May 3, 2008
On Weds, I discussed a few ways to know when it was time to turn a growing store into a top performer! Over the next several days, I am going to cover many of the steps you can take to do just that! As I stated in the earlier post, before you do start making the changes, you want to be sure the site is worth the added time you are about to invest into it. Review the metrics in the earlier post to learn more… So, where do you start?
All the experts say… fresh and useful Content is The King, when it comes to ranking higher in search engines! Regardless of which engine you achieve top 5 rankings in first, chances are pretty good that your site is providing something they feel is not being found elsewhere. Whether your site is about tiny green men or fine designer shoes, you need to find a way to provide fresh, non-bans content to capture more visitors that can be converted into buyers!
The quickest and possibly easiest way to start building content is by adding a wordpress blog. The wordpress platform is included with every HostGator account and can be added using the Fantastico panel, located in your main cPanel of your hosting account. When you install the blog, there is an option about the directory you want to use. If you leave this blank, it will get in a fight with BANS and neither application will work right! For almost all of my blog installations, I use “discussion” or just “blog” to install wordpress. This will leave my BANS install intact and resolve the blog platform to an url like: mydomain .com/blog or mydomain .com/discussion, and is the easiest to work with.
After you have installed wordpress, you need to set yourself a goal of 2-4 new posts each week and stick to it for the first 30-60 days in order to give the search engines fresh content every day. After the first few months have passed, you can slow your posting down to just 1-3 times a week to maintain your results.
The hardest thing about posting to a blog is that you have to figure out how to provide fresh content with each post and the answer, is to subscribe to others! If you find 5 other blogs in your same niche, subscribe to the writers’ feeds and simply use that info as a brainstorming resource for your own topics! Always refer back to the original writer as your source of inspiration for the daily post, and never copy their post. Just put your own spin on the same bit of news…
The true benefit comes when you start linking to the items or categories for sale in your BANS store! Now you have an article post about very relevant content AND a link or two to the actual products inside your money maker! Just like your category keyword research, your post should use the terms that are likely to deliver targeted readers. Always keep your keyphrase research handy when writing on your blog and you will be rewarded with both general AND buying visitors!
Before the end of the week, I plan on testing some basic BANS/Blog templates with a few other readers. Once we have worked out the bugs, they will be available here for your site work. I should state right up front, these templates are not plug and play and will require some code work in order to function seamlessly with your BANS install. Fortunately, I will provide instructions and a video to try and ease the process.
Do you have a strategy for turning an average BANS site into a top performing authority site? Please share…
Mark
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21 Responses to “Shifting your BANS Site into High Gear!”
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Mark,
Good info. I thought I would share with you this post from Courtney Tuttle’s blog which talks about setting up a blog for the purposes of keyword sniping. Another words, you set up a blog around only one keyword phrase you are trying to optimize on your Bans site. I have implemented the process she suggested one one of my own sites and I will be tracking the progress.
Also, in the article she mentions you should have about 10 articles posted with the keyword you are optimizing linked back to your main site.
For more details: http://courtneytuttle.com/2007/12/20/introduction-to-keyword-sniping/#comment-33359
-Ross-
This is a topic that I’ve always been interested in; Incorporating Wordpress into a website. I’ve never been interested in making money solely as a blogger, frankly it takes too much time and maintenance, I prefer the automated, low maintenance route. But I’ve always found blogs to be a great source of insight into your buyers minds, and into the heads of your target market.. The amount of value found within the comments on your blog is top notch…
I’m looking forward to your detailed instructions (as always) on incorporating a Wordpress blog into a BANs site.
Cheers!
I have been playing around with the idea of adding BANS to my existing Blogs. These blogs have already got content that I have been building for the past 9 months or so.
I believe I can go back through previous post and tweak them a bit so they are keyworded to a specific category and then point to that category.
I think this is one of the top 3 hardest things for me to do.. some of my sites, it’s just hard to find fresh content for a blog, especially updating it as aften as 2 or 3 times a week.. i really struggle with that.. maybe i’m just not finding other blogs to relate to…. i dunno..
My question is… which is better between the 2 choices of
A blog on your site
An RSS feed on your site
??
@ James -
I am actually experimenting on both ways to present the site… BANS storefront with a blog in a separate directory, AND a Blog, with BANS in a separate directory. I will let you know how it turns out as time passes…
@ Jeff -
By Far… you would be better with a blog. The main reason I say that is because you have the choise of adding your own content or just pulling RSS feeds into the blog automatically. Its the best of both worlds!
The hardest part is the template work…
Mark
@ Ross -
Great post from a great site! Courts info is always a good read!!
I jumped over and looked at your site, good job getting it setup and working! The only suggestion I would make is that you link the two together to make it a seamless transition from store to blog.
If you prefer NOT to direct users to your blog, at least put a link to it in your BANS footer so search engines can find and follow the info.
The next step you should take will be to integrate the ALinks plugin, and start linking long tail phrases to deep links within your BANS site! :-)
Mark
Mark,
I took your advice and incorporated the changes you suggested. The Alinks plugin will be a great timesaver.
I also am utilizing several other plugins to help with seo including:
all in one SEO Pack -Automates title tags for each post
Simple Tags - Automaticaly posts technorati tags to bottom of each post
Thanks,
Ross
@ Ross -
Great Job Ross!! It looks perfect!!
I have not used the All-in-One SEO pack on any of the BANS/Blog sites, but do use it on others including here.
I will try that as well!!
Mark
Ok, I’m dipping my toe into this pool and already my head is spinning. First off, the wp-o-matic plugin is a nasty beast. I can’t get it to work and the instructions are terrible! I can’t believe they actually leave out the cache folder, which is a critical part of the process.
Anyways, I’ve given up on wp-o-matic and am instead trying http://projects.radgeek.com/feedwordpress/ . I don’t know if this is the equivelant to wp-o-matic but I got it up and running in less than five minutes, including finding an RSS feed to use.
Which leads to a few questions:
- Is any rss feed a syndicated feed? If not, how can I tell if a feed is syndicated?
- Do I want backlinks pointing towards my blog or the original websites?
- Do I want to allow comments on the splogging posts?
- Do I want to accept pings on syndicated posts (I don’t even know what this means)?
Thanks for any clarification on this.
Rochelle
@ Rochelle -
I have feedwordpress, but I have not yet used it. For me, WP-o-Matic was smooth and took less than 2 minutes to install as well. You ARE right about the lack of documentation though, Kim actually used it yesterday and found the same thing. I recall seeing the instructions for the cache folder inside the WP-Admin itself as I was configuring the plugin.
In regard to the RSS itself - ANY feed is a syndicated feed, (RSS = Really Simple Syndication) and meant for publication, otherwise, the rss would not exist.
I DO allow comments on a splog - but enable askimet to weed out the viagra, cialis, poker, etc comments.
I point all links to to my own site. This is only in effect on the titles and I recall, the actual post itself has a link to the original provider.
I DO also allow pingbacks - and have found that other splogs love to link back to the content! :-)
All that aside, I only used the autoposting (10 newest articles per feed) or splogging, for the first 30 days of the site I am testing with, I have started manually adding posts myself now.
Hi,
Mark and Ross how are you setting up your blogs with regard to permalink settings in the blog?
If I change the permalink settings on my blog and modify the .htaccess file what happens is the pages of my store load up looking like the blog page and I end up with a 404 error on the page.
Here is the command I add to the .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
I see both of your sites work OK.
Can you shed some light for me?
Randy
Randy,
When I set up permalinks I used the following custom url structure when specifying a custom permalink:
/%category%/%postname%/
I did not make any changes to .htaccess when establishing my blog using wordpress 2.5.
Why are you changing your .htaccess?
@ Randy -
Just like Ross says… Your Blog, if in its own directory, should not need any special htaccess updates other than setting the permalink structure in the blog admin.
Mark
I have a blog on 2 of my sites.. they are both in their own directory.. ie: myniche. com/blog
i’ve seen the permalink term thrown around but i don’t know what you are talking about.. is there something i need to do for my blogs that i have missed?
permalink structure?
thanks!
Hi Jeff -
Go into your blog admin and under options, there is a choice for “Permalinks”.
On this site, I use “Custom, /%postname%.htm
For most, I use the “Date and Name Based option. It will return friendly urls…
Mark
Gotcha!!! thanks a bunch!
Hi,
My blog is setup as a content page from the Bans Admin.
If I don’t add the changes to .htaccess I cannot get to any of my
posts in the blog. They come up as page not found, 404 error.
I can only go to the main page of the blog.
When I add this comand to the .haccess it the pages will load OK.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
After changing the permalinks to custom structure:
/%category%/%postname%/
This message is at the bottom of the page:
If your .htaccess file were writable, we could do this automatically, but it isn’t so these are the mod_rewrite rules you should have in your .htaccess file. Click in the field and press CTRL + a to select all.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
It maybe making the changes to your .htaccess and you did not even know it made the change.
I think my problem is because it is part of my blog.
I’m going to try to make it external and see if that works.
Randy
I think my problem maybe how I am getting to my blog.
It is a content page within the bans site.
I think I should set it up as an external link
Randy -
I can go to the blog of the link in your comment, by typing /blog behind the domain name. It looks like you are using a redirect on the site… inside your admin. (Maybe for tracking purposes?)
In your admin, just change the filename to “blog” versus externalurl.php, and it should work fine.
Mark
Hi Mark,
I’ve changed it to Blog.
The blog opens OK and the permalinks work OK.
Try to click on a store page and it starts to open the blog page with the URL to one of the store pages and a 404 error comes up.
Randy
Hi Mark,
I think I have it working.
I removed this comand from the .htaccess entry I made because of the permalinks.
RewriteBase /blog/
This is the comand permlinks told me to enter:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
Thank you for your help and a special thanks for all your great posts!
Randy
Mark,
Great information and I agree that Google loves fresh content! I have taken a couple of my older domains, particularly the one in my name, and added a BANS store to the wordpress install.
I did it a little differently as the BANS install is in a subfolder. All I did was add a link to the subfolder and called it “Store” or something else.
I also added a little blurb to the bottom of each post about visiting our eBay store to check out the latest deals.
Getting some results now, so it will be interesting!
ps…I am working on something that I will email you about within the next couple of days also…