Dan Scalco says, “Your website serves as the digital storefront for your business. If it doesn’t look appealing, load quickly or even have a mobile version, customers are going to keep walking. Many small business owners rely on their website to bring in a steady stream of leads and educate potential customers on what they offer. However, when it comes to designing and developing a website, most of those same small business owners think they can’t have all the bells and whistles that larger businesses have. But that’s not true. Why? Meet WordPress. WordPress is a free platform that... [...]
Archive for the 'WordPress Optimization' Category
Page Load Speed is a key ingredient in the search engine algorithms for ranking, along with mobile-responsiveness, backlinks, and more. Not only that, speed can make a difference in whether a visitor stays around to look at your site or bounces off to some other site. Tuning your site for better speed is critical if it is to bring you long-term success. But, isn’t this a job for experts? Yes, it is. But fortunately for the rest of us, experts can capture their knowledge in software that can act as a portable expert. If done well, tuning software can look into the “behind the scenes”... [...]
Sonia Simone says, “If you want to build a software business, there are a lot of advantages to the world of WordPress plugins. To begin with, you have a built-in audience of committed users. That audience is massive — around a quarter of the planet’s websites use WordPress. And that number is growing every day. But we all know that “Build it and they will come” is a myth — for software or any other business. There are tens of thousands of plugins with just a few downloads, and a few successful standouts. Here’s how to put your awesome plugin in the second category.”. 7 Keys... [...]
Brian Clark says, “A business powered by digital products is ideal. It’s still hard work (naturally), but you don’t have the particular headaches of dealing with clients or shipping physical goods. If you’re considering building a digital business (or adding to your existing one), the premium WordPress market is definitely something you should consider. WordPress powers more than 25 percent of the websites in the world, and there’s a constant demand for themes, plugins, hosted solutions, and more. The key to success is avoiding the common mistakes that entrepreneurs commit when entering... [...]
Angela Petteys says, “Setting up and using Yoast SEO When you’re working with a self-hosted WordPress site, the Yoast SEO plugin is one of the most valuable tools you can have. Yoast SEO is one of the most widely popular WordPress plugins around and it’s easy to understand why. Whether you’re running a personal blog or you’re a SEO professional managing a website for a client, Yoast is a powerful tool that can help you make your site as search engine-friendly as possible. Yoast SEO can be installed on any self-hosted WordPress site. (Sorry, free WordPress.com bloggers.) It’s easily... [...]
Matt Mansfield says, “It’s 9 a.m. on a Tuesday and one of Tom’s regular customers just called to let him know that the website is down. Jumping into action, Tom calls his hosting company only to find out that his website database has become corrupted thanks to the new plugin he added last week. Their advice? Restore his site using the latest backup. As he hangs up the phone, reality hits: he hasn’t backed up his company’s website for over eight months. He knew it had to have it done, but it just kept getting put off in the face of more urgent-seeming tasks. Head in his hands, Tom... [...]
Sergey Stefoglo says, “WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. There’s a good chance you’ll need to optimize or work on a website that uses WordPress, if you haven’t already! Whether you’re a business owner, designer, developer, PPC expert, SEO consultant, or writer — getting familiar with WordPress is a smart move. When I started out in SEO, I worked with local businesses that hired smaller firms to design or develop their sites. Naturally, most people gravitated towards WordPress as their CMS of choice: it was easy to customize, even... [...]
Matt McGee says, “WordPress version 4.5 is now available, bringing what the developers call a “more streamlined experience,” whether you’re writing a blog post or building/tweaking your site. There’s nothing that you’d call a significant change or upgrade, but 4.5 does add convenient responsive design preview toggles so users can preview how their site will look on different devices. There are also new formatting shortcuts that make it easier to add horizontal lines and/or format text as code, as well as the ability to add links inline while you write. One under-the-hood change... [...]
Sarah Gooding says, “This week Mandrill announced that it will be discontinuing its free tier for transactional emails. As of March 16th, new Mandrill users will create their accounts through MailChimp and existing users will be required to merge their accounts with a MailChimp account where they will be charged $20+/mo for transactional emails. The deadline for merging accounts is April 27th. MailChimp is choosing to focus on delivering “personalized transactional” emails that require more design. For those who want to continue delivering utility type emails, the company recommends... [...]
Jerod Morris says, “In any description of WordPress features, there’s one word you’re sure to see: Free. This is, of course, true. The files necessary to install WordPress on a server and run it are indeed free. A casual content producer could even sign up at WordPress.com and run their entire website for free, never paying a dime if all they wanted were the most basic features. But you are no casual content producer. You use WordPress like we use WordPress: as a serious business tool to drive serious revenue”. What Is the True Cost of Building and Managing a WordPress Website? ‘Copyblogger’... [...]