EzSEO Newsletter # 246

 

In this issue:

1. How an article killed conversions

2. WordPress Shortcodes

3. Success Story & a lesson to learn

NOTE: If you came here after watching the Amazon feed integration video online, please go see newsletter 247 (not 246 as mentioned in the video).

Hi Again

I am finding it increasingly difficult to get any work done around here.  My daughter has just finished school for the summer and the weather over here is fantastic if you like sunshine and hot temperatures.  I’ve never been one for lying on the beach soaking up the rays, but it is tempting to just go off and jump in the sea to cool down.

In this issue I wanted to show you how the addition of an article to my site killed conversions, plus take a look at WordPress shortcodes.

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1. How an article killed conversions
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In newsletter #241 I created a short video showing you how my WordPress sites work.

(Read/watch section 3 if you missed it first time round).

The video shows a "real time" experiment where I wrote an article which then got indexed and ranked in Google within minutes. 

The article initially went to #1 in Google for the term Cat Reverses Diabetes (the article title) and stayed there for a few weeks.  However, in their wisdom, Google have now replaced that article listing with the main "Cat Diabetes" page on my site (which contains a link to the article).

That’s not a bad thing at all, since the main cat diabetes page has a lot more content than the short article.

OK, there is the background.  Let me tell you how it killed conversions for me.

I have a page that is near the top of Google for the term:

i-pet glucose meter

This is the page:

i-Pet Glucose meter

That page had been converting quite well, but all of a sudden, sales stopped. 

After 3 weeks without a single sale, I decided to take a look at the i-pet glucose meter page.  It was still ranked in the top 3 at Google, still getting traffic, but there had been a big drop off in the number of clicks on the affiliate link.

Looking at the page I think I found the answer. 

If you scroll to the bottom, you will see a link "Glucose meters for pets" which links to another article on the site.

What you see now is the fixed page.  Initially when I went to check out the page to try to find a reason for lack of sales, the spot that is now occupied by the Glucose meters for pets article link was in fact taken by the "Cat Reverses Diabetes" article.

 

Imagine what visitors are seeing.  They are concerned about their pet having diabetes and are looking for a pet glucose meter.  They think they have found one in the i-pet glucose meter, only to read to the bottom of the page and see that its possible to cure diabetes in pets.  Why buy the meter when they might be able to cure their pet?  Surely that would be enough to put off potential buyers so that they could do a little more investigation?  I thought so. 

The solution was to remove the link to that article at the bottom of the page so that only the Glucose meters for pets link was shown.

The results?  Two sales almost immediately. 

OK, this isn’t conclusive proof that the reason for sales was that article link, but I really believe it was.

Looking back at the timings of all this, sales stopped around the time I published the Cat Reverses Diabetes article.

We are always told not to change something that works, but who would have guessed that publishing an article could kill of sales.  Certainly gives me something to think about.

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2. WordPress Shortcodes
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I had originally intended to write a longer tutorial on this topic, but found an excellent one already online.  Let me introduce the topic and point you in the direction of further discovery…

WordPress 2.5 introduced a little known feature to WordPress called shortcodes.  Essentially, these are "short codes" that you can type directly into your posts, and have something inserted into your post at that point. 

Let me give you an example. 

If you setup as shortcode called [adsense], you could just type [adsense] in your article wherever you want an Adsense block to appear.  The magic happens because of a little extra php code that you have inserted into the functions.php template file. 

WordPress has a set of procedures (known as the API) to handle the shortcodes.  When a post is saved, WordPress looks for the shortcodes and swaps them for the content defined by that shortcode in the functions.php file.

Another popular use of shortcodes is to insert related posts into an article.  WordPress has some built in shortcodes, but you are free to add your own if you know how.

Rather than create a long tutorial on the use of shortcodes, there is one already available here:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/02/02/mastering-wordpress-shortcodes/

If you are interested in learning more about shortcodes, do a search of Google for WordPress shortcodes. 

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3. Success Story & a lesson to learn
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It’s always nice to hear success stories so when a guy called Tony contacted me with one, I thought I’d share it with you. Tony is using my themeing strategies to create content for his website.  He mentions using a tool called FCC (that stands for Fat Content Creator and is part of my Fat Content Course).  Here is what Tony told me:

"Andy

I got 34 of the top words used from the top ten sites for a given key phrase. (why does everyone say keyword when it’s really a phrase?) and using FCC I wrote an article. I know a fair bit about on page SEO so I did some of that as well to a new WordPress blog that currently just has a single post on it.

After just one week that single post blog is now 3rd on Google with no back links to the page or domain and obviously no page rank. It’s beating sites that are 12 years old, have PR’s of 3 & 4 and from 28 to 316 page back links and several thousand domain links.

This shows the power of very narrow band themeing and using the words Google likes. It worked just like you said it would. Now I’ve got my basic position in Google I’m going to add the rest of the posts, monetise the site and start writing some LSI themed articles, Hub Pages and Squidoo lens so that I can create backlinks to consolidate and hopefully improve the position.

Thanks for your help

Regards

Tony"

Thanks for that Tony.  As a new blog I would expect rankings to fall off after a while.  The idea of getting links in to consolidate rankings is the right thing to do, and one that many "newbies" forget about.

And the lesson…

Writing great content is just one of the steps involved in long-term top rankings.  The other is links into the content.  Its not always a case of getting a lot of links into the homepage of your site, since Google ranks pages, not sites.  Therefore if you want a particular page on your site to rank better, get quality links into that page.

I was talking with Dr. Neil Shearing last week about link building.  He is busy working on a high quality eBook on this topic, so keep an eye out for that.  He was hoping for a release in early July.

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/

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.

This newsletter disclaims all responsibility for the advertising copy or the product advertised. You cannot rely on the fact that the newsletter has examined the product or recommends or endorses the product, unless it clearly says that it has, when you make your decision whether or not to purchase the product or interact with the advertiser. You are advised to do your own investigation before buying. Additionally, this newsletter may accept articles that we do not write or investigate the accuracy of and for which we may receive direct or indirect benefit or compensation. We specifically disclaim any responsibility for the content of such copy.

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