Well April was another great month, last month my earnings were down but I was able to see a solid bounce back with record revenue and net income.
Spring has also finally arrived and as a result I was spending a little more time outside doing yard work etc. Being time-poor is nothing new and I know there is no “solution” but I need to continually work to maximize every minute I get to be able to continue to push each part of my business forward. (more…)
A few weeks ago Quinn from CubicleFree.com and I shared a public review of each other’s authority websites. These reviews included recommendations on how to improve our sites. (more…)
Today I have a special post, Quinn from CubicleFree.com and myself have both been building authority websites and sharing all the details of the process on our sites. We have been emailing back and forth some suggestions on how to improve each other’s site and learning a lot.
The information we were emailing each other we thought would have a lot of value and learning’s for other people building authority niche sites so decided to do a detailed review of each other’s site and post it for all to see!
You can see his review of my authority website here:
This post grew into a pretty long post and so here is a breakdown of the post…
Quinn has been making all his living full time online for the last 10 years. What I like about his approach is he is solving real problems and adding real value with the sites he builds. He has been able to make six figures per year and is continuing to build his online empire. I believe I have a lot to learn from him and am looking forward to seeing his thoughts on how I can improve my website!
In fact one of his websites made almost $400k in one year!
His review of my authority site is located on his blog – here
When I launched my authority website in September I created this site to showcase my progress and keep me on track! However, one aspect of sharing my site I did not anticipate was the benefit of making contacts with other people at all different stages of growth in their online businesses. These contacts and discussions that have resulted from me publicly sharing my case study have been enjoyable and definitely rewarding.
In this section I will go through 5 aspects of his site and provide what I believe are his key strengths and what I believe are areas for improvement.
Website: http://www.rsacoursesonline.com/
Results To Date – $80 as of the end of November
RSA Courses Online makes money by providing useful content answering questions about RSA courses online which results in visitors from search engines finding the site. Once on the site they are directed to the money pages which are in depth reviews of online RSA courses. If a visitor goes to one of the RSA online courses website and purchases the course Quinn makes affiliate income from the sale.
Website to Offer Match – There is very tight alignment between the topic of the website and the main affiliate offer.
RSA Courses Online is doing a great job of Website Topic to Affiliate Offer Overlap!
Improve conversion from the blog posts on the website to the money pages. There is one tool that can do this effectively…
ACTION STEP #1– Install the plugin QuickAdsense (free) and create 2 ads for all blog posts, one to go top left alignment and one to go bottom middle both of which are to direct people from blog posts to your money pages.
I believe this improvement will have the biggest impact by improving click through rate from money pages to the affiliate offer. The basis for my recommendation here comes from standard conversion advice shared by people like Derek Halpern from SocialTriggers and Peep Laja from ConversionXL.
“Remove all extra clutter – links, menus, buttons – that have nothing to do with the particular ad/campaign. The point is that the visitor cannot ignore your message by navigating away, and therefore focuses on only that page.”
From Peep Raja – “How To Build High Conveting Landing Pages
Right now there is too much clutter on the money pages resulting in people that have made it to the money page leaving the site and going to other posts instead of converting into a sale.
Current Money Page:
Recommended Money Page:
See an example of the Landing Page – Here (quickly built with StudioPress Landing Page)
I believe this change will result in the biggest improvement for your site!
ACTION STEP #2 – Turn your money posts into landing pages – Since the site RSA Courses Online is built using Genesis/StudioPress theme this step will be easy…
Quinn is a big believer in adding value to his visitors, his beliefs are aligned with my own when it comes to truly helping people with websites and that will result in traffic and income.
A lot of the content at RSACoursesOnline is truly helpful and provides valuable information about how to get your RSA certification.
Right now there are 12 pages indexed in Google for RSACoursesOnline. Although the topic of RSA courses online doesn’t allow for a daily posting schedule due to the topic not being deep enough there are opportunities for creating more content to increase the number of daily visitors.
Action Step #3 – Add 1 to 2 Posts Per Week
Continue creating good quality content but increase the rate of posting to 1-2 posts per week. One option to get quality content created for a low cost is this strategy.
Even though RSACoursesOnline does not have AdSense on it I still think it is a good idea to build a website that complies with AdSense Terms of Service. The terms Google defines for its AdSense publishers is likely a good indication of what its search uses as part of its quality score when reviewing websites. Therefore I always try and make sure my websites have an About, Contact and Privacy Policy page.
Action Step #4 – Add Privacy Policy Page
I like to use the free tool here to generate my Privacy Policies. On the post I make sure to flag it as a nofollow noindex post since it is duplicate content. Place the link to the privacy policy page as a drop down in the contact page or create a new menu to go in the footer and place it there.
With the Web Design/Engagement module I will be looking at the current layout of the website to provide the user with a good experience and how well the site is set up to achieve the goals of the site.
Strength – The website is built using WordPress and Genesis/Studiopress which results in a very user friendly and attractive site.
Below are a list of all the action steps in the Web Design/Engagement module that I believe would improve the user experience on the RSA Courses Online website
Action Step #5 – Change Slogan
When someone comes to a website you have 6 seconds to have them understand what the website is about. When I first went to the website I did not understand “what is an RSA course” although most people that get there would understand what it is I believe modifying the slogan to be more clear would provide value.
Try one of these which more clearly lays out what an RSA course is and the benefit of it…
Action Step #6 – Logo Modifications
Currently the logo doesn’t clearly indicate what the RSA Courses Online website is about. A logo that includes an aspect of Australia, Online and Liquor would help immediately convey the purpose and benefit of the website.
Current vs Suggested
vs.
The suggested logo is just an example of a more tightly focused logo (even though its very ugly and not recommended).
Action Step #7 – Modify Embedded Video to Fill Entire Area
Currently the video is the default embed code size and doesn’t eat up the entire area. By modifying the embed code to a custom size it will take up the space and look more “finished”.
Either center the video or create a custom embed code size to fill the entire space.
Action Step #8 – Modifications To “Welcome” Section
Based on many heat map studies the welcome section of the RSA Courses Online website is likely the most looked at section of the site.
Improving this area should result in lower bounce rates and improved click through rates from the homepage to the money pages.
Current:
Suggested:
Photo from jelloneck
RSA Courses Online is built using the WordPress Framework Genesis and using the”Delicious” StudioPress theme.
The Genesis framework takes care of most on page SEO issues and there is very few improvements that would be resuired.
11 Point On Page SEO Audit Checklist:
Action Step #9 – Improve Image SEO
Improve both the alt tags and the image URL/Title for the screenshots.
This would be a lot of work to go back and do on all existing pages, either outsource this activity or just make the changes on all future posts.
Here is a great article talking about image SEO: Top Rank – 6 Tips for Image SEO
Action Step #10 – Locally Target Your Website
The problem Google is having is determining what region your website is built for. Since you live in Canada and server is located in the US Google would have a hard time of telling what market your website is for. To correct this add relevant Australia keywords on the website. Currently on the homepage there is no mention of Australia.
This is interesting since Quinn has clearly made a decision to not build backlinks…
“I will not be doing anything that is potentially harmful including fancy backlink strategies”
From Quinn’s case study introduction – here
However, from my point of view the benefit of working to build some high quality relevant white hat backlinks outweighs the risk.
Current Link Profile:
From Majestic SEO the link profile for RSACoursesOnline is showing high trust flow due to a quality link from an existing website Quinn owns. Typically most sites have a higher citation flow than trust flow so to improve off page SEO Quinn could do well to increase the number of backlinks.
There is one simple strategy that can help build valuable white hat links and that is Blog Commenting + Guest Posting on relevant websites
Action Step #11 – Blog Comment on Relevant Sites
Using blog commenting to reach out to other relevant websites in your potential market is a great way to start building relationships and links.
Action Step #12 – Guest Post on Relevant Sites
Once you have built a relationship with some of the request the opportunity to guest post on their site and receive a backlink from them
This guest posting strategy goes into more details on how I have been doing this for my authority website.
Over the next month we will implement the changes…I will make the changes Quinn recommends on my site and he will do the same on the recommendation above. On Jan 7 we will share the results of what changes we can confirm worked and which ones failed or we couldn’t get enough data to measure.
If there are any improvements to his site http://www.rsacoursesonline.com/ I didn’t include but should have please put them in the comments section below and I will update this post with the recommendation and who recommended it…
Action Step #13 – to be added from readers’ comments below…
Want me to review your site? – Contact Me
