Comment on Stallion WordPress SEO Theme by Mark.

WordPress SEO Theme The ideas you are working on are all good to improve the Stallion theme. My ideas that follow are just a unloading of ideas I am playing with. I have no expectations and do not know if they would be good for the whole but here goes. They might not make sense and 99% might now be feasible for this simple upgrade, but I thought I would put them out there.

Design and colors on Stallion
I think design or cosmetic options always enhance value as people are visual on the web.

Anything to keep people on the site or decrease bounce rate is good. I think style plays a role in SEO.

All the elements from colors to dimensions that enhance the theme is value added. I think there is great flexibility now. You have headers, banners, color choices. With imagination almost anything can be done working with the theme as it exists now.

However, there are always ways things can be improved. One idea might be to allow color or an image on side outside the theme proper. That means with CSS you could have a white theme but on the far right and left outside the theme boundaries you could have a color or pattern.

Another design option might be color flexibility of the fine lines and boarders. You could have a simple or white theme, but then a light blue or option as the border or accent lines. Or the width of the lines could vary. I look at a lot of sites by female designers and notice they are often more delicate with the lines. Or turn off border. Also font types and sizes. People love different font options.They tend to focus on design details more than geeky guys.

Another design idea is having a newspaper or magazine style as an option or a template or two for a first page like this. These are popular now. Or at least a ‘Wow’ first page that looks different from the rest of the blog.

Ideas to increase money from Ads

My brainstorming buddy and I are looking at ways to increase CTR with Stallion. Stallion performs very well with Adsense because of the flexibility of placement and concentration on heat map areas.

These are some ideas we were playing with, when I place a large image of 540 width at the top of the post, this increased money for that post. (My friend used an integration of Adsense and analytics to observe this on post it was done on).

Then below it the first ad. This seems on initial but limited experimentation to result in a higher CTR. That is give more flexibility in top ad placement. It would be one paragraph down or more.

However, to do this in a uniform way it would be coding on your part, I think a lot.

It is similar to the idea of having ads appear in the center of the post. That is not at the top or bottom but in the middle.

I think the top is the best for clicks, however, now with the new Panda updates I am concerned about too much above the fold. “The fold” being as you fold a newspaper or the first half of the page. I think SEO in the post Panda world is a little different, but I do not know how, but this might be an idea as there is some chat on forums about ‘the fold’.

You are brilliant in that you put the sidebars etc bellow the content. This means the content not junk is seen first.

Another idea might be to give two sidebar ads. I know we talk about the pluses and minuses of this before.

Promotion and other ideas
Direct traffic and SEM is a first defense against Panda, I think. Anything to help these things from a subscribe by mail option from Feedburner or more options to promote the subscription to the site.

Of course Facebook is the main social media option today. It is easy to create a side widget that links to a company Facebook landing page. However, maybe an option to have this integrated in the header like the search box? Just an idea.

Also a Stumbleupon button. I think social media gets junky but FB, Twitter, Stumble are big.

Google want to make YouTube the next Netflix. They are pumping up this newly acquired business. To stay ahead of the curve I am trying to create more videos as they are easy way to get links to your site that people explore. If you could somehow integrate more YouTube, such as a side widget with latest videos. I look at a site like smosh.com and know I will never be like them, but I am thinking about ideas for more videos now.

Similarly I do not know what teens (big users of the web) would like? Maybe mobile phone options? I do not know. But I noticed 15 to 30 year olds are on on some of my websites, to capture the next big thing, would be great.

New options are also something I am playing with as Google likes news sites apparently.

Shopping cart and other money ideas
OK again a pipe dream and things that can be done with plugins but having an e-commerce aspect to theme is an idea in the future. I will be selling some flashcards soon and many cart options I will do with a widget. But maybe others are looking to sell things and would find and SEO shopping cart type thing of value.

Or a classified ad way of advertising. Maybe this is better left to a plugin.

Well, these are just ideas and many might not be good or might not be practical, but I thought I would put them out there. They are just a start. I think ignorance keeps me from being a millionaire. If I knew exactly what to do in months I would have a million. So this is some brainstorming to try to break through.