Free Minisite Ebook – Wordpress News Aggregator in 15 Minutes
Wordpress Minisite News Aggregator in 15 Minutes
UPDATE: A new version also now exists at How To Build A Wordpress News Aggregator although not in downloadable format, if you want a PDF this is the post for you.
Minisites for your Domains come in many different forms. One that has become popular is taking a niche and building a news aggregator using Wordpress and the FeedWordpress Plugin which is built specifically to aggregate RSS feeds from sources that you choose. This How-To Create A Wordpress Minisite Tutorial will show you how to create a Wordpress Minisite aggregating news for a specific topic, in this case using Cpanel and Fantastico.
If you do not have hosting with Cpanel and Fantastico then you should head to Hostgator.com, since they have packages that allow for unlimited Wordpress installations at very low prices, I use them for all of my hosting for both my dedicated servers and blog hosting for BruceMarler.com
Originally I was going to paste all pictures and info in one blog post but after seeing the length of the post I feel its best to offer it is a PDF document in a sort of informal E-Book format (for free of course).
To download the Wordpress News Aggregator in 15 Minutes Process click this link (its free) Wordpress Minisite News Aggregator in 15 Minutes
Yahoo Search Results Matter For My Minisites
I very seldom focus on checking my Yahoo search results for my various minisites and developed domains and spend the majority of my time verifying Google search results. I have found that recently Yahoo has been showing certain minsites of mine in the first page of their listings causing a measurable increase in traffic and revenue.
One example of this is my site PensacolaBeach.me . Pensacola Beach is a popular tourist destination in the Florida panhandle. I knew the SEO for anything related to it would be tough up front but have had some success with certain targeted terms but did not expect to rise to the front page of Google (or Yahoo for that matter) for quite some time for the term Pensacola Beach.
I had noticed that mid last week the traffic had went up and that revenue from Google Adsense was also increasing. I took a look through my Statpress statistics and also my Awstats details and figured out that the term Pensacola Beach had increased in the common keywords driving traffic. Looking at referrers Yahoo was now referring a solid amount of traffic. I then went to Yahoo (really cannot remember the last time I used Yahoo for a search) and found that indeed I was in the first page of listings for the term Pensacola Beach.
This is good news for a few reasons, the obvious is that the SEO work that has been done for long tail terms has also paid off for the primary term I expected to wait longer for results on (I just started the development in January). Also, for you .ME fans, with the results I have had so far I cannot complain about developing this on the .ME extension (more details coming on .ME and SEO in the interview I am posting Monday).
I know that it comes to no surprise to anyone that Yahoo matters, but as much time as I spend focusing on Google search results and placement I really found the amount of revenue and traffic increase I received interesting and actually worth spending sometime researching in future developments. For those that fall into the same camp as I have in checking Google only, you may find it worth the time to spend a portion of your effort verifying placement in Yahoo results as well.
On a side note, I am now only 2 sites away from having all my minisites moved over to my HostGator account. After much pain at my previous hosting provider (outages, changed configurations, DNS issues) all while paying for a VPS I have successfully moved to a HostGator reseller account and have had better performance and the support has been great.
Yes, anything ad you see on this site for HostGator is an affiliate but when it comes to hosting its gotta be right. If you are looking for a good provider or just starting from scratch you really cannot go wrong with them.
Random Domaining Notes
This is not the post I planned on doing today but due to a technical difficulty I don't have the bandwidth to fix right now I thought I would post a few domaining notes that were not quite large enough to justify their own post. Here goes...
What may of been one of the coolest things in my keyword research happened today, while researching various keywords coming to my blog I noticed that I had a couple searches for "St. Louis Domainers" show up minutes before in my Statpress results. Thought that was interesting since I am in the St. Louis area. Well, literally minutes later I had a call on my cellphone from a domainer in the St. Louis area interested in meeting and discussing domains sometimes, he was the one searching. Just a cool, fun experience to see the search result in a phone call. Starting to think its a Missouri Domainer Mafia, the person today, Patrick Carleton (Associated Cities), Aron Meystedt, Tia Wood, and me. I know theres more of you out there!!!
Next note, if you are not twittering get to it. Although I have a hard time sometimes fitting what I want to say into 140 characters I find myself getting more from my Twitter communications and social network than I do from most other online networks at this point but I will admit to neglecting my Facebook account due to Twitter. I have been able to acquire domains I would not of found otherwise, create domaining relationships that would not of occurred otherwise.
I want to give a shoutout to Esa and Sri at Estibot.com. After my minisites compared post a few weeks back they have contacted me and found that when the files were transferred there was some corruption that caused some content to be truncated, etc. Great follow up by them. Esa was top notch in communications concerning this and had the team on it right away. Thanks!!!
Was just reading a post on Techcrunch concerning the changes that are coming in Digg Search. For anyone that has used Digg for link building and search traffic this could cause some changes in the traffic flow. Keep an eye on it.
I want to also thank all of you for reading, the blog has been up for a few weeks now and the results have been better than I could of expected from a networking and acceptance standpoint. Good people in this domainer group. I plan to be back to the minisite and how-tos posts in the next day or so and continue to give ideas on how to either choose names for outsource development or develop on your own rapidly.
OK, now for the biggest thing in this post, I PROMISED my daugther that I would mention that tomorrow is her 8th Birthday!!! She is standing over my shoulder right now and making sure this sentence is typed exactly to her liking. Happy Birthday Little Diva!!!!!
Minisite Development Domain Selection Tips
I have had several (dozens...) of emails in the past week asking various questions about developing minisites, using wordpress for minisites, revenue on my minisites, and how-to create minisites.
As most people will tell you, I do respond to each and every email rather quickly most of the time, if I miss one its because Outlook may of been a little aggressive filtering it to junk mail.
That said, I thought I would do a few posts this week about various minisite development topics and how I choose between doing the Minisite development myself or if I outsource and also what names I choose and why.
First things first, when do I choose to build compared to outsourcing to someone else? This comes down to a couple factors, the largest one being time to be quite honest. I have a very demanding sales job that I do along with my Domaining. People ask why do both? Well I actually like the field I am in and the job I do so I use outsourcing based on using my time more effectively (if you really want to get an idea of how to work effectively read 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris). I would expect the majority of domainers work a full-time position while domaining part time, outsourcing is the key if you plan to develop any of your domains if that is the case.
The second big one is the type of site I want built, I have zero graphic skills or graphic creativity, I admit that freely, if I want a simple minisite with simple text content that can be SEO'ed I have that process down to minutes for the site creation. I create those on my own, if it is a site I think could use more of a designers touch and a nice logo then I outsource.
That said, one thing I have learned from experience is make sure the minsite focuses on keywords that have a decent PPC.
I will give a really good example of this, I like to use certain domains for testing various SEO work and Google Adsense optimization. A few months back I purchased KingCobras.org. I recognized ahead of time that the site would not have high PPC values but it was a name that receives quite a few searches per month (approximately 22,000 for exact match) and would be perfect for what I was testing (SEO on images). The site is not pretty by any means but I was able within a month to go from a couple visitors a day to 200 to 300 a day (pageviews are higher obviously), it has leveled now in the 100 range due to lack of attention but can easily be rasied back up to that level. I was able to get a reasonable CTR but the earning per click was a measley 3 to 6 cents. Once again, expected, but it just goes to show to anyone just picking terms to grab traffic if you are looking for dollars and not cents per day pick your content and terms. Thats the point right, to make money:)
Now as far as that site goes, it gets good traffic, I now have a base to build revenue from, there are revenue models that I know will actually make some money off that site and they will be implemented in the near future and I will report on this.
Now, lets go the opposite direction, a site that gets much smaller search volume but pay per click is much higher. WomensBikeShorts.com. Exact match searches are around 2,900 a month which is much lower than the KingCobras.org site so traffic is lower, BUT revenue is much better on a per day average. Why is that? Well its because it is a product people are looking to buy, when people search for a term like Womens Bike Shorts they are looking to buy a product, when they search for King Cobras they are researching. Big difference between what people will pay per click between those 2 intentions.
So, to circle back around to selecting outsourcing or for that matter minisite topics. Its about revenue, if you are looking for high pay per click terms look for services or products, develop your site to match the terms that bring the biggest payback. I would rather a site that gets 20 unique visitors a day getting 20 to 30 percent CTR with 30 cent clicks than a site getting 200 visitors a day with 10 percent CTR getting 3 cent clicks.
All those factors need to go into your decision process when choosing a name for development, deciding if the outsource cost is worth it, or if you want to do it yourself.
I will be posting later this week with an exact how to of how to launch simple Wordpress Minisites that have been proven to have solid CTR for those times when you cannot justify or just do not want to outsource your domain development.
Minisites Looking Good After Google Pagerank Update
Filed under: Developed Sites, Domain Development, Domain News, Tech News
My Wordpress Minisites and other Minisite types seemed to of fared rather well during this weeks Google Pagerank Update.
Overall the Pagerank results are definitely more positive than negative and with this I have seen an increase in traffic for targeted keywords to many of my minisites. Here are several that came out looking good:
HotTubs.net did not increase in Google Pagerank but did get a traffic bump this week for ranking well on various related keywords. The rest of the list above went from pagerank 0 or 1 to Pagerank 3.
Overall I have also noticed that many of my sites may of stayed the same on pagerank but keyword driven traffic that I have been fighting for has increased measurably over the past week or so.
Now hoping a few of my newer sites like Math Book, Cayenne Pepper and Glucomannan start showing even stronger results.
Make sure you check your sites, both in SERPS and Google Pagerank, you might just find good news.
Geo Domains Locked and Loaded – Watch Your Keywords
One thing I have always found interesting is watching what people are searching for that landed them on my site. My minisites are very keyword targeted and usually are pretty predictable but many times I have found that my sites have been "selected" by google to rank high for certain terms I did not necassarily expect and by using this data I can sometimes find solid hand registered domains that I may not of found otherwise.
With the recent launch of this blog I have found a very interesting search that has started to send traffic my way. Recently I posted about Newspapers Closing. I have been a fan of Geo domains for sometime but with the recent fall of old school media I really think the time is now for Geo domain owners to fully develop and take advantage of the opportunity at hand. One thing that really drove this point home has been a term that has been driving many visitors a day to this blog.
That term is Newspapers Closing, at first I did not think much of it but then started thinking, the public has changed mindset enough that they are searching online frequently enough that it would show up in my keyword results. A quick check of the google keyword tool shows small results for this term but in the past 3 days I have had more visitors for this term than the big G shows for average search volume on this term for a month.
As more and more newspapers close their doors people will be looking for alternatives online. If you own a Geo domain it would be a smart move to be that portal. I will be posting in the near future on content that is freely available to develop your Geo domain to provide the content that people are looking for each morning when they sip their coffee.
So, even though this post is focused on why I think a specific term is valuable for Geo domains, the point is to pay attention for trends in the data that you have in your keyword stats. It could be valuable....
Wordpress Plug-Ins for Minisites
Wordpress is one of the most flexible and easily implemented tools for developing minisites for your keyword domains. Whether I am looking to develop a high traffic minisite or a more niche topic I can find ways to use Wordpress as the base for my site and use one of many free Wordpress themes to customize the look and feel.
Many webhosting providers provide point and click install of Wordpress through Cpanel and Fantastico which makes the process even faster.
Once up and running I have several Wordpress plug-ins I use to make the site more SEO friendly and make site more functional from both an admin and user perspective.
There are hundreds of Wordpress plug-ins, these are my goto plug-ins for vritually every site, some I recently started using and am moving back through my older sites to add:
Add to Any Share/Save/Bookmark Plug-In
This tool adds a button at the end of each post that allows the viewer to easily share your story on Digg, Facebook, and may other social news and network sites.
Google XML Sitemaps
To make sure your site is fully indexed and visible to Google (Yahoo and Microsoft as well) it is very important to create a compliant sitemap. This plug-in automatically creates the proper file and updates it as you add posts and pages. It is very configurable and allows automatic notifcation of sitemap updates to Google, Yahoo, and more.
All-In-One SEO Pack
The All-In-One SEO Pack makes it a snap to easily setup your post titles, meta tags, and other important SEO items in one spot. Where I really find this tool useful is on a per post basis you can configure description, keywords, etc.
Statpress
Statpress is a tool for viewing stats for your Wordpress blog, this allows for reporting based on last referrer, keyword referrals, and other areas of interest as well as tracking the top referrers and keywords. I still use Awstats but find myself referring to this frequently as well.
OK, a couple that I do not use on every site but have found useful too:
FeedWordpress
This plug-in allows for automatic posting of RSS feeds from other sites to yours. If you are wanting to setup a niche news aggregator using Wordpress this can be an quick and easy way to do that.
WP Super Cache
If your site gets frequent updates and high traffic this is a must, this plug-in creates cached files of frequently viewed pages of your site. I have a couple sites that this became a must on after traffic grew over 1000 uniques a day.
Twitter Tools
This one is a recent addition for me, this allows for your blog posts to be automatically fed to twitter or for your twitter posts to automatically generate blog posts on your Wordpress blog. I also use it to create an auto-updating "tweet view" on my right sidebar. Its a nice way for visitors to keep up and gives the site a more personal feel in my mind.
I am sure there are many more that can be pointed out that can be useful, feel free to leave a comment with plug-ins that you find useful as well.
Mini-Sites Compared
After all the interest recently in the domainer community on development vs. parking and then seeing several (dozens...) of companies popping up offering up rapid development services I decided to try a few out and make some comparisions. It should be noted that I have put together sites of my own , such as iPhone App Reviews which receives 1000's of pageviews a day but I really did not consider myself a real developer but thought I could probably be able to evaluate some of the techniques used for SEO and site development.
For comparison purposes I evaluated AEIOU.com which provides a 5 page mini-site using either Wordpress or a PHP based template for $250 (discounts available for volume purchases). I also tested the services provided by the Estibot.com team which provided a 5 page site (using Wordpress) for $99 and then a very low cost provider off the namepros.com forum which provided a 5 page site (HTML) for $39 dollars. Oh yeah, and I thought I would compare results to a few pages I built using the very easy to use Prosense theme for Wordpress with articles outsourced, total cost of each lsite ess than 50 dollars but requires a bit more work on my part.
By reviewing the product that should be received from each of the companies it sounded like the AEIOU.com and Estibot.com services should be very much alike but the random forum developer would be less so, so I thought this would be a good test of "get what you pay for".
We will start with the low cost provider, I must first say the individual did a very good job communicating and was very open to making changes, asking what topics I wanted, etc but one difference is that no link-building was included in the package. That was ok since I was really comparing low cost vs. high cost. The sites I had built by the low cost mini-site provider were:
Moms.org.uk Pregancy Tips
WomensBikeShorts.com Womens Bike Shorts
OnlineGraduateClasses.com Online Graduate Degrees
Although the sites looked reasonably good for the cost I was rather disappointed in the content, specifically on WomensBikeShorts.com. I had to re-write quite a bit just to make it readable but stopped after a bit since the whole purpose was to test the site as is from the developer. If you have to rewrite most of the site its not really worth your time to purchase it, defeats the purpose.
Also, there was quite a bit of SEO work that had to be completed although that was said to be included, tags had to be moved around, words were not spaced, etc. That had to be fixed as well. All in all I found you do get what you pay for. I would not use the service again although I want to be clear that the actual customer service provided was actually superb.
The estibot.com service was basically the same as AEIOU.com for a much lower cost, I had 2 minisites done:
MexicanVacationSpot.com Mexico Vacation Spots
HDTVTelevision.net HDTV Reviews
Both these sites looked reasonably good for the cost, the content was good compared to the $39 dollar sites but the frontpage content of HDTVTelevision.net was weak. I had originally planned on using the included hosting but determined quickly that I would not have the ability to truly use Wordpress as I would be able to on my own server or be able to get the stats I like to use from Cpanel. This is not their fault really but just something to be noted.
After installing the sites it was found pretty quickly that they had the the wrong keywords in most of the pages of the site, people that are not savvy with code at all would not of found these errors since they would not know where to look for various tags and other items. There were a few other items that had to be corrected. But once again, the support was superb.
Now for AEIOU.com, they are the higher cost provider but in comparison have, in my mind, had the best looking sites of the rapid mini-site services, so I thought it would be worth a try. The first sites I had developed were:
BransonMo.net Branson Mo
PortIsabelTexas.com Port Isabel Tx
Out of all the services the sites were the closest to being spot on out of the box. Although some of the content is a little generic you could tell the keywords had been researched and used accordingly. I do think the way the titles had been setup originally was probably not optimal for SEO and I have since corrected this after allowing for time to test. That was the least amount of work required between the (3) paid services.
I have deployed plenty of my own mini-sites using Wordpress, a few examples are:
BiometricFlashDrives.com Biometric Flash Drives
PensacolaBeach.me Pensacola Beach Fl
ifones.com iPhone Apps
Obviously these require more work on my part, but at the end of the day this is all based on ROI, so the question becomes is my time worth it or is it worth it to outsource?
So, after letting these sites sit for a bit of time the results are pretty straightforward. The 2 sites I have listed above from AEIOU.com have received better results in Google, and inturn have received much better returns in ad revenue. PortIsabelTexas.com actually ranks first page in Google for many terms that would be considered prime for this name.
The close 2nd is actually the sites that I developed on my own, ifones.com is more than a minisite so probably should not be used as a comparison but PensacolaBeach.me and BiometricFlashDrives.com could be considered a direct comparison. They both receive comparable results to the AEIOU.com sites and better results than the other services.
All that said though, the question becomes could you spend the saved money from the Estibot.com service and use that for linkbuilding to get the same results as AEIOU.com gets? Maybe so.
AEIOU.com does a great job sending a report after the linkbuilding is done, I do not want to give up any of their internal details but will say they use several different long lasting link techniques that seem to work.
I have purchased more sites from AEIOU.com:
DrugAbuse.net Drug Abuse
MathBooks.net Math books
I have not had the sites up long enough to judge results. Based on their past results I felt strongly enough to be a repeat customer. Note that I do not have any sort of relationship with them other than being a customer and a purchaser of a name from Rick Latona.
Moving forward I will be doing a mix of personally developed sites and AEIOU.com. Feel free to comment with your own thoughts.