Explode the WordPress Learning Curve: An Evening with the Experts
Get connected with the tools and resources you need at Explode the WordPress Learning Curve: An Evening with the Experts. Your moderator, Miles Austin, leads presentations and discussions that will show you how a WordPress website, combined with savvy social media strategies and solid search engine optimization techniques, can make your marketing and sales so much more successful.
After An Evening with WordPress Experts, you’ll understand:
* why so may businesses are choosing WordPress for their websites and blogs
* how to leverage the power and flexibility of a WordPress website to increase sales
* how easy it is to make the move to WordPress
* 5 techniques for optimizing your WordPress pages for better search engine rankings
* the key features of 3.0, the newest version of WordPress
What’s Included in this Event:
* 3 “mini-seminars” from WordPress experts
* 15-minute break with time for networking as well as time before and after the event
* Extended Q & A panel discussion with the experts-get your questions answered
* Opportunity to meet the experts at the conclusion of the event
* Time to visit the presenters’ tables and exchange information
* Copies of all presentations
* Additional information on useful tips, plugin’s, themes and resources for WordPress users
Speakers at this event:
Moderator Miles Austin, founder and owner of Fill the Funnel, Inc.
Moderator Miles Austin, will serve as your guide for the evening. Miles will set the stage for the presenters, providing an overview of the content, introducing the speakers and facilitating the panel discussion/Q&A session.
Miles Austin is a leading authority on the selection and use of web tools to drive increased sales. He has 25 years of experience in high-profile sales with experience across multiple industries. Miles is a highly-sought out speaker and author of the popular Fill the Funnel blog.
Myself
WordPress 3.0: Better, Faster, Easier
With the release of the newest version, WordPress 3.0, life just got easier. I will have just returned from WordCamp San Francisco, where Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress was a key speaker. I’m not holding back. He’ll share all the cool new WordPress features and even a couple of hidden gems.
I am the founder of SavvyWordPress.com, the premier membership site for entrepreneurs looking for all the latest WordPress resources and tools to make their websites and blogs unique, memorable customer magnets. I’m a Mac evangelist and twitter addict who learned life lessons from Curly of the Three Stooges.
Mark McLaren , founder and owner of McBuzz Communications
Get Found Easier: 5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress
WordPress is your out-of-the-box solution for creating a website or blog that is highly optimized for search engines. Learn how, with just a little extra time and effort, you can take your site to the next level of search engine optimization. Mark will show you five key techniques for optimizing your WP pages and posts for better search engine rankings.
Mark McLaren is passionate about WordPress. He was a speaker at WordCamp Seattle 2009 and presents regularly to Seattle business groups on search engine optimization, blogging, social media marketing and WordPress websites. Business Blogging 101 is his site for free WordPress tutorials and support. Mark is the owner of the online marketing firm McBuzz Communications.
Tom Todd, founder and owner of T2.
The WordPress Advantage: Why Smart Businesses are Making the Switch
Businesses of all types and sizes are choosing to replace their static, inflexible websites for dynamic, WordPress-powered ones. You’ve heard the buzz about WordPress. Now find our exactly why so many businesses are jumping onboard. In this session, Tom will show you how easy it is to switch to a client-attracting WordPress blog or website.
Tom Todd is a lifelong marketer, designer and tech-geek. Founder of T2, he creates customized WordPress websites and provides WP training and consulting services for a range of Seattle area clients, from solopreneurs to mid-sized companies.
About the Facility:
You will enjoy the benefits of a state-of-the-art lecture facillity with sloped floor stadium seating, workspace for your notepad and/or laptop, comfortable chairs and two extra large projection screens and sound system to follow along with the presenters.
Your Old Blog Posts Aren’t Dead. They’re Just Sleeping.
Post by Judy Dunn
We’ve been tricked. All of us.
That freshly baked, piping hot, sweet-smelling, pie called Original Content grabbed us by the collar. Assaulted our nostrils. Made us salivate.
This pie was made just for me. It’s fresh and juicy. No one else has had a bite. I want the first piece.
We bloggers know this pie well. We should, because we baked it.
As we create the content pie that becomes a new blog post, someone is standing over our shoulder. Maybe it’s that Internet marketer who sends us their weekly newsletter. Or that hot-shot author whose book, “Create Original Content or Die,” is on the bestseller list. And they are whispering:
“Say something new! ”
“Write with your own voice!”
“Be original. Be Cree-A-tive.”
Why Bringing Back an Old Blog Post Can Be a Good Thing
Attention spans are murderously short on the Web. Plus, you are always collecting new readers.
So you have your memory-challenged regular readers. And you have a brand new audience that has never read your old posts. That means that with just a little tweaking (or a lot, if it makes sense), you can get more google juice.
Of course, if you just start republishing old posts randomly, without choosing carefully, you’ll just be rehashing stale, boring ideas. But done right, you’ll get a surge in traffic and, very possibly, some new subscribers.
5 Steps to Waking Up an Old Post
- Revisit your older posts often. Your goal here is to find which posts were the most popular. If you see a certain post being viewed again and again, this is prime content to bring back. Sometimes it will be a post that had a lot of reader comments and sometimes not. Pay particular attention if the referring site (where the reader came from) is Google. If people are searching for help with a certain problem and they keep finding your blog post, you have a winner and you should consider republishing it.
- Look at your title, sub-heads and formatting with a fresh eye. Reworking the title just a little bit could make your post even more popular in a Google search. An added benefit: Google will look at it with fresh eyes, too. Google Analytics even tells you what terms people were using in their search when they found your post. Adding intriguing sub-heads also helps—to break up the text and draw the eye to the important parts of your post. And check your spacing. Do paragraph breaks often to help readers skim and scan. Sometime my paragraphs are just one sentence long, especially if I want to add emphasis to a thought.
- Consider updating the content. Your most popular posts got to be that way for a reason. If you can add new content, or rewrite, you’ll capture more readers, people who wanted to know more about what you were talking about. So think about the new things you could add.
- Add new tags. A tag is merely a keyword or category used to describe the topic of your post. Tags are indexed by Google and Technorati, so someone doing a Google search is more likely to come across your posts. Revisit your tags and think about whether adding a few new ones might help more people find your post.
- Think about adding a new image or two. If you are like me, you didn’t give much thought to images when you first started blogging. But images can be very powerful, hitting the part of the brain that triggers memory and emotions. The result: You attract more readers—and keep them engaged in your post. For more advice on what the right image can do for your post, read 5 Ways the Right Photo Can Get You More Blog Readers. For some good sources of photos, see my recent post, How to Find Spectacular Free and Low-Cost Images for Your Blog Post.
What about you? Do you republish old blog posts? Do you think it’s a good strategy?
Changing Your Page Title in the Nav Bar
You create a page. You title it “About Joe Smith,” which is what you want it to say on the page. But in your nav bar, you just want “About”. Here is a simple way around this problem.
First you will need to install the plugin All In One SEO Pack. This is a great plugin and one you should be using anyway. I’m not going to use this post to tell your all it’s features, but do check it out.
Once installed and enabled, you will find this box at the bottom of every post and page you create. But you will only see this line for your pages.
Menu label:
Simply type in what you want to appear in your nav bar, save and presto!
Grade Your Website
Recently a colleague suggested I check out the site Website Grader. It’s a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.
Interesting results. Out of 100, our site was graded a 92. Whoopee!
Will the new theme Headway take the place of Thesis?
Just a quick post, as the talk on Twitter, and elsewhere, is the new theme Headway. I’ve yet to really take the time to go through it, but at first glance it’s pretty impressive.
So instead of rehashing what has been said, check out the Headway site and John Haydon, social media marketer, on why he made the switch from Thesis to Headway.
SEO Tools – A Must for WordPress
The All in One SEO Pack is probably the most used and well known admin plugin for WordPress. The All in One SEO pack allows you to give your post or Page a keyword rich title, different to the post/Page title, a meta description and keywords. This is a must have tool especially for Pages and when you are running your site as a content management system. Click here to download the All in One SEO Pack.
