Building theme based website

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Compare Infobase Limited

An ISO 9001 : 2000 Certified Company


The Compare way since 1998

Building Theme based website


What is a Theme

Theme is a story you write for Search Engines and users - to accept you as an authority on that subject

Theme discovery is very closely linked to project conceptualization

Objectives of Project initiation must be kept in mind while doing Theme Discoveries

Theme based websites are very much like Theme based parties - which give very unique character to the party and to the host


Adding More Themes

Sites evolve and go beyond the central theme they were made around.

This fact pushes the need to have multiple themes to a website which was created for a single theme

Additional themes can be disjointed or co-joining to the main theme Additional themes can leverage on existing links of existing themes

but must go beyond existing links


Landing Page Optimization A theme based website must visually give a feel to the user that he /

she has reached the right place

A theme based website must convey to the Search Engine the depth of knowledge and relevancy of the landing page

The landing page for a theme based website has to be divided between a destination and a transit point

Making a landing page of a theme based website only as a destination kills inbound traffic movement and only making a landing page as a transit page would dilute the optimization


Statistical Analysis of Incoming Traffic Theme based websites are developed after researching and

documenting key expected traction areas The best of the research can only lead to 20% of predictability of

themes ever evolving nature The real time exposure of the themes on the search engines and

search engines mating the theme with user’s requirements throw up unexpected new traction points and new sub-themes and sometimes every point you to multiple themes


Analysis of Competitor’s themes

By the time your theme based website would move from Idea to incubation your competitor would have moved or extended his theme to various interesting and “current” extensions It is very important to leverage competitor’s leanings to your own

theme at every stage To discover a competitor’s theme you must very minutely study

the inbound links to that page and outbound from that page to the site and outside the site


Creating Sub-themes

Themes need to be dependent on Search phrases thrown up by search engines

Search phrases sometimes reflect extensions which may not be mission critical at this stage but may have a huge potential in times to come

These phrases need to be attended to and evolved into sub-themes to keep the evolution process going.


Managing Multiple Themes

It is very important to create iron curtains between the themes to the extent possible

It always helps to not having to manage multiple themes

Lot of people attribute Yahoo’s disaster and coming down to its mismanagement of multiple themes

Multiple themes can always make you loose the central theme or character of your site for instance Yahoo and Google keeping Youtube separate than Google.com

Compare has successfully managed to introduce multiple themes in Mydearvalentine.com. MDVC has a mature theme of Valentine day and now has a very strong theme of love and romance


Reaching Targeted Communities Compare Infobase probably is the 1st company to introduce theme based website

in India if not in the world. Compare introduced a Pongal, A Malayali festival, A Baisakhi, A Janamashtami

way back in 1999 realizing that creating and carrying multiple themes on Dgreetings.com would be a challenge

Themes should very clearly address the aspirations from the side of the User community. For this it is essential to preempt and to document the expected aspirations of the user. For instance, aspirations of a User for a theme based website on Rakshabandhan would be the following:

• I should be able to send a Rakhi• I should be able to send a Rakhi with Gift• I should be able to send a Rakhi with sweets & gift• I should be able to send only a Rakhi card an no Rakhi• I should be able to select a unique message• I should be able to select a time of delivery• And so on….


Link Building You have to build a site as a Silo but you don’t have to live the site

as a Silo

You need relevant links to the site to the theme from within the site and from outside

Every time you give a link within the site you loose certain page rank

Page rank management becomes very crucial when it comes to brining up a theme and creating sub-themes

No follow tags do help a lot when you are evolving a theme based website as the organic traffic flow happens but the page rank does not get affected


Planning Navigation

Navigation is the biggest challenge for a theme based site.

Where to send & where to monetize & where to just let the user go out?

Navigation must flow beyond low hanging fruit, we must direct as much

traffic to competitive words from weak words & phrases


Planning No-follows

Everything said & done, Page Rank remains important.

Every time we send a link we lose some weight of the page from where the

link is going. No-follow ensures that spiders don’t take it as a natural /

organic resource and read it as a specific rather than a generic link.

Protecting Page Rank is critical, still.


Content Targeting I Want Vs I Want

Of Course what user wants comes first, what we want has to be

sold, it can never be given

Gender/ Geography/ Income/ Age/ Race/ Education/ Religion/

Language/ Passion (All Music Lovers/ All Football Fans etc.)

Segmenting content for each target user segment

Quality eventually holds the key

Theme should never be lost


Planning Keyword Densities

Be Natural

Being natural is a variable, definition of natural changes with

every crawl of search engine

Under hurts. Over kills. “The Kill” lies somewhere in between

One wrong move & you are a spammer & you burn a domain

Smart use Vs Abuse – remains a priority


Social Media Strategy for Theme Based Websites

It is all about

• Communities

• Being seen

• Rub-off

• CURRENT

Communities desire instant value

Engaging a community needs constant “Hot Triggers”

For a theme based website – the SM strategy has to begin with

“Omnipresence & end with Consistency)


Maintaining & Growing Themes

Kyon Ki saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi

Maintaining a theme needs constant research to understand

changing needs of users

Themes need tweaking

Growing themes has a lot to do with “Drill Down” approach

Drill downs may give birth to independent themes. Be always

ready


Business

Building theme based website