Wanted: Website Review My first stab at an affiliate site

[Tyrannical]

Hi all,

After only recently starting in the whole domaining/affiliate marketing world i thought it might be wise to see other peoples opinions on my first developed site, bit nervous about revealing it as noone wants to be made to look stupid but here goes: 50cc moped

Any and all critisms are welcome as that's the only way you learn in my opinion.

This is also my first time at using wordpress, that was a learning curve all by itself lol. The website was ranking on the first page in google for the first week or two for its main keyword, but has fallen to page 10 now i'm hoping it will bounce back.

Thanks for your time

Stuart

 

[rush]

Good 1st site, couple of things you need to add, a privacy policy page & site map, both of these are essential for good indexing. There are plenty of sample policies about you can amend & a site map should be an easy add-on.

The 'top offers' link doesn't seem to work, i'm sure you already know about this though.

Maybe try and fill some of the blank space in the right hand column with some form of content, another insurance aff banner?

You could also add some other linked moped accessories to the site, not necessarily on the front page, in separate sections, helmets, clothing, locks etc, if aff products are available, might make some other related sales if visitors don't go on to buy a moped.


Edit: I think the links through to the products should be 'deep links' if possible, i.e. directly to the product info page on the retailers site, rather than the front page.

 

[davedevelopment]

Site looks good, I've used that theme, only problem is that it can be pretty heavy on the downloads.

Try running Y!Slow on your page for some optimisation tips.

Your home page and all components is more than 2MB to download, you need to turn on gzip compression.

 

[suzi]

Fantastic site - looks great to me, speaking from a purely aesthetic perspective.

How long did it take you to produce? Did you do the logo or have someone do it for you.

Well done!

 

[bensd]

Nice little site there.

It is now time for something bigger and faster - 125cc mopeds

 

[Tyrannical]

Good 1st site, couple of things you need to add, a privacy policy page & site map

Thanks for the input, i'll get to work on a privacy policy this afternoon, i do have a sitemap plugin already which i have submitted to google, you think i should have 1 displayed as well?

The 'top offers' link doesn't seem to work, i'm sure you already know about this though.

It should just link back to the homepage, just tried it and it worked on IE, what browser you using bud? will try and fix if it doesn't work in yours.

I think the links through to the products should be 'deep links' if possible, i.e. directly to the product info page on the retailers site, rather than the front page.

I agree, i have deeplinked most of them, but the Direct Bikes ones i couldn't find an option anywhere to deeplink, will try and contact the merchant or commision junction to figure it out, your comments on the white space and especially the accessories have been noted, thanks for taking the time to have a look

Site looks good, I've used that theme, only problem is that it can be pretty heavy on the downloads.

Try running Y!Slow on your page for some optimisation tips.

Your home page and all components is more than 2MB to download, you need to turn on gzip compression.

I had been looking to try and trim it down some, so thanks very much for the pointers

Fantastic site - looks great to me, speaking from a purely aesthetic perspective.

How long did it take you to produce? Did you do the logo or have someone do it for you.

Well done!

Cheers, been working on it most nights for the last few weeks, but hopefully now i know a bit more future sites will be quicker. The logo was done by me surprisingly with a bit of clipart and adobe fireworks.

Nice little site there.

It is now time for something bigger and faster - 125cc mopeds

lol, will see if this one makes any sales first , when it hopefully returns to the top of google it will be more fine tuned with more content

 

[retired_member12]

How effective is the CSS positioning on the Wordpress theme? It exhibits the annoying 'scroll bar jump' bug on your 'top offers' link. As a short term fix, you could always add blank content to the page to force the scroll bar into use.

What's the cut for a sale, % wise? Only one or two sales seems quite a good little earner I imagine!

 

[Tyrannical]

How effective is the CSS positioning on the Wordpress theme? It exhibits the annoying 'scroll bar jump' bug on your 'top offers' link. As a short term fix, you could always add blank content to the page to force the scroll bar into use.

What's the cut for a sale, % wise? Only one or two sales seems quite a good little earner I imagine!

Tbh i haven't delved into css positioning at all, just left it as it was out of the box, i'll have a look at that though and try and rectify it so thanks for pointing it out, do you have a massive monitor by the way? the scroll bar is always in use on mine lol

Well Tesco direct and argos only offer i think 2% as standard and Direct bikes are £50 a bike, not that i have had any sales yet unfortunately

 

[rush]

Thanks for the input, i'll get to work on a privacy policy this afternoon, i do have a sitemap plugin already which i have submitted to google, you think i should have 1 displayed as well?

I think if you place a footer link to the map, helps crawlers index the site.

It should just link back to the homepage, just tried it and it worked on IE, what browser you using bud? will try and fix if it doesn't work in yours.

I'm using Firefox, doesn't seem to like the 'http://www.50ccmoped.org.uk/\' top offers link.


Is it that rotator block that causes the slight load delay? Would reducing the number of items in the module speed up the site load time?

 

[Tyrannical]

I'm using Firefox, doesn't seem to like the 'http://www.50ccmoped.org.uk/\' top offers link.


Is it that rotator block that causes the slight load delay? Would reducing the number of items in the module speed up the site load time?

Ah right, was just a rogue '\' then, sorted now cheers. And quite possibly, it does load 14 images up, will look at optimising the whole thing right after i've fixed someones puter thats landed on my doorstep

 

[Tyrannical]

Just thought i would update and say the site has returned to the first page of google as of yesterday and also made my first sale!!!! Feel a bit silly, but what a great feeling, my first ever affiliate commision

 

[spondishy]

Good stuff. Did you sell a moped? That must be a few quid in commission?

 

[riz77]

Not bad for your first site, can't wait to see site number 10.

 

[RampageJackson]

You are not going to keep that ranking, or rank for anything else, unless you build backlinks. If possible I would use any income from sales to add more and more links. You can build large (and profitable) sites very quickly if you keep reinvesting the money into links and content.

On that site I probably wouldn't even have a "buy now" button. You only have 1 paragraph of text on the bike I'm looking at right now. For £1800 I'd want a whole lot more information before I decided to buy. Either detailed reviews, embedded youtube videos, or something. I would say either thicken out the content, or kill the "buy now" button and make the "more info" one more prominent. Someone who sees a "more info" understands they can click it without committing to anything. Then they are on the Tesco site and the affil cookie has been set. Selling motorbikes is a different world to selling an £8 cd were you want big "buy now" logos to grab the impulse sales.

 

[Tyrannical]

You are not going to keep that ranking, or rank for anything else, unless you build backlinks. If possible I would use any income from sales to add more and more links. You can build large (and profitable) sites very quickly if you keep reinvesting the money into links and content.

Thanks for the input, backlinks are proving to be a pain to get for me, i have managed to get a link from another related site, done some directory submissions and things like Digg etc, but am not really sure where to go from here to be honest, paying for links isn't something i have considered, is that a common practice?

Maybe you could give me some pointers on how to go about getting links, would be much appreciated as i have started working on my next site and would like to get things right from the start.

On that site I probably wouldn't even have a "buy now" button. You only have 1 paragraph of text on the bike I'm looking at right now. For £1800 I'd want a whole lot more information before I decided to buy. Either detailed reviews, embedded youtube videos, or something. I would say either thicken out the content, or kill the "buy now" button and make the "more info" one more prominent. Someone who sees a "more info" understands they can click it without committing to anything. Then they are on the Tesco site and the affil cookie has been set. Selling motorbikes is a different world to selling an £8 cd were you want big "buy now" logos to grab the impulse sales.

What i might do is try and implement some sort of link tracking and find out how many times each button is clicked and go from there, even though i dare say you are probably right.

The amount of info available for the mopeds seems to be quite thin on the internet so am struggling to find anything to add to it, but will see what i can come up with.

Thanks for your time.

 

[RampageJackson]

Maybe you could give me some pointers on how to go about getting links, would be much appreciated as i have started working on my next site and would like to get things right from the start.

Get on Google and search for things like "moped blog", "moped fan club", "50cc blog", etc. Then approach all these sites and ask to buy links. If you thicken out your own site you might even be able to get links for free, but as it is there is no way you are going to get free links for what is effectively a tesco brochure.

If you own other related sites, then link from those too.

Or create some link bait content. I don't know much about mopeds so its hard for me to think of ideas, something like "top 10 moped crashes" then go through youtube and find a bunch of smashes with mopeds, put them into a post and promote it.

 

[retired_member13]

Most sensible, clearest viewpoint I've read on here in a bit about site building. Nice one.

 

[Tyrannical]

Many thanks for the advice, and presenting new angles i hadn't thought of, i'll finish up the design of the site i've started (larder fridge) then work on bulking them both out and hunting links

Cheers again