Where to learn?

[slowhost]

Hello all,

I have been messing around trying to make mini sites for well over a year now as a bit of a hobby, a couple i have rank well in google and make a couple of $`s a week.

They arnt the best looking sites tho, i would like to learn how to make a decent looking site or even just buy a decent template that i`m happy with to use for all my domains.

I would prefer to learn how to do everything properly as it would be a gud thing to learn, and there is only so much i can do altering free templates.

If anyone has a gud template for sale PM me.

Thanks for any advice on either option. cheers

 

[DaveH]

Post up some of the ones you've created and we'll take a look for you. Might be able to advise on improvements etc...

 

[dw1973]

I agree with DaveH plus you get a lot more pleasure out of doing it for yourself and not just making it from a template.

Do you use html or wordpress/joomla/another CMS?

Whichever you use, there is a lot you have probably already picked up from altering templates so you are well on your way.

Post a few links and I'm sure you'll get plenty of constructive comments.

 

[Skinner]

The best advice you will get is learn fundamental html.

I'm talking barebones here, learn how to write code to XHTML Transitional at a minimum and Strict to be a nerd.

Learn about <h1-6>, <strong>, <cite> learn the basics on how to build a page, and this will help you infinitely more than most things.

Simply changing fontsize=18 to <h1> has a profound effect, on your SEO, loads of changes like that worth their weight in quality printer ink (which oddly is worth similar to gold, only I don't thro much gold in the bin).

 

[slowhost]

dont think i`ll get gud comments but heres my best altho they are of templates and not happy with them (looks and content)
LED GU10 Light Bulbs - LED Light Bulbs LEDGU10
British Metal Music | British Metal Information | British Metal Merchandise BRITISH METAL

Dont know if ive done that right but have a look i use dreamweaver but would like to know how to make nice images, css, as i have aiso have a couple of full websites for my business. both also rank high for key words just dont look the part.

 

[crabfoot]

Not enough serious content on the light bulb site - the ads focus well, but you need something to read on there.

British metal - there are a few you are missing - Budgie, The Pink Fairies, Heavy Metal Kids - you need more here, too.

Bounce, bounce, bounce - nothing to catch the attention, no new info, no freebies.

You could optimise the sites better by including one or two sentences as a tag line on every page, including the keywords in your meta tag.

If you can't add the content needed, pay someone - there is always someone who will write what you need for money.

 

[DaveH]

LEDGU

• Your meta description quite spammy. Change that to a small sentence / paragraph which is natural text.
• xhtml markup needs tidying. You've got extra closing <li> etc... causing 16 errors (see The W3C Markup Validation Service)
• All the links in the left hand side bar all go to the home page.
• You're left hand side bar benefits is quite spammy. I know what you're trying to do with adding LED GU10 LIGHT BULBS to get more density for that keywords on the page but Google can see that isn't natural text.
• Like crabfoot already mentioned you need much more content for the SE to keep coming back and favour you in the SERP. You've got two pages with less than 450 content words across two pages.

The biggest tip I can give you is that you need to concentrate your efforts on the end-user and not the Search Engines. SE will favour you if it thinks your website is a content rich, human targeted without the SE spam. Doing what you're doing now may work short term but for the long term goal you need to think differently. Google is constantly penalising and de-indexing sites that are deliberately trying to gain false rankings.

IMO, The biggest factors to make a successful minisite are:
Lots of unique content, at least 5 pages with 300 words +, ideally more.
Age of site and content - nothing you can do here
Relevant back-links from other quality websites.
Consent minor updates and extra pages added once in a while.

BRITISHMETAL
Most of the above applied.
Split this up into pages with more content.

 

[slowhost]

thanks for the feed back, got a few more sites which all probably have the same problems, some of which are now de-indexed by google,

probably the most asked question on here but, where do i find unique content? as you can probably imagine i know nothing about the content on each site and have just taken snipets of wiki and altered it. where do you all get ur content from and if you pay someone who?

thanks again everyone...

another site i`ve recently added Muscle Training - Information - Equipment - Supplements

 

[DaveH]

I use a few people for content. Always go for UK writers, more expensive but you get what you pay for.

I've used Rich1880 on here and Julian who runs http://content4u.co.uk/
Others I've used have been let down by poor grammar etc..

Have a search around the forums as it's a question asked a lot - see http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/services-wanted/42405-mini-site-content.html

muscletraining is better, although it's not in Google at all. Is this because it's been de-index or has it just never got in?

Muscle Building / Nutrition / Weight training has a high CPC, some of my best performing sites are in that area, so stick with it.

 

[slowhost]

it was indexed and ranked high, but started to drop down the ranks, so i totally changed it, and i think while i was messing around changing files it was indexed with no file in the ftp so has been de-indexed, i have submitted it again i`ll just have to wait and see if it comes up again. would be grateful of a link exchange to speed things up if its possible.