Reworking Older Sites
An adult webmaster resource...
I was wondering what to write about in the early hours this morning but I found that a healthy dose of rather strange spam in my email today held the answer. The subject to one of my emails read:
"Reanimate that dead fish!"
You've got to admit that it's intriguing if nothing else and I hope that this is a new breed of spam. But I figured that we'd look at what to do with one of your adult sites when it's time to reanimate it. The sales might started to run flat, traffic might have dropped, and this is a major site that HAS to pull it's own weight. So what do you do...?
Keeping the banners fresh
This is an old tip and although banners are no longer the best way to advertise your sponsors, the tip still holds a lot of water. Often, if you see a drop in sales, simply re-working older ads on that site will be all it takes to get your site making money again. Remember that sponsors release new banners and ads on a regular basis so why not take advantage of that? Don't update content on your older sites but pay attention to your ads.
Check the RECIPROCAL links...
When you made this site, you probably submitted it to as many link lists as you could to start the traffic flowing. But how many of those link lists actually listed you at the time? How many STILL have a link back to you now? It's time to do some link checking here! Just follow the recip links from your site to their destination and see if you can find your website listed there somewhere. You could also check your website stats to see if the link list in question is sending you any traffic. If you're not listed - recycle that space and submit somewhere NEW.
Check YOUR links...
The most common two kinds of links within your adult site will likely be internal links (your own navigation from the home page to the other pages) and then the external links (to your sponsors for example). The problem with humans is that we're prone to making mistakes so follow all of the links on your website. Ask yourself, "is the traffic going where it should?" "Do your sponsor links all work?" "Have you messed up the code anywhere?" "Do all of your page links work? Check every link on those pages and I bet you'll find a problem that you can fix.
Time for some search engine optimization...
Unless you are super-disciplined (unlike ME!) then when you first built this adult site, you'll have been in a hurry to release it so that it could start sending you traffic and making some sweet green! But, the problem with this is that every area of your site is probably not optimized fully for the search engines. Did you optimize the gallery pages? How about the picture pages? Go through all 20 plus pages and, as a minimum, add a title to each page and an H1 tag to the body. Submit the gallery pages and let the spider crawl to the rest, OR submit each one by hand...
Is the index page listed?
Check the major search engines. Is you index.html page IN those engines? If it is - is it receiving any traffic from those engines? Check your visitor stats and see if you can spot the major SEs in there anywhere. Don't panic if you're not seeing traffic from them - it can often take a while to get listed. But if it's been 3 months at least, and there's no SE traffic, then it could be time to analyze the homepage, and then have another go at optimizing it. Have you picked popular phrases? Did you break any rules? See if you can spot any deliberate mistakes.
The rest of the site...
If this site has been left for a few months, I guarantee that you will be able to spot some pretty drastic mistakes with either the layout or the advertising on it's pages. Trust your instincts here and hold each page up to your current bank of knowledge which will have increased greatly since you built this site. What really sucks about it? Are there any problems with the pages? Do they load fast enough? Are the text links up to your new standard? Fix anything that is sticking out like a sore thumb.
Some good news!
Fixing broken links, re-optimizing or optimizing new areas for the search engines, submitting to new link lists that WILL list you, and all the other things I've just been talking about will make you more money instantly. It's important to commit to a regular overhaul of your sites - in a very similar wy as it's important to give your car a regular service. If you don't it could be running at 50% of it's capability and don't forget that YOU are learning all the time too. Why not put some of this new found knowledge to work on your older sites?
Happy site building.
TOM ^"^
ICQ 12616560
Email tom@tomsnewbiebooster.com
Enter TOM'S NEWBIE BOOSTER
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