I'm just going to go ahead and say it. WordPress is amazing. When I built my first web site about 10 years ago it was so laborious I was extremely discouraged. I felt like it was going to be impossible to maintain it at any level with new content or just to add a page that would talk about something current going on with my company. It was little more then an electronic business card and not a very attractive one at that. Boy have times changed.
SydneyBeck.com
I created a new website yesterday for my daughter. I did this based on a book I just read called "Crush It" by Gary Vaynerchuck . Gary talks about the importance of branding yourself in the New Economy and suggests securing domain names for not only yourself but your children as well. I did a search over the last week and discovered my daughters name was available in a .com so I thought now would be the time to get her up and running with her own site. You can go here and check out domain names for your kids. Domain Search.
I had my daughter time me to see how fast I could set up a WordPress website. I had her start the clock at the login to my hosting account to purchase the domain name and stop when I had the site up and running with WordPress and had changed the title tag of the site to show her name. 8 minutes and 45 seconds from start to finish.
Akismet Plug In – Mandatory To Set Up Immediately After Creating Your WordPress Website
Once you get your domain secured and get WordPress set up you will want to log into the dashboard and make sure you set up the Akismet Plug In to keep the SPAM from taking over your site.
Here is a quick tutorial I have put together to show you how to get this done.
Leave any questions or comments you might have below. Here is the Domain Search Again to check out domain names for your kids. If you don't want to build their sites yet you should at least secure the domain name.
When you start to consider blogging for your business one of the best things to do is to find out what the competition is blogging about. I talk to my clients about the necessity to begin blogging about their business because their competition is doing it. This is when the lights start to go off on how important it is to start a business blog to keep up with the competition. There are three very important reasons for this.
1. Your competition is establishing itself as an authority in your niche. When potential clients are searching for information about your niche they are finding your competition and reading about how they are capable of filling their needs.
As the holiday approaches and more importantly the new year the rush to find the ideal gift and influence a bit of preparedness for the new year is a common dilemma. I was just scouring my Google Analytics and found a consistent search over the past few days was people looking for gifts for their business partner.
I find this fascinating that people are looking for the best gift they can find for their business partner because it usually needs to have a bit of business savvy, intelligence, motivation and uniqueness all wrapped up into one. Ease and clever delivery would be a nice touch as well.
I think I have just what you are looking for. There are a set of 3 incredibly intelligent, motivational, business savvy, easy and cleverly delivered books I would urge you to consider.
The process of keyword research is an ever evolving maze of tools and methods that can a bit overwhelming. The good news is every now and then a really awesome tool comes into existence that can really help guide you to relevant search terms that can make you money.
Google Insights is just such a tool. I just discovered this derivative of Google Trends and have been experimenting with it over the past few days.
This is a fantastic, easy to use tool that can really help guide you to some very geo-specific keyword terms and the areas these terms are most search in.
I have created a quick video to show you how to use this cutting edge tool. Please leave any comments you might have below.
The first step to setting up your business blog is getting a self-hosted domain.
Many times there is a website in place for a small business but there are no measurable results being realized by the business from the website.
What Are Measurable Results?
What would be considered measurable results? One of the most obvious would be to have the phone ring due to a potential client finding you online. Sometimes this happens and the business owner does not have a tracking method in place to determine how the phone call was generated. I have some great tips about how to put those tracking methods in place along with other necessary data capturing tools to begin to show results and set up different split testing options to realize what is working what is not.
Read on to learn more measurable results and don't miss the "how to" video below to guide you through your hosting service set up.
Recently I was asked about Meta tags and how to use them. My quick response was to say they are not that important because Google doesn't pay attention to them but the more I thought about it I felt like I needed to take some time and really explain exactly what Meta Tags are and what they do.
Lets start with a simple explanation of what Meta tags are. Meta tags are small pieces of information (snippets) that are located between the <head> </head> tags at the top of the HTML document.
Here are two of the format styles that you will see for Meta tags.
1. <META HTTP-EQUIV="name" CONTENT="content">
2. <META NAME="name" CONTENT="content">
Meta tags have been around since the early days of the internet and were originally used in the Mid 90's to aid in the explosion of web pages being added to the internet. The problem with Meta tags started when Webmasters, many of them who ran adult websites, began abusing the use of Keyword Meta tags. They used a lot of unrelated keywords on their sites in the Meta tag section to make their sites to appear in the search results for unrelated topics.
How do you use the Meta Tags now to produce results?
Over the past 2 months I have started to offer a business blogging workshop through a Meetup group I have been involved in for the past year or so. I have been trying to get the attendees up and running on Blogger in an effort to get them to experience the process of blogging. This always generates confusion and misunderstanding about the difference between a blogging service and a self hosted blog/website. Why would someone need to buy a website/blog if you can do it so easily from the free services.
There are many reasons and we will discuss a few but one of the biggest reasons is what happened to WordPress.com (another Free Blogging Service ) on March 3, 2011.
A DDOS attack floods a web server with so many data requests that it shuts it down – essentially crashing over 18 million hosted blogs.
The attack affects any and all blog sites. Everything from the casual bloggers, major media outlets [such as the Financial Post and Techcrunch], small business owners, and entrepreneurs, and others were in the dark for hours.
This is the downside to why you should have a self-hosted blog. The upside has monetary and strategy advantages.
I spent the last couple of days trying to find an easy way to add a visual site map to my sites. I realized I needed to incorporate this into my site building because I kept being reminded of it over and over again as I visited sites I respect and I just couldn't ignore anymore. Do you ever have things like that work in your life? It seems there comes a time when the signs are just so obvious you just can't ignore them anymore.
I started out by doing a search in the plug-in section of my dashboard thinking there was certainly going to be a lot of visual site map options. I knew there were a plethora of XML options so I just assumed there would be a plethora of visual site map options as well. My assumptions were wrong.
The differences between an XML site map and a visual site map are simple. XML sitemaps are created for the search engines to help them navigate through your site and rank pages. They don't produce a visual page for your visitors. I wanted a visual sitemap for my visitors and maybe you do to.
Here are a couple of the reasons why you would want to incorporate a visual site map to your site.
Summer 2011 Almost Over – What Have You Accomplished This Summer
I can’t believe the summer is in wrap up mode already. It has been a busy one for me and I hope you have grown as much, if not more than me this summer. I actually spent this last weekend a little outside of my comfort zone and took a Scuba class. I am not a strong swimmer and have only snorkeled a little bit off the shores of Panama City in water I could stand in so Scuba was a big leap for me.
What have you done lately to get outside of your comfort zone? This is where we grow and challenge ourselves to do something our minds are telling us we might not be able to do. I know because I just got done spending a weekend battling with myself about whether I was going to be able to go through the various underwater drills required to pass the Scuba class. Let me tell you, I came close to throwing in my mask and snorkel a couple of times. I just kept moving forward and when it was all over, I knew I had accomplished something I really didn’t know if I could do. Now, I can’t wait to get back into the water.
This simple mindset has put me on the path to success a number of times in my life. Here are a few of the secrets to gaining that mindset.
I'm just going to go ahead and say it. WordPress is amazing. When I built my first web site about 10 years ago it was so laborious I was extremely discouraged. I felt like it was going to be impossible to maintain it at any level with new content or just to add a page that would talk about something current going on with my company. It was little more then an electronic business card and not a very attractive one at that. Boy have times changed. 
Well here we are staring at the end of the year, only a few short days away. 
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Summer 2011 Almost Over – What Have You Accomplished This Summer
