Tips for a good website

Why Your Small Business Needs a Website

July 1, 2015 Beth Devine

small businesses need a website — “Smart cat” by Lori, used under CC BY / Modified from original

Your small business needs an online presence to survive. Without a website, people won’t be able to find you. I mean that literally. We live in a world where we Google before we shop, before we get in our car and drive anywhere new.

Gone are the days of phone book white pages and oversized Rand McNally road maps. When you’re looking for a place to buy the world’s best cat litter, you don’t search in outdated formats. You’re going to ask Google, use your GPS, and set course to the best deal in town.

To Beat Your Competition

So what happens if people don’t find what they’re looking for online? They’ll go to the competition, that’s what. Not having an online presence means you’re not being found, which means you’re losing out on business opportunities.

Having a website shows you’re a legitimate business. Having a professional, updated, easy-to-navigate website shows you’re the type of business who cares about your product or service. Who would you be more likely to buy from, a sloppy, outdated website, or one that reflects a business with a progressive website?

To help promote your business, make sure your business site is connected to all the relevant sites: the three top search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Bing; and other online directories such as Yelp, Merchant Circle, Yellow Pages, Trip Advisor, and BBB. Depending on your business, there are a variety of online sites who will list you for free.

Business discovery sites like these are what help you get found. Without a website, there is no information for indexing programs to share with potential customers who are searching online. Your first impression is often your website, so don’t give the wrong one with an unavailable URL.

Here are three good reasons why your small business needs a website:

To Give Your Customers Convenience

People shop differently in today’s digital age. Window shopping is occurring online more and more, competing with an afternoon stroll down Main Street. And when customers are ready to buy, they’re more likely to research their next purchase through the help of Yelp or Google or Shopzilla.

According to comScore’s quarterly State Of Retail report, online shopping reached a total of $61.6 billion in Q2 2014, up 13%, accounting for 11.6% of consumers’ spending for both mobile and desktop.

People want to use the internet to research, compare, and buy. And it’s not just individual customers who are doing this. The 2014 State of B2B Procurement Study shows that 94 percent of businesses are doing some type of online research as well.

It’s never been more convenient to shop when the digital world of products and services is no further away than your keyboard. Without a website, your small business isn’t providing customers with the convenience of easy shopping.

Before they can shop online, they have to find you. We already know how that’s going to work out if you don’t have a URL address. Give your customers an online printable map option, embed a Google map, and make sure you provide a street address as well as email and phone number on your website.

Think of your website as your digital business card, complete with a full-color brochure attached. Can you imagine someone showing up to your business and not handing them one or both of these? Even when a customer forgets your business card, they can find you online. You’ll never run out or misplace it, the information can be easily updated, and the content can exceed any printed format.

To Build Relationships With Your Followers

Having a Facebook page is a great way to help build relationships with your followers. But without a website to link to, you’re sending the message that you’re not that interested.

Through a website, your small business can send regular e-newsletters and stay in touch with blog posts. Sending emails is a great way to offer discounts and specials on your services or products. By establishing a relationship through these channels via your website, you can develop a relationship of trust.

One reason e-commerce won’t replace brick-and-mortar stores is due to the trust that’s forged from a perceived sense of permanence, reliability, and familiarity. In order to convey a similar degree of security to your website visitors, your website must be designed to show that you’re thinking like your customer. Studies continue to show, for example, that free shipping and speed of delivery increases online sales, not low prices alone.

Substituting online for what you can’t give tangibly in order to create a relationship involves using all the tools available, from a site designed to meet your customer’s needs, to using social media, to answering common questions with blogs and helpful site content. Don’t forget to include testimonials in strategic locations that demonstrate your customer loyalty and satisfaction.

You Need a Team of One

Your small business website needs to appear as if you have a team of professionals who are working to keep your online presence active and available. This appearance is achieved far more easily than keeping your physical storefront polished and inviting. The only team you need is you, and your web hosting company for any additional website work.

You don’t need to update your website everyday, or even every week. New content management systems like WordPress make it a quick job to stay on top of things. With the support of your web hosting company, you can present a professional and engaging website with minimal maintenance.

Is your site mobile ready? Do you care? Google does.

April 16, 2015 Beth Devine

Google’s view on what makes your site mobile-friendly is about to affect your search engine results. Bad search results can cause your site’s traffic to diminish. This “significant impact in our search results” begins April 21, when Google changes the ranking signal for mobile searches worldwide and in all languages.

In other words, if your site isn’t designed for “mobile-friendliness,” you’re going to see a drop in your rankings. If you don’t know what a mobile-friendly website should look like, or if you even have one, read on.

How to Know if Your Website Is Mobile Friendly

If you’re unsure whether or not your website has Responsive Web Design (RWD), there’s a simple way to check. RWD is a web design that allows for easy reading and navigation across a wide range of devices, including mobile phones.

To find out if your site gives viewers optimal viewing on phones, Google has released a handy Mobile Friendly Test. Just type in your site’s URL and Google will analyze it to ensure you’re ready for the upcoming algorithm change.

Another way to check your site for mobile-friendly design is to do a quick search on your phone to see how it displays in the results. If your site is optimized for mobile, you will see “Mobile-friendly” before the meta description in search results.

What You Can Expect from Google’s New Mobile Changes

Google will reward website’s that are designed for viewing on mobile devices without the need of resizing, zooming, and scrolling. Another criteria to avoid is the fat-finger syndrome. This is the prognosis given to sites with links that are too crowded and buttons that are too small, causing the wrong links to be tapped.

Because the numbers of mobile device users is accelerating at high speed, Google wants to make sure websites engage their viewers with easy-to-navigate content. As a website owner, you want to give your customers and readers the best first impression, which is now often on a mobile device. Mobile-friendly sites won’t drive customers to competitor’s sites, and you will get better traffic and better revenue.

Which Is Better: RWD or Mobile-Dedicated?

There is a difference between Responsive web design and a dedicated mobile website. RWD is designed to respond to the size of the screen. The particular theme within your content management system (CMS) that controls the website’s content often has mobile website styles configured.

A dedicated mobile website is also known as a mobile web app. It has a separate website version from the desktop version that is designed to fit on small screens. It detects when a viewer is using a mobile device and redirects them to the mobile website version.

There are several disadvantages to a dedicated mobile website. Separate and duplicate web content for the desktop and mobile versions can be necessary. Sometimes a viewer’s device is not recognized with the site detection function, and the best version won’t display. Finally, the duplicate content can negatively impact Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

RWD doesn’t have the additional burden of creating and maintaining duplicate content. It is designed to give viewers the best experience for all devices, including phones, tablets, e-readers, and even new devices as they enter the marketplace.

As the world wide web continues to grow, it’s important to keep your audience in mind as you build and maintain your website. In many cases, your website is already mobile-friendly, thanks to its Content Management System. Ask your web hosting company to help you determine what the best option is for you and your audience.

How to Optimize Your Website for 2015

April 15, 2015 Beth Devine

website optimization — “death and taxes” by lucyfrench123, used under CC BY / Modified from original

As the saying goes, there are three things you can count on: death, taxes, and changing SEO. Okay, so I added number three because optimizing your website is also unavoidable. Thanks to perpetually changing SEO, you can count on having to keep your website up to date.

Best practices must not only be reviewed, they need to be revised. Adjusting to continually changing SEO or search engine optimization strategies is easier than meeting the tax deadline. So don’t get frustrated with the inevitable.

Read on and see how you can optimize your website for 2015.

Make your website mobile friendly.

Boost your rankings with Google and other search engines by making your website mobile friendly. It’s no surprise based on the numbers of mobile users that mobile-friendly sites rank better with Google.

By giving your visitors a better user experience, you are working with Google’s common mobile mistakes to avoid. Faulty redirects, blocked media, mobile-only 404s, and slow mobile pages are a few to check into.

Look for our next post for more about search engine rankings and Google’s new algorithm for mobile-responsive websites.

Maximize for Local Search Update, a.k.a. Pigeon

Google’s latest search algorithm update was coined Pigeon by Search Engine Land, because it’s a “local search update and pigeons tend to fly back home.”

Anyone who wishes for their business to be found locally on Google should maximize their site for local search results. If you serve clients at a physical business location and have a physical address, you may be affected by Google’s Pigeon update.

Continue with these tried and true best SEO practices for your local search strategy:

Get listed on Google My Business and create a Google+ page.
Create a content strategy with local focus.
Stay engaged on social media.
Keep your listings up to date. Check out Local Visibility System for a definitive list of local search citations. All your listings should include accurate data, including your business name, address and phone number. Include when possible such things as product descriptions, services provided, hours of operation, any coupons, photos, and payments accepted.

Maximize Your Website’s Speed

Fast load times becomes more and more important as users refuse to wait. Google made site speed a signal in their search ranking way back in 2010.

Here’s what you need to know to speed up your website:

You can test your site speed using Google’s PageSpeed tools. This will analyze a web page’s content for both a desktop and mobile device and give suggestions on how to increase the speed.
Reduce your image sizes and optimize them for the right file format. PNGs are good for graphics fewer than 16 colors, and JPEGs are good for photos.
Use a quality web hosting company whom you can trust and who can handle your site load.
Too many plugins can slow a site down.
Embedded video can also slow down a website.

Use Proper Page Titles

Search engines identify your page titles and headings by their tags. When you use a Content Management System like WordPress, you won’t see the code that brackets the titles. <H1>, <H2>, and <H3> tags tell a search engines the level of importance of the content. You can see this by viewing your content in the Text or HTML mode.

Each page or post should have only one H1 tag at the top of your content. All other tags should follow below and be H2, H3, and so on. The H1 tag should include the most important keywords when possible. Most importantly, it should tell your reader what the content is about.

Heading tags should tell your readers and search engines about the page’s or post’s topic. Avoid using generic terms, such as “home,” “introduction,” “overview,” or “products.” Others are adjectives that can indicate something appealing, such as “help,” “best,” and “top.”

Don’t use generic keywords that attract visitors who aren’t interested in what you are offering. Keyword phrases that specify an otherwise generic term, like “toy,” are preferable, especially in high-competition categories.

Finally, if your H1 tag is an image, use the image alt tag to include the important keywords.

Why You Should Worry About HTTP vs. HTTPS

Google is pushing for heightened security on the internet. The importance of using HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) over HTTP means that your website is encrypted and can’t be hacked.

Google is currently using the HTTPS as a ranking signal in less than 1% of their global queries, but they may decide to strengthen it because they’d “like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.” Having an action plan is a wise idea should Google move to rank secure sites higher.

Get Better Form Conversion with These 10 Tips

February 12, 2015 Beth Devine

Lead generation is the process of collecting registration information, usually in exchange for content, so you can increase your marketing database for email follow up, which means new contacts for sales and marketing.

To successfully capture audience information with lead generation, you need successful form conversion. More form conversion means more lead generation, which is why you’ll see it called “lead gen form,” a fancy term for your contact form. Marketers love their buzzwords, especially content marketers.

Here are 10 tips to increase form conversion by making your form as straightforward and easy as possible.

1. Don’t ask for a phone number.

While it’s okay to include your business number somewhere on the page (but not on the form), it’s good to avoid asking for a phone number unless your business is based on follow-up sales calls. People are leery to divulge personal information, and are even more reluctant to receive a phone call.

2. Show your privacy policy.

Because people are unwilling to share personal information, it’s important to reassure them that their details are secure. Link your privacy policy within the form as either a footnote or just beneath a sensitive field, which could be a field for a phone number. Let your visitors know what to expect from sharing our email, and reassure them they won’t receive email spam as a result.

3. Use trust seals.

Trust seals are logos or badges tell your visitors that your business and website are trustworthy. They are best used on ecommerce sites where customers want to ensure the safety of their transactions. Choose one that is backed up by a consumer guarantee, such as a guarantee of delivery, a guarantee of consumer identity protection, or a price drop guarantee.

4. Keep your form fields to a minimum.

The more information you ask to be completed, the more your rate of completion will drop. If you only need an email address to complete the signup form for your newsletter or blog, then don’t ask for job title, firm size, etc.

With every additional form field that needs filling out, the greater the chance of your visitors losing interest. Even when a form field is indicated as optional, the form appears longer and more time consuming, and therefore less inviting.

If you must include additional form fields, then try doing a test to compare how the different forms – one with all your fields, one with the minimum number of fields, and possibly one with a middle ground amount – and compare their conversion rates.

5. Find a good location.

The internet tells us that the best form conversion spots are in the upper right hand corner of the webpage, which probably has everything to do with how our eyes scan the page. Placing your form where it’s most visible at first glance also means placing it above the fold, so viewers can see it without scrolling.

A good test is if you can see the form in the time it takes you to blink, then you’ve found a good place, and visitors are less likely to miss it and bounce off the page.

6. Give your form some space.

Your form will attract more attention if it’s surrounded by white space and not crowded with clutter. Minimize dissonant colors and too much text, and use directional cues to help your visitor’s focus travel to your form.

7. Use power words.

When you describe your offer, include powerful, action verbs like “get,” “feel” and “have” to help compel your visitors into an active role. Include these power words in your headline to support your call-to-action. “Complete This Form” is an example of a headline that is too generic and not very compelling.

8. Never submit!

Never use the word “submit” for your form’s call-to-action button copy. Using submit will reduce your conversion rates by 3%. More specific button copy is more successful, such as “Click here for your free download,” Sign Up for Your Free Demonstration,” or “Get Your Free Copy.” This means the old standby “click here” won’t make a spectacular hit either.

9. To CAPTCHA or not to CAPTCHA?

Using CAPTCHA can mean a loss of lead generation, which means less potential sales. Unless you’re plagued with spam, it might be simpler to filter through a few spam conversions than scare away visitors. If you are going to use it, use smart CAPTCHA, which shows a human verification code only when there’s an indication of form abuse.

You can also try the honeypot CAPTCHA technique where CSS is used to hide a form field that’s meant to be left blank to human eyes, but not to a spam bot. When the form isn’t blank, you know it’s spam.

10. Make your field labels clear.

When Expedia made the mistake of including an optional field that wasn’t clearly marked, it cost them $12 million. Too many fields and too many decisions can result in more error. Make your labels clear by using specific terms your visitors will easily understand and respond to.

Indicate which fields are required with an asterisk or some other mechanism.

Duplicate Content Causes and Some Easy Fixes

September 12, 2014 Beth Devine

Duplicate content is just what it says it is – content that appears in more than one place. When duplicate content occurs on the internet, search engines can’t be relied upon to decide which is the most relevant version to give when someone makes a search.

Search engines will display all the relevant results, but won’t show the duplicate content versions. Google and the other search engines have to choose which version is the original one, or which is the best one.

What does this mean for your website? Your SEO can be compromised. Your duplicate content links are diluted, and your ranking potential for a given keyword is reduced.

Most of the causes for duplicate content are technical and baffle those of us who remain un-techified. The fixes, however, are often less daunting.

Here are the most common duplicate content causes and some easy fixes.

URL Parameters that track data

An SEO-friendly URL won’t have parameters, and if it does, no more than two should be used. Parameters are the part of the URL that provides data for correct retrieval of records.

For example, these two sample links demonstrate different parameters for tracking data:

http://www.example.com/keyword-x/

http://www.example.com/keyword-x/?source=rss

Be sure to tell your programmer to always build your parameters in the same order. See, that’s easy to do!

Link Back to Original Content

Duplicate content that comes from outside your own site can be “scraped,” or used without your consent. This leaves the search engine with another version to rank, making competition in ranking for your original version.

Because search engines aren’t able to effectively filter out original content from the scraped content, website owners should create links to their own sites within their content. This way scraped content will point back to the original content and allow for some potential traffic.

If the links aren’t removed by the scrapers, it could also help search engines to determine the original content if enough links point to your site.

Session IDs

For every website visitor you have, a different session ID is stored in the URL. This is used for ecommerce sites that want to keep track of visitors and make storing items in a shopping cart possible.

A unique ID number is added to the URL for every visitor to your site, and for every page of your site. For example:

http://site.com/product?id=1234567890

http://site.com/product?id=1234567891

http://site.com/product?id=1234567892

The other option is to disable session IDs in your systems settings and instead allow cookies for tracking visitor’s products.

Printer Friendly Pages

If you have a link on your website that reads something like “click here for a printer-friendly version,” you have duplicate content.

Every time a visitor follows this link, a separate document containing duplicate content is loaded, search engines will find these and decide which version to show.

Because you want the version that contains all your additional site information, not just the stripped-down, printable version, you should use a print style sheet.

Since this is a rather un-techie solution, ask your web developer to help you. Or you can go to the WordPress Styling for Print page to see for yourself.

Pick Either WWW or non-WWW

Search engines still can get this wrong when it’s possible to access both versions of your site. Solving this problem means choosing your preferred domain and telling Google which site should be shown in search engine page results – the one with the WWW or the one without it.

Take your pick:

http://www.example.com/example.html

http://example.com/page.html

Get your easy fix to this split-identity issue by following my help in Improve Your WordPress Site’s SEO With a Single URL. Remember, if I can do it, so can you.

Remember to stay consistent when you link within your website and always stick with your preferred domain.

Two More Duplicate Content Solutions

Sometimes you want to have multiple versions of a page available for users, or you simply can’t get rid of it. You can manage this duplicate content in two ways.

1. Adding a Canonical URL Link

Once you’ve chose your preferred domain, you might need to add the rel=”canonical” links to the <head> section of your site. It will look like this:

2. Do a 301 Redirect

Another option for dealing with wrong URLs for content is to redirect them. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that’s set up from the duplicate content page and sent to the original content paging, passing the ranking power to the redirected or original page.

See Improve Your WordPress Site’s SEO With a Single URL for instructions.

For the non-techies, this could prove to be confusing, so ask for help.

For a great tool to check for duplicate content, use Google Webmaster Tools. Go to Search Appearance, and then HTML Improvements to see if there’s any concerns you should know about.

Are You Botching Up Your WordPress Site’s SEO?

September 5, 2014 Beth Devine

It’s true that WordPress is one of the best content management systems out there. What’s not true is that when you hit publish on a post, you are now done with your SEO.

There is a lot you can do to optimize your WordPress site for search engines. Chances are, no matter what you are doing, you’re still not doing enough.

Here are 5 SEO actions you don’t want to botch up for your WordPress SEO.

1. Set Preferred Pages By Choosing a Canonical URL

Look like uber-geek computer talk to you? It’s not as difficult to do as it sounds. When you choose a canonical URL, you’re telling search engines how to find you.

If there’s too many choices, your search rankings will be lower. By telling Google and other search engines how to find you, they won’t end up picking from multiple options of the same page.

Your first step in choosing a canonical URL is to decide if you want it to be http://www.yoursite.com or http://yoursite.com.

Tell WordPress which one you want (See Improve Your WordPress Site’s SEO With a Single URL )
Tell Google through Webmaster Tools
Use a plugin like WordPress SEO by Yoast so your canonical URL is always defined for each site page. With this plugin, “you automatically get canonical link elements for every page type in WordPress.”

2. Create Custom Titles and Descriptions

These titles and descriptions are what people see when they search for your site. Even if your site is ranked lower than other sites, your information on a given SERP can be more authoritative and receive greater response.

These two features provide your potential readers with concise data on each of your pages and posts:

The Meta Title is the headline replacement and displays in bold in the first line.
The Meta Description can be used instead of the first lines of your post to describe what it’s about.

This is a simple task that can be done using the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin. For each page published, you input the desired title and descriptions, and the rest is done for you.

3. Do Your Categorization and Tagging

Using your categories and tags correctly is a way to increase website traffic, and it can also help visitors stay longer on your site.

Effective tagging lets search engines know what your pages are about, like a street sign tells travelers where to go. Tagging and categories indicate the relevant keywords on your site and should be equally limited and relevant. The “less is more” approach is the way to go.

4. Supply Google With a Sitemap

A sitemap is a file where you can list the web pages of your site to tell Google and other search engines about the organization of your site content. Search engine web crawlers like Googlebot read this file to more intelligently crawl your site. (Webmaster Tools)

So sitemaps are the way Google finds pages on your website. While there’s no guarantee Google will find every last page of your site, you won’t be penalized for creating a sitemap.

Thanks to the coding gods and goddesses, the process of setting up an XML sitemap is as automatic as one click. With either the Google XML Sitemaps or the WordPress SEO by Yoast, you can get your sitemap up and running in seconds.

5. Mark Up Your Site for Google+ Authorship

Or not.

In case you didn’t get the memo, last Thursday Google put the kibosh on its Google+ Authorship program, which let Google rank content based on the authority of who wrote it.

The long game of trying to rank on the gargantuan search engine is never over. There will be new ways to attempt better rankings, better search results, and better clickthrough rates.

But don’t count on Google to make it happen. Don’t count on anything outside of serving up great content that educates and entertains your audience. Give them exactly what they want.

Like Copyblogger suggests, if you want a “wider audience, more subscribers, better conversion to paying customers, fanatically loyal readers, and enviable word of mouth,” there’s one thing you need to do.

Giving your readers what they want means “treat your readers like dogs.” (Treating them like cats can work too.)

Instead of spending hours and hours on SEO, create great content that rewards your readers. Spend your time figuring out what they want and producing that content.

There is no perfect formula for SEO success, but there will always be this last hard and fast rule. Meet your audience’s needs first.

The latest SEO tactics, like the very promising Authorship program, will come and go, but your audience will continue to be there, asking for what they need to know.

7 Tips for Your Content Management System

September 1, 2014 Beth Devine

CMS — Photo a derivative of “Blank sign post, empty field” by Ano Lobb under CC BY.

A content management system (CMS) like WordPress is a software that lets you create, manage, store, edit and publish all of your of content without any serious HTML or programming skills.

Thanks to this ability to edit your content from any computer that connects to the internet, you don’t have to rely on a third party, like developers or web hosts, to stay up to date, right?

Well, sort of.

A CMS is designed to streamline your workflow, making life easier, while also reducing costs and increasing productivity.

It’s true that a CMS website gives you greater control. You get the benefits of overcoming technical barriers to adding content, allowing multiple people to add and edit content, and facilitate faster updates.

It’s also true that with greater control and power comes greater responsibility.

Just because a CMS gives you the flexibility to manage content whenever you want doesn’t mean it’s getting done and getting done right. At its most serious, mismanaging your CMS website is like hanging up a sign that informs hackers you’re open for attack.

Here are 7 tips to follow when you have the responsibility of a content management system.

1. Maintain Site Security By Updating

The developers and contributors are constantly updating plugins to keep WordPress efficient and secure. When a bug or vulnerability is discovered, they get to work on a solution right away.

If you’re not updating your WordPress site and its plugins on a timely basis, this means it’s unsafe and probably vulnerable to hackers. With a single click, you can maintain your website’s security by simply updating your theme, plugins, and the latest version of WordPress.

It’s always possible that a security hole exists somewhere on WordPress since it’s an open source software and highly targeted by hackers. However, keeping your data updated will greatly reduce the risk.

2. Perform Backups

Besides regular updates, part of keeping your CMS secure involves performing regular backups. Determine who will do this and how often you want it done.

There are several backup solutions available, including paid versions such as the highly touted VaultPress. Your web hosting provider will often offer backup plans as part of your hosting package.

3. Basic Updates of Site Content

When content needs to be updated, it is often confusing to people who are either not adequately trained or who aren’t using the site regularly. A CMS like WordPress isn’t difficult to use when you’re working with it on a regular basis.

If you know you need basic updates of site content monthly, for example, then be sure someone is trained and tasked to do so.

4. Configure Your Content Management System for SEO

SEO is user-friendly with plugins like the WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast. Custom titles and meta descriptions are common elements with these plugins, but there are other important configurations as well.

Generating a sitemap file, customizing URLS, and eliminating duplicate content are just three ways to improve your site’s SEO, helping you gain more subscribers and elevate your rankings.

5. Blogging for SEO

If your website includes a blog, your CMS will make it simple to manage regular content curation. Manually posting and maintaining valuable content for your site’s SEO can be easily handled by the same people who write and develop it.

The only trouble is dedicating someone to this task and making sure it is regularly scheduled for consistent SEO results.

6. Not So Simple Navigation Changes

Making navigation changes may seem like a no-brainer in your CMS, but even the simplest changes can have enormous consequences.

Your navigation menu is like a road sign directing street traffic. Without it, your visitors will have difficulty finding their desired destination. This is one area where you should be well-informed with WordPress before altering things and dramatically affecting the user experience.

7. Keep Current With Comments

If you have a comment section for your blog, you will need to keep current with your readers’ comments and be prepared to write replies. Comments give your visitors a way to interact with you, creating a sense of community and encouraging return visits.

Setting your comments so they publish only when approved is a good practice, allowing you to weed out spam, a way for insidious malware to sneak in through your backdoor.

Make a plan to keep your CMS well-groomed and secure with either an internal process or with your web hosting company. Don’t let your CMS-based site appear shabby, out of date, or open to hackers.

How to Use Categories and Tags in WordPress

August 2, 2014 Beth Devine

Categories and tags are forms of classification for your website. They help make your site easier to navigate, allowing users to sort through your content by topic instead of having to browse chronologically.

What is the difference between categories and tags?

Categories are for grouping general topics, like a table of contents in a non-fiction book. Categories help to identify what your blog is about so users can find the subjects they are interested in.

Categories can be arranged in hierarchical order, which means you can create sub-categories.

Tags are more specific in their classification. Tags are like the index of a book, giving more specific details to further explain what the post is about. Tags aren’t hierarchical.

The main difference between categories and tags is that categories aren’t optional and tags are. If you don’t choose to, you don’t have to create tags. If you don’t categorize your posts, then they will automatically be categorized for you as uncategorized.

How to use categories and tags in WordPress.

Say you have a blog about travel. Your categories could be the names of countries where you’ve travelled. The tags could be food, museums, or best beaches.

As your blog evolves, your categories might also change. To start with, it’s okay to have only a small number of categories that reflect your content and to update these categories with new content regularly.

As your content grows, you will determine if there are new sub-categories that have grown enough to become categories, or tags that have developed into a category of their own.

Beware of using too many categories and tags. The purpose is to enhance user experience, not overwhelm them with a protracted list of choices.

When choosing a tag, try to maintain as few tags as possible. If you can’t decide on a tag, don’t use one. The only purpose of a tag is to group posts under that specific tag so users can choose to read more on that topic.

Choosing categories and tags.

Think of a keyword that a user would search for to read the post. For example, if someone was searching for “best beaches in Italy,” they could find useful information under your category “Italy” and your tag “best beaches.”

A post should be in no more than two categories. If it is, consider creating a sub-category. Tagging should cover only what is most relevant in your post, and it should be a tag you’ve already used or plan on using again.

Creating an archives page.

If you want to capitalize on your categories and tags even more, an archives page is a smart addition to your blog. This page contains three ways for users to locate content on your site: by date, category, and tag.

Learn more about how to create your archives page and improve your users navigation.

Did you know categories and tags are part of the archives URL?

Check to see how your categories and tags show up in a URL by going to one of your blog posts and clicking on either a category or a tag that the post was filed under. These can be found at either the top or the bottom of your post.

The active URL that appears will have the name of the relevant category or tag. This little exercise demonstrates the importance in choosing words to classify your posts.

Get started with these three easy tips.

Choose words that are easy to remember and that people would use when searching for your post, begin by using fewer words, and make changes as needed as your blog grows.

Remember, you can change your categories and tags in WordPress as you need to. Computer code is not written in stone like the Code of Hammurabi, so relax.

What Are Pingbacks and Trackbacks?

July 18, 2014 Beth Devine

Think of pingbacks and trackbacks as cousins to your comments. Comments originate from visitors who visit your blog and decide to join the discussion. Pingbacks and trackbacks are the distant relatives who link to your site from other websites, sending you a notification when they publish a link from your site that will appear in your comment section.

Pingbacks and trackbacks are even more closely related, but they are definitely not identical twins. Both are forms of communication between websites, but pingbacks are automatic and depending on the WordPress theme, might not display any content, whereas trackbacks are created manually and include a content excerpt.

The Difference Between Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Pingbacks and trackbacks can be an effective tool to discover when and where your site is being mentioned and linked. It can also be used to determine if the site you’re being linked to is spam.

Here’s where the main difference between the two comes into play. They use very different communication technologies (pingbacks use XML-RPC and trackbacks use HTTP POST, in case you were dying to know), with pingbacks using an automatic verification process that makes it much harder for someone to fish for links for their spam site.

How to Use Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Trackbacks and pingbacks can be a great way to discover if your content is stolen. When you receive either of these in your comment section, always check its source before approving it.

When visiting the pingback or trackback source, check to see if their content is relevant to your niche, or if it’s a spam blog trying to steal traffic. If it’s a spammy site, don’t approve the link. No kidding, right?

To create your own pingback, all you need to do is link to another blog in your own blog post. Your pingback will appear in their comment section (as long as they’ve enabled pingbacks), allowing their readers to click through and read your post.

This is good for generating traffic, joining the conversation within a community, and earning the attention from a blogger who might in turn link to you.

Creating a trackback is possible for any site that offers a trackback URL in its post. This will usually be found near the comment section. It’s not necessary to create one when two WordPress sites are involved, because pingbacks will automatically generate.

How to Eliminate Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Besides not approving them, you can disable pingbacks and trackbacks from ever happening in your comments section.

In some cases, when you’ve been receiving too much pingback spam, or you’re concerned your site is being linked to spammy sites and your SEO will suffer, you can simply turn this option off.

Go to your WordPress Settings, then find Discussion, and at the top uncheck “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks).”

Linking to your own posts within your blog posts will create self-pings in your comment sections. These are called internal links and are good SEO practices, and can be a good way for readers to keep track of your other related posts.

But if you don’t wish to see them in your comments, you can paste a bit of code by following these “no self-ping” directions.

Fortunately, your comment’s cousins do not all have to be invited to your blog. This is your party after all.

Content Marketing Buzzwords You Need to Know

June 18, 2014 Beth Devine

Content Marketing isn’t about selling. It’s about giving your audience information they need and want without a price tag.

To help you stay in the know on this important concept, I’ve rounded up the most-used content marketing buzzwords.

Native Advertising

A type of paid advertising that matches the form and function of the content that the user is viewing.

Or, as Demian Farnworth defines it in a Copyblogger article, “Native advertising is paid content that matches a publication’s editorial standards while meeting the audience’s expectations.”

Owned Media

A channel that a publisher or brand owns and where they can publish whatever content they choose, such as a blog or website.

Shared Media

Content that is promoted and shared on social networks by a brand’s followers.

Anchor Text

The readable text that you see which provides a link to another page. It’s normally a royal blue color and changes to purple once you’ve visited the link.

Call-to-Action (CTA)

Words that persuade a viewer to perform a specific action. Appears in the form of a link, button, banner, or some type of graphic or text.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

A measurement used for CTAs and emails to determine how many clicks received by a link, image, or anything that leads to a web page, landing page, or offer.

Top of the Funnel

The point in the sales process where a prospective buyer acknowledges a need for more information on a certain product or service.

Permission Marketing

Seth Godin writes “Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.”

In order to earn the attention of your audience, you need to demonstrate respect. There are no short cuts to permission marketing.

Content Promotion

The type of content promotion through channels that are controlled by the brand, such as social media posts, RSS feeds, and personalized email.

Content Distribution

Differs from content promotion in that it’s the paid form that’s disributed on channels the brand does not own, such as sponsored articles, social updates, and recommendations.

Inbound Marketing

A type of marketing that focuses on getting found by new visitors through blogs, websites, social media, SEO, whitepapers or other content marketing forms.

Landing Page

A web page where visitors end up after clicking on an advertisement or CTA and exists solely to capture visitor information.

Long-Tail Keywords

Specific keywords that aren’t searched for as often individually, but when combined, they have a higher search ranking. Are growing in use as natural language search becomes more popular and pervasive.

Marketing Automation

Software and technologies that are designed to automate repetitive marketing tasks on multiple channels, such as email, social media, website blogs, etc. It allows for great efficiency and less human error, but may result in less personal engagement.

Content Management System (CMS)

A program that makes it easy to add, edit, and publish content on a website from a central interface. WordPress is an example of a CMS where users create and manage HTML content.

Unique Visitor

An individual visitor to your website who is counted once although they could have visited more often.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

A form of internet marketing where you promote your website to achieve maximum exposure and traffic. A combination of paid advertising and SEO (through website design, copy, and keywords) is used to to increase search engine results (SERPs).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The process of making your website more relevant to get higher ranking in search results for a particular keyword or combination of keywords.

Social Advertising

Advertising on social media channels by paying for sponsored posts, stories, or promoted links.

Social Targeting

Targeting your advertisements to certain groups or excluding other groups or locations from seeing your posts to increase the relevance of your posts on social media.

Word Cloud

A collection of significant keywords from a particular text or subject to show which ones are the most relevant. It can be an image or a jumble of words with the size of each word indicating its frequency or importance. Wordle or Tagxedo will create one for you.

If you have an addition to this growing list, please leave it in the comments.