Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

You can have a different banner for your blog and for your Wordpress pages. Then, I'd use the same "look" for both banners, but change the title text.

(Aside: You'll want to redirect from your 2 old sites to your new one, likely via a 301 redirect (so not as to lose any of the search engine "juice". And don't forget you can create a subdomain redirect for your new website's blog, for example: "ask.creativestarlearning.co.uk").

I can remember incorporating a splash page for redirects in some situations like yours years ago. But not sure about how google and other search engines would view this today.

Here's a link that may add some insights:
https://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=301+redirect

Juliet,
use a blog post as a landing page by all means - but only if it is appropriate. I always think of landing pages as being specific for one purpose, and blogging is more for the sake of interest which is usually broader. That means your landing page covers perhaps 1/3 of what a blog post might - but is 3x more targeted thereby. You can always link to the blogpost from the landing page of course.

What are your thoughts?

(Aside: A subdomain redirect allows you to use a name like "ask.creativestarlearning.co.uk", but have it go to: creativestarlearning.co.uk/blog (for example). The advantage of this redirect is that you can make it simpler, and if you change the location of your blog on your site, people can still use the "ask.creativestarlearning.co.uk" name.)

A landing page is what you'd use when you have an advertising campaign (PPC or otherwise). It continues the presentation, and lets the person know they're in the right place. A home page is more generic. A landing page more specific (based on your campaign).

Your ultimate goal is to get more "business", so you might want to slightly change the tone of your blog from "here are some ideas" into "here's how I can help". That'll position you more as an expert, rather than a collector of information.

Okay: your business is getting more gigs as an educational consultant, right? In that case, keep your style and keep going just as you are. I am a trained scientist and a trained maths teacher and your stuff sings, okay? Especially for the British market, you are saying things that get people interested. My point is that people will like what they read, like your style and think "my kids will love this too". So do as suggested above and make sure there is some way for them to find out how you can help them directly.

I happen to have a thing about Fibonacci too ...

Landing pages are specifically for advertising, and PPC (that is Google/Bing pay per click - the little blue ads to the top right of your search screen when you're looking for Fibonacci Retracements or some such). If you click on one of those little Haikus, you will be led (hopefully) to a page that is dedicated to that advertisement. It answers any questions that the advertisement raised. That page is a landing page and crafting them is a speciality in itself. They have broader uses than this, but this is the most typical use today.

If you want to increase the visitor numbers to your blog - you could use paid advertising. That is to say, PPC (see above). For your keywords the rates for PPC will be relatively low. Howie Jacobson's Adwords For Dummies is one of the best on the market for this and available in the UK if you really want to go down this route.

In any case, the easiest way to grab people is to ask the questions they are asking. Because these are the things they are putting into the Google search box (a big hint for PPC, by the way). Google doesn't answer them, it only matches terms that fit its algorithm - all of which means you need to think like your customer. Since as a teacher in the wild you are doing this all day long, it isn't going to be hard to come up with at least a dozen questions they all ask that only your service will answer. Questions 1-12 become the headlines of twelve different landing pages. They describe what the question is, what the answer is and in between you can have a heap of fun getting there with photos and tips along the way. All your landing pages point to your blog and your pages that describe what you do and your availability and all that kind of thing. The landing pages do not have to be linked from the blog at all, especially if you are using PPC. After all, 75% or so of the internet isn't indexed at all.

Before I fall into bed - it's almost midnight here. I want to untangle a few things. The Adwords book is not expensive and is comprehensive and extremely well written. It will give you real insight into the way PPC and landing pages work. The real power of PPC is to determine what emotions trigger responses from the searchers, and the use of this is exceptionally powerful. The point is that the advertisement they notice gets under their skin and they click to find out more. As a teacher I'm pretty sure you'll understand this.

More important in your context are the 12 questions (or however many you come up with). A frustrated teacher - note they are feeling frustrated! - will type in a question that is bugging them. The problem with the internet is that everybody writes about the answers. A recent search about a diabetic pill for my partner gave no answers to my questions whatsoever. Not one page had been written about my elementary question about its use. Not one page of millions. Eventually we tracked it down by some methodical searching, but it was hard work. So: think of a question that teachers put to you on a regular basis - or choose one that happens to speak to you right now - and use that question as the title for your blog post. Then answer it in simple terms, which as a teacher should come pretty easily, and state how you as a practitioner can really help in their situation.

Bingo! Someone who is frustrated and can't find any connection between maths and nature and pops their frustrations into the search box - there's the answer at the top. Not because it's got fantastic SEO or any of the other internet mumbo-jumbo - but because it's the only page that actually meets their needs. And nobody else thought to do this. Only you. So when you're out walking the dog tomorrow morning - or the haggis since you're in Scotland - and a thought comes your way, catch it and when you're back indoors pop it down as a "landing page" for what internetters call "organic search" (ie it's just found on the internet and there's no PPC involved).

Hi Juliet,

Your main site, creativestarlearning.co.uk is now an aged domain (registered 10-Aug-2007), which Google loves, while your blog site is a blogspot.co.uk domain that you don't own. If blogspot take any offense at your content on their platform for any reason, you lose access to your content:
all of it. By all means use Wordpress if it's right for you, but be sure to transfer your main site content AND your blogspot content to the new Wordpress platform under your current, aged domain.

As for landing pages, yes, they CAN be specifically uses for advertising and PPC ... but this doesn't always have to be the case.

The role of a landing page is simply to tell the person who's clicked on a specific link that they're in the right place to continue the conversation: so a post on Facebook could take a visitor to a specific, Facebook-related page on any given site. Likewise Twitter, or Pinterest, or a link from another site. The beauty of landing pages uses in this way is that the text on them can be used to reinforce the relationship, and to deepen the sense of identity between the site the visitor has come from and the page you're greeting them on, so you can send visitors elsewhere, OR, so you can lead them to more content that's SPECIFICALLY aimed at their self interests and compulsions.

As for "Creative STAR Learning Co as the banner with a smaller mention of "I'm a teacher, get me OUTSIDE here!" ... run a split test over a 30 to 60 day period, with the same links to each element, then tally your traffic and conversion results.

Wordpress is great for blogging, but its not the best choice for a web site where you want to do more.

Joomla is a better CMS because you can extend it with ecommerce, have great landing pages, and you can BLOG BLOG BLOG, everything in one nice web site.

My two cents.

Darcy Moen
Customer Loyalty Network.

Good morning - Joomla is great if you can get someone to set it up for you. My experience was of a learning cliff with support from people who used overly-technical language that needed a glossary just to understand the first sentences.

Wordpress (for all its faults) can be installed on your website - that is to say your "aged domain". This is way better than a free blog from Wordpress or anybody else because you have control of your own site and you can form a strong relationship with the technicians who look after the hosting. You can get super stylish Wordpress themes from https://Arcsin.se and they work straight out of the box.

I doubt the likes of Joomla or Drupal will catch up any time soon. Their attitude is far too intellectual to be easily grasped by ordinary people.

So if it's the pure blog you're happiest with, install Wordpress (or get your hosting service to do it for you) and take a cruise around Arcsin.se. At least you will be sorted in a way you presently like.