ubaidabcd

I'm starting my first blog, and not sure how I should organize the posts. I'm going to have a content writer post to the blog daily for a month to get Google to see their is new content being published regularly.

I'm not sure how to organize these articles, 30 articles on the same page seems like too much. I would like to have 1 article on each page since I have adsense on there and some banners, if I add too many articles on the same page. I'll end up having too much room on the sides and won't be able to fill up all the space with banners without the site looking bad.

So I was wondering with 1 article on each page, how would I organize the links? On the side bar do I just create a title for every post? So there will be 30 links to posts? Or should I create a link for every week of the month, then after you click one of those links, on the next page it displays links to each post?


Thanks

DaveEMG

Your best bet is probably to find the top blog in your sector. Look at how his/her blog is organized and copy that to start off with. Don't spend time reinventing the wheels that someone else already invented.

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ubaidabcd

I can't figure out how to edit the left side bar in WP

sampunk

go to dashboard -> manage -> category

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cashflowrusty

It depends on your theme. Some have a 'sidebar.php' or something like it. Or it could be hardcoded into the index.php page (or elsehwhere)...

Sorry could not help more...

ubaidabcd

It was called, "Widgets" in WordPress.

cashflowrusty

That's only if the theme supports Widgets. One of the ones I use (I'm where I can check now) is a three column, with left and right columns, and the center is the main content area. Left side is 'sidebar.php' and the right side is 'rightcolumn.php' for some silly reason... :-)

Glad ya found it! Widget support should make it easier to edit.

BTW, back to the original topic, if your blog is going to be multiple categories, not really related, and not don with subdomains, you may want to search for 'seo siloing' and read up on it a little. Good post & free plugin over in the archives at Make Easy Money With Google And AdSense to help set this up.

ubaidabcd

Well in the widgets there is a "widget" for pages, which is what I need so I can make a seperate page for every article, but the way the designer coded the template it's messed up and overlaps into the rest of the page and WP won't put the titles of the pages under that title.

I think I've pissed him off enough with all my questions he didn't respond to me today. Not sure how to fix this problem. If I assign categories instead of pages, WP will still place all the articles on the same page.

and thanks for that link I'm checking it out right now

cashflowrusty

Ok, now about this if you are going to create categories:
1) permlinks to /category/posttitle
2) set # articles per page to 1
3) create a custom category page for each category, and instead of the full article(or a partial), only include the article titles, clickable of course.
4) Set up a robots.txt to now allow indexing anything but the category pages, and the main index. That way you category pages do not 'confuse' your adsense targeting, even if they are related.

That way you can have something like:
Homepage (with latest article)
|
|--> category page (with multiple links to articles)
| |---->article1a
| |---->article1b
| |---->article1c
|--> category page (with multiple links to articles)
| |---->article2a
| |---->article2b
| |---->article2c
|--> category page (with multiple links to articles)
| |---->article3a
| |---->article3b
| |---->article3c
... ...

ubaidabcd

Damn thanks so much! ++rep I was able to configure it like that so now I only have 1 article per page, and people can see the articles on the blog from looking at the side menu.

ubaidabcd

Hopefully this is my last question!

How can I setup robots.txt? and where can I find it? Is it in my WP folder or will I have to create it? I've never setup robots.txt, I do know what it is and it's pupose, but I skipped that part, and now I'm noticing how my adsense ads have ads for making money with blogging, instead of all ads being related to the articles.

Thanks!

cashflowrusty

Ok, first thing you need is GoogleAdWrap from: Google Ad Wrap - Section Targeting | Urban Giraffe

Next, you need to review the results here for Robots.txt & Wordpress stuff: Google

One more thing: If you edit your template, and place the Google tags:

<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

around any text in the template that is BLOG related, it will help. This includes wrapping the comment around the links to the archives, the footer text, anything with WordPress-type stuff in it. It will not effect anything OTHER THAN how Google views your page.
Oh yea, also wrap your meta info that may contain anything WP related too...

Just make sure you keep the spacing EXACTLY as it is. I have read where it was not working, but after fixing spacing, it worked fine.
I was getting WordPress/Blog ads all the time till I did this and it helped a lot!

Good luck!

ubaidabcd

Ok, I'm kind of slow so I wrap those links are the text that is blog related.

and do the links go like this:

For example in the footer:

<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
Powered by Wordpress.
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

Anything that is related to wordpress, that's where adsense is picking up those ads to make money with blogging?

Thanks

ubaidabcd

Doesn't seem to be working, when it's on the homepage the adsense ads are related to blogging, and even though nothing changes, there is still a related article on the homepage, the template and everything is the same. If you click on an article in a category, then the ads change to the content of the articles. Nothing changed about the template, it still says, "wordpress.org" in meta on the sidebar. Is there a way to edit the links under "meta". I opened up sidebar, but I couldn't find "wordpress.org" in there.

cashflowrusty

The home page is almost a lost cause, because when the ads were put on it initially, they 'registered' it as being about blogs. Unless you change the folder (...com/ to ...com/blog or something like that) it's pretty much stuck there for awhile.

What I have done is NOT used AdSense on front page. Makes it look cleaner when the GoogleBot comes by (for AdWords, although I do not know if it REALLY helps) and that way, since it is always changing, (content) there are no(less) targeting issues for the site.

I do this using the AdSenseDeluxe plugin, and unchecking the 'Enable Ads on Home page' option. That way, if a post shows up the home page, it does not show AdSense. But when a post is shown elsewhere (single page, category page, etc) it will.

Hope that helps!

cashflowrusty

That is correct. I went crazy on one theme, because the domain name itself was throwing off AdSense, and wrapped every link with the code, since it was full URLs.

As for killing off the 'blog' stuff, I wrapped all the meta, style, classes, and so on, such as below:

<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
<p class="postmetadata">Posted in <!-- google_ad_section_end --><?php the_category(', ') ?> <!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) --> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?> <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments &#187;', '1 Comment &#187;', '% Comments &#187;'); ?></p><!-- google_ad_section_end -->

In this example, only the category name itself would show, and "postmetadata", "Posted in", "Comment" are all suggested to be ignored, as they can be signature words for blogs, I would think...

BTW, this is sorta my theory, but I have seen others talk about it also. YMMV and in general, just my opinion.

ubaidabcd

Thanks for the advise, I might look into the adsense deluxe plug-in, I don't have it installed. I'm not really sure if I should even have adsense on here, I really want to get people to click on my banners for the affiliate offers. The template came with adsense on it so I figured might as well leave it there and update the code with my information. I'm making a few cents, but then again I just started the blog less than a week ago and it's organic traffic. Maybe if I keep working on it, and the blog gets more content updated regularly, backlinks, etc.. I'll be able to make more.

Do you think if I removed adsense it would help to get the traffic to click on the affiliate banners instead? Of course I understand it's all about testing, etc.., but I was just wondering what you think.

To be more specific I think my adsense ads are competing with my banners. For example: If you have a blog about televisions, and you have banners going to your affiliates about televisions, and then you have adsense giving you links to different sites selling televisions. Although I don't want to lose out completely if they don't go with the banners. If they really are interested in the banners I suppose that's what they would click on and not go to adsense.

Thanks again you've been a great help throughout all this ++rep

cashflowrusty

Honestly, I do not know. Putting AdSense on pages with other ads is both good (gives the user another chance to click and you small money) and bad (gives the user another chance to click and make you bigger money).

Would you put AdSense on your landing page for a vote site? How about on the 'results' page, in addition to your offer?

As you said, test test test... I have a few sites with no ads. I have a few with ads only on the individual posts, and a few plastered with ads... Is it testing? No, it's lack of direction. But the sites I do not have ads on at the moment are sites I'm trying to build up. When traffic starts, I'll add some ads.

Remember, some folks JUST WILL NOT CLICK BANNERS or have them blocked. Others WILL NOT CLICK ADSENSE or have it blocked also.
Like a blind man in a painting gallery, there is nothing you can do with him.

ubaidabcd

Damn, you know what I just found out from changing my settings to 1 article per page? When you click on categories it also displays only 1 article and doesn't display all the articles in the category. I'm going to look into the "evermore" plug-in for WP, where I can display small extracts of a post instead of the complete article on each page.

cashflowrusty

Using that SEOSilo plugin from above, you should get all the articles for that category. Links to them, via title, that is. I have it set for 3 articles per page, but that plug shows all for the category.