Days 6 & 7 – The First Week of my New WordPress is Complete!
It has now been 1 full week since I launched a WordPress website and started building it one day at a time. If you have followed along, you know that my original site goals included 5 unique posts every week and one top 10 list every week. You guessed it… today, I will write my first top 10 list to the site!
At this point, I am also going to review the previous week stats and see where I can make small improvements toward my overall goals.
Week 1 Stats
During the first week, the site entertained a total of 383 unique visitors who looked at 3297 pages of content, or 5.18 pages/visit. Many of the visitors came from here… but a more telling story lies in the 79 that came from search engines! In the first week, the site saw traffic from both Google and MSN search engines, on a total of 29 different phrases from 78 different words! While these numbers are nothing to write to associated press about, the fact that they existed at all tell me the indexing of the site is starting to take off!
What I can learn from them is that I need to do more in regard to indexing from Yahoo and the Live search engine! In order to get that rolling, I am going to visit both of their webmaster areas and get the sitemap submitted and verified.
To Do:
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Submit site to Live. You have to create a free account… but just like GWT, it works for all domains.
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Submit site to Yahoo Site Explorer. Same as above, its free to maintain your sites.
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Double check site for errors in Google Webmaster Tools.
Week 1 Subscribers
In the first week, there was a total of 14 subscribers to the email feed from the site. Being new to aWeber, I have also realized that my feed has not transmitted to the subscribers each night and I need to figure out why! From what I see so far, they have to be manually approved in aWeber before they are sent. Live and learn right?
To Do:
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Learn more about the aWeber list management system!
Post – Link – Comment!
Today, after I write my first top 10 list, I will once again visit the list of blog directories from day 5 and submit the site to the next 10 on the list. There was a comment by Melissa Eaton who suggested starting at the oldest directories in the list, or #1, versus the top like I did. I am going to take that path today! Thanks Melissa!
In addition to the directory submission, I am going to spend about an hour commenting on similar blogs, to see if I can contribute to their conversation. I have bookmarked many blogs as I built and started growing the site, so revisiting them will be simple. I WON’T comment just to comment… if I cannot add to the discussion, I will just read and move on.
One additional thing I am going to do today is put a call out to all of you and the existing visitors for articles! If you have a site that do something themself, submit an article for me to review and post on the DIY Reviews site! I don’t have many rules… just write a minimum of 250 words about doing something. You can include 1 link back to your own site… but you cannot include any affiliate links! The only changes I will make would be a spelling check and creation of images for the post… aside from that, its all yours! Some good examples:
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If you have a site about Cars – Write an article about selling a car on eBay! (Linked to your auto site)
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Site about Small Appliances – Write a post about Choosing the right size Coffee Pot!
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Site about building websites – Write a post about DIY site structure!
My Overall To Do List
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Write a top 10 post.
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Check/Submit site status in Webmaster Tools of major search engines.
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Learn why aWeber did not send out feed emails and correct.
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Submit site to 10 more blog directories.
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Write a site PAGE about article submission and guidelines, asking readers to submit.
How is your own site coming along?
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Days 13 & 14 of my New WordPress Website
- Week in Review and the Week Ahead – August 10 2008
- Days 3 & 4 – Finding Sources for Content Ideas!
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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.
Hey Mark,
Nice work on the site! I noticed your comments on Ben Johnsons site and I agree, it’s time for a change (cliche’?) and using blogs/wordpress works! I know you have the popshops plugin and noticed the books page, have you had any sales in your first week?
Dan
@ Dan –
No sales, but there were 3 adsense clicks! LOL
Mark,
I need to ask a question that is not on the current subject.
Where do the ads (under featured links) come from?
And how do you set up.
Thanks
Jerry
@ Jerry -
Are youtalking about this page: http://www.diyreviews.net/inside-home/what-size-gas-logs-should-i-choose/
That is a Popshops generated page. See the Using Popshops post from last week.
Mark,
I am so impressed with your site. The template works so well. My first impression as a browser is, “there is so much practical information here!” I guess that is one verification of what Google thinks the browser wants.
I like the way the home page has excerpts of posts with a small image…just the combination to get my attention -big time. I want to do that with my blogs. Is there a plugin for that or does it have to be written into the template?
Also, where do you get images?
Thanks,
Julie
@ Julie –
Thanks for the kind words about the theme – I designed it myself, but did take away from some of what I saw on other themes.
The homepage images are done by utilizing the custom fields sections of the posts in WP. I had to code it into the template as well… to read that custom image field and display the thumb images when they existed.
99% of the artwork on the site was from iStockPhoto, where I keep an account. You can generally get bargain basement images for $1 each, sometimes… you can get a group for $1.
other images were either from creative commons on Wiki, or product searches in catalogs. eBay itself is a GREAT source for images!
Mark
Thanks for the mention and you’re welcome. Though I can’t take all the credit. I believe I learned it was more beneficial to submit to older directories first from you. ;)
I’m not sure it will work on every template, but there is a plugin called Get The Image from Justin Tadlock that will help aid in pulling in a small image along with the excerpts. You can either specify custom fields or it will just automatically pull the first image in your post for the excerpt. This is what is used to pull the images on my theme.
Another place to get awesome free images is http://www.123rf.com/freeimages.php
The photos you see at the bottom and on the next pages are free to download for a limited time. Usually within an hour or so. Once the time expires, they become photos you must pay to get. But if you get them during the free window, you don’t pay.
The only drawback is that I cannot find a way to search/sort the free ones so you have to browse. However, if you spend a few minutes looking, you can rack up a great collection of high quality photos.
Mark,
I was asking about the ads on this blog. on the page I am placing this comment on.
I do appreciate your answer and it is good info.
Jerry
@Melissa
Thanks for sharing the site with the free images. I joined and downloaded quite a few just now. This is what I have been looking for.
I am going to try to figure out how to do the thumbnail image thing with the plugin, Get the Image, using the custom fields. I just love Mark’s site with the thumbnails and excerpts on the home page. If anyone knows where I can read instruction on how to do this, please post it.
Concerning Stats on cpanel….
with word press, my site includes statistics for these types of “pages”:
/ideas/searchform.php 9136
/ideas/inc-rss.php 6353
/ideas/inc-main-menu.php 6060
/ideas/inc-sidebar.php 5807
/ideas/inc-footer.php 5757
Since these are not posts or pages, their presence in the stats skews the number of pages views counted.
Can anyone tell me how to keep cpanel from listing these files.
Can this be fixed with the robots.txt file?
I think Rochelle has directions for adding files to robots.txt file to keep the bots out. Is this what I need to do?
Thanks to anyone who can help with this.
Julie
@ Julie -
Unless you have awstats on a dedicated server, you cannot make changes to the required ini files in a shared hosting environment.
The webalizer stats included with the HG hosting does NOT count them the same. I am currently testing two alternatives for stats as well and will report here about it soon.
Mark
Thanks, Mark. That helps.
I use hostgator, so I looked at my stats in webalizer, and there I can see how many visits and how many pages per day with out the clutter that gives a false number in awstats.
I really like awstats, but it is easy enough to click on webalizer once a month to check on the actual visitor and page counts.
Mark,
You said:
“I don’t have many rules… just write a minimum of 250 words about doing something. You can include 1 link back to your own site… but you cannot include any affiliate links!”
Suppose you allow affiliate links…
Won’t many more people submit their articles to you in that case?
Just an idea!
What do you say?
@ GB –
Funny you mention that…. My post today will talk about just that!
Mark
[...] of you may recall that on Day 5, I wrote a single paragraph inviting anyone with content of their own, to submit it for posting on [...]
[...] you recall, during the week 1 stats, there were 383 unique visitors who looked at 3297 pages, or 5.18 pages per visit. At the end of [...]
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