful the conversion has been so far.

The old site was built in Dreamweaver a few years ago and hadn’t been touched since.

Prior to the conversion, here are the stats for the site.

November 2008:
20 visitors a day
Combined Adsense + affiliate sales (1 sale) = $ 38.87

December 2008:
19 visitors a day
Combined Adsense + affiliate sales (1 sale) = $ 34.65

SITE CONVERSION BEGAN MID JANUARY

January 2009:
25 visitors a day
Combined Adsense + affiliate sales (3 sales) = $ 46.30

February 2009:
34 visitors a day
Combined Adsense + affiliate sales (3 sales) = $ 56.28

March 2009 to date:
41 visitors a day
Combined Adsense + affiliate sales (7 sales) = $ 85.41

NOTE: The content on this site has not changed significantly.  I have modified some articles, merged some into a single article and deleted some articles altogether, but essentially the content on this site is the same.  The only thing that has changed is its presentation, and the fact that it now runs with a WordPress engine

Now, looking at the figures above, the site is not currently going to add much to my bottom line.  However, remember the following:

1. The site is only 2/3rd converted.  I still have around 60 pages to convert.

2. I told you the site was created a few years back, remember?  Well back then I used ghost writers, and the instructions I gave them for creating content meant that a lot of what was published on that site was quite spammy.  The content on this site is still not very good.

3. I haven’t added in any themeing of content yet, which I will do as I add new, quality content to the site.

4. I have not done any promotion on this site yet – no backlinks, no social media, etc since it was created a few years ago.

This site is starting to turn around – the figures show that.  This will continue as I complete the conversion, and then work a little on backlinks. 

The course should be ready in about a week.  I’ll be offering it at a reduced rate via this newsletter for a few days.  If you want to be notified when it is ready, you can sign up for notification here:

http://improdigy.com/html2wp.php

Note that this is a double opt-in form.  Once you fill in your details and hit the submit button, an email will be sent to you asking you to confirm you want to be added to the list.  You will not be added to the notification list until you click the link in that email.

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2. Planning a website
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I have always planned a website in the same way.  I’d go off to Wordtracker and collect several thousand keywords, import them into KRA Pro, and then sort and filter until I had found the best phrases for main pages, and those I wanted to use as articles. 

In the last few months though I am doing things slightly differently.  The new method makes it a little easier, as well as helping to better silo the site (which is helping in search engine rankings).

Now, before I go into the new method, I just want to mention that I am not a hardcore siloer.  I like to keep all related content together in the same category and I try to cross-link only related articles, but, I do not take this to extremes.  If I have links to other categories, or articles in other categories, so be it. 

The overall idea of this new system is to concentrate on sub-niches, one at a time, and build those sub-sections before moving on to the next one.

THINK OF EACH SUB-SECTION AS A MINI-SITE

Suppose my website was on dieting.  This is a huge niche and to try to do the keyword research up front would be a monumental task.  A large part of my site would probably be the various diets that people could go on, so I would start off by setting up my WordPress site with a super category called "Diets". 

I would then pick one diet at a time, e.g. the Sonoma diet, and carry out the keyword research only on the Sonoma diet.  I’d keep this data in a separate database in KRA Pro.

I could then concentrate on the Sonoma diet, creating a main page for that diet as well as articles on the diet that can link back to the main page. 

When you are finished with the Sonoma diet, pick another area you want to work on, e.g. South Beach Diet and repeat.

IT’S LIKE ADDING LOTS OF MINI-SITES TO THE SAME DOMAIN, AND LINKING THEM WITH THE HOMEPAGE AND MENU SYSTEM

Planning a site this way has a number of advantages. 

As you work on the sections, you are actually becoming somewhat of an expert on that section as you are not distracted by the bigger picture of the site.  You can also make sure that each section has incoming links before moving on to the next section. By working in this manner and creating a "mini-site" for each section, related content is closely inter-woven, increasing the siloing of the site, and probably your rankings.

As time goes on, your site will grow as you add new sections and you’ll end up with a real authority site on the subject.

Imagine the alternative of sitting down and planning the entire site in one go…..  That’s what I use to do…

Well, that’s it for this issue.  If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my
blog:

http://ezseonews.com/blog/index.php

For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:

http://ezseonews.com/archives

Have a great week!

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The contents of this newsletter is copyright 2009 Andrew Williams.  If you want to republish any of the articles, you must get permission from the author.

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