I wanted to give a specific example of a mini-website and to show you how I put it together. BoneThinning.com is a work in progress but it is a good example of how to put a mini-website together quickly and easily. I will go through the steps needed to create it and the resources I used.
WordPress and WordPress Mu
OK, those of you who read regularly are probably fed up with me mentioning WordPress and WP Mu but that is not going to stop me giving a quick recap. for those who are not familiar. For mini-websites, I use WordPress MU if I am keeping them for income. This way I can update the software once because multiple sites can be on one installation. It saves a lot of time during updates and when adding new websites.
You can also use regular WordPress but you will have to maintain each one separately. It can be handy if you plan on selling the website after you develop it.
Building your WordPress mini-website
I am going to assume that you can install WordPress and there are resources out there to help you if you need it. Assuming you have WordPress installed, you need a suitable theme. For BoneThinning.com, I am using the Xeiro 1.1 theme. You can download it at the end of this post if you are interested. Of course there are many themes and you can choose those that match your domain and website.
WordPress Plugins
I have used the following plugins in creating this mini-site
- AdSense manager
- Amazon showcase
- exclude pages from navigation
- Google news
- Google xml sitemaps
This allows me to show Amazon books on the left and AdSense ads on the right using the widget ready columns. I can also craft the menu I want using the “exclude pages from navigation” plugin. The Google news plugin allows current topic related news to be pulled in from Google news sources. The Google xml sitemaps plugin create a sitemap for the search engines to use to index the website.
Creating the banner
To create this banner, I used Adobe Photoshop and opened up the banner image file that came with the theme. This could be found at /themes/xeiro/images/banner.jpg. You need to stick to the default dimensions of that file unless you know how to edit CSS.
I used different fonts in Photoshop to create the text and then I went to istockphoto and got the two images. I framed the text with the two images left and right. I flipped the one on the right so it was facing in towards the text.
Next I flattened the image and saved it for the web. This keeps the file size small enough to load quickly.
A trick for photos on a website
A trick I often use is to choose images that have a white background. This allows them to merge well with your page as you can see here. You can use Photoshop to make this change but if you find images already with a white background, it speeds up the process.
Creating content on the pages
For the Osteoporosis page, I used government data that is free from copyright and took a very boring table of statistics and used Excel to create a graph. This gives visual appeal to the page as well as complementing the text. You can read more about this trick at Using Government data to develop your domains
For the Bone Structure page, I used an image from a book scanned into Google books. The book is from 1906 and so the copyright has expired. More on this technique here: Copyright-free books for domain development
For the Osteoporosis News, this was created using a keyword and the Google News plugin.
Other mini-website development tips
I have given you the bare bones guide and there are tricks to customizing the theme and the plugins. For instance, the Amazon plugin actually is coded to give a percentage of your earnings to the author. The author allows you to change it but doesn’t provide a guide on how to do that.
Setting a website up on WordPress Mu (Mu stands for multi-user) is actually quicker than on WordPress because the software is already installed assuming you already have a website on it. You could probably get most of this done in about 30 minutes to an hour with WP Mu.
I describe how to edit the Amazon plugin as well as how to use WordPress Mu in my ebook WordPress and WordPress MU for Websites
Here is the theme I used for BoneThinning.com. It is a zipped file so follow the instructions for using themes with WordPress.
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow! Great posting! I learned so much from this posting alone. Thanks for sharing from your vast knowledge! WordPress MU sounds like a good system to work from. I’ll check it out!
Jeff,
Glad it was useful. I suggest getting to know WordPress itself first and then moving onto WordPress MU. The basics learned with WordPress really help when you move onto the more powerful WordPress MU
Thanks – terrific post. I really appreciate the nuts and bolts!
Great post. I am really starting to like your blog. What is your experience with using scraped content on your sites? Have you had a difficult time with SEO because of the Google duplicate content filter?
Content is my worst enemy! I am trying to put up a site or two a week but the content takes forever (my average site has between 2-3 thousand words of content).
I used a company called SpunWrite.com to do some content rewrite for me last week and was happy but it cost me about $25 per site.
Troy,
Content is always the killer. That’s why I try to stick to topics I know something about so I can add some original content. I do add some “scraped” content also but it is usually factual information and I often present it differently like in the example of the graph from government statistics.
Copyscape.com can help you check originality but I don’t use it that much.
What about getting an expert to write something? Give them credit, link to their site, pay them or promote their book as payment.
Doing an interview by email can also give you some original content to mix in.
So the simple answer is no, I haven’t had a problem with SEO but it’s because I spend a good bit of time working on content.
It is worth it if it is evergreen content because then you will only have to sweat over it once.
Hi Barry,
great post, lot’s of helpful stuff in there for a neeb like myself. December last year I built up a portfolio of 700+ domains during a discount which I am now in the process of developing into minisites. I’m currently deploying them all at the same hosting service, so all sites will share the same IP adress.
What is your experience with this? Will Google mark your sites as spammy if you have too many sites on the same IP?
/cheers Johan
Johan,
No, in my experience I have not seen any penalty because sites were all hosted at the same IP. I do minimize cross-linking between sites unless they are truly related. So I treat them as if they were completely separate websites in the normal way.
There is a practical reason why you do not want to host 700 websites on the same hosting account though. What if that server had a problem? All 700 of your sites would be down.
So I spread my sites across multiple hosting accounts to minimize the risk. You could split them across 3 or 4 hosting accounts so you will not lose all income in one go.
The alternative is to have a fail-over server. This is probably a more expensive option though.
Thanks for your comment.
Barry,
thanks for your reply. Yes, I agree that using several hosting servers is to recommend due to the risk of server going down. These 700 domains I intend to develop quickly (on a cheap hosting with lots of space) just to get a “taste” of the taffic they might generate. 90% are “one-keyword domains”. Hopefully 30-50% will be ranked good enough to develop further. After 2-3 months of indexeing in Google I guess I will have an idea of their potential. If any potential exists (more than 1 visit average per day) for a domain I will put the site on a different host (better host) probably.
More Q’s:
- when do you make Google aware of your domain(s)
- at what point do you put Adsense on them?
/br Johan
Great questions. I make sure I have enough original content on the website before I submit a sitemap and get links which are two ways search engines will find the site.
I put AdSense on the pages from the beginning. Others say that it is easier to get links without ads on the pages but I haven’t found much of a difference if your content is good.
As to your strategy of putting all the domains out there and seeing which one survives, it can work but there may be gems in there that require more than a mini-site or need a custom approach. Also some sites do not succeed early but need time. And organic traffic from search engines may not be the only way to go. Thats for another blog post though
Good job, clean and simple.
The one thing that may be an obstacle for some is the Photoshop. It is expensive and heck I don’t even know how to use it. For those like me you can go to a web forum like Digital Point and pay someone $5-$10 for a header.
Other than that, great job, you make it look easy
Nice site. Given the limited content perhaps better not to have the search box as not many terms will be returned. Or have a Google Search box, although I have not had good CTRs with those or indeed with advertising videos.
What do you think of the alternative strategy of creating a single domain of authority and have the mini-sites running of it as extensions of the single domain, rather than multiple domains?
Hi Patrick,
I agree. Any of these steps can be farmed out for relatively little. I get a kick out of doing it so I have a process to create the sites. Since I do photography as a hobby, photoshop was necessary and it helped with site design. As you rightly advise, you get someone else to do the work. I would recommend building up a relationship with a designer then if you are going to design sites regularly.
Hi Phil,
A search box is a good idea but like you, I havent had great success with them. I intend to add more content over time and driving traffic through links.
As to the alternative strategy, I assume you mean sub-domains of the main site. That can work if the sub-domains are closely related topics. I don’t tend to follow that strategy for the following reasons:
For SEO purposes, it is easier to get links to a standalone website than to a sub-domain and you need the link to have anchor text directly related to the sub-domain topic to get ranking for that sub-domain keywords.
I want to have the option to sell the mini-site at a later stage. Selling sub-domains is not really an option. Exporting the sub-domain to a new domain name just means you are starting over.
If the sub-domain topics are so closely related, I would prefer them to be directly part of the main website.
Sub-domains can help if you have a very large website and need to break down the content into logical units for visitors. Thats where I see it being used to good effect.
Thanks Barry. Actually, I was thinking of something like Elliot’s http://www.tropicalbirds.com as the authority site. So rather than buy a domain for each bird type you buy this one site and with effort surely it would have the authority to rank for each bird on a number one spot – you could use extensions or subs.
But perhaps it is your point below that keeps this from being the case?
“For SEO purposes, it is easier to get links to a standalone website than to a sub-domain and you need the link to have anchor text directly related to the sub-domain topic to get ranking for that sub-domain keywords.”
Phil,
There is no simple answer to that. Yes, getting links is harder to each sub-domain. I can imagine though that a site called parrots.com (dont go there, its so ugly!)has a better opportunity to rank first for the keyword parrots if they start on a level playing field. But parrots.com is not getting traffic from people who like budgies. So Elliot’s site collects traffic from different categories even if it doesn’t rank no.1 in all.
Bottom line: It’s easier to rank in a niche but the smaller the niche the less people you have to make money from. Finding the sweet spot is key.
Sounds like another blog post to me! Boy you lot are helping me rack up the ideas.
Barry,
That is some really nice looking site.
What really strikes me is how relevant everything
is that appears there.
—-
“You can also use regular WordPress but you will have to maintain each one separately. It can be handy if you plan on selling the website after you develop it.”
Is it possible to move content from a site created
on WordPress MU to regular WordPress?
Patrick,
Thanks. The site really hasn’t been tidied up fully e.g. even out the columns and fit the footer but it works for now.
WP MU to WP is possible. The way I did it is not for the faint of heart i.e. database exports. It is something I will look into again to see if there are easier ways now that the software has progressed in development. When I find out, I will post the information
Hello,
I’m slowly becoming a regular of your blog. Great info everywhere! Thanks a lot.
Only one suggestion: Don’t forget the private policy page and save a headache with Big G.
All best,
Will
Hi Will,
Glad to hear you are stopping by. If you have any thoughts about what you would like to see, I would be happy to oblige or have a guest post from someone else.
You caught me with the privacy page. I hadn’t finished the footer to the website. I added AdSense and Amazon a bit early to give everyone a sense of what the site would look like. Thanks for the reminder though.
Thanks for you kind words!
What I would like to share are a couple of changes I made to the Google News plugin.
*My* version shows the title+description but it changes the url provided by the rss to a local script that shows the news inside a frame, giving the user the option to get back to my site or get ride of the frame. I’m sure you’ve saw it over there.
It also gives you the change to put some ads in the upper frame.
In the link I provided for this comment, you can fin a sample of what I’m trying to tell (with my limited english).
I also added the ability to see the latest news per country as you can see.
I think it might help a bit the overall experience of the casual visitor and, hopefully, make them regulars.
Hope it helps somehow.
Regards,
Will
Will,
Thanks for the information. I will check out your plugin. When you say frame, are you talking about an iframe?
If it is an iframe, I have mixed feelings. The positive side is that you can retain the visitor because they can return to your page. The negative is that visitors can get upset with iframes if it is not very clear which site they are on or if the frame stays when they try to browse.
Anyway thanks for the suggestion. It is worth trying out your plugin. I hope some readers try it out also.
Forgive a neeb question but what is the “private policy page” adn how is it important to Google?
Sorry… I meant to say Privacy Policy page… It is a requirement from Google in order to show adsense ads.
Barry will explain it better.
Johan,
AdSense terms of service (TOS) include a requirement that to use their program you have to put a privacy policy on your website. I have one in the menu at the top of this page.
Here is the quote from the Google AdSense TOS
“You must have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy that clearly discloses that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users’ browser, or using web beacons to collect information, in the course of ads being served on your website. Your privacy policy should also include information about user options for cookie management. ”
Here is a link to the full TOS if you need them: Google Adsense TOS
Barry, great post, thank you.
I have a few SEO suggestions for your mini site:
1. Use H1 tags for your page headings instead of H3
2. Instead of the “all in one seo” plugin, try the “seo title tag” and “add meta tags” plugins together to give you better and on your pages
3. Interlink your pages together with keyword rich anchor text in natural sentences in the post body
4. Change your post slug /osteoporosis-2/ to /osteoporosis/
Item 2. is especially important for the SE’s and gaining trust from visitors. If you do a google search for ‘bone thinning’ and look at your title and description displayed in the google result, you’ll see how you could improve.
- Richard
I totally agree with TooMany. .. except for the plugin. I would rather recommend Platinum SEO Pack… the next generation of All-in-One. Give it a try (you won’t lose the work you made with All-in-One, it recognize it).
Thanks for the link Barry, I’ll have a look at it later on.
Will, Richard,
Thanks for catching those SEO things. I haven’t gone back to check for SEO yet. There are still pages missing and the footer isn’t complete. Great point about inter-page linking within a website. This is often overlooked and people are often afraid to do it because overdoing it can look like you are trying to spam the search engines. Done properly it is well worth it. We fight so hard to get inbound links but forget inter-page linking.
I have actually just got a new professional theme that has SEO built in and no need for SEO plugins. I picked up the developer license and it has multiple other advantages. More on that in a later post. For those deploying multiple websites, I think it will help a lot.