Build a Niche Store Empire – Working with the Templates
I wanted to get this weekly series started MUCH earlier than today, but the release of BANS 3.0 yesterday threw me for a little spin! :-) Anyhow… by now, most of you are growing impatient and wanting to get some darn color to your niche sites, which means we need to start modifying the templates! Did I just hear a gasp in the crowd? Honestly, it can be challenging to modify your templates, but once you have the basics of website design down, the template mods will start to make sense!
It is very likely that this series of posts alone will consume 1-2 full weeks of time, so I don’t want you to get hung up on working on this ONLY. As we progress through some of the areas, you should still be building a new Niche Site every week! 5-6 weeks from now, you should have a total of 8-10 BANS sites in progress… and you should be comfortable with almost every task you need to perform on them! The really good part to this is that I am going to be providing FREE BANS TEMPLATES of my own along the way, you can all download them and use as you wish! :-)
Without further Ado…
Build a Niche Store Template Modification
I’m sure all of you would hope to jump right in and start building your own template system right now… before I get to that point however, I want to take a day or two to explain both the good and bad things you can do to your site template, that will have an effect on SEO. Building your template is just as much of a thought process as your entire niche store and you should draw it on paper BEFORE you start!
ANY examples I use for this series are sites that are linked in the Niche Store Directory on this site. I am not picking on anyone, just showing examples of both good and bad things to do, please don’t hunt me down and shoot! 
Look on the bright side, you just got your site linked, Free inbound Link!
First and foremost – TEXT IS KING!
So, what the hell does that mean Mark? In a nutshell, I would estimate that 90% of the build a niche store websites I see, have spent quite a bit of time adding a nice header graphic. In order to get that header graphic looking good, they usually delete the code that shows the page / site title, and incorporate that into the new image they made. Here are a few examples:
-
Asus Ecobook Laptops - Removed header H1 and replaced with image
-
Vintage Collectible Dolls – Even worse… Hid the H1 title as small text and made it the same color as page background! (Place your cursor over the top-left dolls head, hold down the left mouse button and drag it to the left side of page, you will see the H1 highlighted)
-
Classic Kit Cars – Same problem as the first site, removed H1 and replaced with image.
OK, so why the fuss, these sites all look great! Put yourself into the legs of a search engine spider… they don’t read images! Even though the big three (Google, Yahoo and MSN) say they are on the verge of effectively reading images, the bottom line is that Text is King!
Example #2 up there has a whole different problem with the way the H1 is reduced in size and hidden in the background. A small thing like that could ultimately get your site dropped from the results pages.
So what difference does it make? Lets envision a search engine spider like a human. (with 8 tiny legs and alot more memory!) The spider bot finds a link to your site over at a different site (Like this free resource directory) and it acts as a referral from one human to another. Site 1 (the referrer) says to the spider: “Hey, go check out this site, it’s about Hybrid Golf Clubs” (“Hybrid Golf Clubs” being the anchor text of your link) or something to that effect. When the search spider follows and comes into your site, you want to be sure to do the following with your page:
-
The page displayed MUST be in context to the link anchor text! (If your anchor text is “Shiny Blue Widgets”, your page should be about just that! Not just blue widgets, but Shiny Blue Widgets.)
-
The title tag should BEGIN with your target phrase!
-
The keywords should reflect your target phrase!
-
The description tag should be relevant to your target phrase!
-
The file name should be relative to your target phrase
4 of these 5 things are controlled inside your site administration at the individual page level, the fifth, your anchor text, is controlled by you when requesting links. These are the 5 things a spider has visibility to BEFORE ANYTHING is even displayed in a browser! Next:
-
The FIRST WORDS on your website should be your target phrase, and highly relative to your tags above!
-
Within the first 50 words, your target phrase should be encased in an H1 (heading) tag!
-
Your entire page should be in tight context with the meta tags and anchor link.
-
ANY navigation should be text based, dress up the background with images if needed.
-
The LAST WORDS on your web page should be your target phrase!
Lets make a quick walk through now… assuming I am the spider.
- I find a link on another site, titled: Shiny Blue Widgets and follow it to your website!
- Once there, I find a title tag of “Shiny Blue Widgets” as well!
By now, I have found a link telling me the site is about Shiny Blue Widgets, and now the first thing I read, the title tag, tells me the same thing! This site MUST be about Shiny Blue Widgets! - I read the keywords and meta description and sure enough, they too are about Shiny Blue Widgets! Woohoo, I’m in spider heaven, I found the real deal!
- As I start reading the actual page content (Between the <body> </body> tags) The first 3 words on the page are in an H1 tag: Shiny Blue Widgets (As opposed to “Search title and description”)
At this point, everything is in place… the link into the site, meta tags AND the first words on the site are ALL about Shiny Blue Widgets! - As I go through the rest of the page, I find Shiny Blue Widgets in several other places on the page, roughly 5-15% of the page is comprised of the term!
- After approximately .05 seconds, I have made it to the bottom! Hopefully, the page was less than 75-100k in size, and don’t you know, the LAST WORDS on the page are Shiny Blue Widgets also! As a search spider… I think I found a very relevant page to the topic! I may just have to promote it!
One thing I failed to mention in the first few paragraphs is page size! Did you know that search engine spiders don’t care too much for pages larger than 100-150k? What does that mean to a BANS user?
- Don’t use large images in your logo file – slice them into smaller sizes!
- Don’t show more than 10-20 listings per page
- Don’t use 4 paragraph articles on the pages with listings
- Check your page size as you go along
As an example, lets use the very bare, hybrid golf clubs site. Go to the page size checker at: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/, and check the size of the main page: 116 kbytes, even in the most bare form, the page is kinda large! Now run the same check with the sitemap page… 56k in size! That is the difference between 18 listings and none! The fewer listings you can show, the better off you are!
Even my most dressed out site, buy a race car, runs high at 178 kbytes, but when you remove the 94k in listing and banner ad images, it comes down quickly, to below 100k. That glance at the site tells me I need to reoptimize the size again… :-( (Not a good example, but too late to delete the paragraph)
As this week progresses and we get deeper into the templates, I will share tips on how to make page size smaller and assure you have all the right pieces of code in the right places for correct search optimization.
Mark
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- More Free Build a Niche Store BANS templates – Come and Get Em!
- Build a Niche Store Empire – Marks Site Performance
- Build a Niche Store Empire – Get Inbound Links to Your Niche Store Website
- Build a Niche Store – Working on Main Categories
- Sell on eBay or Build a Niche Store Empire
- Build a Niche Store Empire Series in 12 Weeks – Niche Market Research
- Build a Niche Store Empire in 12 Weeks – Inbound Links Bring Spiders!
Rate This Post
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
Excellent Mark and your Race cars for sale site looks awesome, well done. Mine doesn’t, yet :)
I followed through this post and continually went back and forth between my site and here to see if I was doing it correctly.
I think I was pretty close although I had the number of items showing set to 30. I have changed it to 15.
I look forward to your next post in the series. Once I have learned the correct process I will move on to creating a BANS site per week.
Hi Mark,
You mentioned not to use 4 paragraph articles on the pages with listings. What’s the reason ? What is the number of paragraphs recommended on pages with listings ?
Other questions :
As a newbie and haven’t started to earn money on BANS yet, i’ve set up few subdomain on my BANS website. Is this ok ? what are the pros and cons ?
Do i need to promote my subdomains too inorder to drive traffic ? or just the main domain ?
No offense taken Mark, I can use all the help I can get – which is why I’m here. Had you not pointed it out, I would have never known. Thanks! And thanks for the free link.
My question now is should I go ahead and fix this or wait for more posts on this topic?
Sherrin
Very interesting Mark – I’ve replaced my Headers with custom headers and have been using H1 tags on the main or custom category pages. For Example, I have a category about backpacks, I create a H1 title as Backpacks using the editor tool in the admin panel.
Sherrin,
if that doll site is yours, looks like there is still hidden text on the page, the text is “Search title & description” – it is the same as the background. To change this text, goto the Search section of the CSS style sheet.
Hi Sean – thanks for the info. I know how to change it, I was just wondering if there is any reason I should wait until Mark goes more into this series.
Probably a silly question, so I think I’ll go ahead and change it.
Sherrin
Wow. I never thought/knew about page size as a concern. My site from last week is at about 200 kb. I’m down to 9 items per page so it looks like I need to work on my logo…
Rochelle
Hello Mark,
about your statement that search engine spiders don’t care much about big web-pages. What do you exactly mean by that? That they will stop visiting your page, or they won’t index it, or something else? My pages are quite big due to logos, ad banners, etc. But I still got them all indexed and bots are still visiting (the sites have been slapped afterall, and are in the Google exile now).
I think there’s smoke coming outta my ears!
I have custom headers on most of my sites that someone else makes for me…all my headers are clickable and return the visitor to the homepage. Is there anything I have to do with the header image to make it more SEO friendly?
Wish I would of read this a day earlier :)
I submitted a website to your link directory and my title doesn’t match what I have now.
Let’s just say in your title you have:
GPS Devices: Garmin GPS, Navigon GPS, Navigon, Garmin etc…
I’m taking the example you had in a article where you had the main keyword then after that you have variations.
For a site title should I put the whole line or just “Breeding Dogs” as the title on your link directory?
Also. I really like your grill auctions template. Any chance of providing the PSD file :) It’s very clean and I like the way you use the tag and the 3-4 main categories at the top.
Thanks,
Jason
With BANS in standard mode every page has two sets of H1 tags – the title in the header (name of the store) and the title of the page itself, in the content area above the auctions.
Isn’t it bad SEO to have two sets of H1 tags on each page?
Shouldn’t the header H1 (which is the same site-wide) be ‘demoted’ to H2 so as to give full weight to the unique page title?
Lynx text browser is useful to see how your web pages look to a spider. You can download the DOS-based browser to run on your PC, or use this online viewer
@ Alice -
I would definitely not recommend using too much text on the product or listing pages, maye 1 paragraph about the specific page…
The more words you use, the less meaning your keyphrase/keywords have. It will also push your product listings below the fold!
In regard to the subdomains, I dont recommend it. Simply stated, each subdomain MUST be promoted as if it were its own store. The url seen by search engines will view it as multiple websites as well. Besides… what if someone wanted to buy your “Niche Market” portion of the website one day… you would lose everything! :-)
Mark
Mark,
With regard to subdomains…I’m confused. If we purchase a different domain name for each store, that’s NOT a subdomain…correct?
I get confused because in my Hostgator account it always shows my very first site as the ‘main’ one….and it looks like the rest of the domains I’ve purchased since then are considered subdomains.
Am I way off on this?
Eric
@ Mik -
In regard to page size… the spiders wont stop visiting your pages. They do however limit themselves to how much content and how long they will stay on a site. It is done to prevent server overload as well as allowing them to go elsewhere.
Basically, from a spider standpoint, the larger your pages are, the fewer pages will be crawled in that visit.
From a viewer standpoint… consider there are still MANY (even some BANS developers) running a 56k modem… a 200k page qill likely never get in front of those visitors.
@ Jason -
I will be making several templates available before the end of the weekend! :-) They are actually very similar, just different colors, and can be used as a baseline for the rest of your template.
@ Eric -
Correct. If you purchase a different domain, it has its own www. address. The way hostgator and other hosting set up these new domains on your account is a bit confusing, as they actually list it as a Add-on or Sub-domain.
@ James -
James actually brings up a very good and valid point about BANS. The H1 tag is used over and over in the header of the site, on every page, thus deprecating the value of the H1 tag itself!
Its almost like I just saw a lightbulb go off! I will follow up more on this… Thank you James!
Mark it figures you would find the 1st site I removed the H1 tag from my header. (ex. one) I always knew not to remove it, but I have been trying for months to find help placing H1 tags in my headers. I hope that’s first on the list here. Being able to utilize the header space has eluded me.
@Eric
When you start a second web site, If you use ADON domain feature in Hostgator it is a Adon not a Sub-domain. It is listed in the stats as a sub-domain, but it is treated as its own site.
A sub domain is a file in your main domain. So it would be http://domain.com/sub-domain. That’s how I understand it. Some folks use the re-seller account so the domains are totally separate. There are many reasons for this. The first is so you can sell a site. Another is some say Google is going to start or already has started considering ADON Domains as a file in the main domain. I don’t know how true it is. A re-seller account gives each domain it’s own CPanel.
Hope that helps
Mark,
Your comments on custom headers makes sense. I only have a custom header on one of my sites, but Also have the name of the site in small text at the top of the header (see http://www.teafortwoparlor.com) What about doing something like that? Can we have our cake and eat it too??
Yael
Mark, I think a can of worms has been opened here. You could start a blog just for SEO. I went ahead and used the tool you provided and every one of my sites has issues. Even the sites that are out of the box with no header and no text. On example one above I went through the site and reduced everything the tool said was causing issues. I was able to get half of the areas it checks to comply but there are still 5 that need more attention. I tightened up the CSS and php code and reduced listings but it is still gets warnings. Would be nice to address this further.
Thanks
@ Bill -
On your site, it is the logo.jpg that is eating up bandwidth… check your email.
Thank you for the tip to discuss more, I will do just that! I am also going to discuss some advanced techniques for “slicing” images into smaller sizes, that helps to load pages much quicker.
Mark
@ Lionmom -
Here is an example of a site I made a small change to today… Family Guy Movies
I took his header image and just added that small shadowbox to the lower right corner. Once the box was in place on the image, I positioned the site title to show above that box.
One think to notice is that I used HIGH VOLUME terms in the site description for this area.
In your case, while the site is titled “Tea for Two”, what your site is selling should be in the title section, or:
“Green Tea, Teapots, Tea Kettles, and many Flavored Teas for Sale”
Mark
Check out this site for some really cool FREE CSS templates:
http://www.freecsstemplates.org/
I’ve used Mr.Techie myself and futzed with the HTML/CSS. Pretty simple too.
enjoy!
Chris
Mark,
Good point. I couldn’t figure out how you did the shadow box though……My guess…..??Photoshop, semi-transparent layer, then positioning text (or is that graphic too?) and some alt text for the graphic???? Also looked like you may have sliced the graphic.
I liked it!
Yael
Mark,
I just ran all my sites through websiteoptimization.com and the ALL seem to be space hogs. Will try to start whittling them down.
Yael
Hi Mark,
I ran one of my site thru the http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ and it
returned these results:
TOTAL_HTML – Congratulations, the total number of HTML files on this page (including the main HTML file) is 1 which most browsers can multithread. Minimizing HTTP requests is key for web site optimization.
TOTAL_OBJECTS – Warning! The total number of objects on this page is 14 – consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your external objects. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
TOTAL_IMAGES – Warning! The total number of images on this page is 12 , consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your graphics. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
TOTAL_CSS – Congratulations, the total number of external CSS files on this page is 1 . Because external CSS files must be in the HEAD of your HTML document, they must load first before any BODY content displays. Although they are cached, CSS files slow down the initial display of your page.
TOTAL_SIZE – Warning! The total size of this page is 196576 bytes, which will load in 41.98 seconds on a 56Kbps modem. Consider reducing total page size to less than 30K to achieve sub eight second response times on 56K connections. Pages over 100K exceed most attention thresholds at 56Kbps, even with feedback. Consider contacting us about our optimization services.
HTML_SIZE – Congratulations, the total size of this HTML file is 20368 bytes, which less than 20K. Assuming that you specify the HEIGHT and WIDTH of your images, this size allows your page to display content in well under 8 seconds, the average time users are willing to wait for a page to display without feedback.
IMAGES_SIZE – Warning! The total size of your images is 165020 bytes, which is over 30K. Consider optimizing your images for size, combining them, and replacing graphic rollovers with CSS.
CSS_SIZE – Warning! The total size of your external CSS is 11188 bytes, which is over 8K. Consider optimizing your CSS for size by eliminating whitespace, using shorthand notation, and combining multiple CSS files where appropriate.
MULTIM_SIZE – Congratulations, the total size of all your external multimedia files is 0 bytes, which is less than 4K.
Where can I find the info to make these changes? Especially
about changing the CSS Size and images.
Are you saying if you have the eBay product feeds on your page
then you shouldn’t have any text that you add. All text should be
on a separate content page.
Thanks,
Phil R
Phil -
Please email me the URL of the site in question.
You IMAGE SIZE is the killer…
IMAGES_SIZE – Warning! The total size of your images is 165020 bytes, which is over 30K. Consider optimizing your images for size, combining them, and replacing graphic rollovers with CSS.
Mark
Lots of good tips in here. Glad I passed by…
Thanks!
[...] this week, I spoke a little bit about working with BANS templates and a few of the on page factors that may have an effect on your Build a Niche Store website. [...]
Leave your response!
On My YouTube Playlist
Latest Twitter Updates
Posting tweet...
Site Categories
Monthly Archive
My Favorite Places
Blogging Sites
Blogroll
Places I Write
Technology Sites
Site Credits
Niche Store Builder is powered by WordPress, using a modified theme originally inspired by Arthemia.
Home | About | Contact | Mark Hansen @ Google | Terms & Privacy