A day in the life of a WordPress-obsessed SEO

November 21, 2008 by Patricia Skinner · Comments
Filed under: Blogging For Business 

I have been offline for a while because my ISP had a technical problem that affected a whole batch of DSL subscribers. FAIL.

Back to Business!

So when I finally got back online I had a whole pile of work to catch up on. I only had three-and-a-half hours sleep last night. But so far today I have installed a WordPress theme, tinkered with two others, and caught up with a whole load of email correspondence.

One of my clients chose a really great WordPress theme over at Revolution. Very nice theme, although a little complicated to set up–much more so than regular WordPress themes.

I may decide to use one of those themes on here, they’re so professional-looking. We shall have to see if I even have time to get around to that any time soon.

The blog is taking over!

Interestingly I have had a number of clients recently who want WordPress installed on their main website. They have heard good things about it’s flexibility and the fact that in general, the search engines love it. It certainly makes it easier if a number of people need to upload content to a website. I love it and always encourage anyone who wants to install WordPress.

WordPress Makes Search Engine Optimization and Pleasing Visitors Easy

The major advantage in using WordPress is the fact that it becomes really simple to add new content to your site on a regular basis. This alone will make the search egnines, and Google in particular, love you to bits. More to the point, if there’s plenty of interesting information on your website your visitors will love you too.

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Connect With Your Audience

October 7, 2008 by Patricia Skinner · Comments
Filed under: Blogging For Business 

Increasingly the Internet is being seen as the global village predicted by Marshall McLuhan. Our networks extend over continents, professional domains, social milieus, generations and just about every other demographic you can think of. So whenever we want to achieve anything we automatically have access to a wide selection of people whose input can be highly valuable to us and dramatically impact our level of success.

Over the past week I’ve called on some of my Internet friends for their wisdom and expertise, while I was setting up this blog. As usual, they were unstinting in their generosity, both with time and nuggets of hard-won (and when you pay for it, expensive) specialized consulting knowledge.

Twitter is fabulous and it’s my networking tool of choice. Leaves most of the others standing–including FaceBook for me. But I digress as usual.

I’ve asked my Twitter network for advice on my design and color scheme, how to import the posts from my old blog, help with troubleshooting feed problems (Feedburner was jettisoned as a result) and a host of other stuff. I’m sure I’ve driven them nuts–I’m thoroughly sick of the subject myself at the moment–but they were all patient. So they deserve a big mention.

Top of the list is Mich D, who is quietly brilliant, working away in the shadows. He wrote a guest post for me on Blackhat SMO tricks. I think you’ll agree there’s lots of valuable information here as well as some fresh and unique perspectives. He said he loved the design, and that while it was pink, it wasn’t “fluffy.” I took that as an approval. Mich gave me the most fundamental help when I told him I was having trouble importing posts from one MySQL database to another. Why bother? He asked. You can import blog posts, even across platforms, through your WordPress Admin interface, and I did, and it worked beautifully. Thanks Mich!

In case you’re having he same problem, in the WordPress Admin panel for your old blog, select Manage Posts and click on Export from the options on the dashboard. Save the resulting WordPress file to your hard drive. Then go to the WordPress Admin for your new site, select Manage Posts and then select Import. Browse for and upload your saved file, and voila, you’re done. But don’t forget to do 301 redirects for your posts or you’ll have duplicate content issues big-time.

Kimberley Bock made me feel more comfortable with my choice of color scheme. I say ‘more comfortable’ not because I had doubts about what I like but because a couple of my other friends had mentioned that they weren’t 100 percent comfortable with my choice. You could say I was suffering a confidence crisis.

In particular, Richard Dewick, AKA Makaman, had strong reservations about my choice of color. He also reminded me to follow my own advice and make the font a readable size, which I did. He also reminded me about posting my Twitter feed to my blog, which I haven’t had time for yet. But I will. Richard also hated my logo. I don’t think he’ll like the new version either, but it’s the best I can do for now. Whaddya say Richard?

Ultimately I felt my choice of WordPress theme was totally vindicated by Chris Garrett who said:

You have to connect “you” to your target audience, if pink fits both, forget what random internet folks say :)

I totally agree with this. A small thing like your color scheme could put off a small minority of visitors, but overall I think it’s true to say that if a reader senses that you’re not holding back, and that you’re communicating who you are at a basic level, with no artificially-set parameters, they’ll respect you more for it. And I’ve never been one to try and impress, so this concept suits me fine. :P It’s not that I take a devil-may-care attitude. More that I like to communicate honestly, including who i really am.

But Chris got me thinking about how to really connect with your audience. What’s the secret? Obviously your theme and choice of colors is going to be a superficial first-glance thing. But there has to be more to it than that. What are blog readers really looking for?

In the end I came to the following conclusions:

Connecting with your audience is all about being who you really are. It’s about being willing to take the risks associated with sharing your innermost thoughts about what you do and how you think. You may leave yourself vulnerable to the piranhas that live online, but you’ll also make contact with a solid readership base who are looking for authenticity. You’ll also make genuine friends. The Real Thing is impossible to fake and it’s priceless.

So in the coming months you can look forward to some hard-hitting opinion, state-of-the-art SEO information, and tips on how to get your blog or website off the ground. Most of all though, you can look forward to my blog as an honest expression of who I am.

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My Final WordPress Template Choice

October 1, 2008 by Patricia Skinner · Comments
Filed under: Blogging For Business 

It has been a hectic few days. However, I finally decided to go with the theme you now see. It’s called Optimism and it’s by–well they already have a link at the bottom!

I’ve also got my contact form up-and-running and I’ve written a cursory About page. For sure there is a lot left to do but I am functional.

I’m still working on importing the posts from my other blog so that I can setup the redirects. Haven’t had time to look into that properly yet. Comments and suggestions are always welcome. :) Meanwhile enjoy this music that I feel goes with the theme. 03-enchantment

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