Hello SSWT! Which site to backlink?

[christianwins]

Hello,

Last time we went on a deployment (I am currently on a Naval vessel out of Japan), I had stocked up on the last 18 weeks of IMTW, and most definately had to check out Lynn's site. Like what I see on the forums and will probably be joining the Members area within the next few months.

Here is my question. I am helping someone turn their very good content blog into one that is profitable. Now that I am starting to do some SEO for him, what page should we be pointing all the traffic to?
The opt in page:
http://motocrosshideout.com/landing.html
or the blog itself:
http://motocrosshideout.com
and have a 'guides' section where they can subscribe

We are having great results getting opt ins so far (2 cents per click to the landing page), but as far as organic searches go, which one works better in the experiences you have had? Thanks.

[Lynn Terry]

Welcome Christian :)

Optimize every page and post on the domain for a specific keyword phrase. That will allow you to go wide in that market and reach people on various topics they're searching for. So you'll want to get inbound links to internal pages, as well as those two main pages.

Also, add an opt-in box to the sidebar, at the top right of the blog, so that anyone who comes into the blog from a well-ranked post will have the opportunity to subscribe.

You can also end your posts with the call-to-action to learn more about your offer.

[angienewton]

Welcome Christian! Glad to have you here.

[jkgourmet]

Welcome, Christian. And thank you for your service.

[retta719]

Welcome to the forums Christian. Thank you for your service, I know being deployed and out to sea is not an easy thing by far. We appreciate you and we're glad to have you here.

[christianwins]

Thanks for all the support and replies. Glad to be part of this forum group.

[lisamariemary]

So glad to have you here, Christian! I really appreciate the job you are doing and the toll it takes on a family - thank you.

I'm excited that you're still getting to work 'the online thing' even when you're out there. That's really cool.

There's another guy that comes to this forum that was deployed when he started - he might be back home now, though, I think.

He's a great guy with tons of good stuff to teach - lemme look him up...I'm on his mailing list...back in a sec....

Ok, here he is: http://nathanhangen.com/blog/ Super cool guy!

Best of luck to you - that's awesome you're getting good sign ups for that page. My hubby used to really be into all of that!

[christianwins]

Thanks for the link Lisa. I hope to be back home soon as well (couple years).

I've redesigned the site now, it's still a work in progress (I can program AI better then HTML at this point).

Right now the homepage http://motocrosshideout.com (http://motocrosshideout.com) has links to the blog and forums.

The blog is a .blogspot and the forums are .freeforums. Is there a way for motocrosshideout.com/forums or /blog to show instead. How have y'all solved this on your sites? Thanks.

[Lynn Terry]

The best thing to do is install a blog & forum on the domain, with your own hosting account. All of this is fairly easy from within your hosting account.

If you don't have a host yet, most of us use HostGator (http://www.clicknewz.com/hostgator.htm) and you can get the first month for 1c with the coupon code "wordpress".

[christianwins]

Thanks Lynn, the site is on hostgator right now. You mean something like installing a wordpress blog?

For the forums, I have seen forums that let you buy them a new domain, but not one that lets you add a subdomain to (except the vBulletin that these forums are on). Is that what you mean?

[Lynn Terry]

Okay - gotcha.

Yes, ideally you would host your own blog & forums, instead of using free hosted options. But you can also create a redirect from the domain since it's hosted at HostGator.

So to make motocrosshideout.com/forums point to your free hosted forum, you create a redirect file and name it index.html or index.php and put it in a directory named "forums" on that account. Then when someone clicks that link it redirects them to the forum you have on the other site.

Honestly, I would go ahead and set up the blog & forum on your own hosting account before you get too much further with the project. You need to own the properties and the content, especially if it goes big.

[Clay Franklin]

Thank you for your service Christian.
When I checked out the site most of the graphics has x
For SEO: linking from each page to another page provides good internal linking and improves SEO. so when writing posts include links to pther posts or products for sale pages.

Lynn,
For a forum for Christian's site or my site is simplepress ok our should we consider vbulletin like used here at sswt?

[Lynn Terry]

I haven't used simplepress so I can't comment on that one. I did use PHPBB for 6+ years and loved it. It's free & open source so there are tons of mods and add-ons available (also free). vBulletin is a great platform, but I switched mainly for the paid subscription option because I was handling that manually on PHPBB and needed something more automated.

[christianwins]

You don't see it on that site, testing on another site, but using Fantastico in the Hostgator Cpanel it was amazingly simple to install both the phpBB forums as well as a wordpress blog which solved both these issues. Yay, another small victory on the way. Glad I asked here.

[Lynn Terry]

Congrats - glad to hear it! I use the Fantastico features through HostGator a lot. Very simple to install & set up just about anything you could want on a website.