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Redesigning High Earning Site - Help Needed

by packerfan
12 replies
  • SEO
    • |
The short backstory...

I built a smallish 20 page site, ranked for some high volume keywords, and the site is getting about 2,000 unique visitors/day.

When I built it I wasn't concerned about anything other than optimizing for adsense, and honestly didn't expect the site to get this kind of traffic. It has high quality content, but the design sucks.

The conundrum...

I want to redesign the site so I can expand the content, focus on some social sharing, collecting some emails, etc.

But it's a high earning site so I'm really hesitant to mess with anything.

The question...

Assuming I want to redesign it, is there someway to do it and not negatively impact my rankings?

It's a wordpress site, but it's built on Thesis and heavily customized. I can't just plug and play a new theme.

I don't know where to start, so any help would be appreciated. It makes enough that I'm fine with paying for the work to be done right. So even if you could recommend the right kind of programmer or "IT" guy, that would be great.

Thanks,
Paul
#earning #high #needed #redesigning #site
  • Profile picture of the author prince55l
    when you say redesign, it depends on what you want. Do you want to change the thesis theme and use another theme or do you want to customise the thesis theme and make it look more beautiful, i will advice you to go for the later because thesis theme seem to be search engine friendly, so even if you are out-sourcing let the person use the theme and customise it the way you want your site to look. On the other way round, i will advice you to backup your theme before doing anything on it, so that incase your traffic drops, you can bounce back to your original thesis theme
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    • Profile picture of the author packerfan
      Keeping Thesis is fine, but I'd rather not. The site is basically silo structured and I'd like to add a blog to it or change it to a blog.

      Maybe the easiest answer is just install a blog in a separate directory and make a strong call to action to divert traffic there from the main site.

      The main intention is to be able to interact with visitors, make things more sharable, and add content that's about a wider range of topics (this is why EMDs suck...).

      Anyway - I might have talked myself into the answer already. Thanks!
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      • Profile picture of the author ilikepie
        Originally Posted by packerfan View Post

        Keeping Thesis is fine, but I'd rather not. The site is basically silo structured and I'd like to add a blog to it or change it to a blog.

        Maybe the easiest answer is just install a blog in a separate directory and make a strong call to action to divert traffic there from the main site.

        The main intention is to be able to interact with visitors, make things more sharable, and add content that's about a wider range of topics (this is why EMDs suck...).

        Anyway - I might have talked myself into the answer already. Thanks!
        I'm still not sure what your goal is but if you are going for a more complex environment. Then you might want to change from CMS and use Drupal which can offer you a lot of options. I use Drupal on all websites which are more then just a blog or a few basic pages.

        SEO wise there should be no problems because you would reproduce the structure you had and might improve it where it is needed.

        Anyway like I posted in my previous post do some research. And have an open mind for everything. The easiest way is most of the time not the best way

        You started your journey based on one idea: Adsense. Now it evolved in something bigger then you thought or hoped for. Be smart and don't make the same mistake by adding yourself limitations again. This has maybe also something to do with vision. Your goal for your website 1.0 was clear, now you seem to have a good idea about 2.0 but what about 3.0?
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  • Profile picture of the author ilikepie
    A redesign is always difficult.

    Its quite hard to work with something as: my design sucks.

    But if you are about serious improvements, make two lists: the good and bad list. From there you can build a list with requirements for your future design/layout. Take also a look at your competition or website which offers something similar. From there you can make at least one design. Again I'm not sure how serious you are but you can make several designs and so some testing on your own. From there on you can test it for a good period on your live website.

    From what I understand about your story, you need improvements on user experience. So that is mostly doing research, plan, building, testing, research and final improvements. In my opinion an average programmer is only good for the building part. I would also recommend to look for a programmer outside this board my preference would be someone you would know real life. Ask for portfolio and make clear agreements about the work that has been done (don't pay for unfinished work or work that you don't have seen). The plan (covers everything what has to be done) and planning (timetable) part is very important there.

    I hope this helped you
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    • Profile picture of the author packerfan
      Thanks ilikepie,

      I basically have 3 objectives.

      1. Keep organic search traffic
      2. Create additional traffic sources by capturing visitor emails and social interactions.
      3. Provide a better user experience.

      My current site has the following problems.

      1. When I created it, I built it around a very specific keyword and bought an exact match domain. Expanding the content on this domain name is really awkward. An example would be having green couch cushions.com and wanting to engage visitors about dining room furniture.

      My topics are more closely related, but I think you get my point.

      I'm very serious about doing it right. I'm not going to spend $20,000, but if I had to spend $3,000 that would be fine.

      Thanks for getting me focused on the basics of the design as well. I've been thinking of my site in a silo, not researching others in the market. Thanks for that!
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      • Profile picture of the author packerfan
        I posted before reading the second post. I'm going to spend some time on research and think about the long-term vision for the site.

        Thanks again.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        Why can't you just expand it without changing it?

        If you redesign it, you're looking for a fall.

        Paul
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        • Profile picture of the author packerfan
          Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

          Why can't you just expand it without changing it?

          If you redesign it, you're looking for a fall.

          Paul
          Just as an example. The homepage is basically links to the 5 categories of the site with a short explanation of what each is about. (it's formatted and looks fine, but that's all that is there).

          If my site is blue couch cushions.com, my categories are blue couch cushions, blue couch cushions with buttons, blue couch cushions for over stuffed couches, etc.

          Now I want to expand it to include how to throw great dinner parties, feng shui, etc.

          It would be easy if I initially created the site for a general home and garden site.

          Long story short, I created an MFA site with good content and it took off. I want to keep the traffic but do the site the right way now.

          Make sense?
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          • Profile picture of the author tinknocker
            If it works don't fix it. Build another site with your idea instead of screwing with this one, then you can go after a broader site name instead of being constrained by an EMD.
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      • Profile picture of the author ilikepie
        Originally Posted by packerfan View Post

        Thanks ilikepie,

        I basically have 3 objectives.

        1. Keep organic search traffic
        2. Create additional traffic sources by capturing visitor emails and social interactions.
        3. Provide a better user experience.

        My current site has the following problems.

        1. When I created it, I built it around a very specific keyword and bought an exact match domain. Expanding the content on this domain name is really awkward. An example would be having green couch cushions.com and wanting to engage visitors about dining room furniture.

        My topics are more closely related, but I think you get my point.

        I'm very serious about doing it right. I'm not going to spend $20,000, but if I had to spend $3,000 that would be fine.

        Thanks for getting me focused on the basics of the design as well. I've been thinking of my site in a silo, not researching others in the market. Thanks for that!
        I suggested to take a look around at others e.g. competition so you can see how others did it. You can learn or get ideas from that because you will see good or bad things which you should use or avoid. But to be honest the improvements you state are not that complicated (and not that expensive!). Only the content is a bit of a question. I agree it looks odd but I have seen it worked before, it depends on your kind of audience/organic visitors and that is hard to predict. You can try it out with some test pages and see how it works.

        But an other idea might what others suggested keep it like this and start a new project. If your competition is not that hard to compete it might (there are no guarantees) bring you two money machines. This also makes you less vulnerable if something would happen with one website.

        Anyway just threw some thoughts out, hope it helped you
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        • Profile picture of the author packerfan
          Thanks for all the input. I think I'm going to leave this site as is and put some calls to action to divert traffic to a new site I'll create.

          I still have a lot of research to do though like ilikepie suggested. I just hate to give up the opportunity to capture a high percentage of 2k visitors/day.

          But as mentioned, the competition isn't fierce so I'll probably just develop another site.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    One thing I learned a long time ago about changing the look of a site, it can have an impact on earnings. I screwed my site up once by giving my main site a whole new look, CTR on everything went down, including my email optins.

    IMO bare bones looking sites are far easier to increase CTRs, so that's what I stick with. Some people around here call bare bones looking web pages (ex: Craigslist) ugly, I call it easier money than a web page with a lot of distractions. Your only distractions should be a call to action.

    If the site is earning decent money I would be very careful what you change, even the layout can mess up a good CTR.

    Always make a backup of anything that performs well (themes, layouts, color schemes, etc...).
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