FP - How I Build Huge Sites, Get Good Traffic and Make Nice Money

[SYCRO]

With regards to navigation, with there being so many pages on a site like this, how would you design it? A left hand side bar with a link to each page looks slightly messy and hard to use. Split it into categories? Related posts?

[BrettM]

With regards to navigation, with there being so many pages on a site like this, how would you design it? A left hand side bar with a link to each page looks slightly messy and hard to use. Split it into categories? Related posts?

Sounds like BTB may provide a diagram of some sort:

I get what you are saying and I should put something together like that... I'll put that on my daily list and try and squeak that in today.

Also, if you scan the thread (I know it's long, and you may have already) there's some points on how others are doing this. Also check the related group to see if there's been a mention there: http://flippingplanet.com/forum/group.php?groupid=14 .

Either way, I'm looking forward to BTB's diagram too but also know he's busy so will enjoy it when it gets here!

[tnphoneman]

With regards to navigation, with there being so many pages on a site like this, how would you design it? A left hand side bar with a link to each page looks slightly messy and hard to use. Split it into categories? Related posts?

If you look at the example that BTB posted on the first page of this thread, all the links are at the bottom of the page. I have divided mine into categories and grouped like pages/articles into those categories. With me using wordpress for all of my pages, I use the custom menu widget(s) in the footer area so that it will appear on every page. There are a lot of links but it is very clean.

On another note, I also have a forum on this very topic that I am targeting so I have a link in the navigation bar at the top and in the links at the bottom. The forum is new also and is located on a separate url. This is not monetized as of yet but it will be when I get it populated and figure out how to do it with the phpBB forum. Still reading up on this.

[BassTrackerBoats]

Perfectly executed.

Yup -- that's what I'm getting. But also, let's make a differentiation (my terms below... others could use different words):

Searches = estimated number of people searching for a KW or KWs (on Google, etc.)
Visitors = number of people who clicked through from Google, etc. to visit your site.
Transactions = number of people who bought, or otherwise paid you money either directly (your own product) or indirectly (AdSense, affiliate programs, etc.)

So in BTBs example, he's estimating 6 million searches a month, of which he hopes to attract 5% to his site... or 300,000 visitors (6,000,000 * 0.05) a month. From those visitors, he hopes to convert 0.2% (0.002) to a sale of some sort, or 600 transactions (300,000 * 0.002) per month

(Also, if BTB is expecting $1,000 / day, then I'm guessing he's making $50 per sale. $1,000/day / $50/transaction = 20 transactions / day or 600 transactions / month.

Hope that helps, and everyone / BTB please correct me if I've mis-understood!

I'll have a diagram up tomorrow... I'm working on it now and rather than just slap it together, I want to make it nice and clean for you guys and gals so it's taking a little longer than I initially thought.


Re: How I Build Huge Sites, Get Good Traffic and Make Nice Money See if this makes any sense to you:
http://i40.tinypic.com/x2o47s.jpg

I didn't put all the pages in the diagram as it would have made it hard to understand the concept but the page count can get very high depending on the amount of KWs you generate for the site.

As you can see, I have 2 pages on my WP site. One is the main page and has 8 - 10 articles on it but you can add more if you want. The other is what I call my Hub page. It lists all the categories and all the subcategories.

The categories are clickable to the Light blue html page which also has an article on it and a list of the subcategories relating to it which are the darker blue html pages.

All the html pages link reciprocally to the Hub page as well as a one way link to the main page.

It's not really that complicated and it looks very clean in real life.

All pages have a search bar in there so you can find any related topic very easily.

[SYCRO]

If you look at the example that BTB posted on the first page of this thread, all the links are at the bottom of the page. I have divided mine into categories and grouped like pages/articles into those categories. With me using wordpress for all of my pages, I use the custom menu widget(s) in the footer area so that it will appear on every page. There are a lot of links but it is very clean.

On another note, I also have a forum on this very topic that I am targeting so I have a link in the navigation bar at the top and in the links at the bottom. The forum is new also and is located on a separate url. This is not monetized as of yet but it will be when I get it populated and figure out how to do it with the phpBB forum. Still reading up on this.

All the links? With 250+ links, that would be a bit excessive though right?

[tnphoneman]

You would think so but so far it looks really clean. I was afraid of that at first but then after getting going it works. I have 188 keywords for my site and there will be 360+ pages. Now with a max of 2 clicks to get from any one single page to any other single page I have not thought of another way to do it.

With the 2 click theory, only 1/2 of my pages will be in the bottom of the site so there will only be 188 links there not 360. So from any page on the site you can get to any other page in 2 clicks or less.

BTB correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that this has to do with the depth of the site more than the actual navigation. It allows the bots to crawl faster so that all the pages get indexed faster. If you have a site that is say 5 layers deep, the bots do not crawl that all at once.

[BrettM]

No problem BTB. I was also trying to wrap my mind around all the arrows, so I did a simplified "one category / one sub-category" version, which of course you'd just expand for every category and sub-category page. Does this work too, on an extremely simplified version?

http://i53.tinypic.com/t8kygj.png

Another question... your image seems to indicate you'd only have one sub-category page (the darker blue HTML pages) for every category page (the lighter blue HTML pages). Is this correct, or you may have more then one sub-category page... just not shown in your diagram for simplicity?

Thanks!

[BassTrackerBoats]

Another question... your image seems to indicate you'd only have one sub-category page (the darker blue HTML pages) for every category page (the lighter blue HTML pages). Is this correct, or you may have more then one sub-category page... just not shown in your diagram for simplicity?

Thanks!

There can be anywhere from 3 to 15 Subcategories on the bigger sites and as many as 50 - 60 categories depending on what I have in Keywords.

Even with all those categories and subcategories, it ends up looking very clean.

[ske11]

Thanks BTB for a great post and the site layout diagrams are excellent.

I feel I must come clean and admit I was told about the article by BTB and joined the group following his recommendation, I was notified of the post because I use the Linkpush system BTB runs.

What I think is important to remember is that building links to the site is important and if you are going to build a site to 300 pages plus you need to have a back linking plan in place, BTB has been very professional in not pushing his product.

I would like to give a testimonial for the system if that is ok with the Mods

I first signed up for a basic 12 push package and was very pleased with how quick, easy, inexpensive and (most importantly) effective it was. Over the next few months I not only recommended it when ever I spoke about link building I also upgraded through the different packages to the 72 Mega pack, all paid for from extra revenues generated by the system.

So if anyone is sitting on the fence about trying it out give it a go, I assure you (and you have no reason to believe me as I realize I showed up yesterday) I have no financial connection with these guys I am just a very happy user of their service.

[tnphoneman]

I started my site before BTB posted the photo so as I have said, mine is looking a little different. It may seem bad the way I am doing it, but it really does not look bad. Besides you want them to click before they get to the menu anyhow

With that, many have been wondering what I am doing because they can not picture it so here is a picture thanks to BrettM for setting up a site so that I could get this photo for you all to see.

http://i54.tinypic.com/205xysl.png

As you notice all the categories are lined up and neat looking. Well in reality this is not the case because you will have more articles in one category than another. When I am creating the site I end up with categories that are bigger in size so sometimes I have to move them around in the footer so that they are pretty much even at the bottom.

How do I do it? Every one of the categories that you see is a custom menu widget in the footer. To create the menu, I go to appearance-->menu and create the menu that I want using the custom link feature to link directly to that page and to insert the keyword as the anchor text.

It is going to get large but I think it will still look very clean and neat. Heck even some of the keywords can be used in the category heading and they should because this is a h3 tag on the menu title.

Hope this helps