Big changes again happened to TM Blast. New DIV layout, new contact form, new twitter feed, and more! Take a look!
Creating a DIV Layout
I just made myself sound way fancier than I really am. A DIV layout allows me to put areas on the web page into neat columns (please don’t hate developers if I just butchered that definition) rather than just a long page with content (like this post). I did this change because I was not satisfied with how the site was looking at a desktop level. I always felt like the video of the old design took up way too much real estate on my site.
Before (September 5th, 2014)
After (September 6th, 2014)
Adding More Content / Picture
Here was something I thought about for a long time. I did not like my homepage on my site. I just did not know what to do with it. For that exact reason I did not want to optimize it. I just kept thinking I don’t know what I want this page to be so let me just make it incredibly basic and hope my inner pages rank.
Now I am going all in with the content on this page. I think I need to find the right balance with content and pictures, but for now I am fine. I am curious to see what this does to my rankings, impressions, bounce rate, links, etc.
Taking Out the Right Side Defaults
I hated the template design on this theme where it will show all of my recent posts, categories, dates, etc. I just felt it had way too many links on each page. In terms of SEO I always felt the focus was lost on tmblast. I felt as a user, you get to a page and I am telling you to check out, and then I am telling you to check out other things.
I decided to go right into my WordPress settings and I removed every section minus the search box. For now I am happy with how this looks, but this will change slightly in a few weeks (if not a few days)
Before
After
Call to Action Form
The biggest problem I have with this blog is that I don’t feel I have a purpose with it. I worked really well on my side projects or projects that I work on at work because I have a clear goal. Most of the time I am working towards a goal and everything I do is to improve that goal. The goal could be a form fill, a conversion in e commerce, a new subscriber, a new follower on twitter, video plays, etc.
I am hoping that this goal that I set up can do a couple things for this blog.
The First
I want to A/B test with this form fill. I want to test out at least one more variable to see what the data says. I am obsessed when it comes to A/B tests and seeing what is going on. WordPress has some amazing tools that will show you the A/B tests with the impressions, clicks, ctr, and conversion rate. I would love to write a few posts about what I see and what I think the numbers mean. For me that is fun because I like making changes based off the data, not my opinion.
The Second
I want to open up Bing Ads again. I really want to try out some of the new features that they added and I want to test them out to the homepage for now. I want to see what comes out of the PPC method and more importantly, I want to share the data. I have not used Bing Ads in a month or two and I miss that aspect of this site.
The problem with the ads before was that I did not care what the user did when they came to the site. I just really wanted to try out the platform so I was essentially paying for clicks just to mess around with the platform. Now with a clear message as to what I am trying to do, I am hoping I can really target specific keywords and really A/B test different messages. I might move into Google AdWords later on but I know that will get even more expensive and right now I am just looking to give free reports out. If the free reports turn into something down the road where I have some extra spending money I will mess around with Google and some retargeting and display.
The Third
I like doing SEO reviews of websites. I am hoping that this can be a good balance f0r myself to continue to get even better at SEO but to also work on my own blog and see how best I can optimize it. I did this a lot at my old job so I want to make sure I am keeping my skills sharp.
Twitter Feed
This was always something I wanted to do. I love websites that show the company (or the person) is being active socially. This feed I hope will allow people to see my passion for this field and how much I truly do enjoy talking with people. One of my goals is to continue to get better at Twitter and understand the platform more.
Moving Forward
Today was a big day for this blog. I was able to get a lot of changes that I have sketched out into publishing. From the back end I will be monitoring the form fill and I have also launched a few things in Bing Ads. I look forward to the data and the next changes that will come to this site.