WordPress
WordPress Categories and Tags – Which to Use and How?
This is a question I get a lot lately. This feature of WordPress can be confusing, and throw in keywords for search engine optimization and people definitely get that glazed over look. And the more I read other good posts on the topic, the more I realize that there are a lot of opinions on what they are and how they are used. What I have come to realize is:
There is no one right answer to how you should use WordPress categories and tags for your blog, but there are some guidelines on using them effectively.
Things you need to consider:
- Should I use both?
- Should I assign posts to more than one category?
- Do either of these help with search engine optimization?
- Should I let search engines index your either or both of the archives?
Read more on WordPress Categories and Tags — Which to Use and How?…
Three WordPress Plugins for More Effective Online Marketing
Most small business marketing is done online where first impressions, relevant content and social media integration are key requirements for achieving visibility, which ultimately should result in quality inbound leads. Your website, which is the hub of your online presence, needs to be created on a platform that makes it easy for you to maintain, add new content and keep it fresh for your ideal clients. WordPress is the website platform of choice because it enables small businesses to achieve a quality, professional web presence that is easy and cost-effective to update and maintain.
What makes WordPress easy to use and maintain is the inclusion of WordPress plugins, created by a network of developers, that extend the basic WordPress platform with complex functionality without custom development. The following are three WordPress plugins that extend the platform to include features critical to your online marketing:
What do these plugins have to do with marketing?
- You need to optimize your site to be found
- You need a strong call-to-action on each page of your site with an associated form to encourage people to contact you (inbound leads are the best)
- You want prospects to see reviews from your very happy customers on your website (and other review sites too)
Let’s take a look at them in a bit more detail. Read more on Three WordPress Plugins for More Effective Online Marketing…
Don’t Wait Until it’s Too Late – Protect Your Online Assets
For many of us in service based businesses, our knowledge is our main asset. When we write about what we know, in our blog, in an ebook or out on the social web, we share that asset with many people to help them out and to attract them to our businesses. In addition, many of us have spent a lot of time and money on our Web or blog design, creating a brand identity that projects how we want people to perceive us and our businesses. So when I read about how someone’s blog or website was hacked and they lost their content, their brand and are trying to recover these assets, it’s time for a reminder post on WordPress security to protect your online assets. It’s something we all can do ourselves. We just need to remember! Read more on Don’t Wait Until it’s Too Late — Protect Your Online Assets…
Five Easy Tips to Optimize Your WordPress Website
I highly recommend that all small businesses use WordPress for their Website. Even if you have no plans to blog, a WordPress website gives you control of your content so you can keep it fresh and relevant to your target audience. The following are a few tips that will help you get visibility in the search engines.
Make your permalinks pretty
This is an easy setting but one I’ve seen overlooked on many, many WordPress sites. The default setting is http://yourdomain.com/?p=123. How useful is that? If you leave your permalinks set this way, you lose all the value of those keywords that you used in the title of your post or page. Instead, select the custom option and set the format to /%postname%/ or /%category%/%postname%/. Add the category if you have been strategic with naming your categories using your main keywords. Otherwise, use just the post name and make sure you use keywords in their titles. Read more on Five Easy Tips to Optimize Your WordPress Website…
Tags: search engine marketing, search engine optimization, SEO
Full Posts or Excerpts?
Are there benefits to having only excerpts on your blog home page or should you have the full post (or maybe a combination of both)?
I started thinking about this question from a marketing perspective (of course) and decided to do a little bit of research to find out if there were benefits to exerpts on the home page and if there were any serious disadvantages.
From all that I read, the only disadvantage I found was the user had to click to read more. But, if the post is interesting, clicking on the link is really not a deterent because if the user isn’t interested, they won’t read past the first paragraph anyway.
However, if you are like me and write posts that are around 600 words or more, this may be an option you may wish to consider. Read more on Full Posts or Excerpts?…
WordPress, Not Just for Blogs
Small businesses need a Web presence. It’s the central hub of your social media strategy – the place where you send everyone to find out more about what you do or provide.
The challenge for many small businesses is to obtain a high quality, professional Web presence that is affordable and easy to keep fresh with new content. On top of that, business owners are hearing that if they blog, tell stories and keep people aprised of what they are up to, they will help increase their chance of being found through search engines.
Read more on WordPress, Not Just for Blogs…
Amazing WordPress Plugins – Part 2
Creating a Membership Site
Back in February, I wrote about two amazing WordPress plugins that made implementing a rotating flash header easy to implement. In this post, I want to talk about more nifty WordPress plugins that helped me implement a membership area on the Web site. This area is used by the condominium association to communicate with the owners of the properties, providing updates to documents, minutes to board meetings and information on social events.
Read more on Amazing WordPress Plugins — Part 2…
Amazing WordPress Plugins
There is a reason why I just keep talking about why I love WordPress. I recently moved one of my client’s sites to WordPress for the usual reasons – ease of use, flexible architecture, add a blog when they are ready and all the other good things that come with Wordpress. When I suggested we move the site to Wordpress, however, I forgot that we had a couple of features that I hadn’t thoroughly investigated – a flash header with a variety of phrases that were randomly assigned to pages and a private membership area for the property owners.
Tags: flash headers, membership site, WordPress plugins
Changing Your Blog’s URL
Apologies to those of you who received the Masterful Marketing feed of quite a few posts yesterday. Here’s the scoop on what happened and my learning experience (which were many for the record).
Read more on Changing Your Blog’s URL…
Protect Your WordPress Site
As one of your major marketing tools and in many cases, the only thing your prospect sees of your business before deciding to call you, your web site and/or blog is a valuable property that needs to be protected. Having had a client that built security software to help companies prevent malicious attacks on their systems and networks, I am sensitive to these issues. So the two posts from Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends caught my attention.
Read more on Protect Your WordPress Site…
