Website Advice Please

[Banner-Traffic]

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Hi All,

I am currently playing/teaching myself Word Press. I am planning to use the site to promote lingerie and swimwear using many Affiliates product feeds etc.

I have added a couple of brands already using TD and will have in the region of 150 brands when complete. I will tidy up the text but would just like your thoughts on the idea of using the blog to promote the products and gain visitors back to the site.

I only have a basic knowledge of Word Press so any advice would be really appreciated. I have had some success selling within this market already, but lack any real knowledge of blogging.

The current site is at www.lingerie2lust4.com

Many thanks

[H001]

blog isn't a bad idea

using the default template is, check out the wordpress directory for a soft and clean theme that will better fit your lingerie and swimwear topic

[Geno_AMNavigator]

Not bad at all. One of my better affiliates is a blog...

The only thing I want to suggest is fleeing from those numbers in the domain name. If you can get a domain name that has only words in it, get it. Numbers and hyphens are much harder to type (for domain names) and are never recommended in a domain name. Search GoDaddy for domains with "lingerie", "blog", "best", "buy", etc in 'em and you'll certainly find some good ones. BestLingerieBlog.com is available!

Geno

[accelerator]

Nothing wrong with using a blog, use a ping service such as:

http://pingomatic.com/

to notify major services that your blog has been updated.

I think a blog is best used in conjunction with a normal site so that the blog can give PR to your site, e.g. my blog at:

http://navito.blogspot.com/

helps drive traffic into:

http://www.navito.co.uk/

Have you submitted the site to search engines yet? You aren't indexed by Google yet.

Rgds

Accelerator

[Nosmo_King]

Not sure how well all those content units work - gives the user a bit of a shock. Can't help thinking if you can get to grips with Wordpress... Joomla or Mambo might be better if you want to use content units - no harder to learn.

Agree with Geno about the Domain plus it doesn't suit the Figleaves range. You might want to make me an offer for femininelingerie.co.uk

[deano6410]

Nothing wrong with using a blog, use a ping service such as:

http://pingomatic.com/

to notify major services that your blog has been updated.

This is good advice, but there is a built-in ping system with Wordpress.

[valD]

There are Wordpress themes that are designed to take Adsense and affiiate ads. I mentioned a couple of them on this thread

[Banner-Traffic]

Hi All,

Many thanks for all the advice, I have already started to look for a better template but as yet nothing has really taking my fancy. I did find a couple of possible shopping/lingerie based solutions at Word Press Themes.

I was somewhat put-off when making a purchase due to the payment options and their requirement for the buyer to submit phone number etc (which it then refused to take). It all felt a bit intrusive and un-necessary. You would think in this day and age they would have incorporated paypal, or a better payment system. It shouts out dodgy to me has therfore cost them another sale.

It is interesting to note that many people do stay away from numbers within a web address. Do the search engines really hate them? Does it stop your pages being listed? I am very interested in any comments as I will play with web addresses if necessary. I initially picked the the names www.lingerie2lust4.co.uk and www.lingerie2lust4.com as I was trying to find a simple web address that might be memorable and more importantly a name that was eye catching.

As I explained, this is my first experimental play in Word Press and I may change to another Blog at some stage. I am experimenting with the plug-ins etc and they seem pretty simple.

I have currently changed the url so the date and brand is displayed.
Added Adsense,
Added a Site Map (recognised by Google)
Confirmed ownership with Google
Added a meta tag generator
The site Pings everytime a page is edited or a page is added.

Still to early to see if Google picks up the links but we will sit and hope. I have currently not linked to any other blogs directly as I want to see if any pick up my links based on content alone.

This has started to happen but a little early to make any real analysis of hits etc. I will sit and play, experiment some more and maybe even design my own header.

Another question for the Blog experts out there.

I have my own hosting site already (US) so have no issues with bandwidth etc. Therefore would you recommend adding my own link to lots of Blog sites to kick start the campaign or would this possibly reduce the likehood of natural google inclusion?

I have previously managed to get top 10 positions on Google for over 150 brands of lingerie using the search term "gossard lingerie" etc. In the vast majority of pages I ranked top 3 in Google, above Figleaves in most search terms. This was not through research, using correct keywords, or cheating. All links were natural using a popular online stand alone web page designer.

This sytem will be used again at some point when I am happy I have chosen the correct Blog and have uploaded pages etc.

As ever, many thanks for any advice

[affiliates]

I've posted a video on my site showing how to easily import datafeeds into a Wordpress blog:

Affiliate training videos

[Geno_AMNavigator]

I've posted a video on my site showing how to easily import datafeeds into a Wordpress blog:

Affiliate training videos

Sweet indeed!

Drop me an e-mail, Adrian. We may do some business together.

Geno

[figleaf]

Hi

Great to see figleaves being used! If there is anything we at figleaves.com can help you with, feel free to PM or email me.

But I also think a blog is a good idea and certainly the notion that content is king appears to be coming back (did it go away?), especially as far as google are concerned.

Good luck

Simon

[DavidSWP]

Hi Banner,

I like your site, I think its good how you kept it simple with a concise description on the brand, a good quality image and then product feeds (mainly figleaves I'm guessing). I think your site just needs a bit more customising in the theme department, but don't do anything overly complex, I'd try searching the Wordpress theme browser for something close to what you want and then modify it. You can get to the graphical theme browser at http://themes.wordpress.net/

I started on a Wordpress site a few months ago aiming to sell similar products but I actually wish I'd gone for a simpler targeted approach like yours. I signed up with figleaves and a few other programs but haven't got round to integrating them into my content yet. Basically I bit of more than I could chew in one and got bored. I'm going to go full tilt into marketing my sites now and then when I see a decent number of visitors it will give me the enthusiasm to go back and work on the content and affiliates side.

I think search engine marketing is really the all important factor in sites like this. Anyway my site is called Just Slimmers, its a very customised WordPress site. Its a bit rough because it was my first wordpress site but I know quite alot about customising it now so if you need any help give us a shout