IMM1 Part 7 – The Big Reveal

So here we are! Ready to reveal the URL and niche of Genevieve's site. We're both a mixture of excited and nervous I think. The site has been ready for a few days but I'm on holiday (again) in the Isles of Scilly visiting a friend, and just couldn't get the time to sit down with a laptop and properly type up this post.

Don't judge me, look at the scenery!

This is St. Agnes – where I'm staying

It's a rainy day today though so here I am, sheltered away and writing up this post.

Getting The Site Ready

Before I let everybody see the site, I had a few last minute tasks for Genevieve. They weren't related to writing articles, but more “sprucing up” the site and doing some tweaking. Dotting I's and crossing T's.

Here's a brief list of what I had her do:

  • Add images to every article. Give the site some life!
  • Include headings and subheadings in the posts. It's important to break up text and make for easy reading.
  • Put posts into categories.
  • Some basic titles with All In One SEO Plugin
  • Internal Linking.

I paused here and let Genevieve get on with these tasks. She completed most of them fine and had a few questions (See her comments below). After that, it was time for MORE tasks:

  • Organizing the main menu.
  • Fixing the sidebar and making it look nice and be functional.
  • Assigning featured posts to the homepage.
  • External Linking.

This is basically my checklist before I will “announce” a site. Remember, Genevieve still hasn't linked her site to Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools, so it's essentially off the radar.

The site will do a lot better if the first time Google really crawls the whole site it has a good link structure, well organized menu, and decent content. So that's our next plan! Introduce things to Google.

Now For The Big Reveal

Ready? Here's the site:

Www.allhomeworkouts.com – Go check it out if you want.

This was one of the very first sites that I built for sale on HumanProofDesigns so it was great to see it get chosen.

The niche might appear a little competitive at first, but using LongTailPro and Jaaxy you can see that there is still a lot of ranking potential.

Equally there aren't a huge number of sites dedicated to working out at home, as most of them will be more general exercise/fitness sites. There's a long way to go to get this site ranking and performing well, but there's also a lot of potential here too!

Before I go into too much detail about the niche and pros and cons of choosing one like this, I'd be interested to hear all of your thoughts on it. Write us a comment below!

Now let's see what Genevieve thought of her massive to-do list.

The following is Genevieve's writing:

​Tasks before the “reveal”

Bryon told me that before we could reveal/announce my site, there were some tasks (some of them cosmetic – to make the site look neater and more presentable) that needed to be done. He divided the tasks into 2 batches. The first batch had 5 tasks. He said some of the tasks on this batch should only take 30 minutes.

I was so busy; I was only able to start the first part after a few days (4 to 5). I was stressing, but doing the first 4 was not so bad after all, it didn't take very long (just finding the time to do them).

I can see now why it's better to use WordPress (when writing articles) directly. I had to fix the headings, subheadings, etc. When they were transferred from Word to WordPress, some of them shifted all over the place.

I was stuck with #5 (last item on the batch). It took a little bit of time for me but I was able to weave my posts together (mentioning 1 or 2 of my other articles on each article). I wanted to make sure when I mentioned them, they made sense or flowed with the article.

I thought I was doing ok, and then I had to actually link my posts together. I didn’t know how to do that. So I had to ask my expert mentor, Bryon (good thing he is very patient). He patiently explained to me how to do it.

There’s also the matter of WordPress emailing me (to “moderate”) each time I link my posts together.

Batch #1 was finally done. I didn't realize it's not really hard to do #5 (just finding the time to do it) – it's really quite easy. I think knowing the steps made the difference.

Bryon sent me the remaining tasks, there were 4 of them. He said they were a bit fiddly but relatively straightforward. He commented that I did a great job on the tasks (he’s so nice and very encouraging all the time). I thanked him for encouragement.

On the last task, I had to go into every post and link OUT to 2 or 3 other websites. There are at least 3 to 5 good sites that I follow that have very good articles (on my niche). I asked Bryon if I could use some of these sites or if he could suggest any.

Bryon said I should be careful on which sites I’m linking out to. Some of these sites are technically going to be my competition when I’m more established. He said I can use some of the huge sites, because they have already have a lot of links going to them, it won't hurt to add a few more. Besides, it's good to “align” myself with them by linking to them.

Whew, I'm finally done. I have to re-tweaked some of the posts, they shifted all over the place (again). I was also stuck a bit on item# 1 – naming the menu after I created it (so I just named it the same name as my site).

I also got stuck on item#4 when I was linking OUT to other websites. I had to pick the right articles that I thought flowed or made sense and added value to my posts. Bryon also showed the proper way to link OUT (to external sites) and link IN (to my other posts).

I fixed the linking IN (to one of my pages) and linking OUT to external pages. (For reference, internal links shouldn't open in a new window, and external links should – Dom)

I think that's about it. I can't believe we reach this far already!

I'm so excited; I can't wait for the “reveal”. I'm also very nervous, hopefully my site will be received in a positive way.

Back to Dom

Genevieve's issues with things like opening links in a new window and moderating WordPress ping-backs were things I wouldn't have though to mention when training people, so it's really been a good experience for me.

It's amazing how many small details you take for granted on a daily basis when using WordPress!

Anyway, the site is “ready”, you guys have the URL, go and pay it a visit and leave us a comment below (or on the site itself!).

3 thoughts on “IMM1 Part 7 – The Big Reveal”

  1. Wow so good to see the new site! It looks awesome, don’t forget to fill in the author bio though!

    A few questions if you wouldn’t mind sparing me some time.

    Genevieve:
    1) Great niche but competitive as you commented on, how much knowledge do you already have of the niche? It’s perfect timing for me as I’m building up my own home-gym at the moment.

    —>Reddit may be helpful for you if you need any ideas for content http://www.reddit.com/r/homefitness

    2) How are you finding content creation? I know its my hardest part for me. From the posts I’ve looked at your content quality is really good.

    3) Where did you source your images?

    4) Other than Amazon, are you considering any other monetisation strategies?

    Dom:

    1) Why do you open internal links with the same window but not external? I have always done external windows for both types of links.

    2) What do you mean by moderating ping-backs?

    3) Do menu names matter?

    Thanks a lot guys, I love this case study! Genevieve I wish you all the best!

    1. Hey Graham,

      I recommend that internal links don’t open in a new tab because people will end up with 50 tabs open and it’s a bit of a nightmare. When someone has the potential to leave my site by clicking an external link, then I’ll make it open a new tab, but when they’re going elsewhere on my site, no problem.

      When you link to one of your other posts, it sends a pingback to you and you get an email. Most of us just ignore the email then delete the pingback, but Genevieve didn’t know what to do initially, so that’s what I meant by “moderating ping-backs”.

      Menu names don’t matter. I told Genevieve to choose a name for her menu for future reference, in case she makes multiple menus, but I think she interpreted that to mean the name did matter and she put a lot of thought into it. Menu names are purely for your own reference, “Header menu” “footer menu” etc.

    2. Thank you so much for your comments. I’m glad you like my new site. I couldn’t have done it without the help of Bryon. He’s been very patient as a mentor, especially with a newbie like me.

      Regarding your questions:
      1) I don’t have vast knowledge of the niche, but I’m passionate about it and I find that I have learned so much about it while I was doing my research for my articles.

      I will check out Reddit. Thank so much for the tip.

      2) Like you, I also find content creation hard. I think it’s because we try to have very good quality articles. I’m hoping that it will get easier as time goes by.

      3) For the images on the “Best Home Workout DVDs”, I got them from Amazon. For the rest of my articles except for one, they’re already on the site included when I bought it.

      4) For monetization strategies, I will probably consider others eventually. I will have to see how things are going and what will be Dom’s advice on this.

      I hope I answered all your questions. Again thank you so much for your nice and encouraging comments. I also wish all the best!

      Genevieve

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