One of my very first attempts at isolated photography. Learned a lot in the process. Lighting is key!
Wireless black and gray mouse isolated on white background. Get this on Photodune!
Build Awesome WordPress Landing Pages
October 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Landing pages are tricky.
Get them right, and they become one major piece of a booming business online.
Get them wrong, and, well … *nothing* happens.
And that’s just the writing part.
If you’ve ever tried to *build* a landing page in WordPress, you know it can get very frustrating, very fast. The basic idea is to strip all the extras away — on that page only — so your reader focuses on the action or product you want them to focus on.
So, away you go…
Remove the sidebars. Change the header. But don’t change the header on all the other pages of your site!
PHP. HTML. Javascript. CSS. Tracking down the right images and graphics.
Play with color, add an opt-in form (one that actually looks good). Add video, add audio, and on and on and on.
Unless you’re a developer, this stuff can drive you crazy, and waste a lot of your time.
Here’s one we built for a client of ours:
Here’s the thing, the Premise for WordPress landing page software was built to solve all these problems for you (and more).
Premise is a plugin for WordPress that takes all the hassle out of building effective landing pages that get results.
And it does it all, right from inside WordPress. Check it out here:
Beyond page building and design, you also get copywriting advice (right from inside WordPress), plus copywriting and conversion optimization seminars — all at no extra charge.
Premise for WordPress is the total package when it comes to getting people to take the action you’re looking for, without wasting hours trying to get your page just right.
Here’s a quick look at what you get when you buy Premise:
- Unlimited landing pages you can create
- Unlimited domains you can use Premise on
- Copywriting and conversion seminars
- Specific copywriting advice inside WordPress
- 1,100+ custom graphics library
- Technical support and updates
Anyway, if you want to take all the hassle out of building landing pages for your WordPress site, you should check out Premise right now:
Using My Desktop Calculator as a Handheld – No Photoshop
September 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I have broken the code to the Matrix. I can now interact with my computer in three dimensions. Ok, well not really. 
Here’s a cool photography trick I learned from Evan Sharboneau’s Trick Photography ebook.
Website Content Development
October 19, 2009 By 1 Comment
Now that you know what people are searching for, it’s time to write content around those keywords. When you plan out your content, each page should be focused on one keyword – called keyword focused content pages. Then sprinkle a few “long-tail” keyword phrases in your content.
Ok, let’s take the “wilmington nc storage” example from above. I want to build a page that targets the big number which happens to be “wilmington nc storage.” That’s what most people are searching for so that’s going to be our main keyword or keyword phrase. Then I want to take 3-5 supporting keywords and add them to the content.
My keyword focused content page plan may look something like this:
I’ve got my main keyword and 3 supporting keywords for my one page therefore capitalizing on not just the potential traffic of my main keyword but of 4 others as well. Properly optimized, that one page could show up on the first page of Google 2,850 times a month! That’s just ONE page. Now what if you had a hundred or more content pages on your site?
Are you starting to see why content is king?
You may be wondering if there is some magic ratio of keywords and actual content. Short answer is no. Back in the 90’s you could stuff your content full of nothing but keywords and you’d rank at the top. But search engine algorithms are so sophisticated these days that they can smell a spammy site from a mile away.
So when you’re writing, write for the human reader first, the search engine spiders second. Don’t force a keyword to fit where it just reads unnaturally.
In the storage example I’d probably write about 300-500 words with the main keyword showing up 3-4 times including the title, and each supporting keyword just once or twice.
Other places your keyword needs to show up are in the URL, title tag, and the H1 tag in the HTML of your content. Here’s a diagram illustrating how keywords can show up in your content and the other areas outside of the content that I recommend you add your keywords.
Here’s the HTML of that same page so you can actually see where those HTML tags exist.
Tracking Website Visitors With Google Analytics
October 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Don’t forget the analytics! Now that you’ve got your site set up, some content and just the right look and feel, I know you’re dying to start marketing it. But take 10 minutes first to setup a Google Analytics account. It’s free but the data you get from it is invaluable.
It’s so very important to know how visitors are getting to your site and what they are doing once they get there. You can even integrate it with Google Adwords, track ad campaigns and email campaigns. Probably one of the most powerful features is the ability to create goals and funnels to let you know conversion rates and ROI, if you’re selling directly from your site.
Here’s how to get the code and install it on your site.
After you’ve created your Google Analytics account, click Create New Website Profile. You’ll be adding a profile for a new domain.
Then click on continue. The next screen you see is going to be your tracking code. The New Tracking Code is the selected by default. That’s the one you want. The Legacy Tracking Code is the old code.
Then click in the box and it will automatically highlight the entire text. Then copy it and go over to your WordPress Dashboard.
If you are using WordPress you won’t have to mess with any code. And if you’re using a Studiopress theme, you don’t have to install any other plugin.
For my Studiopress Theme, I’m going to go to Corporate Theme Options then scroll to the bottom.
You’ll see a box labeled Analytics/Stat Tracker Code. Now just paste your tracking code in this box. Make sure the “Do you want to include analytics/stat tracker code?” dropdown box says Yes.
If you are not using a Studiopress theme, use can use the WordPress plugin Google Analyticator.
If you’re not using WordPress but are using another Content Management System, check their documentation to see what plugins or addons they support. Otherwise, find the footer includes file and paste the Google Analytics code just before the ending </body> code.
That’s really all there is to tracking website visitors with Google Analytics. You should start receiving data within 24 hours.
Your next step will be to determine what goals you’d like to setup. I recommend setting up a goal for subscribers to your newsletter and, if you sell anything directly from your site, the sales funnel.
Small Business Search Engine Optimization
October 19, 2009 By 1 Comment
The marketing question I get asked about above any others is, “How do I get traffic from the search engines?” like there’s some quick magical answer. So now I can just say go to my site and look up Search Engine Optimization.
The answer: It takes work! I know, bummer right?!
Getting your website ranked in the search engines is a combination of art and science, skill and research. It’s really not difficult and depending on your niche, it might be easy. But you are going to have to work for it.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short is made up of 3 basic ingredients:
- Keyword research
- Content
- Link building
You may or may not have heard the expression “Content is King.” This is a widely debated topic within the SEO community. What they are talking about is the content on your site is #1 above all else. The other side says that links are more important. Links are how many sites point to your site.
Bottom line is this, both are important! However, if you have no content on your site, I don’t care what anyone says, you’re not going to rank nearly as well or, maybe even more importantly, for as many keywords as if you did.
I’ve broken it down for you in detail with these three tutorials:
Keyword Research
Before you start writing your content, it’s a good idea to know what people are searching for. Remember how you search for your business and how others search for your business could be two completely different things.
learn more
Content
Now that you know what people are searching for, it’s time to write content around those keywords. When you plan out your content, each page should be focused on one keyword – called keyword focused content pages.
learn more
Link Building
The next component of SEO is link building. This is where you get as many websites to link to you as possible. Think of these links as “votes” of credibility.
learn more
Small Business Hosting
October 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Setup your hosting account at GatorHost.org.
Next, decide on which hosting package is right for you. You have a choice between Hatchling, Baby and Business. For most businesses, the Hatchling package will be just fine.
However, I would recommend going with the middle Baby package for one main reason: unlimited domains.
More than likely, you’ll be adding more domains to your account as you grow your business for various reasons, mainly redirects to affiliate programs when you incorporate them into your business plan for multiple sources of income.
You can also use additional domains for tracking purposes. This is really good for print advertising when you want to send someone to a particular page but don’t want some long URL like www.mydomain.com/go-to/this-page. You could use a domain such as www.myextradomain.com and redirect it to that page.
Once you’ve chosen your package, go ahead and register your domain. The domain is an extra $15 and renews annually.
You’ll be able to add additional domains at any time once your account is set up.
Take some time to think about your main domain though. You want something that is both easy to remember and easy to read. Try to avoid hyphens because that makes it really hard to read off to someone.
Imagine trying to say, “my hyphen company dot com” all the time. I heard a radio advertisement one time with a hyphen in the domain. I was like, “seriously?!”
Once you click on Next you’ll be taken to the order screen.
IMPORTANT – use coupon code hgc25 to get your first month of hosting free!
Once you’ve setup you account you’ll get an email like this one below. It’s going to take a bit of time for your new domain to actually be registered and active and found on the internet. Could take as long as 24-48 hours.
But you can get started in setting up your site using the host’s nameservers. Click on that link with /cpanel at the end.
Step 2 – Install Your Content Management System (WordPress).
Content Management System
October 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment
I want to show you how to setup a small business Content Management System (CMS) called WordPress. This software makes it very easy to build and edit your website eliminating the need to call your webmaster to make a simple little change.
Why WordPress?
I’ve used all kinds of content management systems such as Joomla, Drupal, and Site Build It. I’ve even built sites using no CMS at all, just straight HTML and PHP.
WordPress started out as a blogging platform but has grown into so much more than that now. You can build extremely vast websites with a blog component. You can even turn it into a full ecommerce store if you want.
I can tell you that once I tried WordPress there was no going back. I just wish it was the first one I tried instead of the last. But then I guess I couldn’t give you such a definitive suggestion.
If you’re getting nervous at this point, don’t worry. It’s only going to take about 5 minutes. Seriously…
Ok, once you are inside your control panel or CPanel, scroll down to the Software/Services section. Look for the blue smiley face icon Fantastico.
This is going to create the database for you and install the WordPress software. After you click that button you’ll be taken to this page:
Click on WordPress then click New Installation.
Unless you have some reason that you don’t want WordPress installed in the root directory, like your adding a WordPress blog to an existing site, go ahead and leave the Install in directory blank.
Enter your Admin access data. This is what will be used to access the backend of your site. It’s a good idea to write this down.
Enter your Base configuration. There will be some info pre-filled in for you but you’ll want to change the email address to your current email address since it’s probably not setup yet. If you leave it the way it is, the confirmation email will just be sent off into cyberspace somewhere.
The Admin nickname is up to you. Sometimes I leave it as admin other times I use my name as I have here. You can leave the site name and description the way it is because you’ll be changing it later anyway.
Now hit the Install button!
This creates the database. Then click on Finish installation and this will actually install WordPress in the database.
The URL I highlighted here will be the URL you use to get into the backend of your site. They tell you to bookmark it, go ahead and do that. In case you forget, it’s always going to be yourdomain.com/wp-admin.
That’s it! Your small business Content Management System and website is setup. Not bad huh?!
Now if you’ve done all of that directly after setting up your hosting account, your not going to be able to see your site yet. You’re probably going to have to wait a few hours until the domain registration goes through, or what they call “when the DNS resolves.”
If you try now, you’ll get a page like this:
If you want to see if your installation was successful, you can do that by going back to the email that Hostgator sent you. Look for this line:
You can view your site using that link until it resolves. When you click on that link, you should see a page that looks something like this.
If you see a page like that, Congratulations, you just created your site!
Once your DNS resolves, you can move on to the next step – Designing your site.
