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by jeromec 5510 days ago
Yes, I saw the link to the blog, but that's not what I mean. In terms of SEO you want to think of your site as a house, or library. You don't want to have people be presented with distractions or have to enter through some back door to get to the main goods. You want to offer your best right up front and be clear about it. That means the Wordpress structure should be the main site. Now, if you know what you're doing for SEO, and your main site focus is not the blog content, then that's when you can have a different site upfront and the blog attached with a link.

I have absolutely no idea about producing comics. If it were me I'd just start with blank white paper, draw out my comics then scan them in as JPEGs to post online. If the comic content is good, like Garfield, for instance, people are going to like it, and I'd say that's fine starting out.
1 comments
Mz 5510 days ago
Yeah, I kind of know that. I have been told by someone who knows way more than I do to just leave the main site in place to preserve the URLs for pages that have been around a while. I have debated making the domain point to the blog portion but then I don't know what to do with the main site. I have debated making it an archive. One technical issue I have is that the blog is a subfolder of the main site, so changing the name of that upper folder breaks the blog and I don't want to migrate it and lose the dates and ...yadda yadda. I am stumped as to how to change the spotlight to the blog, where more current content is, and leave the existing site intact as an archive, so people who do know of it can still find it and so it can serve as background info/introductory info.

Thanks for all your feedback.

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jeromec 5510 days ago
...to just leave the main site in place to preserve the URLs for pages that have been around a while.

Google shows about 4 links pointing to healthgazelle.com (http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=link%3Ahealthgazelle....) ... all from healthgazelle.com. There is nothing to preserve, and if there was the way to do it and preserve search engine rank is by using a 301 redirect (http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php).

You seem to be holding on to your established site, almost with nostalgia, and I can understand that, but that's not the way to be effective when it comes to building traffic. You have to be prepared to start out on the right course, even if it's new.

Healthgazelle.com says it's been around for about 7 years, and it has 4 links pointing to it, all from itself. If you follow the steps I outlined above I guarantee you will see significant results in less than 12 months.

If I were you the first thing I'd do is ask myself what I want to be known for, in terms of traffic. I'd choose something far more popular than cystic fibrosis, but using that as an example I might buy a domain like howibeatcysticfibrosis.com. Next, point that to a newly set up Wordpress blog. Now, you need content for your new site. You have existing content at healthgazelle.com, but Google doesn't like duplicate content, so you have to make a choice. You can either plan on producing all new unique content for your new site and leave the old site, or cut the content from healthgazelle.com and redirect it to the new location.

If you want to use the name healthgazelle.com you can do that too. Although it's not a very good name in terms of informing search engines or people what the site is about it does at least have some age on it. If that's the case I would download all the content from healthgazelle.com, delete the current site, set up the wordpress blog on the server, then start reposting the content you want to use.

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Mz 5510 days ago
You seem to be holding on to your established site, almost with nostalgia, and I can understand that, but that's not the way to be effective when it comes to building traffic. You have to be prepared to start out on the right course, even if it's new.

Try "inertia" and "lack of time/energy". I don't think nostalgia has any significant positive part of this. (I have lots of negative feelings about the kind of negative attention the site has gotten me, which is the primary reason I frequently consider abandoning it altogether.)

Again, thank you very, very much. I am working on some of these issues. This has all been extremely good feedback.

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jeromec 5510 days ago
Inertia and lack of time/energy are understandable, but unfortunately that's a sure fire way to have another 7 years of non-results.

You mentioned not having great web skills, but you don't need to in order to make money online. You just need to first find out what you should be doing, then stay the course actually doing it. Good luck!

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Mz 5510 days ago
Sorry, all I meant was "I am not intentionally holding on to something". It wasn't intended to "defend" doing it this way.

Thanks for all the bits!

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