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  1. #1
    big fishing shop's Avatar
    big fishing shop is offline IM & SEO Quiet One big fishing shop is on a distinguished road
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    Question Help! Review my new website please.

    Hello, I need help! I have a fishing website that I built, using Wordpress and the Mandigo theme, from a crappy cookie-cutter site I bought on Ebay back in March for 40 bucks. I know nothing at all about web design, and know only very basic HTML. Everything on my site I did myself, putting in literally hundreds of hours and reading tons of material on building and running a website, as well as SEO, linking, social media, marketing, etc.
    Even though my Alexa ranking has dropped from 8 million + to 379,893, I have come to the conclusion that unless I make some drastic changes to my design, no matter how much great content I put on my site, I'm not going to keep a visitor on it - most visitors probably leave instantly when they see how unprofessional it looks. My statcounter "visit length" column has many zeros in it.
    That being said, I am now reaching out to you web professionals for advice. **I have ordered a new logo for my site, should have it by the end of this week. Should I keep the current theme and save up for months to pay a semi-pro designer? Or maybe go with a new theme, and then get a designer? My host has agreed to install a new theme and upgrade my wordpress from 2.7 to 3.0, (for an undisclosed fee), but I'm afraid they will screw everything up (worse than it is now). Whatever I do, my funds are massively limited. What simple changes could I make (that a newbie can do) to make a big difference?

    Scott Rogers
    bigfishingshop(dot)com

  2. #2
    Nemanja's Avatar
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    You need to change this header first and add new logo there....
    Also font color needs to be changed like yesterday.

    Basically you nee to upgrade your WP first(backup all first), you can do it by yourself, just search youtube for tutorial.
    Then search free fishing templates on the net...
    Find best you like and implement that.

    You are done!

  3. #3
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    While the site design could be better I doubt that is your real problem. I think that it probably looks fine for your target audience.

    My impression is that you are leading with a sales pitch. One thing that is often mentioned is that you need to answer your visitor's question - solve their problem. What does a fisherman want? Probably to catch more fish! I would bet that if the first thing that your visitor saw on your landing page was 'How To Catch More Fish' with some good tips on fishing in general, and some text links to the other specific pages you might 'catch' the attention of more visitors. On your sub-pages start with tips and how tos for those specific areas.

    Limit the promotion on your home page, maybe one or two tasteful banners. Make the home page more informational. On your interior pages offer the tips and then tell your visitors about the products that will make their experience better. You have a lot of content, and 240 pages indexed in Google, lead with your content and then direct them to your catalog pages with a strong call to action.

    I would also suggest finding some good YouTube fishing videos, either spectacular or funny, and putting one on your landing page, probably just below the fold, after your "How To Catch More Fish" leader. People like videos. (maybe look for some John West salmon commercials)

    You may need to spend some time with keyword research. You do need to make some keyword rich tags on the post pages (the search engines like tags).

    The only adsence products that I saw were link units. In my experience, link units pay very low amounts even if you do get clicks.

    For your affiliate marketing in text links in appropriate places will work much better than banners, but you probably really want people to buy from your store.

    So I would say lead with your content and I think that you would have better success. You need to build some trust and a relationship before you hit your visitors with a hard sell.

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  5. #4
    Nemanja's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wink0r View Post
    While the site design could be better I doubt that is your real problem. I think that it probably looks fine for your target audience.

    My impression is that you are leading with a sales pitch. One thing that is often mentioned is that you need to answer your visitor's question - solve their problem. What does a fisherman want? Probably to catch more fish! I would bet that if the first thing that your visitor saw on your landing page was 'How To Catch More Fish' with some good tips on fishing in general, and some text links to the other specific pages you might 'catch' the attention of more visitors. On your sub-pages start with tips and how tos for those specific areas.

    Limit the promotion on your home page, maybe one or two tasteful banners. Make the home page more informational. On your interior pages offer the tips and then tell your visitors about the products that will make their experience better.
    You have a lot of content, and 240 pages indexed in Google, lead with your content and then direct them to your catalog pages with a strong call to action.

    I would also suggest finding some good YouTube fishing videos, either spectacular or funny, and putting one on your landing page, probably just below the fold, after your "How To Catch More Fish" leader. People like videos. (maybe look for some John West salmon commercials)

    You may need to spend some time with keyword research. You do need to make some keyword rich tags on the post pages (the search engines like tags).

    The only adsence products that I saw were link units. In my experience, link units pay very low amounts even if you do get clicks.

    For your affiliate marketing in text links in appropriate places will work much better than banners, but you probably really want people to buy from your store.

    So I would say lead with your content and I think that you would have better success. You need to build some trust and a relationship before you hit your visitors with a hard sell.
    Great advice!!

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  7. #5
    big fishing shop's Avatar
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    Wink0r - Thanks so much for the help. I understand what you are saying, I need more useful content and less product promotion. Or to be more specific - promote the products WITHIN the content. I've been told before that Amazon aStores don't perform very well, and I'm starting to believe that. In my wordpress edotor, I have the option to show my most recent post as my homepage. Maybe I should do that. I will still have the affiliate ads in my sidebar showing, but I need to re-configure them to show only the good-performing and most relevant advertisers.
    I do want a new template, but I work full time so it's hard to find the time for such a time consuming project without leaving many of my pages a jumbled-up mess for days until I have the time to configure them into the new template. A new template would also give me a way to better organize my content and show it in a more flowing, eye-catching way.
    I have a lot of work to do, but good advice from friendly people such as yourself and Nemanja does indeed make it easier for me. Thanks!

    Scott Rogers

  8. #6
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    As I recall Amazon has a way to build your own link using anchor text that will take you directly to a product page. In that way you could list a make and model of say a reel in the middle of an article on reels and have the make and model number be an affiliate link directly to the product page. That would be particularly good for products that you have used and know that they represent good value.


 

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