Total Web Review

Website Optimization Site Study

James Terrell — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 09:14:57 +0000

This is going to be the beginning of a study on website optimization for one of my sites. I am going to try and give monthly updates on my progress and the things I have done to improve traffic and ranking for the site in question. I will also be looking at income for the site. Right now the site is doing pretty poorly when you take into consideration that it has been up since December 2006 and it has 163 published posts. Last month it only made $6.50 from Google adsense and $10 from another program. My affiliate earnings are non-existent. Hopefully over the next 6 months with a little work I can get the site back on track. What I will do is lay out a list of goals, then the tasks that I will do to attain those goals. Through it all maybe I will see what works and what doesn’t.

These are the goals that I would like to attain over the next 6 months.

$50 a month from adsence. Right now I am at around $6 a month, hopefully by researching the right keywords and ensuring that I post quality, keyword rich articles it will increase my traffic from the search engines thereby increasing outgoing clicks on ads.
Two conversions a month on my affiliate links. I know that isn’t a very lofty goal but you have to start somewhere. One way that I am going to try to work this is through the keyword rich articles. I will also try and develop a page specifically for each of the affiliates that I am promoting. Every time I do a review or highlight some new product I will link to the page for that affiliate and also include an affiliate link on that page. At some point in time I will buy ads through Adwords and a few other advertising mediums to increase page views on those pages. It should result in conversions.
Next goal is 500 unique hits a day. This one will be kind of hard but it isn’t impossible. If I can get some exposure out there it should brings the visitors.

These goals kind of go hand in hand. If I can get 5 to 10 incoming links a week from good sites using the proper keywords it will help a lot. Quality articles will be a start plus try and promote the articles that I already have. We will see what works and at least once a month I will document my efforts and results. As a starting point here are my stats for the past month to date;

671 Unique Visits
4312 Page Views
55.74% Bounce Rate

I just hope that during all of this my bounce rate doesn’t go up. It is pretty fair percentage as it is. One more thing that may help is running adsense in my photo gallery. As a matter of fact I have a lot of work to do in that area but maybe once I start making a little more profit then I will be able to afford to pay someone to come in and help me with a better design for my gallery and get some SEO work done on it also.

Need A New Theme?

James Terrell — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:33:20 +0000

Over on one of my other sites (Open Road Biker) I have just got a new theme. I spoke with Ben Cope and he customized it just for me and helped me get it set up just right along with the installation of the theme files and widgets.
You can get your own copy by clicking here;
WordPress Dream Theme
There is three options when you purchase; You can get a basic install of the default dream theme with help for $97
Or you can go with an option for a little customization and a banner image for $167
If you have multiple sites that you want to use it on it will only cost you $247
This is a great theme and it will give your site a professional appearance right out of the box. Take a look at my other site and tell me what you think.

Thanks for reading,
James Terrell

PayDotCom Widget

James Terrell — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:31:29 +0000

Some of you that visit the site may have noticed a new widget. Now I am not of fan of widgets and I try to minimize them as much as possible on my site but this one was a little hard to bypass. It is a bit of simple code and it doesn’t increase my load times much and the bonus is that it features products that webmasters would be interested in (my main audience). I am hoping this will be a good way to monetize my site. Right now about the only thing I run on the site that earns any money are ads and they don’t do that good. Why don’t you head over to PayDotCom and get your own widget.

Using Article Sites For Links

James Terrell — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:50:28 +0000

We are constantly trying to gain backlinks so that we can improve our ranking in the search engines. Well one way to gain an unlimited amount of links is to submit your original articles to article sites. These sites host articles that others can use on their own site. So here is what you need to do;

Write a quality article. Do not use an article that you have already posted on your site. You want to avoid duplicate content if at all possible. Make sure the article has at least 2 links to your site and if the article site allows it use one of the links as a deep link. Preferably linking to an article that covers the same type of information that is in the article you are submitting.
Submit it to various article sites. This will increase your exposure and links. You might want to change the article up a little for each site you submit to.

Once that is done your article will be featured in whatever category that you chose and when someone else uses your article you get another link back. The article could be used multiple times possibly gaining you hundreds of backlinks for a good article.

Now there is one downside to this. Your article may be picked up by PLR resellers who just delete the links and use your article as their own. This doesn’t hurt your site but you just won’t get credit for the article from the people that buy it from the PLR resellers. There really is no way of preventing this but you still manage to get links from the article site and anyone else that uses it from the article site.

So there you are, a quick little method to help you obtain backlinks. Try it out and see how it works. You just need to type article directory into google to find tons of them. There are thousands of them out there.

Thanks for reading,

James Terrell

Use A Photo Calendar To Market Your Site

James Terrell — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:10:08 +0000

One good way to market your site is to give out free swag. This being the end of the year it makes it a good time to hand out Photo Calendars. Wallet calenders would also be a inexpensive way for site promotion. That way they get to see something with your sites logo and information all year long. Essentially you are buying a years worth of advertising. You can order items like that and other printed materials from Vista Print.

The Vista Print site is easy to navigate through the variety of products that they offer and they make the ordering process simple. Some of the products that they offer include business cards, rubber stamps, stationary, and a whole list of free products. Here is a list of the free products they offer;

* Free Business Cards
* Free Websites
* Free Rubber Stamps
* Free Poster Calendars
* Free Pens
* Free Caroling Caricatures
* Free Logo Design
* Caricature Design
* Free Checks
* Free Car Door Magnets
* Request Samples

Heck I think it is worth the price of admission just to check out the free stuff. I will be ordering some pens, business cards, and maybe a few calendars myself. That way when someone ask me about my site or I am telling them I can just hand them one.Probably the best deal though is going to be the 250 free business cards. Whatever you do just remember the new year is upon us and if you want to get a head start on next years profits now is the time to do it. In this market where we are all competing for a little slice of the pie you need to use every asset to your advantage. Look into Vista Print as one of those assets.

Thanks,
James Terrell