[First Website] Tips? Advice? Help?

A

Akibwa

New member
Oct 2, 2011
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Hey!

After one or two months of analysis paralysis and confusion, I've finally made my first site - Sweaty Hands Guide | Just another WordPress site. This thread will be a journal of my progress with this site and somewhere where I hope to gain valuable advice from some of you.

I'm currently getting help from dchuk and grazie via Skype but am always looking for more, so if you can send me a PM with your Skype information that'd be awesome.

My current plans are to write 1000-2000 words on the homepage, get indexed, find a better theme (I've noticed that a lot of successful sites seem to use basic templates - anyone have a go-to theme that they'd recommend?), get a logo (currently being made by a friend), write 10 750-word articles (7-8 targeting longtails, 2-3 to beef up the site and support internal links), start backlinking and then monetise.

I'm writing the content myself as I'm on a tight budget but am finding it exceptionally hard to get no results on copyscape. I'm using about five resources and trying to write it in my own words but I tend to copy five to six word strings without any thought.

Tom from AAO recommended that I start with backlinks from blog comments, social sites, FB fan page/Google+ page, and start with social bookmarks immediately.

Using these plugins:

Akismet
Google XML Sitemaps
NoFollow Free
Subscribe to Comments Reloaded
W3 Total Cache
Where did they go from here
WordPress SEO (yoast)
WP Socializer
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Am sure I'll have a lot of questions along the way, but for now I'd really appreciate some feedback on these:

1) Opinions on the keywords I'm going for: 'sweaty hands', 'how to stop sweaty hands', 'stop sweaty hands' and 'home remedies for sweaty hands' which all have ~$2 CPC. 46 average competition on serpIQ.

2) Should I drip my articles or just submit them all at once/as I do them?

3) Which go-to theme would you recommend?

4) Would you recommend AdSense on this site, and if so, should I add it after my content is up or after a few weeks?

5)) What should my plan of action be from here?

Thanks in advance!

Akibwa

P.S. Am currently working on the homepage content.
 


Oh, was also wondering about whether to have the www subdomain. I asked HostGator to automatically make all of my domains www. but it seems to have had no effect.
 
thehobbster said:
Some asshole will probably come compete in your niche and steal the #1 spot if you don't remove your keyword data and site link. Just a heads up.
Click to expand...

Can't remove anything now. I was debating whether or not to include the niche, but I doubted that anyone would actually target it (perhaps I was naive) and since I'm using it as practice, I don't expect to make a huge profit on it anyway.
 
Really bad wordpress template.

Here's why:

The text color is hard to read (gray)
The top estate of the website is wasted
The big fat widget on the top is kinda useless

Use the tried and tested templates, try to copy something similar to: Flat Stomach Exercises - Tips and Weight Loss Advice

[edit: I recommend the "cutline" WP template, two columns]

In fact, I recommend you copy the layout, how she interlinks the pages together, the about page, the contact page etc

It's a good start, don't give up.
 
amanda11 said:
Really bad wordpress template.

Here's why:

The text color is hard to read (gray)
The top estate of the website is wasted
The big fat widget on the top is kinda useless

Use the tried and tested templates, try to copy something similar to: Flat Stomach Exercises - Tips and Weight Loss Advice

[edit: I recommend the "cutline" WP template, two columns]

In fact, I recommend you copy the layout, how she interlinks the pages together, the about page, the contact page etc

It's a good start, don't give up.
Click to expand...

I knew that the theme was bad but I was just using it until a better suggestion came up.

I installed the 2-column template but it only took up half the width of the screen and so opted for the 3-column split style instead.

Thanks for your suggestions, I won't be giving up.
 
be quiet and do something already. pick a template, use it, fuck it up and improve on it.
 
Please get rid of 'Just another Wordpress Site', the default widgets, and the sample page.... it hurts me.
 
Yeah will be working on it soon, just have a load of coursework and revision to do in the next few weeks so progress will be slow.
 
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