[Reader’s Note: Each of these posts will give you an inside look at the exact instructions I give to Simon Barker about his Zath.co.uk site. If you would like me to take a look at your site, drop me a note here: Aaron@FullTiltBlogging.com]

Simon:

I gotta tell you I love your site. It has a solid look, conveys not only good but cool info.

All in all it’s easy to see why you have 7,000 feed readers.

Your goal is to get the site making a predictable US$3,500.00 per month as quickly as possible. That is a very achievable goal.

We’ll take this course of action:

First we’ll make some changes in your site that will make it both more search engine friendly as well as more “marketing” friendly.

Second we’ll begin looking at ways to immediately monetize your site including identifying products you can offer that your readers will be interested in buying. Since you have 7,000 RSS readers already, we need to focus on getting messages out to them that not only are enjoyable but also make you money.

Third we’ll work on getting more traffic to your site as well as turning more of those first time visitors into subscribers, repeat visitors, buyers and “evangelists” for your site.

Ready? Cool.

For onlookers, Simon’s site now looks like this:

(Click Here for Full Size - Opens in New Window)

Here are some changes you need to make and why you need to make them:

• Making Your Site More Search Friendly
  • Create a Keyword Phrase List for Posts, Categories and Tags

  You need to have a list of keyword phrases you are targeting for traffic. Ultimately you will want to have a list of 4-6 top keyword phrases that will give you the most traffic but that may take you longer to target; a list of 25 or so moderately competitive keyword phrases that you can target over the short term and as many keywords as you wish with little or no competition.

  If you don’t know how to create a keyword phrase/competition list let me know and I’ll create a tutorial.

  • Put the Categories in Your Side Bar

  Your categories should be your main keyword phrases. Placing your categories in your side bar let’s Google know what your site pages and site as a whole are about.

  • Put a Tag Cloud in Your Side Bar

  Your tags are your secondary keyword phrases. Placing your tags in your side bar is another way to let Google know what your individual pages and site as a whole are about.

  • Insert the Categories tag into the Title Tag on your Single Post, Category and Tag Pages
    

  Titles on your posts are a great way to attract readers, but they are also used as the title tag for your individual post pages. You can start using your keyword phrases as the beginnings of your titles, but it might make your posts less appealing to readers.

  By modifying your theme to automatically insert categories at the beginning of a single post page, you don’t have to worry about placing the categories in the title, but you still get the search benefit from having a keyword phrase in your title tag.

  • Add Your Top Keyword Phrase(s) to Your Main Page Title Tag

  These phrases ought to be the phrases you most want to target with the main page of your site. This would be your top 3-5 phrases (depending on the length of each term.)

  • Add the Top 4-6 Keyword Phrases in Your Footer

  Just like your top phrases above, insert the top keyword phrases for your site in the footer to place them on every page. You can get the details here.

• Making Your Site More Marketing Friendly
  • Make a list of any product ideas you may have BESIDES Advertising

  Advertising is a product–even if it is just Adsense ads. But it is often not the most lucrative product for your blog. In your case the level of subscribers you have allows you to monetize advertising offerings pretty quickly, but I would strongly recommend you come up with some ideas of possible other products you can offer.

  Try brainstorming possible products you can offer that would appeal to your readers. Look at affiliate products, products offered by others in your market niche and even products (like eBooks or software) you can create and offer yourself.

  • Never Have More than 1 “Your Ad Here” Banner

  When I looked at your site you had two 125 x 125 banners saying “Your Ad Here”. This cheapens the value of your advertising. My recommendation is you have NO “Your Ad Here” banners, and just have a link beneath the banners to your advertising program. At no time should you have more than one.

  But what do you do with the unsold ads? Put up banners for affiliate program products. This allows you to possibly generate some income while waiting for advertising sales to meet supply.

  • Create an ADVERTISE Page and Offer Free Advertising

  If your product is advertising (as it is now) you want to get as many potential advertising clients as possible. The best way to do this is to give qualified prospects a free advertising try out.

  Here’s how it would work:

  You offer a free week or month of advertising (one ad–either a banner, text or RSS ad) to anyone who is already running similarly priced paid ads on other sites. They send you their contact info, the location of ads they are currently running and the ad text or banner they would like to have run.

  Once you have the page set up you can notify other bloggers in your market about the free advertising offer.

  You also need the page to explain the various ads you offer (I would add text ads as well as RSS sponsor ads), prices and payment links. Place a link to the ad page in the top navigation.

  • Get Rid of Top Commentators

  Once you are getting more traffic and comments you can put it back up.

  Make these changes and we’ll get started and we’ll be ready to move on to actually putting some money in your pocket!

  [Reader’s Note: If you would like me to take a look at your site, drop me a note here: Aaron@FullTiltBlogging.com]