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[Everton Blair]

Up for a pimping this week we have Ajay again with his second site techtites.com. Ajay has asked for help with:

    * Link building
    * Increasing CTR
    * Ad placement
    * Affiliate schemes
    * Template optimisation


Ajay made a lot of changes to his personal site following his last Pimp, so it'll be interesting to see how we fare this time.

Please have a look at the site before adding any ideas in the forum.

More...Remember that the idea behind Pimp My Blog is that all readers help the chosen weekly blog, rather than just the usual suspects. Between us we can make a noticeable difference within a week to Techtites
Ok, let’s get pimping!

If you would like your site to be included in a future Pimp My Blog then please submit your blog here. Don’t forget that the forum contains many other tools & tips that can be utilised whilst you are waiting.

[wine.scribbler]

First things I notice -

You have a subtitle graphic (TechTites Daily) that is more dominating than the actual site header. It is far too big and very confusing. You actually have two headers for a post...

The subscribe by email box justs out of the container box in IE7. Ruins the design.

You have two RSS multi-sunbscribe links, one is a drop down menu. Why twice? Confusing.

[bittertonic]

Hiya,

I will just add a bit to the previous post re: confusion.  This may help.

A basic principle of design is to choose one alignment, use it all the time, and never mix alignments.

You have a few alignments going on in this site: The post titles are left aligned. The test in the graphic underneath is right aligned.

The content text is left aligned. The "posted by" is right aligned.

The chicklets in the Feed This box look centre aligned. Your footer is all centre aligned.

When you mix alignments your eye bounces around too much and it makes it harder to read. If you choose one, and stick to it throughout the site, your site's design will be tidier, it will be easier to read and use, and more pleasant on the eye.

Oh - and try not to use centre-aligned. It is the hardest to read. Most beginners and non-trained use it all the time. Trained designers use it rarely.

Looking good though.

Irene

[Ajay]

Hey thanks for the feedback.

@Wine, I guess I need to work on the design of the Techtites Daily a bit. Do you suggest I just knock off the header images and stick to plain text and maybe have those headers only on single post pages?

I'll fix the subscribe via email and the subscribe box, which one do you prefer?

@Irene, I never realized the alignment related issue.

[bittertonic]

Yeah - it's a basic principle of Graphic design.

The below isn't the best looking page, but it summarizes the principles nicely into CRAP. haha.

http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/Design/graprin.htm

There's a good book to by Robin Williams - design for non-designers that is good too...

[Everton Blair]

* Link building

One think I've noticed about Techtites is that you don't link to other blogs. 

When you say link building do you mean developing links for backlinks?  Why don't you change the links in one of your themes to point to techtites?  I can't think of any better way of building links and it's how I moved from around 20K on Technorati to currently 600.  I think it's also why (hopefully) I'm going from PR5 to PR7.

    * Increasing CTR

One think I find hard about the design is things aren't where I expect them to be.  for instnce, after reading a post I'd expect the post info to be at the bottom of the post or the top, but it's in the sidebar.

I think the logos you have at the start of posts are bad and are made even worse by the square adsense ads that are forced above them.  If you're looking to increase adsense CTR then you need to decrease the noise around this ad. I'd remove the tyroo add, the next/previous links (why at the top of the page) and also the logos.

I'd also remove the Adsense ad in the sidebar unless you're getting a CPM of over $1 a it's only going to reduce the CPC in your better units.  Same with the linkad in the header (whihc I think might actually be gettig your best ads as it loads first - not sure abotu link ads).

Sidebar

If you want to increase CTR surely you should have you important material at the top...I'd move the 'meta' to the bottom.  I'd also question the need for 2 columsn in the sidebar as there's not a lot there..

I think Green's a bad colour to indicate links - always stick with blue in my view (and the sidebar ones aren't underlined)