DNseo.net

This is a WordPress Blog Design we made for our networking site SEO Optimization, a seo blog sharing tutorials on search engine optimization, link development and internet marketing to obtain better search engine rankings in the SERPs of the major search engines.

To run a similar blog and to love blogging on that topic is cost effective, it requires money invested to perform tests, check out seo softwares and review them, hire seo companies to test drive them and tell everyone how things have worked out. The amount of money that goes out of the pocket is never enough, thats why we needed a layout which would let the blog pay its own passion, we needed well optimized blog (and not only for search engines) but also for monetizing the blog to bring a nice stream of revenue which would make the expenses of the experiments be paid by the revenue that the blog would be pulling out, thing which the old free wordpress theme that the blog was using would never permit due to lack of space.

We had to redesign the blog and our goals were

• Improving the layout from a SEO perspective and obtain higher search engine rankings for several keywords
• Constructing a layout that would permit us to improve our internal linking structure
• Optimizing the blogs layout to pull more online revenue and not hurt the site in the same time
• Giving a pleasant, eye relaxing and fresh look to the layout for better browsing experience to the visitors

SEO and User Experience

What we did was expanding the width of the layout to give more space between the borders of the content holder. Having more space between borders when the site is content intensive it helps you keep eyes relaxed and the content is breathing better. The next move was creating and header that will display ONLY in the homepage of the blog. Header which would permit is to use our targeted keywords and as well interlink with other pages and popular posts of the blog that we wanted to boost rankings for.

Marketing and Monetizing Optimization

To monetize the blog we have create several spaces where advertising banners, affiliate banners or even pay per click ads can be placed. The monetization corner has been mainly concentrated in the sidebar of the layout where are mainly positioned a block of PPC ads (Google AdSense) and a set of affiliate banners, both blocks (mainly the AdSense one) is well positioned and it is in a visible part of the site.

When the goal is to monetize a website, but yet to present to the readers a pleasant layout on which they can browse and read without feeling their eyes hurt you can’t just stop optimizing the site to pull revenue only from the sidebar, it needs to diversify the ad position all over the site so everything looks new and yet attractive. For this we have custom coded a snipped of code that will display 468×60 ads ONLY on top of the homepage and the category pages while on the post pages is presented a larger block with PPC ads which is well blended with the rest of the layout. As we already knew that we might want to grow later on, we have also left the top header where the heading tags sits with enough space so we can in the feature place another 468×60 ad banner.

Our goal was met, and not a full month after the optimization of the blog for pulling more revenue we were satisfied with the results and not only, but we also managed to obtain better search engine rankings.

Work Involved

• Graphic design (PhotoShop as tool being used)
• Semantically correct xHTML and CSS coding
• PHP language