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millie
Joined:
12 Nov 2003
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3
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GA
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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2003 6:28 pm
Post subject: How much content is enough?
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Hello everyone.
I'm really nervous as I type this, because I rarely post messages to forums. I've been lurking here for a while now and I have noticed that you all have been very helpful and friendly to everyone who post a message. I've been wanting to do affiliate marketing for quite some time now and I must say that reading the different threads in this forum gave me the extra little push that I needed to get started.
Well, I'm all done with my first affiliate website(almost). However, after taking a peek at some of your websites, I feel that mine is too simple and not enough content. Therefore, my question is, how much content is considered to be enough? I plan to add more pages - to link back to my merchant pages - and tweek a few other things before I start promoting it.
I was wondering if I could get a few of you to look at my website and let me know if I'm on the right track? I've included my URL in my profile.
I really would appreciate the constructive criticism.
Thank you in advance for your feedback and I look forward to a long relationship with this forum of friendly people from all over the world. 
Millie |
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netwise
Joined:
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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2003 7:12 pm
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I had a quick look at your website and from the look of things, you have enough content to start promoting it. You'll need to continue adding more and more content as time goes on. I've found that the more unique content you have, the more traffic you'll get from search engines like Google. Keep adding more articles and interesting content and you'll start getting more traffic eventually. If you write interesting articles, some of your visitors will link to your articles or send the url to their friends. The links will improve your search engine ranking.
Just my two cents
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Charlie
Joined:
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3305
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UK
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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2003 9:18 pm
Post subject: Re: How much content is enough?
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Hello Millie.
| millie wrote: | | Well, I'm all done with my first affiliate website(almost). However, after taking a peek at some of your websites, I feel that mine is too simple and not enough content. Therefore, my question is, how much content is considered to be enough? I plan to add more pages - to link back to my merchant pages - and tweek a few other things before I start promoting it. |
Ken Evoy suggests a maximum of 150-200 pages for a content site, so who am I to argue with him? 
By the way, I think there's a difference between a site being too simple and not having enough content...
Give people what they want, and they won't be able to get enough. Try and push on them something they don't want, and very little content will be more than enough. When it comes to content, though, always remember that MWR - a clickthrough to a merchant site, most likely.
When it comes to simplicity, simple is often a good thing. If you just add a second colour - maybe some yellow or gold to work with the blue and the occasional red word for emphasis, perhaps, your site might be "complicated" enough.
You need to be aiming for a crisp, tasteful text-based site, rather than taking even a single step down the road to Specialeffectsville.
Hope this helps,
Charlie.
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Larry Chamberlain
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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2003 10:20 pm
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Hi Millie,
Very nice work, you've obviously read and followed the action guide. You are certainly on the right track with your content, and as Charlie says "simple is often a good thing"
Millie, may I email you regarding a link exchange, as our two sites have related themes?
All the best,
Larry Chamberlain.
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alfaped
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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2003 10:27 pm
Post subject: Colour
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When I checked Your site, I immediately reacted to Your choice of colour, even as blue is my favourite. Consider a warmer colour, perhaps ? Try to avoid strong red; it smacks in Your eyes. Your choice of fonts in headings is calming 
(Having worked with human/computer interfaces for 25 Years..) |
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Dinky
Joined:
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25
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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2003 11:36 pm
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Good overall design, taking the simple approach, but not going too far with a lot of "clutter"
You may want to consider darkening up the graphic/link when you click on one of your categories on the left bar. It displays your current category in a lighter color, but in my browser, it's almost too light... |
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millie
Joined:
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3
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GA
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Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 4:52 am
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Hello all! I really do appreciate all of the great feedback. I will continue to work on my site with your suggestions in mind. I'm very excited now that others have actually seen what I've been working on in the wee hours of the night.
Thanks again for your feedback! |
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Guest
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Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 3:50 pm
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Hi Millie.
First off, let me congratulate you on plunging into the world of affiliate marketing. But since everyone here was rather positive, I have to be a bit more critical. Isn't life a pain?
There are a few things that really worry me about your site, and I thought you should be aware of them.
Choice of Keywords
The amount of search engine traffic you'll get for the targeted keywords (when I say keywords, I mean keywords or key phrases) you currently have might be a bit thin.
Let's look at some of your targeted keywords and see what traffic they get:
Animal t-shirts - 12 approx. worldwide searches a day (according to Wordtracker.com)
animal jewelry - 59
animal magazines - 12
animal posters - 57
animal figurines - 53
stuffed animals - 1452
Now, compare these to some keywords in Allan and Rupert's SBI case study cheap-computers-guide.com that received top 10 rankings at Google:
cheap computers - 1752
cheap computer - 212
cheap computer parts - 344
build your own computer - 740
barebone computers - 218
"Stuffed animals" is a good keyword, but it's a little off topic, and I would guess that people who search for it don't necessarily have real animals or pets in mind. If you find a lot more keywords like "animal jewelry", "animal posters", and "animal figurines", or "stuffed animals" but better targeted, and write content pages for those, you should be fine. But if all you do is write content for keywords like "animal t-shirts" and "animal magazines", you might be in trouble. If you can't find many good keywords I'll advise you to find a different topic to write about, and take your Animal Lover Gifts site as a learning experience.
The Content Itself
Your content pages don't give much useful information and mostly state the obvious. This is fine if you have for example 20 pages of useful, informative content, and then you write 5 pages like that just to bring traffic in. But I'd avoid this style as much as I can.
So for example, if you are writing a page about animal toys, instead of saying something like this,
"Animal toys are great. All sorts of pets love animal toys, from cats to dogs. Animal toys keep your pets occupied, and make great gifts. A very popular animal toy is the ball. Balls come in many sizes. Some balls are small and some are large..."
Try to write a page explaining what specific toys cats love and dogs love, and why, what specific uses some toys have, as some are chewable, for example, and good for a pet's teeth, etc.
Search Engine Optimization Methods
Unless there is little competition for your keywords, you must write longer pages, and use more of them on a page. Your Animal T-Shirts page has the phrase "Animal T-Shirt" on it only three times. In the general case it's good to have more than that. This particular phrase is not very competitive, so you might be fine. But the #1 page on Google for "animal t-shirts" has this phrase three times on it, if you had it 6 times, you'd be a much better contender for the #1 spot.
I hope all this helps, and if nothing else, I advise you to study cheap-computers-guide.com. It's a great example of a good affiliate site (the only thing is that its design is ugly) and one of the best things that came out of AssociatePrograms.com. I also think that familiarizing yourself with Wordtracker.com is a good ideal.
Regards,
Yaron |
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Yaron
Joined:
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196
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New York City
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Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 3:53 pm
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I did not mean to post this as guest. I suppose I took too long to write it and my login time out.
Question for the Admin: Is it possible to move that post over from Guest to my account?
- Yaron |
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Yaron
Joined:
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New York City
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Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 4:19 pm
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Here is something I forgot to mention in my previous post:
If you are having trouble coming up with useful content, try to pick some specific products related to the subject and review/discuss those.
- Yaron |
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Yaron
Joined:
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196
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New York City
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Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 7:38 pm
Post subject: Re: How much content is enough?
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| Charlie wrote: | | Ken Evoy suggests a maximum of 150-200 pages for a content site, so who am I to argue with him? |
According to Ken Evoy's Affiliate Masters course:
"Ongoing Goal... Create one Keyword-Focused
Content Page per day. Start with the TIER
2 pages. Then keep adding TIER 3 pages, 1
per day. Create 50-70 maximum. Then start
a new Theme-Based Content Site."
So it's 50-70 max. But the SBI case study cheap-computers-guide.com has only about 25 content pages, and it allegedly made $2800 at one point. It's targeting some very good keywords to achieve that, but it shows you that you don't have to write so many pages; they just have to be quality pages, i.e. with good keywords and good content.
And as far as submitting to AdSense is concerned, I got accepted with only 10 content pages, and zero traffic.
- Yaron |
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Charlie
Joined:
22 Aug 2003
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3305
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UK
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Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 8:36 pm
Post subject: Re: How much content is enough?
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| Yaron wrote: | | Charlie wrote: | | Ken Evoy suggests a maximum of 150-200 pages for a content site, so who am I to argue with him? |
According to Ken Evoy's Affiliate Masters course:
"Ongoing Goal... Create one Keyword-Focused
Content Page per day. Start with the TIER
2 pages. Then keep adding TIER 3 pages, 1
per day. Create 50-70 maximum. Then start
a new Theme-Based Content Site."
So it's 50-70 max. |
Ken talked about 150-200 pages on the radio show and I've read it somewhere before that, too - in the SBI! guide I'm 99% sure. I think he meant total pages for the site.
Besides, some other content sites have thousands of pages. It just requires more work making sure the spiders find them all. There is no limit, per se.
| Yaron wrote: | | But the SBI case study cheap-computers-guide.com has only about 25 content pages, and it allegedly made $2800 at one point. It's targeting some very good keywords to achieve that, but it shows you that you don't have to write so many pages; they just have to be quality pages, i.e. with good keywords and good content. |
I think the earnings there have as much to do with high average dollar per click for the merchants and products in question, as the number of pages on the site, or even the content, if you see what I mean.
Picking the right niche is as much about earning opportunities as it is SE traffic.
All the best,
Charlie.
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- Groucho Marx |
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HorseMan
Joined:
01 Nov 2003
Posts:
29
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Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 11:22 pm
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Yaron, you claimed that the keywords where not seeked enough to use
| Quote: | | The amount of search engine traffic you'll get for the targeted keywords (when I say keywords, I mean keywords or key phrases) you currently have might be a bit thin. |
I just ran over the words you talked about in overture and the results look pretty good to me. I would build a whole site for each of those keywords.
animal jewelry - 59 - 104600
animal magazines - 12 - 31700
animal posters - 57 - 51900
animal figurines - 53 - 68800
stuffed animals - 1452 - 231000
Do you know why there is so often difference between WordTracker and Overture. I stopped using WordTracker cause I felt the results where often too negative.
I know Overture often throws search results togather, but that is most often the results we would get anyway.
I am sure you are right about this, I am just not sure way
Millie, from all I can see a beutiful site. I need to get some lessons from you in web-designe.
I think you have plenty of content to get started with. Then you can add more pages once in a while ( the SE love updates ).
I have no idea how many or few pages you should have on a page. I generally try to have a least 10 pages, but that is just me.
There is one thing though I was wondering about that is your inner linking struction (Maybe some of the SE experts here could comment on this one). Because you use Javascript and Gifs in your internal linking, you might not benefit from your inner linking as much.
You use old fashion HTML on the main site, so the SE will find all your sites, but they might not realize every page links to every other page on your site.
Maybe you could put up a little sitemap at the bottom of the page using just small fonts.
Welcome to the affiliate world, and may you have a happy time here
HorseMan |
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Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2003 1:01 am
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| I believe the results he gave were from Wordtracker's free version. Since this only queries Alta Vista, naturally the results are going to be low. I guarantee "stuffed animals" is searched more than 1452 per month on Google. |
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Yaron
Joined:
13 Nov 2003
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196
Location:
New York City
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Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2003 2:22 am
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| Anonymous wrote: | | I believe the results he gave were from Wordtracker's free version. Since this only queries Alta Vista, naturally the results are going to be low. I guarantee "stuffed animals" is searched more than 1452 per month on Google. |
Actually the Wordtracker figures are approx. searches per day, and the free Wordtracker uses the same word database as the full version (I tested it myself). Wordtracker does not use Alta Vista for its keyword database. It uses metacrawler search engines to compile its database of keywords, these results are then extrapolated to give the number of total searches per day. At least that's what they claim. Alta Vista is used for competitive analysis (for the supply) in the free version.
But the absolute figures are not as important as the relative comparison, especially since Overture does not attempt to give you an accurate picture of how the words are shearched globaly. Overture figures only have a meaning in absolute terms if you're going to just use Overture.
What's strange is that on Overture "stuffed animals" is about twice as much as animal jewelry, and on Wordtracker it's 25 times as much. Can anyone explain this discrepancy?
I guess if you tend to believe Overture over Wordtracker, then those keywords are fine.
Regards,
Yaron
Last edited by Yaron on Sat Nov 15, 2003 3:53 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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