Blog vs. News/Editorial Layout?
-
We're in the coupon blogging space & saw that one of the larger coupon sites move away from the more traditional blog layout: http://thekrazycouponlady.com they now have more of an editorial type layout. Here is another site which is more similar to our layout: http://hip2save.com.
So here are my questions:
-
Which layout type do you feel better serves their visitors & why?
-
How does the affect the SEO of the site?
-
How does it affect the advertising revenues?
-
Which layout do you prefer?
Is there strategy in this move for the coupon blog, or is this just a preference on how they now display their content?
We're making some updates to our design soon & I wanted to get some feedback on the overall direction we take.
-
-
What analytic tools do you use? We currently have Google Analytics, but I'm familiar with KissMetrics & Crazyegg, do either of those make this process easier to measure?
-
We put up version A and get data on a large number of visitors.
Then we make a logical change to the position of the elements to produce version B and run that to get data on a large number of visitors.
These changes are not yet tweaking colors or fonts. They are testing ad positions or navigation formats.
We watch the data for changes in things like ad yields, number of pageviews, time on site, number of sales - whatever metrics are important to you.
If you have a lot of traffic you can determine if a design is tanking in a short amount of time but if you have small amounts of traffic you might need to run split tests or separate tests for days, weeks or months.
After we have tested a few very different designs we then start tweaking ad colors. This is done by creating a program to change ad colors hourly with a separate channel for each hour. On one of my sites my first choice of ad background color was ffffee... then after testing many different colors I learned that ffffee had the lowest yield.
We found up to 10x differences in revenue from different formats and up to 2x differences in revenue from different ad colors.
It is much easier to double your income from your current traffic than it is to double your traffic.
-
I'm always afraid of drastic tests, how would you do that on a large scale? With the 15 different versions you tested on your pages, what were the key items you were measuring?
Any chance you can share more info on the enormous differences in your changes & how measured this? Ultimately this is what I'm looking to do. I just want to make a calculated decision before jumping into it.
That's good to know about the SEO...thanks!
-
Don't ask us and don't guess yourself.
Instead, toss up a version and test it on your visitors.... then try something different...
The response of your visitors is the only response that matters.
If you have a content management system it isn't a whole lot of work to try something different.
Some of the page formats on my site have been through 15 different versions and the income / engagement differences between them have been enormous.
About the SEO.... if you don't change the title, navigation links and other on-page elements of the design there should be little impact on the SEO.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is Prerender.io/React going to negatively impact our SEO efforts?
On any page on the site (https://theadventurepeople.com/), the same short code appears. Having investigated Google index pages, Google's cache and Fetch & Render, it does look like Google can view the content and index it, but we're not 100% convinced. Background technical information from the web developer: The website is a single page application built using React. The site is setup with Prerender: https://prerender.io/ (which renders the javascript in a browser, saves the static HTML, and returns that to crawlers). Is Prerender.io/React going to negatively impact our SEO efforts?
Web Design | | Wagada0 -
Specifying image dimensions for site speed vs. responsive
I'm working on improving site speed from an SEO perspective, and one bit of advice I see often is to specify the dimensions of the images you're using so the browser knows the size of the image it needs to download. However, I am wondering what impact this may have if the site is responsive? If you specify the large dimensions suited for a desktop browser, would you be forcing a mobile browser to use that sized image? Has anyone seen dramatic improvements in site speed using the <picture>tag for responsive images?</picture> Thanks! Jannette
Web Design | | JannetteP1 -
Tips on finding the right Senior Designer / Design Director
Hello Everyone, I manage a fairly large educational website that we are looking to completely redesign to improve the overall site user experience and usability. In the past I, a non-designer, business person, would just roughly draw how I thought the site should look and our developer (who is good, but not a web designer) would just try his best to make everything look profession. Over the years, it has become painfully obvious that we need to invest in more design expertise and move towards a modern, smartly designed website. So my question: Where are the best places to find good freelance designers? I have of course conducted web searches, browsed elance, and asked my network for referrals. However, I am finding that most of the really good ones, ones who have to ability to take charge and lead us through this entire process, and who have at least a basic understanding of SEO principles, work for larger integrated development shops who also expect their people to develop the new site as well. We already have a developer and are primarily looking for the design expertise. Does anyone in the Moz community have any suggestions or even referrals? Thanks! Eric
Web Design | | Eric_R0 -
Drupal vs. Wordpress
I'm working with a site that is built completely in Drupal - including the blog. As we begin on a content strategy initiative the blog is vitally important but lacks core SEO functionality and is cumbersome for the content teams to work with as they have no technical background. While there will be more work required (moving the blog to a sub-domain or separate URL) to play nice with the broader drupal environment I believe it may be the better choice to move over to Wordpress and port over any existing content worth keeping. Has anyone encountered a similar scenario or have an opinion on either platform? Love to hear your thoughts both pros and cons. Thanks in advance.
Web Design | | JonClark150 -
Site structure and blog tags for local with five locations
I have a client who has five locations. Their current web site was structured very well for the pre-penguin and Panda world. However it does not seem to do as well after these changes. I believe it would serve them both with their customers as well as on Google if they localized the site for each location. Currently all the content on the site if focused on one location that is in the largest metro. On the content side we have a plan to produce local content and blogs for each location. My questions are how to go about structuring the site map and blogs to provide the most local juice. I was also wondering how to properly mark up a site with a main trunk and five local branches. I am also trying to figure out how to structure the tags on the blog. On the site map itself I was planning on maintaining all the content as well as the older blogs in the main trunk of the web site. Under this trunk there is a locations page that currently goes to five pages that simply have an address as well as a bulletin board of upcoming events. The blog is directly off the main page with no tie to any location. Here are my thoughts on what I think we should do: I believe we should create a mini web site starting at the location page that has specific content and navigation related to each location. That the content should focus on the specifics of that area and what would serve that clientele the best. We should add to each branch location based on the key words and competition in that area. The blog off the main web site should continue to house the general categories that are already there as well as any other general posts. I think we should add a link to each store page with a location specific blog in each mini location site. Each mini location site should have it's own blog with specific blogs targeted towards the local market. This local blog would also feed in the general blogs from the "trunk" as they are posted. Relating back to my original questions: is what I outlined the right approach or is there a more effective way to do this? Is there any special mark up I should do to tell the directories what to do? How do I structure the tags for the blog? I was thinking of a structure like this: General blog/category/subject under the main structure : local blog/category/subject Any ideas of input on this? Ron
Web Design | | Ron_McCabe1 -
Blog.yoursite.com or yoursite.com/blog/?
Rand made the following post in 2009. In July of 2013 I question whether this is still best practice. Obviously, much has changed in our industry in four-and-a-half years! "...if you're seeking to maximize your ranking ability for a given piece of content, it's my personal belief that you should, most of the time, keep it on 1 subdomain under 1 root domain (but feel free to use subfolders as it makes sense). Starting a blog? I almost always recommend yoursite.com/blog over blog.yoursite.com. Want to launch a new section of content? Use yoursite.com/newstuff rather than newstuff.yoursite.com." Source: http://moz.com/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
Web Design | | JorgeUmana0 -
Side Nav. Vs. Top Nav
I have a client that currently has a side navigation and wants to know how changing to a top nav will affect her SEO. We always recommend top nav for user experience but I am not sure if there is a direct effect on SEO. Would the change affect it? Thoughts?
Web Design | | hwade0 -
HTML vs WordPress
Which website gets better SEO results? I was told that HTML is crawled better than WordPress. Which is a more expensive website to design? What are the pros and cons of each?
Web Design | | CapitolShine0