This is the Targeted Ads Approach

Wouldn’t it be great if you could plop a targeted message in front of visitors eyes, and increase conversions??

SEE HOW EASY IT IS TO DELIVER TARGETED ADS!

Do you have a site with a broad central topic, and lots of sub-categories, where you display ads? Sometimes you wish you could deliver an ad based on the category, tag, or even the sidebar. It’s pretty easy to do, and in this scenario it involved a bit of HTML and some PHP conditional statements.

First, the PHP. Let’s begin by displaying an ad on a post by categories.

<?php if (is_category('Copywriting Basics')) { ?>
Replace this text with the html to display the product for Copywriting Basics
<?php } elseif (is_category('Copywriting Creativity')) { ?>
Replace this text with the html to display the product for Copywriting Creativity
<?php } elseif (is_category('Copywriting Freelancing')) { ?>
Replace this text with the html to display the product for Copywriting Freelancing
<?php } else { ?>
Place the html code for the product you want to display on all other categories. Leave this blank to display nothing on all other categories.
<?php } ?>

In the “Replace the html…” sections, we will do just that. Let’s put together some code to do that.

Sample HTML:

<div style="width:590px; height:180px; background:#fef7cd; padding:5px; margin:0 0 10px 0; border-top:1px solid #efe9b0; border-bottom:1px solid #efe9b0;">
 <img src="http://www.freelancecopywritingblog.com/wp-content/themes/premiumnews/images/hotcopyfast.gif" width="116" height="168" hspace="20" align="left"> 
 <h2 style="font-size:22px; line-height:24px; color:#CC3300; letter-spacing:-1px; margin-bottom:5px;">This is the Targeted Ads Approach</h2>
 <p style="line-height:1.4em; color:#000000; font-size:16px; font-family: Trebucher MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom:5px;">Wouldn't it be great if you could plop a targeted message in front of visitors eyes, and increase conversions??</p>
 
<p align="center" style="line-height:1.4em; color:#000000; font-size:16px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top:15px; font-weight:bold;text-decoration:underline;"><a href="youraffiliatelinkgoeshere" style="color:#000; font-weight:bold; text-transform:upppercase;">SEE HOW EASY IT IS TO DELIVER TARGETED ADS!</a></p>
</div>

Of course, I’d recommend flushing that inline CSS out and attaching it to a div class, but you get the idea. You can change up the wording, affiliate link, and image for each snippet you insert.

But wait, there’s more. Here’s an example of how to do the same things, only using your sidebar:

 
<? php if (is_home()  ) { ?> 
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/sidebar.php'); ?> 
<?php } elseif ( is_category('3') ) { ?> <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/sidebar3.php'); ?> 
<?php } elseif ( is_category('6') ) { ?> <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/sidebar6.php'); ?> 
<?php } else { ?> 
<?php } ?>

The above example is more or less using the same code as what I outlined in a previous post, creating multiple sidebars.

In this case, you would insert the HTML snippet wherever wanted it to appear on each sidebar file. Once you have a sidebar you can load it by the category name/id.

Conditional PHP statements can be your best friend when developing for WordPress. They allow you to display information based on certain conditions. We can use WordPress’ internal meta data, such as tags and categories, to determine what to display in certain cases. In this case, we want to simply display a unique heading for various categories.

In your category.php page you’ll want to paste this code snippet:

Here’s a quick snippet of code that allows you to include any number of different headings using one category page. Of course, adjust the category id to your own.

<h1>Classifieds</h1>
<?php } elseif is_category('4')) { ?>
<h1>Environment & Real Estate</h1>
<?php } elseif is_category('18')) { ?>
<h1>Hot Buzz</h1>
<?php } elseif is_category('16')) { ?>
<h1>Product Plaza</h1>
<?php } elseif is_category('7')) { ?>
<h1>Menu Development</h1>
<?php } else { ?>

This is a basic, but powerful idea. You can use “elseif has_tag(’tagname here’))” to do the same thing with tags instead of categories for instance.

WordPress is the best platform to develop a site on for many reasons. It’s simple interface allows you to easily manage your site, and a worldwide community of developers have created some amazing plugins that build off the inherently awesome SEO foundation of WordPress. I consider the list below some of the most “essential” plugins that I install on every site to greatly enhance SEO and boost traffic.

Platinum SEO Pack – What more can I say about this, other than it should be required and used by anyone who’s faintly interested in optimizing their site. It lets you optimize every page AND post’s title, description, and keywords.

Google XML Sitemap generator – Does what it says. Generates a site map on the fly and submits it to the major search engines, including Google. Helps attract those search engine spiders.

SEO Smartlinks – Internal link juice is great, and this plugin finds related keywords and phrases from other stories or posts on your site, and automatically links to them.

A good ping list – Go to “Settings – Writing” and check what services are notified when you update your blog. If you’ve never been there before, chances are there’s only one. I’ve compiled a list of well over a hundred sites to notify when you update your site. Download it here!

Auto Social Poster or Wicked WP Poster – Don’t you have having to go to Twitter and announce your last blog post, or trying to bookmark your site in delicious to bump some traffic? These do all that and more for you; automated social bookmarking made easy.

SEO Super Comments – Now you can have each comment become an individual indexed page on your site. Brilliant!

Some other essential plugins:
Maxblogpress ping optimizer – Save your site from becoming a ping spammer with this plugin.
YARRP – Yet another related posts plugin. Helps boost internal page links by pointing users to related articles and posts.

A better “Read more” link – You can see my previous post for more on this, but the point is to generate a keyword-rich internal link by using the post title as the “Read more” link.

<?php the_content('Continue Reading' get_the_title()); ?>

Jontristermd.com is a site made for a Doctor who specializes in a unique practice of medicine known a Prolotherapy. He wanted something clean, and modern looking and without fuss. I delivered him a site that’s easy to modify and totally scalable.

I’m going to share a simple snippet of code that will help optimize the “Read more” link for your WordPress site.

First, you should always begin by writing a concise title that contains targeted keywords. Your post titles should also always be contained in

tags. I mention this because the “read more” link will pull the text from your post title and display it as a link. As we know, the more links you include on your site, the better. And it’s much better if those links contain the same targeted keywords you chose for your title. This helps boost your onsite keyword density and links at the same time. This tip you’re using the <-more-> tag to cut your post content. If you use the excerpt option, simply replace “the_content” with “the_excerpt”.

Within your WordPress loop, look for the following code:

<?php the_content('Continue Reading' ()); ?>

Here’s the snippet you will use:

<?php the_content('Continue Reading' get_the_title()); ?>