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This is a project that has been online for years and only turns a few dollars/month. I've put hundreds of hours into this site and am very disappointed :confused: with how it performs.

I would LOVE any feedback or criticism for on this site.
Basically it's an amazon affiliate site in the "bilingual books" niche.


The Language Bear:
Teach Your Child Foreign Language with Dual-Language Books - Dual-Language Children Books - The Language Bear
#review #website
  • Profile picture of the author DanielDuffo
    I think people just don't need your service.
    A lot information about " how teach your child Foreign Lang" they can find in internet.
    Or maybe school give enough skill )
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    • Profile picture of the author chienfu
      Duly noted.
      I'm basing my niche on a small amount of keyword research. It looks like there is 18k monthly searches with "low" competition for "bilingual children" and 12k searches with medium competition for "bilingual books".

      I don't know if this is good or not, thoughts?
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  • Profile picture of the author Warrior Roy
    What are your site's keywords?

    Who are yout competitors?
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  • There is a lot going on. I would focus on simplicity, cleaner navigation and a smaller focused offering. My eyes don't go anywhere in particular. Move the website visitors where you want to move them. I think you are just trying far too much and it's hurting you.
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  • Profile picture of the author vivadesign
    Optimise your website,
    You could start by changing that long title you have on your index page.
    Add a bit more content on the about page, or make the text bigger.
    I think you also need to do a bit more marketing.
    Nice site, i like it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Warrior Roy
    A major issue is you are not showing up on the first page of Google Search Results for any of these keword phrases:

    languages for kids
    language learning for kids
    languages for children

    These may be three of the keywords that should send people to your site. It looks like you need some SEO work done.

    You may want to consider adding articles named by these keywords or use other article strategies.

    You can also drive traffic to your site by using a combination of CPV (inexpensive paid traffic) and a CPA offer. The offer would be a pop-up that would appear on your competitor's sites.

    Hope this helps.
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    • Profile picture of the author chienfu
      Originally Posted by Warrior Roy View Post

      A major issue is you are not showing up on the first page of Google Search Results for any of these keword phrases:

      languages for kids
      language learning for kids
      languages for children
      Thanks for the keyword tips. Those look great. I will try to put out some appropriate content.

      Originally Posted by Warrior Roy View Post

      You can also drive traffic to your site by using a combination of CPV (inexpensive paid traffic) and a CPA offer. The offer would be a pop-up that would appear on your competitor's sites.
      Who would you recommend I use for CPV/CPA?
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  • Profile picture of the author carrot
    Whats your traffic and conversion (vistor>amazon and amazon>purchase) rates like?

    The site is well made and fits the target market well design wise.
    Also, what are you using to build out the store side? I see amazon in all the urls, but its not an old astore, so the content is actually on your domain and indexed, but this may still pose a search engine problem.

    Do you get longtail traffic for specific book titles at all?
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    • Profile picture of the author chienfu
      Originally Posted by carrot View Post

      Whats your traffic and conversion (vistor>amazon and amazon>purchase) rates like?
      Q1, 2012:

      Visitors: 1600
      Amazon clicks: 460
      Sales: 15


      Originally Posted by carrot View Post

      Do you get longtail traffic for specific book titles at all?
      No. None at all. Good observation about the engine. It's not an astore, I use Drupal which has a module for affiliate stores, but it has limitations like not being able to create permalinks to book titles that say anything relevant to the product.. I will talk to the developers about that..
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  • Profile picture of the author carrot
    OK, well 1st, those conversion rates are very good, so props on that.
    2nd, your traffic absolutely sucks.

    That is the one and only thing you should concentrate on for now.
    What keywords do you actually rank for?

    On to longtails, your pages are indexed, so you can rank them.
    Take a look at the screen grap attached for a random product. Though the top results are amazon, none have any links directly to the page (though tons of domain links) so they can be beaten.

    Also note that the titles and descriptions are not particularly enticing.
    1st change your title from 'book name | Dual-Language Children Books - The Language Bear' to 'book name - in stock fast shipping' or something else catching.

    Then look at your meta description. At the moment its just using the title, make it more interesting. Its not guaranteed that google will use it, but they often do, especially for low comp results, so make the most of it.
    Well written titles and descriptions can get more clicks than badly written, higher placed ones.

    That said, ranking is the most important, so build some links to those pages, (pick some based on search volume, or if too low to measure, commission earned (eg highest price)).

    Then pick some more generic higher traffic terms to research well and rank you main site or categories for.

    You actually have a very well built site, buit next to zero traffic, so work on that.
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  • Profile picture of the author carrot
    CPV for such a specific niche is probably a very bad idea.
    And with such low % coms and $ value per conversion, paid traffic of any sort is likely to be out of your reach, even if you can get it dirt cheap.
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  • Profile picture of the author Warrior Junior
    There are too many links all over the page. No clear call to action for you visitor to take action. Clean and simple is the best.

    This video might help you : /watch?v=erdEZvOq6wo (Webinar: The 7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design with Tim Ash) at YouTube
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  • Profile picture of the author carrot
    Its not a landing page, far from it. There isnt one action he wants his visitors to do, he really needs them to browse and buy multiple items, as the com is so low.

    Sure you can apply some landing page ideas to the individual product pages, but its not the same concept.
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    • Profile picture of the author chienfu
      Originally Posted by carrot View Post

      Its not a landing page, far from it. There isnt one action he wants his visitors to do, he really needs them to browse and buy multiple items, as the com is so low.

      Sure you can apply some landing page ideas to the individual product pages, but its not the same concept.
      Good point. I've got a call to action to sign up for the mailing list, but other than that, I'd love for people to go crazy and really browse the site and add a whole crap load of books to their cart.

      Maybe the homepage should just be more visual? Instead of languages in the side menu, maybe there is a category list as the main content with big images or links to "Children's books in Spanish" or "..in Japanese" etc.

      What do you think of that?



      Also, I've got the full content from the 5 most recently published articles on the home page. Is that worth having there?
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  • Profile picture of the author allpurposeguru
    What are you doing to drive traffic to specific articles? What will people who land on a specific article see? In particular, what call to action? Could you add reviews of particular titles and have the cover and affiliate link to that title at the end of the review?

    You're offering a great service. Our educational system is notoriously incompetent at turning out people with any fluency in foreign languages. I have studied three languages and might not be able to read even children's books in any of them. And I certainly can't carry on a conversation or even eavesdrop with any comprehension. Best of luck to you.
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    • Profile picture of the author chienfu
      Originally Posted by allpurposeguru View Post

      Could you add reviews of particular titles and have the cover and affiliate link to that title at the end of the review?
      Great idea. Right now it's just the article, generally no affiliate links. I will try to work those in. Glad you appreciate the website!
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  • Profile picture of the author carrot
    See my post above the one you quoted.
    Your conversion rates are fine, dont bother tinkering with conversions until you have at least 10x the traffic.

    To repeat, you need a ton more visitors to make anything with this site. You could spend thousands with an ecom optimization specialist, and still make pennies unless you get more traffic.

    Sod call to actions etc, you dont have enough visitors to test it on anyway.

    Get more traffic.

    Some on page changes can help, but this mostly means OFF SITE stuff, eg links.
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  • Profile picture of the author chienfu
    Understood. I will be spending the majority of my effort on increasing (and retaining) traffic.

    Sounds like the best way to do this is through targeting long tail keywords, refining my main keyword focus, publishing more articles targeted to my keywords and optimizing other little things (like urls) for SEO.
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  • Profile picture of the author benjigbird
    from a design perspective it looks really nice!
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  • Profile picture of the author avanwhy
    Personally, I think the font size in the blog postings is too small and the entries themselves too "wordy". For example, the "Four Tips To Help You Learn..." might be better as "bullets" and the tips explained in as few words as possible. Same for the "5 Reasons to Study..." post. It looks too long and I had no desire to read it.

    Somehow you need to grab my attention as to why I would want my child to know another language. Just listing the reasons doesn't quite work.
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  • Profile picture of the author chienfu
    Good advice. Thank you. I will try to improve the quality and allure of my posts.

    As far as keywords go, without paying for keywords, what is the best way of "implementing" keywords on my site?

    Page titles? Within content? H1 tags? Metatags?

    Thanks!
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    • Profile picture of the author Bret Ferguson
      Originally Posted by chienfu View Post

      Good advice. Thank you. I will try to improve the quality and allure of my posts.

      As far as keywords go, without paying for keywords, what is the best way of "implementing" keywords on my site?

      Page titles? Within content? H1 tags? Metatags?

      Thanks!
      Meta tags for sure.
      Site Title, Keywords and Description. If you don't put a description on your site that you want your customer to see on a search then Google randomly pulls content from you page for your description.

      It's a super easy thing to do and every little bit helps.

      Bret
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      • Profile picture of the author Ed Brown
        Bret I tried to reply to your PM but I don't have enough posts yet, lol.
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  • Profile picture of the author CyborgX
    Too many options to choose from. Make it simple and easy for the visitors to browse through your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author chienfu
    Are you referring to the left hand menu? I tried to consolidate everything to that menu, but maybe there is still too much?

    Thanks.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bret Ferguson
    The site looks great. My questions is, is there a market for it?

    Second, I'm going to break from the pack on your site being to busy, my opinion is it's fine. I've been to Amazon, Pinterest etc.....let's talk busy.

    However, I will say that you need re work your call to action, work on the copy, because you do have a call to action, it just needs tweaked.

    I checked a couple of your keywords (first 2 I believe) and there were no searches for them. However, googles keyword tool offers a nice list of keywords with low competition like this one here - foreign language for kids

    Obviously you are building a brand with the bear that is a plus.

    I think you're on the right track you just need to make a few tweaks and changes.

    Good luck!
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  • Profile picture of the author ezjob
    I think your website looks good but you need an attention grabbing title that explains what you are offering to people.

    Such as "Easiest Way For Children To Learn a Language"

    Or what ever you are selling.

    This should be above or below the image at the top of your home page.

    It should stand out so people will know what you are truly offering. When I visit a site I want to know what they have to offer.

    You are offering a free language bear book and the first thing I was wondering was, is this just teaching me English or what?

    So I would put up an attention grabbing headline either above or below the language bear offer image at the top of the page (might try both to see which works best).

    Also, I would get a different page text that is darker and larger. The text is too small and thin for my online reading.

    Hope this helps,
    ezjob
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  • Profile picture of the author Ed Brown
    all I'm getting from your website is:

    HTTP ERROR: 504

    Gateway Timeout RequestURI=http://www.thelanguagebear.com/

    so, if it were my site, before i did anything else, I'd check it's up time. If it experiences downtime regularly ... move that sucker! Downtime is a big rusty knife right into the heart of your business. Don't tolerate it from any hosting provider!

    It looks like there is 18k monthly searches with "low" competition for "bilingual children" and 12k searches with medium competition for "bilingual books".
    you're using 'broad" match type and in my opinion you should be using [exact]. While your numbers above are accurate, when you perform the keyword research using exact match it turns that 18k into barely 1k and your 12k into only 720 ... and those numbers are more realistic. Also, when you mentioned in another post that the competition is 'low' I'm assuming you're gauging that by the competition column in the keyword tool, but that column is based on pay per click advertising competition ... NOT on actual organic search competition (which is very misleading, i do realize).

    But the fact is, there are people in here that would kill for your conversion numbers. 1600 unique visitors in 3 months with well over 25% of them clicking through to amazon and then 15 of those making a purchase?

    Hell, based on the numbers I see, there's nothing more you need to do to this site ... you just need to pick other niches and create more sites ...

    oh and if drupal doesn't allow long tail keyword posts/pages, etc ... try wordpress ... it's really the best CMS for affiliate marketing.
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  • Profile picture of the author bus-fin
    Simple Design i like it
    all look simple but professional

    Good job

    Regards
    Ahmad
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  • Profile picture of the author Kyro
    Doesn't feel like there is a clear Customer "Journey", everything feels a little random and there is no clear Call to Action.

    In terms of design, try some more simple, clean looks with clearly defined calls to action.

    Plenty of themes here to give you some inspiration:
    themeforest (dot) net
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  • Profile picture of the author chienfu
    Thanks all! This has been great advice!
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  • Site design is nice and attractive so far. Some advice,

    Adsense integration is very poor. You can use the power of adsense control panel and customize it.

    Home page is too long. People dont have that time to see your whole page. Keep it simple.

    Dont target only money, target quality content. Try to see as your first visitor looks at your site.
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