Choosing an article site template

For those of us who are "web-design-challenged," there are lots of choices for templates to use for an information article web site. Awhile back, I got such a content site made for me. It had all the bells and whistles that you could ever imagine. It came ready-made for three different types of ads for monetization. It was specifically designed with SEO in mind. It even came with starter articles in the niche of my choice. How could it miss? I was gonna rake in the bucks with that site.

The layout was nice. The graphics were professional. The SEO job was phenomenal as I did NADA to generate traffic, yet the site got plenty of hits. There were some things that I did not like about the site, though. First, I had to get over my panic when I was told to edit the config.sys file so that the ads would come from my own personal accounts with the included systems. Second, it wasn't immediately obvious how to add new articles to the site. Third, the article content and the article titles were displayed at random, but independent of each other. You could call up the url and find on the site an article title that did not match the article underneath it. I guess what really drove me nuts was the fact that I had no control over the site, short of taking a crash course in programming.

Hope this rant gives you some food for thought if you are in the market for site templates. Oh, want some stats on that site of mine? It has received over 2500 impressions since it went live several months ago. 23 ads were clicked for a grand total of $7.23 USD. Mind you, that site has never been updated. The bulk of those impressions were received in the first several weeks after the site went live. Imagine how that site could have done if I had just updated it a few times to bring back the search engine spiders and got the site re-indexed. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

White text on a web page is SPAM?

I couldn't believe it when I read this SEO Tip of the Day from John Alexander. He said that white text on a web site with a white background page color raises a flag with search engines because of the potential for "hidden text." That I understand. What surprised me is that even if that white text is in a table that has a dark background, it will STILL raise a flag! I have so much to learn.

Just something to keep in mind when you are designing web pages for your articles.

Here is the tip text in full:

Are you aware of the penalties for using hidden text? This out dated technique is Spam. Never try to add keywords or text to a page, in the same color font as the exact background color, thus making text appear hidden.

Spam Alert: Don't EVER use hidden text, hidden links or hidden "anything" on a page unless you want to risk setting off some warning flags and risk getting in trouble.

Special Tip: Be sure to use care with text color inside of a table too.
Example: If your background is a white page and you are using a table filled with dark Navy Blue (for example.) Be careful not to use a white colored font text. Although the text is not hidden, you could still accidentally set off some flags by using a white text with a white background (regardless of the fact that the table is blue.)

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