What would you pick? Species/Breed or Topic
-
If you'd like to take a look, the site under quesiton is http://ArkAnimals.Com. At the moment I am considering doing landing pages by topics and not by the type of animals. I will be blending both wild and domestic animals but how to best do this is confusing since so much has changed over the years.
My competitors are focusing on animal types mainly and competition is fierce. Also the site attracts by three main topics not specific animals--so I want to be a bit unique which is why I am considering a topic driven focus.
What would you recommend?
Background
This site has been online since 1994 and on its own domain for a long while. However, over time it has suffered from a lot of things--different designers, expansion, movement of content to niche sites and bad seo. LOL
Once everything was on one site with sub directories. Then, it expanded and my online advisors recommended moving topics off into their own niche sites. So, I did that. Ugh.
Now, much of that content is being integrated back as I am undergoing an intense revamp (the last one was a disaster).
There are a few presenting problems that I could use your perspective and expertise--since I am too close to it.
Problems for Needing Your Input
-
The site is over 2600 pages with many in html and others in php.What is the best practice? Moving the remaining html pages over into php? Some of the pages that were not active have a redirect to the blog. I plan on doing page to page 301 redirects once I dig in--unless you have a better idea. There are a lot of well established links to some of the pages.
-
How many topics are too many? I have a wide variety of content. First, the magazine format covered about six topics. Later, I began covering more pet related items and did a lot of different news summaries to keep it fresh. I want to dump the short outdated pages as many of them have obsolete links or are too short to add any value. Or should I update if they help with the seo rather than continue to let them dilute the site?
-
Landing page or blog? Which is better, an index landing page or blog? At the moment the blog appears on the main index for freshness and the site attracts traffic for specific topics not animal breeds or species.
I want to move the site from an educational site to serving as a main funnel for potential clients driving them to get on a list or to a niche site for sales related to the particular topic/training of interest.
What your take on this if you were to tackle it?
Any input would be greatly appreciated. My audience includes those who are pet owners, novice trainers, and animal lovers with no critter sense.
-
-
Thanks Ryan, I can play with the widget code for the Facebook.
Yes, I am doing an entire site redesign but I wanted to run a few things over here at SEOMoz as well.
It is pretty comprehensive based on all the topics and content and so it is taking a while. My designer so rocks--and has some great ideas.
-
A few thoughts I can share:
The attachment is an image of how your facebook widget appears to me. I checked two different pc's using two different versions of Firefox. There are numerous issues with it's appearance.
I am not a web designer. I have the highest respect for those gifted designers who have the ability to take web content and present in cleanly with a "wow" effect. I can share an award winning web design I have found which I enjoy very much. This design is for Joomla CMS, but can be modified for other sites: http://themeforest.net/item/futureprospects-stylish-corporate-joomla-template/full_screen_preview/400149#?tp=1
I specifically like the "HOW CAN WE HELP? What we offer" idea. Whatever services you provide and whichever items you sell need to be presented in some format on your home page. At the very least, a link needs to be offered which provides greater details.
It sounds like you are unhappy with your site. You would clearly benefit from an updated design. I realize it can be expensive but you may want to consider a site rebuild. Determine what you want from the site with respect to SEO, sales, presentation, etc. and work with a developer who is able to offer a high quality site.
If a site redesign is not workable for you, then possibly redesign the home page.
-
Thanks Ryan,
Appreciate your taking a look. We have already implemented a site wide htaccess change for the blog to remove date stamps but I wasn't aware we could change everything site wide. The last designer did a html template and that is a mess which is another reason I wanted to change the pages.
To answer your question, yes many of the pages I have not touched do have backlinks. Some have traffic and some of the links are 15 years old--which is why I have stayed hands off on messing with it.
Orginally the site was a magazine with six different categories. At the moment I am testing two keywords in the nav and one is out peforming the other. I have three business services which is why you see three keywords. So what would you suggest?
I switched to the Genesis theme last Nov and am not happy with it for a number of reasons. Not sure why the Facebook looks odd to you but will put that on the list. I am testing the response and it actually has grown my community offsite.
As far as sales, at the moment a call to action for sign ups for more information is one idea or a call to action leading to the specific sale of the service most relevant for the topic.
We've discussed doing landing indexes per topic--so your idea about an animal page in a different manner.
Again, my topics overlap different services/topics about animals and each has a different audience (think domestic versus captive wildlife) so I didn't think the animal category would be the best based on the current competition and since many of the topics would overlap between the two species.
For instance, training principles for dogs are common for say, an elephant--so the training principle topic focus makes more sense to me--but then I am too close to this which is why I am in the forum.
I'd be interested in any additional thoughts about that as well.
-
I am wondering the best practice in moving the remaining html pages over into php.
From a technical perspective, any html page can be changed to a php page simply by renaming the file. If you have a page called animals.html and rename it to animals.php, the page will work just fine as long as users link to the proper url.
From a SEO perspective, it would be best to use "tech-free" URLs. Instead of linking to a /animals.html or /animals.php page, simply link to a /animals page. The extension is not necessary. You can ask your host or web developer about making this change. It is extremely easy but the exact method would vary depending on your site's software.
Once the change is made, you would simply 301 the old pages to the new pages. Ideally you can make the change with a single redirect for the whole site saying to simply remove the .php and .html extensions from all URLs. This method would save you from the headaches involved with redirecting 2600 pages individually. It also improves the look of your URL, and eliminates the need to make similar changes in the future.
Before dumping any pages, I would suggest performing some analysis. Do these pages have backlinks? Do these pages have traffic? If the answer to either question is yes, you want to carefully 301 these pages to the most relevant page on your site, or consider keeping / updating the page.
Your site has many SEO opportunities.
-
Your home page title targets 4 keywords and contains your phone number. This is not a good strategy for SEO.
-
You do not have any H1 tag on your home page
-
Your facebook widget is poorly integrated into your sidebar. I am using FF and the appearance is quite bad with me not being able to read any of the text of your comments.
There are numerous other opportunities. In general, if you wish to transition to a sales approach, you will need to directly engage your visitors and have some form of "Buy" call-to-action message prominently displayed.
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO Class/Course/Certification
Hello, I'm located in the US and I'm looking for **good **SEO classes or courses. Something that provides certification when completed, if possible. This is something that my employer wants to do. I know MOZ offers a lot of information here and has a course as well, but I'm looking for something that is in person. I tend to learn better that way. I see some things pop up when I search, but I believe most of it is just junk. I am looking for something that would basically go from intermediate to advanced. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | slecinc0 -
SITEMAP - Does <changefreq>and <image:title>have any apreciable effect?</image:title></changefreq>
Hi everyone. It was hard to find some actual evidence that some of the atributes to be declared in a sitemap have some real impact.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaston Riera
Particularly, im interested in these two: <changefreq></changefreq> and**image:title</image:title>** I've used them in a few cases just to check their effect and couldnt see any.
Do you have any experience with these? Or any other atribute that might be helpful, in order to create a more accurate and effective sitemap? Also, this could be a great topic to create a new Moz Blog post, the one about sitemap is 8years old.0 -
Looking for an experienced SEO/SEM contractor
I'm looking to hire an SEO/SEM contractor for about 10 hours a week to work with me at Infer. Will need some help re-architecting our AdWords and continue inbound and SEO optimization of our website. Martech experience a +, Wordpress dev skills ++ Send me a PM if interested.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seanzinsmeister0 -
How do I handle this 301/indexing mess?
I'm working on a client's site and noticed a brisk drop in rankings. In doing some digging I found that the homepage (domain.com) is 301'd to domain.com/home.html. Here's my problem/questions: 1. domain.com is indexed by Google 2. domain.com/home.html is not indexed by Google 3. both domains have some healthy linking 4. Is the fact that domain.com/home.html impacting rankings? 5. How do carefully handle this situation (ex. redirect domain.com/home.html back to domain.com?) 6. See the attached jpeg for a visual representation of my debacle. hcIiPAs
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhoadesjohn0 -
Redirecting just the homepage of a site to another domain- good/bad idea?
TLDR: As part of a corporate rebranding/restructuring, my parent company is asking me to redirect just the homepage of our website to another page on their website. How will this affect rankings of all of the other pages on our site? I work for an organization (XYZ Corp) that is owned by another company (Big Conglomerate). XYZ Corp's main function is building custom skinned microsites for marketing purposes that live on our domain in a traditional directory structure (no subdomains). This morning, I get a request to redirect XYZ Corp's homepage to live at bigconglomerate.com/xyzcorp. But all of our original microsites are to remain as is. Technically, I know how to accomplish this redirection. My question is- should I? Or should I fight this? I searched previous Q&A's, but wasn't able to find someone else who was concerned about losing search rankings for sub-pages due to losing their website's homepage. A few more details- The microsite pages are not linked to from the homepage. The microsites do not link back to the homepage. We cannot move the microsites to bigconglomerate.com because everything that lives there is a cookie cutter CMS page. This is my first question ever, please go easy on me! Thanks, --Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bigwheeler0 -
New Website Look/Structure - Should I Redirect or Update Pages w/ Quality Inbound Links
This questing is regarding an ecommerce website that I hand wrote(html) in 1997. One of the first click and buy websites, with cart/admin system that I also developed. After all this time, the Old plain HTML look just doesnt cut it. I just updated to XHTML w/ a very modern look, and believe the structured data will index better. All products and current category pages will have the identical vrls taken from the old version. I decided to go with the switch after manual penalty, which has since been removed... I figured now is the time to update. My big question is that over the years, a lot of my backlinks came from products/news that are either no longer relevant or just not available. The pages do exist, but can only be found from the Outbound Link Source. For SEO purposes, I have thought a few things I can do but can't decide which one is the best choice. Any Insight or suggestions would be Awesome! 1. Redirect the old link to the most relevant page in my current catalog. 2. Add my new header/footer to old page(this will add a navigation bar w/ brands/cats/etc) 3. Simply add a nice new image to the top of these pages linking home & update any broken/irrelevant links. I was also considering adding just the very top 2 inches of my header(logo,search box, phone, address) *note, some of these pages do receive some traffic. Nothing huge, but consider the 50+ pages, it ads up.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Duplicate Page Content / Titles Help
Hi guys, My SEOmoz crawl diagnostics throw up thousands of Dup Page Content / Title errors which are mostly from the forum attached to my website. In-particular it's the forum user's profiles that are causing the issue, below is a sample of the URLs that are being penalised: http://www.mywebsite.com/subfolder/myforum/pop_profile.asp?mode=display&id=1308 I thought that by adding - http://www.mywebsite.com/subfolder/myforum/pop_profile.asp to my robots.txt file under 'Ignore' would cause the bots to overlook the thousands of profile pages but the latest SEOmoz crawl still picks them up. My question is, how can I get the bots to ignore these profile pages (they don't contain any useful content) and how much will this be affecting my rankings (bearing in mind I have thousands of errors for dup content and dup page titles). Thanks guys Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gaz33420 -
Panda/Penguin & more than one services site in niche
Hello, My friend has a personal development training site. I have been advised not to make separate personal coaching sites for the owners of the training sites. Do you have experience that Panda/Penguin could penalize for separate sites in a similar niche? Do you need any more info to give a good response? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0