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Best way to structure Wordpress content sites?

by tonyscott
8 replies
One of my income streams is derived from setting up small content sites and monetising with (mainly) adsense.

After careful keyword research and outsourced content creation, I use Wordpress for the site platform and drop the Thesis theme on top.

I've mainly been building the sites with half a dozen static pages and a latest news (blog) page - setting the home page to static and blog to "latest news".

The problem is that if I want to add content to these sites it's added to the latest news page as a post and I think I'm missing a trick to get posts grouped thematically in categories.

So my latest site I've set a static home page with an article on the main keyword, the categories as nav menu items so I can add related posts to the correct category and I've hidden and no-indexed the "latest news"/blog page so it becomes redundant (I had to set it as the blog page in settings/reading when setting up the static home page.

I'm still not convinced that this is the best layout. One thing that occurs to me is that I need to specify a sticky post in each category so that the main category article stays on top.

A couple of sites I've just left the home page as a blog and added articles, but these sites don't seem to rank so well.

I'm looking for suggestions for the best way to structure these type of websites and any tips, particularly with regard to seo (that's seo specific to this type of site, not general stuff).

Tony
#content #sites #structure #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author drew3806
    I am in the process of setting up my first adsense site & was wondering the same thing. Here is how I am designing my site. I have no idea how this will work. Maybe someone else with more experience can elaborate.

    I bought a .net domain name that matched the main keyword of the site. I have written 500 words of content on this keyword phrase, posted it as a page on Wordpress & set it as a static main page to my site. I am going to create more pages for the secondary keywords & create links to them with the title text on the main page in the blogroll. All the pages on the site will be accessible from the blogroll. Each page will have an ezine article on the same keyword attached with the keyword as anchor text for backlinks.

    Any ideas on how this will work?
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  • Profile picture of the author TheNightOwl
    Look into the concept of "siloing." Michael Gray has a nice post about it here.

    You can set categories in WP and then what are, effectively, sub-categories by selecting which category to use as the Parent Category.

    That way you end up with wwx.yourdomain.com/keyword-1/sub-keyword-1/post-title-with-keyword

    e.g. ~/vacuum-cleaners/irobot/whats-so-good-about-the-irobot-560-roomba-review

    ...where "vacuum cleaners is your parent category, "irobot" is one of the half a dozen or so brand categories beneath that, and then the post contains your keyword "irobot 560 roomba review"

    Is this what you're getting at?
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    • Profile picture of the author vision2000
      I just wrote a post on Website Structure: Which is best?
      The structure of a basic blog is not the best for a theme-based content website.
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    • Profile picture of the author tonyscott
      Originally Posted by TheNightOwl View Post

      Look into the concept of "siloing." Michael Gray has a nice post about it here.

      You can set categories in WP and then what are, effectively, sub-categories by selecting which category to use as the Parent Category.

      That way you end up with wwx.yourdomain.com/keyword-1/sub-keyword-1/post-title-with-keyword

      e.g. ~/vacuum-cleaners/irobot/whats-so-good-about-the-irobot-560-roomba-review

      ...where "vacuum cleaners is your parent category, "irobot" is one of the half a dozen or so brand categories beneath that, and then the post contains your keyword "irobot 560 roomba review"

      Is this what you're getting at?
      Yes this is what I'm getting at and I'm aware of the siloing concept. There's a bit more to the set-up process though described very well at WordPress SEO Tip: Implementing the Power of Theming and Siloing by SEO Design Solutions?

      Tony
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  • Profile picture of the author nichecloner
    Tony,

    Here is a site that is bar none the best layout I have seen for monetizing a content site.

    What is Sputnik?

    Check out the layout from top left corner going down. Its laid out exactly as it should. I always do my content sites with this layout.

    All the best,
    Derek
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    • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
      Originally Posted by nichecloner View Post

      Tony,

      Here is a site that is bar none the best layout I have seen for monetizing a content site.

      What is Sputnik?

      Check out the layout from top left corner going down. Its laid out exactly as it should. I always do my content sites with this layout.

      All the best,
      Derek
      this site might be good for good CTR on ads, but its still ugly.
      This site is nothing more than a little better looking MFA site, IMHO.

      As for internal structure of a WP site..i also once read about SILOing until my head spun, but i think its one of those SEO subjects where people put TOO much effort into it. "Internal PR rank shaping" might be overrated.

      Its important that your site/theme uses either categories or tags...it depends on your site, really. Most of my own sites i use Categories.

      Furthermore its important that your theme displays only short excerpts on the archive pages (like the category pages or the tags pages and the date archive pages)...otherwise you will get dupes on your category pages and the actual content.

      I usually use a static front page and on the side widgets for categories, recent comments, recent posts, archive. I don't cycle blogs on the front page since the main site/front page is usually optimized for a certain KW...and i dont want to have whatever new entry i write constantly change whats on the front page. Some blogs have sales pages for products as front page, so they need to be static.

      If you have your content within categories its a good idea to link from each article either back to the main CATEGORY and/or to the "next article" in the same category.

      Its also a good idea to have categories using related (LSI) keywords to your main keyword, i think.
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      • Profile picture of the author Andrew Wilson
        Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

        this site might be good for good CTR on ads, but its still ugly.
        This site is nothing more than a little better looking MFA site, IMHO.

        As for internal structure of a WP site..i also once read about SILOing until my head spun, but i think its one of those SEO subjects where people put TOO much effort into it. "Internal PR rank shaping" might be overrated.

        Its important that your site/theme uses either categories or tags...it depends on your site, really. Most of my own sites i use Categories.

        Furthermore its important that your theme displays only short excerpts on the archive pages (like the category pages or the tags pages and the date archive pages)...otherwise you will get dupes on your category pages and the actual content.

        I usually use a static front page and on the side widgets for categories, recent comments, recent posts, archive.

        If you have your content within categories its a good idea to link from each article either back to the main CATEGORY and/or to the "next article" in the same category.

        Its also a good idea to have categories using related (LSI) keywords to your main keyword, i think.
        I tend to agree. We need to think of the purpose of the site. Perhaps, and I have no way of knowing, the referenced site IS esentially an MFA site!
        After all, if it generates sufficient revenue why not have content specifically written for the site and hang the appearance and visitor value.

        As to your other points, yes, I agree too. When I was building autoblogs your strategy is pretty close to what I did. Very few of the sites I built were delisted over the years.
        One point I noticed: When we put content that defined the theme of the blog as pages and made sure that it was content unique to the site then the site tended to do better than one where we did not use pages.
        This meant that we always added several pages (up to about 20) of unique content to the blog as pages, the automated stuff was always in the posts. This strategy enabled a 'fit and forget' approach that has saved lots and lots of time for my clients over the years.
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    • Profile picture of the author tonyscott
      Thanks for the info Derek

      Do you use 6 Adsense blocks too?

      Tony

      Originally Posted by nichecloner View Post

      Tony,

      Here is a site that is bar none the best layout I have seen for monetizing a content site.

      What is Sputnik?

      Check out the layout from top left corner going down. Its laid out exactly as it should. I always do my content sites with this layout.

      All the best,
      Derek
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