Wordpress Growing Pains!

6 replies
Hello all,

I have a very elementary question that I hope to get some opinions on.

My main website crashed and burned after the recent panda update.

After the smoke cleared, I discovered that traffic and income had both dropped by almost 50%.

Fortunately, I live WAY below my means, so I'm not in any financial trouble.

But, this event has definitely motivated me to branch out into other niches, which I'm in the process of doing now.

I've set up my first wordpress (amazon review) blog, and have just posted my first review.

But I'm confused about the site structure.

On my main static website, it goes something like this...

Home Page: Automobile Reviews

Main Tier 2 Page: Ford Automobile Reviews

Tier 3 Pages: Ford Focus Reviews, Ford Flex Reviews, Ford Mustang Reviews, etc, etc...

All internally linked together, using the appropriate hyperlinked anchor text.

My question is, do I need to set up the blog in the same manner?

Or should I just write and upload the reviews "blog style" and assume that the search engines will find these pages like they do on my static site?

Thanks for your help!
#growing #pains #teach #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author Teacherman
    As long as you have the basic SEO plug ins Google will have no trouble finding and indexing your whole site. Bing on the other hand is another matter...
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  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    Why did you opt for creating Pages instead of posts?
    Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author zulfnore
    Instead of Pages create Categories for the various reviews and write posts - use a theme that supports categories in menu or use the custom menu to list your categories in the navigation bar.

    That way when someone clicks on one of the links they will be presented with all the posts you have in that categories. benefits of this is you have Page like structure with dynamic content which can only be good for SEO and SERPS.

    A good theme will have the necessary elements to interlink your categories, posts and pages - there are plugins to help you do that too.

    Let us know if you need further pointers on plugins and themes.

    Zulf
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    • Profile picture of the author LynneCarey
      The good thing about WordPress is that it becomes so flexible with the choice of Themes and Plugins.



      This post is a bit long, and perhaps goes into more than you are asking, but I hope it will help you and perhaps some others just starting to use WordPress.


      Excuse me if I state the obvious, or something you already know

      Generally speaking WordPress in it's simplest form, as you know, is a blogging platform, so by default it operates with you making 'Posts' which will appear on your 'Home' page whenever you publish them.



      This can however, be altered to suit your own preferences. You can set a static 'home' page which can be a 'Page' you have created for the purpose or a particular 'Post' that you want people to see whenever they come to your site. Of course your preferences will depend on the purpose of your site, so might vary from one site to another to achieve different objectives.


      You can select this option under Settings > Reading [see pic below]





      I would not use Posts for a static page, personally, but in some cases I do use a Page I have created for the purpose.



      In order to get your site optimized in a similar way to how you described your static site there are a few things you can do, and a few things to keep in mind.


      WordPress uses 'Categories' 'Pages' & 'Posts'. Each of these play a role and have specific significance.


      You can use these to your advantage, and can optimize them further using plugins, of which I will mention a couple at the end.


      Here is one way you can use these:


      Pages - Some of your pages might include things like, Contact, About, Privacy Policy etc [which you don't need to make prominent in your Nav Bar - maybe just links at the bottom of your page, and you can set to 'no follow' 'no index' as required]



      You will also want to target some main keyword phrases with some specific content Pages you set up ie. Ford Automobile Reviews. You will be able to link back to these pages from your posts relating to the topic or targeted keyword for that phrase.


      You will also notice that Pages, because they are seen as more important than Posts, don't have the option to come under a category, whereas with your Posts you will need to select a Category, or it will automatically allocate them to the 'Default Category'.


      Categories - are another place where you can optimize your site by targeting relevant keywords for your niche ie. Ford Focus Reviews


      Posts - will not only link back to the related Page on your site, but will also come under the relevant Category, and the Post will target perhaps longer tail keyword phrases.


      So in this way you are setting your site up with a structure that will help the search engines find relevant content on your site.


      A couple of plugins that help make your site more SEO Friendly include:


      All in One SEO Pack
      Contextual Related Posts


      Hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author iwilsmar
    Great, thank you for the detailed reply, that's very helpful!
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    • Profile picture of the author SiteSmarty
      You want to create pages first. Make those pages your "anchor content". That's the content your nice is all about.

      For example: Say your site is about Harley Davidson Motorcycles. Do a Google search for harley. Scroll to the bottom of the search page. You'll see 8 topics. Those are what people are searching for on the keyword Harley. Those terms don't change that much depending on the niche.

      Make a landing page for each of those 8 keywords. On that page, place an optimized graphic and upload a video to You Tube with an optimized Title, Description and tags.

      Make a secondary custom menu and put each of the bolded words (out of those 8 terms) as tabs in your sub navbar.

      Backlink those pages until you are in #1 of the search engines. You'll be on the first page of Bing and Yahoo quickly.

      Now write posts until your fingers wear out, place an image and video on each post. Backlink to them until each reaches #1.

      As for categories, forget them. Categories are for you to organize your stuff.

      Clicks. The closer you are to the information the better. If they have to click 3 times to get to your info, it's no good.

      Make sure you only use postname as your permalink setup. No categories.

      Good luck.
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