My name is David Law, AKA SEO Dave :-) and the developer of the WordPress Themes and WordPress Plugins on this website.
I cut my teeth on SEO in the early 2000’s when I started my first online business selling sex toys and sexy lingerie, had a website with around 2,000 adult products and no money to promote through AdWords or other advertising means.
Hadn’t heard of search engine optimization and at first ran on the belief if I built a website, they (visitors) will come: you quickly learn website visitors don’t work that way :-)
Quickly learnt search engine optimization and in my first full year trading had earnt over £80,000 from selling adult products.
Over a decade later I make a living online via a network of websites and to drive traffic to my network have developed WordPress themes and plugins that I also offer for sale and for free. Without the WordPress themes an plugins I’ve developed I wouldn’t be making as much money online.
WordPress SEO Development
For over 8 years I’ve developed WordPress SEO themes, AdSense themes and WordPress plugins culminating in the awesome Stallion Responsive Premium WordPress Theme Package.
Stallion Responsive Premium WordPress SEO Package v8
Stallion WordPress SEO Premium Theme v7.1.1
Talian 5 WordPress AdSense Theme v5.5 (free)
Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin (free)
Stallion WordPress SEO Comments Plugin (free)
WordPress SEO Expert
I’ve been studying search engine optimization for well over a decade and used to offer SEO services (for about 10 years), no longer offer SEO services and only make money online from my network of websites.
David Law
Website - SEO Gold
SEO Help
Hi
Just wanted to know how much do you charge to popularize a site?
My site seriously requires some SEO help. It’s new site.
Thanks & Regards
WordPress Theme Development Ideas
More ideas on improving Stallion. These are just ideas please do not feel obligated these are back burner ideas.
Black theme and Adsense
I have done testing with my websites, though I am only one guy. However, I have found the black Talian theme works very well with Adsense. Maybe people’s eyes try to escape the black and go to the light? The White or simple theme I will use on my website where I sell my own product as it looks cleaner. Your themes are great as they have a lot of flexibility. You can make beautiful images and headers. So maybe in the future you could offer the black theme with more color possibilities. That is black but in addition to orange and green, maybe other colors like light blue or dark blue against a black Talian theme or a number of color that accent the black theme. Even gradients, textures. But these are really time-consuming and I do not expect this as people can re-create their own designs in Photoshop etc.
Visual guides
About the sides that are outside the boundaries of the theme, I do not know would diagonal lines light lines work even that direct eyes to the side bar which might contain ads? That means a pattern that does not violate TOS but is innocent, but still has the effect that directs people’s eyes. It is all about directing people on the site with visuals not just words.
Sidebar decorations
Also sidebar decoration that is not a TOS violation but could enhance Adsense? If you look at smosh.com you will see they do this.
Above the fold
I have found the above the fold ads in the content work 2.5 times better than side bar ads and about 5 better than bottom ads. I think the content ads are the juicy. I agree there is not an easy way to put more content ads in. I think Panda prefers (who really knows anything about Panda) more ads at the bottom, but the top ones pay. I think it is great you could move the side bars to the bottom on an SEO x-ray of a page.
Wow first page
If you could do a magazine or newspaper front page option this does add value especially for people who will expand their idea of a blog to be more social like with bbPress or BuddyPress or at least a landing page that can be change to a ‘business card’ side of their page.
A lot of talk about Social Media but who is buying it
Per our dialogues before on this, SEM Social (Twitter, Stumbleupon,, YouTube etc) is good to diversity from just one type of traffic, but I agree SEO and organic traffic at least today is still the most effective and pays the bills. I am curious how the big ‘G’ will integrate social signals into search if social is low quality traffic compared to search. They are borrowing a lot of money these days (billions)and sit on pile of cash, I do not know if it is to play the interest rate game or something is cooking for the future. Why would a search company being playing the interest rate speculation game? They are hiring people like crazy, they might be up to something.
Thank you SEO Wizard with a white hat
Thank you very much for all your efforts and no expectations here. By the way with the works you have done with this theme, including research and bringing this to fruition, we might just well call you Gandalf when it comes to SEO.
WordPress Theme Development Ideas
SEO HTML Code Optimization
Just covering one part of the above, the layout of the Stallion code behind the scenes.
If you view source of any of the Stallion layouts (including the new ones for Stallion 6.1) they all use the same basic HTML code layout which is built with SEO in mind. What you see on the page right now is NOT what you see when you view source.
In a browser the layout is:
Title of site
Description of site (this can be moved to the footer)
Header image (which is a background image, CSS no SEO value either way)
Search form (can be turned off)
Header Navigation Menu
Ad area if you use it
Rotating banner images (which is a background image, CSS no SEO value either way)
Left Sidebar
Main content + comments
Right sidebar
Bottom footer sidebars
Ad area if you use it
Footer
View source and the layout is different.
Title of site
Description of site (this can be moved to the footer)
Header image (which is a background image, CSS no SEO value either way)
Ad area if you use it
Rotating banner images (which is a background image, CSS no SEO value either way)
Main content + comments
Right sidebar (yes the right sidebar is higher in the code than the left sidebar : using some funky CSS coding :-))
Left Sidebar
Bottom footer sidebars
Ad area if you use it
Footer
Header Navigation Menu
Search form (can be turned off)
Many SEO experts believe the order of content code wise is important SEO wise (really difficult to test, I’ve not been able to confirm it) and that main content should be as close to the top of the content code wise as possible.
You can see from the view source layout it’s almost perfect. The title of the site is important to the home page (it’s in a H1 header) but not so important for WordPress posts and static pages (the title lacks an H1 header on posts, pages, categories, tags…, so just a basic text link : one basic text link won’t do much SEO wise).
So above the main content is the sites title (one text link) the blog description (which can be moved to the footer code wise) a CSS based header image (it’s ignored by Google etc…) an optional ad area, CSS based rotating banners (ignored by Google etc…) then the main content starting with a H1 header with the title of the post etc…
Below the main content is all the navigation links, so 95% of the top of the code is unique main content, couldn’t get it much better SEO wise.
With the new sidebar layouts the code isn’t changed, it’s all CSS changes that have no SEO impact either way. So SEO wise doesn’t matter which of the sidebar layouts you use, they all look the same when you view source (what Google sees).
Regarding ads above the fold. Google can’t automatically determine where an ad unit is just by looking at what we see in a browser window. Code wise the default AdSense ad unit layout is:
Main content ad unit.
Main content.
Bottom content ad unit.
Sidebar content ad unit.
If you place one of the ad units in the header widget that couldn’t be more above the fold, but code wise it’s in the footer code right at the bottom.
If Google could guess the location of an ad based on the code of a typical post running Stallion it would find only one ad unit above the fold (the main one), the rest are way down code wise.
There’s no evidence having ads above the fold results in decreased rankings. Google even states on their blog they do not take AdSense or AdWords into account and I believe them.
What they do take into account is low quality sites, so if a site is filled with dozens of ads with little content I could see them taking this into account. They wouldn’t even need to determine an ad is an ad, think about all the off site HTML calls made if you used Stallion and had AdSense, Chitika, Clickbank and Infolinks/Kontera running at the same time (was never my intention to create a theme where users would turn them all on!). This sort of excessive ad setup will slow the loading of a site down, so a simple comparison of number of off site calls to external javascript (how main ad networks work) to the amount of text based content could be a way to determine quality.
This is just speculation, I’ve tested popular sites with and without ads running and see no major difference traffic wise, never tested running 4 ad networks which could have HTML calls to 20 external javascripts on the same site mind you.
My advice is aim for one main ad network, I use them in this order of preference:
AdSense
Chitika
Clickbank
I generally wouldn’t use two main ad networks on the same site because of all the calls to external scripts (slows a site down). My ideal setup is AdSense only with 3 content ad units, this is a compromise between making money and not irritating visitors with loads of ads. As you’ve discovered it’s that main content ad unit that makes most money.
David
SEO HTML Code Optimization
WordPress Theme Development Mods
Some small modifications could be considered in the next release, but you can determine if it makes sense.
1) I would allow a sitemap without pages just posts and without ads. I do not want to confuse the user to think an advert is part of the navigation. Pages are things you usually have listed somewhere in your footer so not as important on a sitemap (navigation of last resort).
2) In the footer, not a widget, but a footer form that would allow simple html links like contact, about, privacy policy adjacent to copy right. I drop these in myself Why? I think footer links like thee are pretty standard and gives a website trust points with users and maybe Google post Panda.
3) Default favicon that could be altered easy, but a generic one might give people a reminder to make their own. Another minor thing that makes a site look more professional and trustworthy, I see very few spam sites taking the time to do this.
WordPress Theme Development Mods
New WordPress Theme Features
Added 1 and 2 above for the next update, made quite a few changes for the next update so warrants a 6.2 version number :-)
Also added a few new WordPress page templates and modified some of the current ones.
There’s a Recent Comments page template that shows the latest 25 comments in full with links to the comments. Example at SEO Theme Recent Discussions: Will be useful to regular visitors who want to quickly read all recent comments without having to load them one by one. Could add an option to change the number of comments shown in the future. Added a cut down version of the above to the 404 error page, you’ll see the latest 10 posts and the latest 5 comments on error pages which should be more interesting to visitors who find their way to a site via a 404 error page (less likely to leave).
Added a custom navigation menu to the footer, so you create a custom menu, add it to the footer navigation area (available in Stallion 6.2), add whatever links you want (Privacy etc…) and they are listed below the footer copyright info etc…
Have incorporated Google plus, Facebook, Twitter and other profile pages and an RSS feed slot (Feedburner for example) into the author biography box and on a floating bar that can be floated and fixed to the left/right side of the window. Incorporated the Stallion cloaking code so no SEO link benefit wasted unless you want the profile links to pass link juice.
The website URL and the anchor text of the website link on the author biography box is independent of the URL/anchor text used for comments. This is useful because the admins comment author links passes SEO benefit (aded in Stallion 6.1) which meant you’d ideally add keywords for your name and that didn’t work well for the author biography box.
Added new widgets, Google language translation and a YouTube User Channel RSS Feed wudget, grabs the latest videos from a users channel and posts them.
Three new colour schemes, Connections Reloaded, Delicate and Coraline ported in. Five more Stallion TwentyEleven header image sets. Improved search results, rather than showing an excerpt it’s an excerpt of where the keywords are you searched and the keywords are highlighted.
There’s other new features and settings behind the scenes as well.
Like the idea of a favicon, will probably leave to the next update as currently checking the code for bugs etc… before release. See if I can find say a dozen public domain icons and have a dropdown list to choose from like the Stallion colour, header and banner settings.
Thanks for the ideas.
David
New WordPress Theme Features
Custom WordPress Theme Development
Custom theme folder
Updating to 6.2 with the automatic update has made things a lot easier. I was able to update a score of my websites at light speed. Just be aware that if you have custom landscape folder you have to first save it to your hard drive. Then update, then upload it again as the automatic update will overwrite the custom landscape folder.
The landscapes, headers and art provided in the theme are great as well as the ones for sale. One thing people can do is mix and match. That is, take a few of the ones you like from the landscapes that comes with the theme, and create your own custom folder and even add a few of your own.
CSS, gradients with the translation plugin
On the initial trials it appears that if you use the Google translate plugin with a gradient color theme like the Stallion gradient, it will repeat. That is check the CSS for this. You will see what I mean.
The ‘Submit Comment’ rounded rectangle seems to be off 1 pixel on one of my websites. I am not sure if that was an intentional shadow float or something that is doing that because of a plugin or something. I do like the rounded rectangle by the way and the CSS hover animation you seem to have.
Gravatars
I love the Gravatars. I am a big believer that Facebook took off because of the deeply ingrained evolutionary mechanism in our brains to study faces. The ability for humans to read faces was and is necessary for survival.
Therefore, humans get stuck on looking at faces, we can not ignore them. Faces and body language convey a lot of information. Therefore, the comments with Gravatars are very helpful for catching people’s eyes and staying on site. You could experiment further with formatting of this, that is, the text title and excerpts or have the image of the person could grow if you hover. I know it’s a lot of work.
One idea to develop this further is to replace mystery man with custom Gravatars. I know it comes from another server, but I think there is a way this could be accomplished.
For example, if you have a recipes website, like you do, you could have a series of defaults that are vegetables and fruits anthropomorphic Gravatars, a happy carrot or a grumpy pear. Never underestimate the power of images. Or as you know I have a political economy website, I would replace the Mystery man with the founding fathers of the USA like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson etc. Your wife’s good Karma website could be all kinds of imaginative designs from yogic looking symbols to warm sun or nature Gravatar etc.
I do not know if having a link that does not lose PR juice to Gravatar sign up would encourage people to use it more. I did see a plugin like this but do not know if it would be worth it. I have steered a few people to gravatar.com and they have come back with some interesting icons.
If you wanted to get crazy with all this you could take a little inspiration from the Mingle plugin. But that might be bloating it. However, I believe the more people are interacting on your website the better.
Design and colors
The design keeps improving. I take someone who knows nothing about anything with regards to websites, usually a teenager niece, and ask them, which one do you like the best.
I think I have mentioned this before,if you are searching for more design ideas, many designers get inspiration from and colors and proportions from classical art, as the masters spent a lot of time thinking about colors and how they match 500 years ago, life has a more slower pace and before they used a color, it was really thought out. Just look at the the subtlety of colors used in the Italian renaissance.
One idea to take this theme to the next level, but maybe not appropriate for your type of theme, which is general rather than personal and specific, is 3D look or oversized images like Matt Mullenweg’s ma.tt/ website for example. However, that I know he has professional artists working long and hard to achieve those effects.
Another idea is to offer RSS icons that are a little snazzy. I have blue books with mine. They are found in /wp-includes/images/ some it might not be an easy thing to include in a theme because the folders are different.
AdSense
There has been a lot of chatter around Matt Cutt’s comments on Ad placement, location and rankings for 2012. I have no idea how this will translate into affecting search. I think I read something like they will consider where it actually is on the page not just the code.
If that is true, who knows what this will mean. My best performing ad is the block in front of the content. Maybe 3 sidebar ads might be one way around it as the code presents these sidebar ads as bellow the fold. However, I am not sure if this would help.
YouTube
I do not know why but I am behind the curb with monetizing YouTube. However, some people I have personally met only live off of YouTube.
I do not know if it is better to place ads in the videos or simple use the videos to attract visit to you website, but it is something I should try, that is more videos.
smosh.com/videos does a good job with a video page. I wonder if that could be set up easy as a category or a theme option. Maybe it is not worth it as most people who use your theme are brick and mortar bloggers.
One warning is I have noticed that when I embed other people’s videos, they sometimes have Google Ads in them and I am curious that violates the rule of 3 ads a page. I have removed them once I discovered this.
SEO and a positive note on taxes if you purchase the Stallion theme
These are some ideas about the most recent update and some other ideas to consider. How this theme can be developed to best help users and webmasters is something that will change as the web changes. The way I see it is, the web is evolving to be more of a conversation, a steam of consciousness. Webmasters and SEO consultants will adapt to this flow. Your SEO skills are nothing short of brilliant on this WordPress SEO theme. Nothing else like it out there.
By the way, I wonder if people know, if they file a schedule C in the US or as a Sole proprietor in most countries, the price of purchasing the Stallion theme, could come as tax deduction as a business expense. I am not giving tax advice, but if they look into this, I think this is the case. Sure this is something that directly helps your business, so most people would deduct this as a business expense. So the money spent on it really is no money at all as it all nets out.
Custom WordPress Theme Development
Updating a WordPress Theme with Customized Files
When you update a theme (or plugin) using the built in WordPress updater it deletes the current theme folder and replaces it with the new files, so all customizations are lost.
That’s how WordPress works with all themes and plugins, if you’ve made customizations either make an offline copy of what you customized and upload using FTP after you update using the WordPress updater or upload the new files via FTP and don’t upload files you’ve customized.
I have loads of websites with customizations, most are single file customizations (the custom-widget.php file or the test.js file) which I’m updating via the WordPress updater and reuploading the customized file. For sites I’ve added multiple custom files (banner sets for example) I’m using FTP.
Since I own 100 domains and most run under WordPress rather than have 100 offline copies of WordPress, themes and plugins etc… for each site I have a folder for each domain that includes only the custom files:
wp-config.php
.htaccess
images
any customized files for Stallion/plugins
etc…
All in their relative directories.
I also have one folder that includes the latest version of WordPress with all the plugins and themes (Stallion, TwentyEleven and TwentyTen) I use so it’s easy to create a new site, upload the latest version of WordPress, plugins and themes via FTP if I don’t want to use the WordPress built in installers.
David
Updating a WordPress Theme with Customized Files
AdSense Ads Above the Fold and Google Rankings
If Google do take AdSense code placement into account with an aim to downgrading sites with AdSense code above the fold the good news is the Stallion code is designed to push the content high in the code and as much of the repeated template stuff low code wise.
The AdSense content ad that floats to the left/right of the main text is located above the main text, so is the only AdSense content ad unit that’s above the fold code wise.
Sidebar AdSense content ads though shown above the fold in most setups is code wise near the bottom.
Above Footer AdSense ad unit is above the footer area.
The Stallion setup code wise is:
Some header code
Main content
Extra content (comments, related posts plugins…)
Sidebars: left, right, 5 footer widget areas
Footer area
Some more header code
The only AdSense content ad unit that’s above the fold code wise is the main one.
This assumes of course Google can’t ‘see’ a page like we can: unlikely they know where a sidebar is layout wise relative to actual code.
If you disable the main AdSense ad unit and have two widget ad units you can add one of them to the header widget area (the 486px wide one works well) which will put the Adsense ad within the header at the top (way above the fold). Code wise this code is about as low as it can get, it’s below the footer code.
Always remember there’s a big difference when using Stallion with what you see above the fold in a browser and what’s above the fold code wise. If you wanted to see what Google sees (assuming they don’t understand CSS too well) try deleting the two CSS files a site is currently using, this will load the site basically like Google sees it.
David
AdSense Ads Above the Fold and Google Rankings
AdSense Ad Placement
What I read Google will not start factoring ad location into rankings until next year. So there is time to consider this. I do not know if they can read the actual location or just the code. I guess we will have to see. I believe every issues as a solution.
I know they are trying to improve search results but I personally do not see a big correlation between content quality and ads. I have seen many sites that are poorly monetized of poor quality, and many high quality sites with ads.
I really need to study ad position and income on my websites. I think your 45-year-old millionaire site with a main content ad and a header ad is most likely the best combination. I am a fan of sidebar ads when I want to keep my website clean. Maybe I will try a stack of three sidebar ads.
I think the header ad is brilliant. I will have to try it. Since I use the Stallion black gradient theme with a lot of top navigation I have to make sure the ad does not overlap with this theme, as when I first tried it the navigation menu titles seemed to be in front of the ad. But that is me as I have thrown a lot of things on that top navigation. Just a small adjustment might be in order in the next update. You might want to try it to see what I mean. But no problem if it is ment more for the 2011 theme style.
Community website development
My successful sites all have a community to some degree. My less successful sites do not have much of a community. So that tells you something. Mingle or the other social WP plugins and platforms do all have the registration draw back.
My comments cid pages are really starting to pay off with long tail searches. I just think the say you developed super comments is one of the strongest aspects of this whole theme. I hope people understand its power.
Still there I just feel there has to be a feature here that could be taken to another level with regards to community. I do not know what it is yet. Interesting Gravatar do help analogously like your related posts have with images. But still there has to be something else that could be added to encourage community, that would not dissuade people like registration or becoming to cluttered.
Do you know the website chatroulette.com? The key why that is a Alexa 4000 something is because you do not need to register. It is a strange sort of social site with no registration. I think their forum does not even have registration. You just leave a comment and it is on the forum. So I do not know how to extend the theme further with this, but I will throw some ideas out there from time to time.
The 25 latest comments do look interesting. I need to explore more of the features of this theme as development for a one man show is moving at light speed. By the way, I am always impressed how one man shows often produce better quality products then large teams of people (Bing vs. Duckduckgo.com) for example. That is entrepreneurship.
AdSense Ad Placement
WordPress Theme Future Development
Stallion bugs first :-)
Google Translation Widget : well spotted (I missed that one), looks like the Google translation CSS file (hosted by Google) is overriding the Stallion CSS code for the gradients versions, will see if I can find a fix for the next update. Had a quick look and seems it’s not going to be an easy fix.
Submit Comment Shadowing : what you are seeing is intended, it’s deliberately offset so you get a shadow/animated effect. Funnily enough it was an accident while coding the Coraline CSS (which is based on Delicate CSS) that it works as it does, liked it so kept it and updated the old Stallion colours that lacked button styling with the code :-) Didn’t use it on Delicate though, so if you don’t like it the Delicate code is the original without the shadowing.
Gravatars : I don’t plan to add a link to the Gravatar signup page, easy to do though without wasting link benefit. Drag and drop a new text widget below the recent comments widget and add a cloaked link. I used the same technique minus the cloaked code for the “Latest 25 Comment Discussions” link underneath the Recent Comments widget on the right menu. This is the code to use to have a centered link that’s cloaked, don’t forget to turn link cloaking on:
Custom Gravatars : I’ve looked into custom Gravatars (there are WordPress plugin Gravatar sets available), but what I discovered is they can be quite server resource intensive, so decided against adding any. You could replace the Mystery Man Gravatar relatively easily. The Mysteryman Gravatar image is actually hard coded which makes it possible to change it.
Hard coded Mysteryman image code : http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536
Search the Stallion php files for ad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536 and replace all instances with the code of a Gravatar you’ve uploaded to Gravatar. For example if you wanted to use the Stallion Gravatar I use it would be b2a279cb56c346ae52b4c24c1c71a5e2 (you only need the unique string of characters). This Gravatar image would be used for all commenter’s who haven’t signed up for a Gravatar.
That wouldn’t give you unique custom Gravatars for each commenter though.
Had a quick look at the Mingle Plugin and the problem with that sort of plugin IMHO is it’s the equivalent of a forum which means your commenter’s have to jump through extra hoops to comment = less commenter’s.
What’s missing from WordPress compared to a forum is the ability of users to create topics on any subject. Stallion SEO Super Comments could be made forum like if you create general starter articles that are the equivalent of sub-forums. For it to work you’d need to create quite general articles and maybe seed the page with some comments to get things started.
Anymore than that and probably better with a dedicated forum plugin.
Stallion colours : I have looked at colour sets from the past, but I’m not very artistic so need more than a colour palette to work from, I’m quite good at replicating what other sites look like however, been doing it for ten years, almost every SEO clients site I’ve worked on it’s a case of rewriting the code for SEO reasons without changing the overall look. Right now I’m looking for popular WordPress themes and using them for inspiration.
The YouTube AdSense ads are run by YouTube/AdSense. If you have YouTube videos that aren’t using copyright material (like commercial music) you can have to show ads, so what you are seeing is the ads either from YouTube users who are monetizing their videos or videos that are not monetized, but YouTube are adding AdSense ads (YouTube/AdSense keep the revenue). Technically speaking you’ll have more than 3 ad units, but YouTube videos are embeded so they aren’t on your page per se, so not counted as one of the three. If it was counted one of your ad units would be blank as there will only be 3 ad units shown. Problem with this is the ad unit isn’t yours, so any clicks gets you nothing.
David
WordPress Theme Future Development
WordPress SEO Theme Discount
I see you dropped the price of the Stallion WordPress SEO Theme to 40 USD. I hope this increases demand even more, as we need your talent creating such a great SEO theme and updating it. It really is the best SEO theme on the web hands down.
Sorry I have not posted as much on your site as I had to get a job temporary as we had some moving expenses to the USA.
WordPress SEO Theme Discount
Premium WordPress Themes
Stallion WordPress SEO Theme v7 sales have taken a nose dive, looks like there’s not a big market for WordPress SEO Themes that cost a reasonable amount of money, so dropped Stallion version 7 to $40 see if it makes any difference (so far nope).
Been particularly disappointed with Clickbank affiliate sales, with the amount of affiliate sales might as well have not bothered and sold using PayPal (has lower fees). Glad I don’t rely on the revenue from selling premium WordPress themes, I’d go very hungry :-)
David
Premium WordPress Themes
A/B Multivariate Testing to Improve Conversion
My friends who bought your premium theme love the SEO and the customer support.
However when people who I show your website to, land on the page, they are disoriented and lose interest.
I highly recommend A/B multivariate testing (Google has this functionality) to improve conversion rates.
Determine your baseline conversion rate now. Then do multivariate testing until the cows come home.
Double or triple it. Google has A/B multivariate analysis functionality built in.
Think about the average consumer. They like websites like potterybarn.com to dazzle them with images and they want their website to look like this. Imagination is where the purchase is made. Make it tempting to their imagination.
Be a WP super hero with imagination.
They want to impress their friends.
I am sure if your homepage looked like that, on one of your tests it would convert much much higher.
People want
1) a website with a lot of traffic (your theme is great for that).
2) a website that their friends say ‘cool’ it looks great.
I tend to think 2 is more important to the average guy in the purchase choice.
So you need to make it more sexy, so people look at your site and say, I want a website like this.
You are an SEO genius but you need to make it more tempting.
Try the A/B testing and make it more like Potterybarn or something sexy tempting. I have off lines I can share with you. What do you think?
A/B Multivariate Testing to Improve Conversion
Premium WordPress Theme Design
I think your forte is you are a techy. But if you could just take this to the next level in terms of premium theme design, I think people would go wow.
Remember Aristotle’s classic modes of persuasion were ethos, pathos and logos. I think Pathos is the most powerful for most people.
Another example of a Pottery Barn type website might be florida-golf.org. As soon as you land on the page you want to explore it.
I do not know if it is the best website. But I think if people are thinking of a website for themselves they would be proud of a website that was so visual. They would buy that theme, show their friends.
Just some ideas. I am someone that likes more textual websites, however, new guys buying themes and just learning about the web and empire building I think are drawn to visual themes. This is know your target market.
I get this when I am on elance. Guys always say say I want a website that looks like this (insert any graphically oriented website). I show them bloggy or text based websites with good SEO and they are not as impressed.
So based on my experiences on elance, visual really appeal to new guys. That is what sells.
Premium WordPress Theme Design
WordPress Theme Customization
I really like this theme and have worked with it in the past on other sites. for some reason I just can’t get it to look the way I want. Would like to hire a pro to re-skin the site to spec.