Class #7 Guidebook Page Expansion. By Ryan Stevenson

Transcription

1 Class #7 Guidebook Page Expansion By Ryan Stevenson

2 Table of Contents 1. Class Purpose 2. Expansion Overview 3. Structure Changes 4. Traffic Funnel 5. Page Updates 6. Advertising Updates 7. Prepare for Next Class

3 1 Class Purpose In the seventh class of Azon Overhaul, you'll finally be doing work on your live website! This lesson covers all of the updates you'll be making to the existing pages. Your Work For This Class During this class, you'll be using your overhaul plan along with the content you created to update all of the existing pages of your site with your planned changes. This work will include changes to areas of your website such as the structure, traffic funnel, and individual pages of content. The content pages that you update can be informational or product pages, so this lesson may also involve the creation of new Amazon ads. Go through your overhaul plan one item at a time, complete the work using the guidance in this lesson and check each item as complete as you finish. This method allows even the most complicated overhaul plans to be tackled in tiny pieces, making it much easier to complete everything without getting frustrated or overwhelmed. Next Lesson Ultimately, the only work on your overhaul plan that you should NOT complete in this class is the creation of new pages this will be covered in the next class. Once the new pages are built and connected to the site in the next lesson, the entire overhaul project will be complete!

4 2 Expansion Overview Your overhaul plan could contain a variety of different types of work. As a result, this lesson is NOT a linear progression of topics like many of the previous classes in this series it is a guide for the various types of work you're likely to do to the existing pages of your Amazon website. This chapter is intended as an overview for the work you'll want to carry out in this lesson, and all but the last chapter covers specific types of work. Identify Existing Page Work To get prepared to begin work for this class, take a look at your plans for overhauling your website. Every single item on the list should be one of two types.. 1. New Page To Be Created Save this work for the next class. 2. Work To Do To An Existing Page(s) Your goal for this class is to complete everything that isn't connected to the creation of the new pages this includes any changes to the site in general as well as changes / additions to the existing pages on the site. To start, simply identify all of your planned work that will take place on the live site that already exists (ie, everything except the creation of new pages). Complete Existing Page Work Now go through your list one item at a time, and complete that work on your live site. Chapters #3 - #6 in this class cover the major types of work that you're likely to do at this point, so use these lessons as guidance to help you complete that work. I stress the word guidance here because all sites are made in different ways. Even just considering the design of your website compared to mine, your work could vary simply to ensure a consist look across your whole site (ie, don't do something the exact way that I do it just because I do it that way it's better to keep in line with the way your site is already built so everything has a consistent look). Also, the research you did early in this series may have pointed at specific pages on your website that are working extremely well for your niche. If this is the case with your site, I strongly recommend that you use those as templates for other work that you do on your site. For example, if you're updating an existing page on your site with a new product ad, don't design it the way I've done it just because I did it that way if you have data on an ad that is performing great on your site, design everything else like that ad! However, if your original site was built following the Azon Home Study Course / Azon Master Class training, you may have a site that looks very similar to downcomforterguide.com if this happens to be the case, you may be able to follow my exact guidance more closely.

5 Check Off Completed Pages Once you finish the work for something on your overhaul plan, check it off your list don't actually delete it from the list unless you have another copy of it but just make some kind of mark next to it that lets you know that you have completed that part of the project. Using this plan to help you break up your project into numerous small tasks makes it a lot easier to work your way through it and complete it without frustrating yourself or simply getting lost in your own plans.

6 3 Structure Changes The structure of your website could be modified in a number of different ways depending on what you are trying to accomplish and what problems currently exist on your site. These are discussed in more detail below. Menu Structure The menus on your live website are the most obvious way that your structure is defined. These could be menus that appear anywhere on your site (except for within page content) in the top menu bar, sidebar menus, and even footer menus. In general, these main menus of your site will link to the home page, main categories pages and possibly other miscellaneous pages of your site (like an 'about us' or contact page). They can be created in the WP Menu system Appearance Menus. Most WordPress themes allow you to set a menu as your 'Primary Navigation' menu on this page, which is the menu at the top of all pages of your site. You can also add these menus to your site in other locations, such as the sidebar or footer. Go to Appearance Widgets to do this after you have created the menu you want to display. Keep in mind that you don't want to overdo it with menus the least amount of links that you can use to define the structure of your site, the better off you'll fare. The end goal of your structure is to group similar content together. If a search engine lands on your home page, what links can it travel through? If you map out all of the potential links from the home page to other pages and continue that process throughout your entire website, that is your structure. You want this structure to have clearly defined sections of your site that do not interlink with other sections of your site (each section being a group of very similar content topics) the one exception I make for this is for the goal(s) of my traffic funnel, linking my info pages to product pages. Manual Structure Linking Beyond your site menus, the other way you define structure on your site is through the links that are in the content of your pages. These links can be created either manually or automatically. For manual linking, this can really be accomplished in a variety of ways. The easiest is to simply take a word, phrase and/or image within your page content and turn it into an HTML link that points to another page of your site. This manual linking can also become rather complicated with HTML and CSS to design a menu within the content of a page. This is what I did to accomplish the site menu on the home page of downcomforterguide.com. If you are looking to completely redo your website structure and want to copy this technique, refer to the Azon Home Study Course for exact instructions

7 and even an HTML / CSS code generator that removes the technical side of this work so anyone can do it. Automatic Structure Linking Automatic structure linking is when you allow WordPress to create the links for you. This can also be done in a simple manner, where simple text words or phrases are turned into links, or in a more complicated manner that produces a blog-style listing of categories / pages. The main to evaluate when considering an automatic linking method is whether WordPress can maintain your site structure with the automation. This is actually possible to do in many cases, but it ultimately boils down to how the site was created and the kind auto linking you want to use. Auto Text Linking Most SEO plugins for WP have an option to autolink words in your content to other pages of your site. This can be a useful and time-saving tactic to use, but it is extremely important that the system is set up to work in a specific manner. Also, some existing sites may not be able to use this tactic depending on how they were built and what their goals are with their site structure (for example, a site made entirely of WordPress pages really can't utilize this tactic through the entire site). This will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. Auto Page Linking Using the WP Category / Post system, some sites may be able to automatically link categories from the home page of their site and/or individual pages from category pages. However, this is also dependent upon how the site was built and even which free, third-party themes / plugins you're using. The basics of using this system will be covered in the next class with the creation of new category pages.

8 4 Traffic Funnel One of the most important types of changes that you may need to make to your site during your overhaul is to the traffic funnel. You need people to be able to enter your site on any page and ultimately be able to easily work their way to the goal of your traffic funnel (product pages with Amazon ads). Funneling Structure Check If you feel like you thoroughly checked your traffic funnel in the research phase of this course, you don't have to go back through it now. However, this can be something that many people easily overlook in the beginning unless traffic stats point them to a specific page with a big problem. The point is to make sure that your traffic funnel doesn't have any holes. The easiest way to do this is to simply open up each page of your live website (mainly the informational pages), except for your home page, category pages, and product pages with Amazon ads. Besides the main menu at the top of each page, is there another link within that page that moves traffic along in your funnel towards your goal? I most cases, I prefer to put this link in the final sentence or two so that anyone that reads the whole page is inclined to follow the link to continue their reading. Without that link near the bottom of your content, you stand a pretty good chance of losing a fair percentage of traffic that lands on that page instead of being able to direct it along to one of your goal pages. Ensure that you don't have any of these dead ends on your website. Manual Traffic Funnel The easiest way to funnel traffic throughout your website is to simply turn words / phrases into text links, often at the bottom of your text content. This is common on the informational pages so you can move traffic from them to the product pages that have Amazon ads. In the WordPress page / post editor, this is simple to do. First select the text you want to turn into a link. Then click the 'link' button in the editor menu. You can manually type the link address, but in WP it is often easier just to find and select the destination page in the list at the bottom of this window. Beyond funneling traffic, these links are also helpful for SEO. Consider what word / phrase you use for the link and the destination page for that link. The linked word / phrase can help to reinforce the keywords you're targeting on that destination page. For example, if I wanted to make a text link to my Ikea Down Comforter page, I might link up the word Ikea at the bottom of a page of informational content. Auto Traffic Funnel Some websites may be able to have their informational pages automatically link up to a product page, but this requires a third-party plugin and your site must have been created in a specific way for this to work. On top of that, you also have to be careful about how you use

9 this tactic because it can produce undesired results without that care. With that said, here is the main requirements to use this tactic: You must use some kind of SEO plugin that will automatically create these links. I'm using SEO Ultimate, but other SEO plugins will likely have this same capability (it will simply work different from the way I describe it here). Beyond that requirement, you should also modify default settings of that plugin and you'll need to have carefully placed text in content that you want auto-linked. First let's look at the settings for SEO Ultimate. Go to SEO Deeplink Juggernaut Content Link Settings. This page controls how automatic links are created on the site. Consider whether your site uses Posts and/or Pages. You'll need to check the appropriate boxes here to have the plugin convert those sections of your site. This can also help you to control the autolinks. For example, if your informational content is built entirely with WordPress posts and your product pages are built with WordPress pages, you could simply have the autolinks only added to your Posts. The 'Quantity Restrictions' in the plugin are also important. If I'm going to use the autolink system, I want to severely limit the number it can generate so I'll usually set it to a max of 2 per page and 1 of each anchor text / destination per page. Also consider the purpose of these links. Funnel links at the bottom of your informational content is a great use of them, but they can also be used to reinforce website structure. For example, if you have posts on your site sorted into various categories, you can reinforce structure by autolinking those posts to each other but by restricting those links to posts within the same category and/or with the same tag ('Siloing' options at the bottom of the page). Here's the major downside to automatically generated funnel links you can't really control them without putting more effort into your writing / site construction. For example, if you want to use the system to create links at the bottom of your informational pages to link to the product pages, there are a couple of requirements.. Your informational / product pages have to distinguished within WordPress so the system will only add link to the info content. In the Azon Home Study Course, I teach the use of 100% WordPress pages to create the entire site, so this tactic simply isn't possible because links would be added to all pages of the site. Your informational pages need your targeted word(s) used ONLY at the bottom of the page where you want the funnel link to occur. For example, if I have an informational page that I want to link to the Ikea Down Comforter page using the word 'Ikea', then that informational page could only use that word one time and it would need to be at the bottom of the page where I want that funnel link to be placed. The system will take the FIRST occurrence of a word that it finds and will turn that into a link, so if you only let one link get created per word on a page and you used the word twice, the first word

10 would be linked and your ideal word for the funnel link wouldn't be touched. As you can see, using the system for the purpose of targeted funnel links in info content to product content is tricky and can honestly be more trouble than it's worth this means that if your site doesn't perfectly match the conditions for this tactic then you should go for the manual linking approach instead. Honestly, the best way to use automatic links is for siloing to reinforce the structure of your site. However, this can still only be done if your site is built with WordPress Posts and organized with categories and/or tags (so you can control the links and not dilute the structure).

11 5 Page Updates The main type of update that you'll be doing to existing pages of your site will involve content changes / additions. A seemingly simple addition of text to a page can actually bring about other work to do before calling it finished. Follow the steps laid out in this chapter for each page you're updating. Add New Content Even though you should already have your content written at this point, there is more to do than simply copy and paste new text into your pages. However, this is the first step open a page in the WordPress editor and add in your new content. As part of this step, if you have planned to remove / replace content then you will want to also take care of those things. Format New Content & Add Media After you have new content added into your page, you'll likely need to format it. This is simply applying some basic web design to specific parts of your writing to help break up large blocks of text content. The most common of these formatting changes is to make the sub-headers in your page content bold. Just select text in your content and click on the b button in the WP editor. There really is no limit on formatting for design in these updates. HTML lists can be easily accomplished with the WP editor buttons, but more complicated designs like a comparison table may only be easily doable for those that are more tech-savvy. Even if you can't do complicated design on your page, it's quite alright. Simply making your sub-headers into bold text and adding in some images and/or other media to help people visualize what you're talking about can be sufficient. Check Excerpt & Meta Content The 'Excerpt' of a post is the summary that you use on a category page to link to it. This could be something you're manually written into the content of the category page or it could be automatically placed there from the 'Excerpt' setting of your post. Depending on changes you've made to the content, you may need to update this summary to reflect those changes. SEO plugins allow you set things like the Meta Description of your page. Similar to the Excerpt but usually much shorter, this description should also be updated according to any changes made on the page. Check Final Keyword Density Once you've finished all content changes / additions on a site, it can be a good idea to double check your keyword density. The main idea here is to make sure that you have not overused your primary / secondary keywords (if you're seeing percentages over 4-5%, you should tone down your use of those keywords).

12 You can use this site to check the content for keyword density: Complete Other Page Changes Any other changes that you may have marked to make on the current page you're working on should also be completed at this time (minus advertising changes). I've covered the most common of these changes already. However, one other example is something I'll be doing on my site removing the sidebar on specific pages of my site. Final Page Check After advertising updates are made (see next chapter for guidance), if needed, you should always take a look at the live page on your website to make sure everything is as expected. Also, if you ended up deleting and/or replacing entire pages of your site for some reason, you may want to set up a 301 redirect if there was traffic and/or search engine rankings on the old page that you want to keep. A free plugin, Simple 301 Redirects, can be used to redirect old URLs to new URLs on your site (fairly straightforward to use).

13 6 Advertising Updates The final, main type of update that you'll be making to existing pages has to do with your Amazon ads. If you've modified and/or made any additions to your product pages that alter the ads that should be there, you'll need to remove / create new ads before you can call the page complete. Even if you do not need to change Amazon ads on any of your existing pages, if you have planned to create new product pages on your site, this can still be a useful chapter because you will be doing the same thing for those pages. One other thing worth mentioning is the software used to do Amazon ads. Your existing site may already be using something for it's Amazon ads, which is quite okay as long as you're receiving results with it. However, this guide is based on the usage of Product Style, my main Amazon advertising plugin (you've received this plugin as part of the Azon Home Study Course). If you don't use Product Style for your ads, the same concepts from this chapter may still apply to you but the exact guidance will be different with different software titles. Select Ad Design (Style) The first thing to do with Amazon ads that you'll be creating is to figure out how they'll look. If you have pre-existing Amazon ad stats to go by, use this to figure out what ads work on your site. In particular, you want ads that have a high CTR this is the number of clicks it receives on your site compared with the number of visitors that see the ad. However, do take other factors in mind before declaring that an ad design works great (look at things like ad placement, sales / conversion rates and other factors that could skew stats, like multiple ads or out of stock products). With that said, if you have a reliable ad design to use that you know works, definitely use that on your site. Otherwise, you can try the design I'll be using in the live video, which is a fairly basic ad with an image, the title and a buy button (I sometimes include the price too, just depends on the product and how expensive it is). In WordPress, go to Product Style Styles. On this page you can preview existing styles, edit them or even create your own design, if needed. In general, you need to have an Ad Style in mind that you'll be using for new ads you create and that Style needs to be published (check the boxes at the top of the page for the styles you want to use and publish with the button provided). Create New Ads Now go to Product Style Auto Amazon. Use this page to search for products and create ads for them. A brief demo of this is provided in the video training for this class, but you can

14 also see a more detailed tutorial of the plugin in the Azon Home Study Course. Your goal at this point is to create ads for each product that you want to add to your site. Add / Replace / Remove Ads Now go through your product pages on your site where you want to change ads. If needed, remove existing ads that don't need to be there anymore. Then you can proceed with adding in the new ads. This is simple to do put your cursor in the content where you want the ad to be inserted, then click the PS icon at the top of the screen, select an ad and click the button to insert it into your page content. After updating your page, the ad will show on the live site.

15 7 Prepare for Next Class To prepare for the next class of Azon Overhaul, you'll want to complete all of your planned overhaul work for any of the existing pages of your website. Update All Existing Pages With Planned Work Proceed through your overhaul plan and complete the required work for each of the existing pages of your site this should basically be anything that doesn't involve the creation of brand new pages of your site (unless there is a reason you need to re-create existing pages). As you complete things on your list, mark them off so you can easily keep track of your progress. This is especially helpful for larger overhaul plans, but it can still be incredibly useful to help you stay on target with your work with any project. Begin New Page Construction Next Class Your existing website should now be overhauled! The only thing left to do is to create new pages that you've planned for your overhaul project. However, it is entirely possible that you may be done now if you have not planned to create new pages on your site it really just depends on your overhaul plans. Some overhaul plans may even call for the creation of new sections of your site, so the next class will also be covering the creation of new category pages.