Archive for the ‘Internet Marketing’ Category

For the first of our Sunday book reviews, I’m going to start with what I have long considered to be one of the most important books for anyone with a website – and this applies to blogs, online shops, and the rest too – anyone marketing online would do well to read this book.

“A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability” – now as WordPress “users”, you may not think this quite applies to you, however it does. When it comes to WordPress themes (the design) we are tempted with plenty of pretty/scary/all-dancing/action-packed designs, as well as plenty that are pleasing to the eye and useful to you and your visitors. Everyone with a web presence, be that a website or a blog, needs to consider the people you want visiting (and subsequently doing what you want them to do – come back, get in touch, subscribe, buy…). Is that cool, brooding design really going to encourage your ideal customers?

Don’t Make Me Think is a book I’ve recommended to clients and anyone who will listen since it was first published a decade or so ago. Now in its second edition, Steve Krug‘s take on keeping it simple is easy to read and packed with solid advice that everyone, in my opinion, should heed. And this is timeless stuff – even this edition is nearly 5 years old, but it continues to be relevant and a must-read, even for those of us working with WordPress. The sound basis that this gives you when considering usability is essential when choosing your theme and the various widgets and plugins available, and how you present your content.

So this is one of those JDI, no-brainer books if you want your website/blog to do what you expect of it! (and if you don’t really know that, have a chat with Babs and she’ll point you to some useful advice).

You may already, of course – know how many people are visiting your WordPress blog or website. But just in case…

It’s not wise to fret over erratic stats – we’ve all done it – enjoyed a day or several of good visitor numbers to then see a slump and start to wonder about our strategies… Instead it makes sense to consider that there may be factors affecting how busy your blog is, or isn’t.  On one blog with which I’m involved it can depend on the weather; when it’s horrid outside, our stats are higher – it’s a quite a social blog site so can be welcome on a cold, stormy day. With Blogmistress we blog less at the weekends, so of course the number of visitors dips for a couple of days – I prefer to see the steady upward trend on the weekly view (and thank you, by the way!).

So, which stats will suit you.

To be honest, I think for most people the WordPress.com stats plugin is more than adequate. You’ll need the API code that you used to configure your Akismet spam filter and enter that same code to configure the WordPress.com stats. Then these will show up on your Dashboard (you can choose different settings – mouse over the top of the box to see the configure link).

We have one client who has always enjoyed Statcounter and was not keen to lose it when we moved his online rug shop to WordPress – so for him we installed the Statcounter plugin – and he continues to monitor what’s going on with his shop. I can understand wanting to maintain the familiar, especially when getting used to such a different system as WordPress can be to a static website. Statcounter is so easy to work with and was a standard for all websites we worked with.

Now if you want to really get stuck in, there is a plug-in for the real time web analytics of Clicky – this is for those of you who really want to analyse, set goals and campaigns, and even watch live activity with the upgrade. One to consider if this can be useful for you.

And then of course there are the Google Analytics plugins – many available and you need to settle on the one that best suits you. We’ve used Google Analyticator often; that does what we want.

Have a look at the available stats plugins yourself if the above don’t meet your needs – just search for statistics or analytics in Plugins, Add New and away you go.

Have fun, but don’t get too hung up over what’s going on, or spend longer than you need to on analysis. As ever, if you’re unsure what will work best for you, give us a shout…

Babs

You may have spotted a giant button in the sidebar – over there on the right. Just be glad I made it green (for reasons other than aesthetic, though I suppose we could get away with red, considering our header!).

It’s there for whenever anyone needs help with their WordPress – whatever the issue, hit that button and it’ll take you to all of our contact details in one place with a simple form – for now. We may try something more dynamic, but as with all Internet marketing, it’s all about testing, testing…

At the same time we’ve updated the home page to make it clearer (hopefully!) – feedback welcome – I’ve always found doing own business websites to be the hardest!

And coming soon – well! A blogmistress forum filled with useful information and tips for you, where you can ask questions and discuss issues, explore WordPress plugins and ideas – anything and everything to do with this wonderful tool!

If there is anything you’d like us to post about, or provide for you, please say – we’re here to provide what you want, so tell us!

Babs

Following on from the earlier WordPress SEO post, I thought you might appreciate the following video:

In the summer of 2009, Matt Cutts, who heads up the Web spam team at Google (so he’s someone to take notice of), shared his take on how useful WordPress can be for your SEO, and thus your Internet marketing…

It’s worth grabbing a coffee and watching this – useful stuff…

Or if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, Matt offers the presentation at his blog

Enjoy, and take note!

The first in a series that takes you through the ways to optimise your WordPress blog and/or website for the search engine side of your Internet marketing.

Now that you have your keywords prepared – you did work on this after the blog post looking at what your customers actually search for, didn’t you?

Well in this post we start using your best keywords (and if you want to chat about yours, pop an email over to me at hello@blogmistress.com):

• Your blog’s title is one place that should ideally include your keywords – if that works for your blog or website – it won’t for some and will partly depend on the theme’s design, so don’t worry if you can’t work in your keywords here. You set your Blog Title in Settings, General. And while you’re there, see if you can include your keywords in the Tagline too.
• Next go to Settings, Permalinks where you can have your page and post page names to something useful. The Permalinks are simply the permanent link address for a page. Set your Permalinks to a Custom Structure of /%postname%/ – what this does is take the title of your blog post or page and use it to name the link. For instance, this blog post’s link is http://www.blogmistress.com/wordpress-and-seo-part-1/
• Now to install one of the most powerful plugins for your Internet marketing SEO – the All-in-One SEO plugin. Install this (go to Plugins, Add New and search for this then install) and then you can set the basics to best suit your SEO at Settings, All in One SEO – enter a Home Title that includes your best keyword(s) – this is one of your most powerful places to include your keywords – and add a Home Description – this is the bit that shows up in a search under your page’s title, so here you want to include something that will encourage your potential visitors to click to your website/blog, as well as your keywords. And as for the rest of the settings, it’s likely that the defaults provided will work well for you – we’ll explore this plug-in in more detail soon.

That will do for now – your next actions will follow later in the week. If you want to know more about any of this, either comment below, or send an email to hello@blogmistress.com or you may be able to grab me on Skype – find barbarasaul and happy to chat if I’m about.

Babs