by timber
8 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
  • |
Hello fellow Warriors;
I'm getting burnt out. I just don't get what I'm doing, or not doing, to keep from getting anywhere.

I have a question for who ever reads this, do you think it's more important to have a site up and looking professional, or to just have up a page or two and have a squeeze page with an opt in on. Because I'm at a loss as to where to go.

Google doesn't like my guitar review site, I've re-designed it several times, it now includes about 10 diffrent products reviewed, and I've followed thier guidelines to the letter in regards to transparency and all the stuff they state they are looking for. I'm just not understanding what they want in way of content I guess.

Can anyone tell me where I'm going totally off the rails? I mean, is it something I'm totally missing?
I know the problem, I need a mentor, someone who can not only tell me that my page sucks, but tell me why, and what / how to change to fix it.

Okay, enough whining...

I just wanted to say that I can build a website, but that doesn't make me an artist, or a web site designer... far from it. But does it matter? I've seen some very, very ugly sites, and for some reason, they seem to be making money, at least they have a history of doing so according to spyfu.com... love that site.

I'm still having 'issues' with the site, www.theguitarreviews.com/

Feed back is appreciated, as always. thanks for your time.
#content #designer #google
  • Profile picture of the author osegoly
    How much traffic is your site generating?

    How often do you update your content?

    There are so many different elements to SEO that will determine your ranking on Google. I would almost suggest that you stop changing your design and instead focus on your content and SEO. Start link building for example. At the moment it appears that you only have 2 backlinks to your website.

    Also, and sorry if I am wrong, but it appears that all your content is based within your index page. You should try and create a separate page for each product you are reviewing. You could then optimize each page separately for better results. Use your index page to present intros to each product review with a Read More button for example.

    Another idea is to give wordpress a shot. Google loves wordpress. You could implement your existing design into wordpress quite easily as it is pretty simple.

    Hope that helps.
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    • Profile picture of the author petebolduc
      It appears that you simply have an index page and all your links go to an affiliate. It looks like you have created sub directories for each affiliate and are redirecting to the affiliate from the index in each sub directory.

      THIS IS NOT GOOD for SEO. Google is smart enough to realize what you are doing. The only content worth indexing is your index page.

      You should provide content on the index pages in your sub directories related to the affiliate you are reviewing and link to the affiliate with a no-follow link from your legitimate review page.

      In fact, I would not even put them in a sub-directory. I would have them on the top level

      eg. http://www.theguitarreviews.com/play...htheblues.html

      Additionally, google ranks highly on popularity and even your articles are not original content, but come from ezinearticles. Although google does not penalize duplicate content across two different sites, it will always rank the more popular site (in this case EzineArticles) well before your content.

      According to my research you have 0 (zero) backlinks in google and 10 in bing. as the other warrior stated above you should be working on getting high ranking related backlinks to your site.

      Hope this helps
      Pete
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  • Profile picture of the author timber
    Hey, thanks for the reply... yeah, for the moment, the content starts on the main page, but once I figure out what I want to do for the index page, that's how it's going to stay...

    I have been trying to add as many backlinks as I can, but I can't seem to wrap my head around how to build them... I post articles into other people's blogs? Is that the core of it? And I also setup outbound links to authority site? It just seems a little counter productive to me somehow...

    Regarding traffic, I've been averaging about 100 - 150 visitor per week, but that's mostly due to safe lists, like listjoe.com... other than that, no love...

    Thanks again for the feedback.
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  • Profile picture of the author KhadijahChapman
    All the information given here is great, in addition I would ussgest def adding a wordpress blog and hiring someone to help you. Try guru.com or freelance, i also have a team who are helping me to create back links..,

    If you are not able to hire anyone, I would suggest subscribing to Angela's Edward back link service here in the forum, her subscription is only $5.00 a month, first month is free - so you can't beat that. lol...

    And my last suggestion would entail you taking the time to write a few original articles and placing them in article directories such as ezinearticles.com. Hope this helps - or at the least can get you started... and yes you def need a mentor... a lot of what goolge claim they want.. is not what they really want, you have to know how to weed through their web

    again, I hope this helps you
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  • Profile picture of the author timber
    Thanks for the input, I have some original ariticles to put up, so I will deffinatly be adding to that directory with more origianal stuff, and phasing out the ezine stuff soon.
    As for the wordpress, I do actually have a blog running on the site, just not linked in, as I have to get the theme's to match otherwise it might be strange for the reader. I realized too late that I could do the entire thing in wordpress, and to be honest, I'm not up to transfering everything over, even though I know it would mostly be copy/paste.

    Thanks again for the input, it will all be considered. I'll be using Guru or Elance again I suspect, I just have find a mentor first.
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  • Profile picture of the author NetMan
    And I would add that indeed many suggestions are very good plus you've been suggested to use wordpress. It is a known fact that google loves wordpress since it is created for managing content and it is very SEO friendly.

    I would also add that, yes, having a professional design will help in MANY ways. Having a succesful site that makes money nowadays is a combinations of many things and a profesionnal look and design is among one of them. Just think about how that affects the retention and the bounce ratio. Plus among this combination of several things one must also consider integrating social media, that just can't be ignored also nowadays.

    Anyway, if you need help and maybe have a complete revamped of your site done within a few days, that google will love guranteed, and considering all the advices you received here take a look et my turnkey package in my sig below, it is conceived to render al these advices very easy

    Let me know what you think.

    Best regards,

    Andre Foisy
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  • Profile picture of the author timber
    Wow... I'm just looking at some of support packages out there, and coming to the realization that I just can't complete... I thought I'd be able to make a website, put some content in it, as much original content as I can, add a few affiliate links, and then I'd use Adwords or Yahoo and Bing, and see what happened...

    Boy, was I wrong...

    So, in order to make any money online, I'm going to have to put out hundreds of dollars to have a website created professionally, as I'm not a designer, obviously, fill it with original content, then hope to somehow make back my money. All based on the inital investment that I don't have to begin with.
    Even the mentor's I've found want $400 - $500 just to offer e-mail support...

    I just don't get how people are able to make a living with this if it's so complicated. I'm not a stupid person, but the amount of junk thrown around is hard to wade through, and it seems that the only people making money, are the ones offering to help others make money. No one is offering to help for a reasonable price and if you don't have deep pockets, then don't even bother... Yet, i've seen some truly ugly sites as examples of sites that work and are successful, and making money of the owners.

    I must be missing something, I know I"m missing tons for my sites, but it's just getting stupid now.
    yikes!
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  • Profile picture of the author NetMan
    Hi Timber,

    You are missing nothing, that's business my friend. Always keep in mind that you will pull out exactly what you will put in, whether in time or money.

    We all face the same since we're born when we want to accomplish something, no matter what, there's only two choices. That is we LEARN all there is know to accomplish it ourselves, OR we PAY soemeone else to do it for us. That's it! It's as simple as that.

    Now, if you've been brought to believe that you can just up a web site quiclky and hope making money because it is there, I'm sorry to tell you that it is wrong. There's a lot of elements missing on your site actually, one of them is a way to build a list, and there's much more. You look reluctant to pay someone to coach you or to do it all for you, that's fine, then your other alternative is to take the TIME to LEARN and DO it YOURSELF. Because that's the way those who want to charge you went through, and often while eating peanut butter and toasts, through long hours, even days, weeks, month and often years of trial and errors. Keep on smiling that is the cold hard reality.

    Best regards,

    Andre Foisy
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