Why WordPress

Editor's Notes

• #2: “ Why Use WordPress?” You may have covered how to install, configure, style and organize a WordPress website using best practices. You also may have covered WordPress SEO and optimization. The mechanics of WordPress is with the installation, selections of a theme and plugins for the various website functions. Today I will discuss “Why WordPress”. When you begin developing websites for clients this presentation will help in your marketing efforts. Just knowing how to use WordPress doesn't answer the question “Why WordPress?”
• #3: Hello my name is Carol Gann and I'm the Orlando Web Wizard project manager. Orlando Web Wizard is a dba of Winter Park Artists LLC. Owned by myself and my husband. We have been business owners since 1989 Orlando Web Wizard has two servers with over 100 websites. A dedicated server that has mostly small business WordPress websites and a cloud server that is used for websites plus an email list manager. Orlando Web Wizard also sells domain name registration, SSL & Security, Email Accounts , Marketing Tools and we develop websites.
• #4: Both servers are a Linux Server with Apache using Web Host Manager and Cpanel. Linux is an open source software. Open source is software that uses an open development process. In January 1998, Netscape announced they would make the source code for their web browser, Navigator, freely available. Shortly after, the term coined open source was born, and the group realized this was an opportunity to educate and advocate for the superiority of an open development process. This is where many developers share ideas to build a software for free and prohibits restrictions on how the software can be used or who can use it. The Open Source Community was born.
• #5: The Apache HTTP Server Project is to develop and maintain the open-source HTTP server for operating systems that includes UNIX and Windows. Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April 1996. cPanel is a Unix based web hosting control panel that provides a graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site. cPanel utilizes a 3 tier structure that provides the capabilities for administrators, resellers, and end-user website owners to control the various aspects of website and server administration through a standard web browse.
• #6: Orlando Web Wizard has purchased the dedicated server and a cloud server from SingleHop, (winners of the 6th Annual Web Hosting Awards for dedicated servers.) We develop websites primarily for small business owners using WordPress as a content management system and an inbound marketing tool.
• #7: 1. WordPress is open source and often used as a blog publishing application. 2. It is used by over 12% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites. 3. Today, WordPress is the most popular Content Management System in use. 4. The core of WordPress is designed to be lean, to maximize flexibility and minimize code bloat. WordPress is so cool because you can integrate your blog with your website. You can use WordPress as your main website and as your blog simultaneously. WordPress has become a Content Management System over the last few years, but wasn't originally designed for CMS. It still has an excellent reputation for a blogging environment. When properly configured WordPress is a wonderful inbound marketing tool. Where you can blog, tweet, optimize, capture leads, basically everything you need, all in one center, in your WordPress admin area. This is a wonderful choice for a small business owners who have very little time to spare. This configuration will empower small business owners to do online marketing from the website.
• #8: 1. The greatest benefit of blogging is SEO. 2. Each new blog you create offers another page or post to be indexed by the search engines. Blogging helps a website to be found. 3. For good SEO you want your website and blog to be found together on the same domain name. Social Media SEO from your website is all about building inbound links, essentially getting other quality links back to your website. Search engines call this authority or “link juice.” The more inbound links you have, the more important your site must be, thus the higher you’ll rank in the search engines.
• #9: 1. Linking from your website to your blog will have a negative impact on branding because they'll be viewed as separate websites. 2. This could be confusing, unprofessional and may undermine your business credibility. Using a social media excerpt, thumbnail image and link generator plugin will empower you to publicize your blog content, events and latest promotions to the social media networks. Using this tool creates more inbound links and creates more social media brand awareness. Bringing more visitors back to your website so that you may sell more products or services.
• #10: 1. Instead of sending visitors away form your website to a blog; all your inbound marketing happens on your main website/domain name. 2. Then visitors will associate your blog with your brand name/domain name. Using this marketing method will easily generate inbound links with off page SEO automatically. Making the website your social media marketing hub will make online marketing way more powerful and centralized.
• #11: 1. The wonderful easy to use Content, Titles and Tags allows the search engines to prowl a WordPress website and gather information. 2. Title tags are first to be seen by the search robots and are the most important part of the per-page content for search engine optimization ("SEO"). 3. Post titles are also used as title tags by WordPress. 4. Search Robots compare the words within each of these sections and "ranks" the site; dependent upon how well the information matches each word. (word relevancy) 5. There are many enhanced, easy to use visual editor plugins; each plugin can be used for various purposes. 7. You can add a descriptive title for each page or post in the title field; which is also the page title. This can also be the navigation title. 8. You can create categories, posts with tags that can corner the descriptive keywords that the search robots index.
• #12: Make sure to follow the rules: Google released a new update to their webspam algorithm called the Penguin and Panda update. Due to this new update only high quality content will be the key to SEO success.
• #13: Make sure to write content to real people and not to search robots. Create high quality, educational or entertaining content (Offer value to your readers) If people like your content, they will naturally want to share it and click on the link to come back to your website to “ READ MORE . . . .”
• #14: Don't use Blackhat or deceptive practices that will get your WordPress website blocked. Make sure all keywords, titles and links are relevant and don't use software to submit to search engines . Use exciting images from “Big Stock Photo.com” or take your own images with your phone or camera. NEVER take images from Google images or steal them off other websites. This can cost you a huge penalty fee.
• #15: Do keyword search (Using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool) Write with primary keywords and phrases that have low competition and high searches. Google averages the number of searches over 12 months for each keyword
• #16: Addictomatic searches the best live sites on the web for the latest news, blog posts, videos and images. It's the perfect tool to keep up with the hottest topics, performs topic searches to find the viral content for your blogging. You can personalize your results dashboard by moving around the source boxes. When you're done, bookmark the page and keep coming back to your personalized results dashboard for that search. Don't copy and paste, that's blackhat. Use this tool to find the viral topic then your expertise to write the blog. Put your personal spin on the viral topic.
• #17: You've found the latest news you want to blog about. Now you need to know the architecture 1, Start with an intriguing hook title. 2. A nice thumbnail picture relevant to the topic 3. No more than 2 paragraphs 4. A YouTube relevant video You can purchase your thumbnail images from www.bigstockphoto.com or use your own digital camera You can start your own YouTube account and upload videos or use ones with open sharing and embed them.
• #18: Under settings go to permalinks where you can create a custom permalink to give the URLs descriptive keywords. Descriptive keywords in the URL will further enrich the WordPress website for SEO. Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual pages, posts, as well as categories and other lists in your WordPress.
• #19: My favorite custom permalink is /%category%/%postname%/ for “Pretty Links”. However if you use this method only use one category per post and never use it for a Multi-site. It would be better to use //%postname%/ The reason I like my favorite custom permalink is because the category can also be used in the pretty link offering more keywords for the search robots to index. The reason you cannot use my favorite for more than one category per post is because when you assign multiple categories to one post, only one category will show in the permalink. WordPress will use the lowest numbered category. Keep titles fairly short and clean as very long URL's slows down the website. In my favorite theme you can customize them further. (More about themes later...)
• #20: I use Apache web server with the module mod_rewrite, it provides a rule-based rewriting engine to rewrite requested URLs on the fly. I use a writeable .htaccess file for updating the permalink in the admin area. Using the apache Module mod_rewrite you can produce nicer permalinks.
• #21: WordPress offers easy to install themes that make a beautiful website. Suffusion theme is my favorite due to it's high customization capabilities, navigation and permalinks edits within each page or post. Using this theme I can fulfill most all client needs. It has wonderful SEO capabilities and other built in functions.. I can write custom scripts or styles without editing the master theme. Why this is good? When upgrading, theme notes are not needed. After a backup, Suffusion upgrades seamlessly. This fast upgrade saves time and money. Suffusion has many add-ons that can be used according to the website objective. There isn't time to explain all this theme offers. Please visit http://aquoid.com for more information.
• #22: This is a list of my favorite plugins . Plugins are tools to extend the functionality of WordPress. Plugins offer custom functions and features to help tailor your website to your specific needs. CKEditor from Cksource is a plugin to customize the appearance of the visual editor to resemble Microsoft Word. It Allows client comfort using a less intimidating visual editor. This plugin won't work for all website projects as it adds unwanted code. When CKEditor is not appropriate I use TinyMCE Advanced editor or TinyMCE Ultimate, customized for the need of the client. For online forms I use Contact Forms 7 with the extended database and Really Simple CAPTCHA to keep out spam robots. Clients love the database feature that allows the contacts to be downloaded in an excel spreadsheet format. It then can be uploaded into a list or contact manager.
• #23: Orlando Web Wizard offers free online tutorials and screenshot videos. Soon we will be offering seminars and courses. We will be offering a website marketing course using WordPress this fall at Score, National Entrepreneur Center in the Orlando Fashion Square Mall. If interested please give me your business card with your email address. I'll add you to the list to keep you posted on our classes and courses.