When you have a website, how do you structure the URL’s as far as where the products go (assuming you sell products), where does the blog go, where do the opt-in/squeeze pages go?
It depends where you are starting from.
When you are starting with a product that will be marketed by paid traffic or by relying on affiliates (such as putting the product on clickbank), the Top Level Domain should be the opt-in page and/or salesletter.
You can test combinations of a separate opt-in page, combination opt-in page/salesletter, etc. later on.
For example: Your “beginning computers made easy” e-book for sale would go on the Top Level Domain like www.beginningcomputers.com
Tool for the job: optimizepress
I have found that optimizepress is the easiest solution to use as far as how to set up a website to sell products or build a mailing list.
If you decide to create a blog later on, which is a good idea for lead building, then you can install the blog in a subdirectory of your Top Level Domain (known as TLD for your beginners) such as www.beginningcomputers.com/blog.
This would be a new installation of wordpress, which, when you use a good user friendly webhost like the one I use, will take all of 30 seconds to install wordpress with a couple of clicks of the mouse.
Tool for the job: A blog theme – such as the thesis theme
So you would be running the full domain on 2 installations of wordpress. Your sales funnel would be run on optimizepress theme ( a theme specializing in sales funnels) and your blog would be run on a theme like Thesis – a great blog framework providing better features for a content rich website that most blogs are.
Now, as far as the traffic coming to your website.
When you have controllable traffic – articles, ppc, anywhere where you can control the exact page on your domain where the visitor go when they click a link, you send this traffic to an opt-in page most of the time. There are always exceptions such as when someone uses a very strong buying keyword like “buy book on xxx”. In that case you wouldn’t want to distract them from their obvious goal of looking to buy a book.
Using our example from above, the website structure would be setup this way:
www.beginningcomputers.com/how-to-xx – Using your optimizepress wordpress installation because you are trying to either capture the lead or get a sale.
2 – When you start with a blog and plan to add products later – business model 2 or 3 (which I’ll fill you in on a little later in another post) – the TLD is the blog homepage
Example: www.beginningcomputers.com
Tool for the job: A blog theme
If you create products later on then you can add the products in a subdirectory, subdomain, or separate domain. Such as www.beginningcomputers.com/products/
Tool for the job: optimizepress – You will create a new installation of wordpress for this.
So each domain, if you have products and a blog, would have 2 separate wordpress installations.
As an example, on one of my websites, the TLD is a blog, but I also sell my own products out of this domain. The members area and products are done with optimizepress in their own directory and another installation of wordpress – such as www.domain.com/products/
So here are some website URL structure examples using some domains off the top of my head – I have no idea if these are real websites or not and are just used as an example here.
::: Structure 1 – Starting with a Blog TLD
(blog installation)
howtofixdesks.com – Blog Homepage
howtofixdesks.com/painting/article – Blog/category/individual post
(optimizepress installation)
howtofixdesks.com/products/fixdeskscheap – An ebook for sale
howtofixdesks.com/products/toolstofixdesks – Another e-book for sale
::: Structure 2 – Starting with a Product – Sales Funnel TLD
(squeeze and sales installation)
mugsoftheworld.com – Sales funnel
mugsoftheworld.com/europe/ – A sales page of mugs from europe
(Blog installation)
mugsoftheworld.com/articles – the blog, instead of blog you can decide to call the subdirectory something like “articles”
mugsoftheworld.com/articles/europe/article – The blog, broken down into category (europe) and then the article
Using this system, I have no problems about mixing in product sales with an overall content website (blog) where I focus on affiliate marketing and contextual advertising because I follow this website URL structure.
