What would you pick? Species/Breed or Topic

[TheARKlady]

If you'd like to take a look, the site under quesiton is http://ArkAnimals.Com. At the moment I am considering doing landing pages by topics and not by the type of animals. I will be blending both wild and domestic animals but how to best do this is confusing since so much has changed over the years.

My competitors are focusing on animal types mainly and competition is fierce. Also the site attracts by three main topics not specific animals--so I want to be a bit unique which is why I am considering a topic driven focus.

What would you recommend?

Background

This site has been online since 1994 and on its own domain for a long while. However, over time it has suffered from a lot of things--different designers, expansion, movement of content to niche sites and bad seo. LOL

Once everything was on one site with sub directories. Then, it expanded and my online advisors recommended moving topics off into their own niche sites. So, I did that. Ugh.

Now, much of that content is being integrated back as I am undergoing an intense revamp (the last one was a disaster).

There are a few presenting problems that I could use your perspective and expertise--since I am too close to it.

Problems for Needing Your Input

1. The site is over 2600 pages with many in html and others in php.What is the best practice? Moving the remaining html pages over into php? Some of the pages that were not active have a redirect to the blog. I plan on doing page to page 301 redirects once I dig in--unless you have a better idea. There are a lot of well established links to some of the pages.

2. How many topics are too many? I have a wide variety of content. First, the magazine format covered about six topics. Later, I began covering more pet related items and did a lot of different news summaries to keep it fresh. I want to dump the short outdated pages as many of them have obsolete links or are too short to add any value. Or should I update if they help with the seo rather than continue to let them dilute the site?

3. Landing page or blog? Which is better, an index landing page or blog? At the moment the blog appears on the main index for freshness and the site attracts traffic for specific topics not animal breeds or species.

I want to move the site from an educational site to serving as a main funnel for potential clients driving them to get on a list or to a niche site for sales related to the particular topic/training of interest.

What your take on this if you were to tackle it?

Any input would be greatly appreciated. My audience includes those who are pet owners, novice trainers, and animal lovers with no critter sense.

[TheARKlady]

Thanks Ryan, I can play with the widget code for the Facebook.

Yes, I am doing an entire site redesign but I wanted to run a few things over here at SEOMoz as well.

It is pretty comprehensive based on all the topics and content and so it is taking a while. My designer so rocks--and has some great ideas.

[RyanKent]

A few thoughts I can share:

The attachment is an image of how your facebook widget appears to me. I checked two different pc's using two different versions of Firefox. There are numerous issues with it's appearance.

I am not a web designer. I have the highest respect for those gifted designers who have the ability to take web content and present in cleanly with a "wow" effect. I can share an award winning web design I have found which I enjoy very much. This design is for Joomla CMS, but can be modified for other sites: http://themeforest.net/item/futureprospects-stylish-corporate-joomla-template/full_screen_preview/400149#?tp=1

I specifically like the "HOW CAN WE HELP? What we offer" idea. Whatever services you provide and whichever items you sell need to be presented in some format on your home page. At the very least, a link needs to be offered which provides greater details.

It sounds like you are unhappy with your site. You would clearly benefit from an updated design. I realize it can be expensive but you may want to consider a site rebuild. Determine what you want from the site with respect to SEO, sales, presentation, etc. and work with a developer who is able to offer a high quality site.

If a site redesign is not workable for you, then possibly redesign the home page.

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[TheARKlady]

Thanks Ryan,

Appreciate your taking a look. We have already implemented a site wide htaccess change for the blog to remove date stamps but I wasn't aware we could change everything site wide. The last designer did a html template and that is a mess which is another reason I wanted to change the pages.

To answer your question, yes many of the pages I have not touched do have backlinks. Some have traffic and some of the links are 15 years old--which is why I have stayed hands off on messing with it.

Orginally the site was a magazine with six different categories. At the moment I am testing two keywords in the nav and one is out peforming the other. I have three business services which is why you see three keywords. So what would you suggest?

I switched to the Genesis theme last Nov and am not happy with it for a number of reasons. Not sure why the Facebook looks odd to you but will put that on the list. I am testing the response and it actually has grown my community offsite.

As far as sales, at the moment a call to action for sign ups for more information is one idea or a call to action leading to the specific sale of the service most relevant for the topic.

We've discussed doing landing indexes per topic--so your idea about an animal page in a different manner.

Again, my topics overlap different services/topics about animals and each has a different audience (think domestic versus captive wildlife) so I didn't think the animal category would be the best based on the current competition and since many of the topics would overlap between the two species.

For instance, training principles for dogs are common for say, an elephant--so the training principle topic focus makes more sense to me--but then I am too close to this which is why I am in the forum.

I'd be interested in any additional thoughts about that as well.

[RyanKent]

I am wondering the best practice in moving the remaining html pages over into php.

From a technical perspective, any html page can be changed to a php page simply by renaming the file. If you have a page called animals.html and rename it to animals.php, the page will work just fine as long as users link to the proper url.

From a SEO perspective, it would be best to use "tech-free" URLs. Instead of linking to a /animals.html or /animals.php page, simply link to a /animals page. The extension is not necessary. You can ask your host or web developer about making this change. It is extremely easy but the exact method would vary depending on your site's software.

Once the change is made, you would simply 301 the old pages to the new pages. Ideally you can make the change with a single redirect for the whole site saying to simply remove the .php and .html extensions from all URLs. This method would save you from the headaches involved with redirecting 2600 pages individually. It also improves the look of your URL, and eliminates the need to make similar changes in the future.

Before dumping any pages, I would suggest performing some analysis. Do these pages have backlinks? Do these pages have traffic? If the answer to either question is yes, you want to carefully 301 these pages to the most relevant page on your site, or consider keeping / updating the page.

Your site has many SEO opportunities.

• Your home page title targets 4 keywords and contains your phone number. This is not a good strategy for SEO.

• You do not have any H1 tag on your home page

• Your facebook widget is poorly integrated into your sidebar. I am using FF and the appearance is quite bad with me not being able to read any of the text of your comments.

There are numerous other opportunities. In general, if you wish to transition to a sales approach, you will need to directly engage your visitors and have some form of "Buy" call-to-action message prominently displayed.