Two of my favorite things are food and marketing, so a blog post about how restaurants can cost-effectively market themselves was bound to happen. Here are a couple of quick ideas that have either been percolating in my head or I’ve noted area restaurants doing:
1. Twitter and blogging: There are endless possibilities for using twitter and blogs to promote your restaurant:
Today’s Specials - I don’t know about you, but if I was following twitter posts and I saw that my favorite restaurant was tweeting their daily specials, my mouth would be watering and I’d be calling up everyone I could think of to find someone to join me for a meal! There are tools that will allow your twitter posts to appear on your site/blog, too! So, without having to write them in multiple places, folks coming directly to your site/blog, can see these specials, as well.
Last Minute Event Associated Twitter Discounts: So, you just remembered that today is Bike to Work week and your staff things it would be a fun promotion to offer anyone on their bike or using an EcoPass to get a 20% discount. SpudsBros, on the Pearl Street Mall just did this recently. Though I don’t know if it was last min or planned, but they accomplished it without advertising costs, by simply mentioning it on their Twitter page. It’s that simple to do last min promotions!
Wine List additions, or any additions/changes to the menu- if you are a restaurant and you have new items, why not share that news with the local twitter community? You could also write a blog post (provided you have one set up on your site - and you should), describing the new item and the positive response its already received. After blogging about it, tweet your post’s url. This not only allows folks already visiting your site to see these insights, but also gets your twitter followers over to your site and… hopefully… making a reservation!
Chef’s Tips- again, this would be a great use of your blog, and after you write a tip, go over and share the link with Twitter. If you can’t think of any tips, you can always contact UniqueThink for a free one hour consultation, to get you started.
2. E-Newsletters:
Who would want to be on the email list for your restaurant? Well, I would if you were my favorite establishment. I am currently on a few, ranging in price from low budget to high end. So, don’t think your dining facility is above this idea or below it, for that matter. The email lists I am on all do things differently, but below are some of my ideas - by the way, I recommend Constant Contact for cost-effective, high quality do-it-yourself email newsletters. And, below offers quick ways to gather content:
Using Existing Content: Those blog posts you have been writing (Remember, the Additions to the Menu and the Chef’s Tips, to name a few), are all great content to share with your email list. Once a month, pick a few existing posts and summarize them in your newsletter. Or do it the opposite way, write items for the newsletter and then post it online, too. So, everyone benefits. Some folks won’t come back to your blog to hear what you have to say, they want the newsletters in their inbox. Others won’t sign up for the emails, so this lets you share the same great content with both types of folks.
Featured Recipes: OK, so some kitchens aren’t going to give away their recipes no matter what I say, but I say give it all away. Just because you profile a recipe, doesn’t mean folks are going to stop coming in. After all, there will always be folks like me, who as hard as I try (and I don’t try very hard), will never be able to duplicate the taste of your staff preparing and presenting it to me. I’d rather have you cook and clean up and just enjoy the experience. But, if you are not going to give away that award winning dish of yours, at least offer last weeks or last month’s special that you won’t be putting back on the menu anytime soon, so we can enjoy it again, until you tweet to us that it’s available as part of your specials.
3. Offline options:
These two actually both came from one of my favorite restaurants - Leaf. If you are in Boulder, CO, and are a veghead - or even if you aren’t - and want vegetarian global cuisine using the finest organic, seasonal ingredients, this is the place to go. I have taken many meat eaters who have loved this spot. But, this is not about how great their food is, though it is. This post is about some unique marketing ideas I’ve seen them do recently:
Discount on Receipt- Studies show that it is easier to sell to an existing customer than to obtain a new one. Plus, if someone is loyal to you, why not give them a perk. Too many times establishments give discounts to new folks, with promotions geared to first time visitors, but why not award the true fans. On the bottom of the receipt, you can give them a 10% off their next meal. Some chain restaurants do something similar, but make you call in and take a survey. Though the survey info might be worth the cost and expense to a large chain, it is probably too costly for the independent establishments to benefit from the insights. So, why not just get the folks who like you back into your restaurant without the hassle of doing an extra step. I know, when the Leaf, in Boulder, did this a few months back (for a limited time, their receipts offered 10% off the next meal) they not only got me to come back, but it stayed ‘top of mind’ as I carried it in my wallet, to pull it out when we were trying to decide where to go for a meal. In the case of Leaf, they happen to be owned by the same group as some of my other area favorites, and each one had the same note on their receipts, to try the Leaf. Maybe it was because the Leaf was the newest or least known of the 4. But think about it, this promotion didn’t cost them to advertise. They were either marketing to existing clients from the other restaurants or, in the case of the Leaf itself, who also included the discount on their receipt, it offered a perk to loyal customers. I know I appreciated the loyalty discount. Chances are, if you were a fan of one of the other 3 restaurants, you’d liked the menu selections at the Leaf and be open to trying it, even if you weren’t an exclusive veghead (because you knew the food would be high-quality).
Cost-effective Branded Take Out Boxes - OK, I admit, I love left overs! Nothing better than getting to re-enjoy more of the delicious meal I hadn’t gotten enough of the night before. Plus, maybe it’s my grandmother’s voice in my head, but I can’t throw food away, so if there is any of my meal left over, it’s coming home with me. Recently, when I asked Leaf for a To-Go box for my sweet potato fries (which are too good to end up in the trash), they came back with an effective, yet low-cost branded box. On it, in pencil, the staff had written the words Leaf 6/26/09, drew a quick image of a leaf and wrote Fries underneath. I thought this was brilliant, and as you can see from the image I took, it didn’t take them more than an extra 15 seconds, but it made a big impression on me, because:
It is always good to know how long somethings been in my fridge
It showed they were paying attention and gave me the correct leftovers, as well as giving me the reminder later which to-go box is which (remember, I take my left-overs home from everywhere)
It looks pretty, even if it only took a few seconds to do it
And, this is the brilliance of it, if I worked in an office with other folks, and I brought my leftovers to work, it would become a talking point. My co-workers would be saying, “Oh, you went to the Leaf? How was it?” And we all know word of mouth is the best marketing their is…
In addition to a Doggy-bag, this works great for any TAKE-OUT orders, too!
So, hopefully some restaurants are reading this and taking the advice to heart. If you own a food establishment or know someone who does, definitely contact me for a 1-hr free consultation, to find unique ways for you to use online and offline marketing ideas. Or, if you have some ideas to share, we encourage you to post them below, because we’d all love to hear them!
OK, many of you have been asking us to do this, and it ends up that due to family circumstances Doug won’t be able to teach his normal Wordpress Workshop for Boulder Digital Arts. So, Angela Bowman and I will be doing it for him.
If you have been wanting to learn how to set up Wordpress.org for yourself, instead of hiring me to do it for you, this is the time and place.
You actually benefit from both Angela and my own experience. Interestingly, we both took Doug’s class a couple of years before we met each other. So, when we did meet, we were so excited to find someone else who loved building websites (not just blogs), from the fantastic Wordpress tool set.
Anyway, for these classes, you get both of us teaching you all we learned from Doug, originally, plus all we’ve learned since.
So take full advantage of it. Instead of paying one of us our normal hourly fee, you get both of us for 3 full hours, per class.
There are two options, and taking both classes could be beneficial, depending on your goals.
The first Workshop is for those who want to run the site themselves, to understand the power of Wordpress.org as a content-creation or management tool, plus a review of the marketing advantages of using it.
The other workshop is for using Wordpress.org as a site-building tool ( bit more technical, so it’s geared toward those who want to learn all the nooks and crannies).
There will be a review of plugins during both classes, and some of the content will overlap, so if you have questions on which to take, call me and we’ll figure it out.
Sign Up Now, while there are seats available! Or contact me with any questions
I spoke at the Denver Coach Federation, last night. My presentation was called It’s A Blog. It’s A Website. It’s a Marketing Tool…It’s Wordpress!
I told everyone I’d give them my slide presentation on why to use Wordpress to build your site and blog. So, here it is in two forms. One is as a pdf and the other as slideshow.
Whether you were at the event last night or not, feel free to enjoy an introduction to Wordpress. Either download the It’s Wordpress pdfor simply view the slideshow below:
FYI: The Denver Coach Federation has a great group of folks and it was fun to hear about their individual specialties.
Two of my existing Do-It-Yourself Wordpress clients were there, Lee from Retire Your Way, LLC and Mary Lynne from Be Great Teen Coaching, LLC. Right there, that shows you the range of amazing coaches, from those inspiring the youth to those enlivening life after careers.
Plus I got to meet a bunch of others, including a few who are already setting up their 1 hr free consultations, so that they can take advantage of all the amazing advancements of Wordpress.
P.S. A big NOD to Dhyan Atkinson of The Five Essential Skills- who not only gave my name to Barbara of the Denver Coach Federation, but also introduced me to Lee, Mary Lynne and many of my other existing clients. If you need Essential Business Skills for Your Small Business, contact Dhyan. And, thanks to Cindy from Kalmarx Design, for the intro to Dhyan. A great example of how working together within your community can bring about amazing opportunities. Check out Kalmarx Design, for all your illustration and design needs! Cindy also has a fun cartoon line called the Optimistic Dog - can’t wait to share that link with you all!
Oh, and let me know what you think of the slideshow or if you have questions about Wordpress, by commenting below…
OK, I know, I am a Wordpress Dork, but really, this thing just keeps getting better and better!
I must admit, when I heard about 2.8, I didn’t expect much. After all, Wordpress 2.7.1 did such a great job that I wasn’t missing much, other than the theme uploader. And, with Vladimir Prelovac’s Theme Test Drive plugin, I didn’t even miss that!
So what could Wordpress 2.8 have that I’d need? Well watch the video and you’ll see.
If you haven’t watched the video yet, and you are still reading this, I’ll give you a hint of why to install 2.8: (Angela, this one is for you) You really won’t need to open up the FTP for editing php!
If you aren’t coding, that one won’t be too exciting, but then check out the Widgets section. In fact, here, just watch the video. And, if you are as big a dork as me, you’ll be going “No Way! How Cool!” through the whole thing.
When it comes to Wordpress 2.8, dubbed Baker - after the great Chet Baker - to this dork, it is like the first time I heard Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. I find myself torn between enjoying it quietly on my own and making everyone I can find listen to why it is so great.
One of my clients who does a lot with videos, Freddy at Atomic Tango, shared this info with me and I had to share it with all of you.
As you’ll see from the video below, Wordpress.com is getting into the video hosting business. What does that mean? Well, if it means what I believe it does, it means these things:
You can now host a video at Wordpress.com directly - you don’t have to host your own videos somewhere else and then embed them into your own site
As Freddy points out, you aren’t advertising for some other site, because there doesn’t appear to be a logo - like YouTube puts in the corner of their embedded videos
Folks can easily share your video by embedding it to their own site (such as self-hosted versions of Wordpress.org), as I have done with the below video from VideoPress’s site - which will give you more insights on what tools it includes and why this tool is very interesting, so go ahead and watch that now:
This sounds like a great idea for folks at Wordpress.com.
The biggest downside of things - that I can think of at the moment - is that there isn’t currently a way for Wordpress.org bloggers to directly host using this cool tool, we still have to have a Wordpress.com account, upload it there and embed here. But in most cases you would already have a Wordpress.com account, because you’re probably using Akismet to protect your comments and that is the only place to get your API key. So, you could use that existing account for hosting the videos and embed here. Though that is kind of like hosting it on YouTube - minus their logo presence.
Also, if you aren’t hosting the video at a high traffic site, like YouTube, then you aren’t getting their extra exposure for your video.
So what do you think? If you are using Wordpress.org already, is it worth it to use this new option? Maybe for the sizing and other features listed in the video? Watch the video and let me know your thoughts, by commenting below!
When you hear the words “keyword” or “keyword phrases” do you know what they mean to you, your business and especially your clients?
So many times, when I begin to work with a client, the first thing they say, before they even have content for their home page, is “I just want to rank #1 on Google.” So, I naturally ask them which keyword or keyword phrase they plan to rank #1 for? And, that is when I often learn that they hadn’t thought much past the desire to rank well.
I can relate. We are constantly hearing that we need to rank well on the search engines, in order to get traffic to our sites. And, though this is partly true, I believe there are many options to get traffic to your site, but we’ll talk more about other options in a future post. For now, let’s talk about ranking appropriately with the search engines.
For the purpose of this post, we will focus on the topic of keywords and keyword phrases. So, let’s start with a quick definition of these terms related to search engines:
Keyword or Keyword Phrase:A word, term or phrase that someone types into the search box on a search engine site (such as Google, Yahoo or MSN), to find information or sites that talk about ‘their’ subject of interest.
I want you to be sure you understand this: the definition does not say a term that you, and folks in your industry, use to describe your services or products. What it does simply state is that it is a term someone else (a potential client or customer) might use to find info about the subject they are interested in.
For example, though you want to rank #1 for your company name and products, there are folks who may not know you, yet, so you also want to rank for the terms they’d use to solve their problem.
Here is an example that might be helpful.
A few years ago, I went to meet with a company that duplicated CDs. Before I walked in, I did a few searches, to see what they had already begun and how they were ranking in the search engines. I couldn’t find them for any of the ‘obvious’ terms I was searching for (cd duplication, cd manufacturing…). So, you might be as surprised as I was when their president said to me, “We’re # 1 on Google!“
“Really? Wow, that is great, but may I ask for what terms?” I politely questioned, because either I had done something wrong or he was using a term I wasn’t looking up (and maybe his potential clients wouldn’t use his term, either).
He proceeded to show me and, when he did, it became clear why he was #1.
The way he was looking up the term, and the way he had optimized his website, was to use the following full keyword phrase, exactly as it is written below:
“CD/DVD Manufacturer and Duplication Services”
Now, let’s break this down, because - at first site - it does seem like folks might find him this way:
But let me ask you, if you were looking for someone who did CD manufacturing, would you type in the term exactly as he had it? Take another look and remember, he was ranked # 1 exactly as it is written above - slash mark between CD/DVD, and all. Because he did his search with quote marks around it, as well, this meant his clients would have to use the words in the exact order they were in and how they were presented to find his company’s only #1 ranking search term.
He was no where to be found on the terms individually, because he had only placed the words on his site as they appeared in his search term (minus the quote marks).
That would be like me doing a search for…say… the above sentence. Chances are I would easily rank #1 if I did a search for the above sentence (once the search engine’s indexed this page), because no one else has written it the same exact way I have. But would anyone be looking for it to find my company? If not, it doesn’t matter how well I rank for it!
Most likely, if you were looking for his CD duplication services, you would be looking for the term CD duplication or the term CD duplicators. Maybe you would be looking for CD manufacturing (not manufacturer). But chances are, you would not go to Google and type in CD/DVD (because most people don’t think to put the slash in between). So you would never see him. In fact, I went to Google’s keyword research tool, to see how many folks were looking for the term, as he used it, so I could show you the results.
As you can see from this image, there is not enough data (meaning no one is typically looking for that full term that he ranks #1 for). However, Google does provide you with additional searches to consider. This is handy, because look how many folks are searching for CD duplication or CD duplicators, not to mention DVD duplication and DVD duplicator (notice no s at the end of that specific keyword phrase). Also, you might notice folks were looking for the term dvd cd duplicator, which is interesting to note (and could be a whole post of its own), but no one searches for it as CD/DVD (it isn’t a natural instinct for most folks to add that slash to their search).
Let’s pause for a moment…
You may be saying, yeah, but if he includes that full term on his site and he is ranking #1 for it in any fashion, doesn’t that mean he’ll rank for the individual terms, as well? Well, that is a maybe. See, if there are 200 or more sites who are optimizing their site with the correct keyword phrases that do rank well, then he will be pushed below them - meaning someone would have to search a long time to find him.
If you know that folks are looking for the term CD duplication or, better yet, CD duplicators, you should be consistently using the term or terms appropriately throughout your site. Not the term “CD/DVD Manufacturer and Duplication Services.”
If no one is looking for the keyword phrase you are using, then it doesn’t help you to rank #1 for it!
This brings us to another example. In this case, it is of a keyword phrase lots of folks are using, but one that is useless for the site to use (fortunately, the client realized it):
I have a client who offers software internationalization services. It’s a specialized field, but basically they work with the strings of code (the backend of the software) to prepare it to work in any language.
Their president told me he had a disappointing experience with a search firm. They were trying to rank him for terms that didn’t make sense to his clients and he knew it.
They were suggesting he use the keyword phrase “translation software”, because they found it ranked better than some he was using. And, yes, they were correct, a good number of folks were searching for that keyword phrase. The problem was most of those folks were looking for:
A product like Rosetta Stone (which teaches you how to speak another language)
A way to translate a simple line of text from one language to another - you know, like how to say “Hello, it is nice to meet you” in French
The second searchers were looking for a free online tool like Babelfish not a company that organizations like Yahoo and HP might go to to make sure their millions of lines of code work in any language.
Fortunately, my client knew his own clients well enough to know the search firm was giving him bad advice, at that moment. Keep this lesson in mind, just because a word ranks well doesn’t mean it will bring the folks who need your product. Maybe a lower ranking word will bring better targeted folks to you.
The thing I want you to take away from this post is that ranking well in the search engines requires understanding how your customers would search for you!
If you don’t know, then ask some of your existing customers. Whenever a client calls me for the first time, I ask them how they heard about me. Granted, for me it’s usually from a referral, which I like even better than ranking #1 in any search engine, because it means another client recommended my services! But on those occasions that folks said they found me on Google, I always ask them if they remembered what search term they used.
I also listen to what terms they use when they speak to me, because they may give me clues there, as well.
As I’ve mentioned before, my forte is online marketing, not SEO, but they go hand and hand. I believe I do a good job at starting folks out on their SEO campaigns. When I am working with a new client’s optimization, one of the first things I do is spend a minimum of 1-3 hour just doing a keyword research campaign (I’d prefer more time, but again, this is just to get them started).
However, before I begin the research, I ask the client what terms they think folks are using to search for their types of products or services. Then I go to a series of keyword researching tools to begin to capture results. BUT, I always keep in mind that just because a keyword ranks well, such as translation software, it doesn’t mean it is the word potential clients are using to find them. So, I go to Google and do some searches to see what types of companies are listed for that specific keyword phrase.
And, of course, while I am doing that, I encourage my clients to check with a couple of existing customers. Because, after all, their customers are the best resources, as they were once prospects, too.
Here are my suggestions of free keyword research tools, to get you started:
This post is just the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to keywords and keyword phrases, but I do hope it expands your mind and offers some good advice.
By the way, if you haven’t already, you may also benefit by reading two previous posts on UniqueThink’s blog, about search engine optimization:
My presentation was called It’s A Blog, It’s A Website, It’s A Marketing Tool…It’s Wordpress. It talks about using Wordpress as both your blog and your complete website.
Jill WhalenCEO and Founder of High Rankings wrote an interesting article about SEO Expectations in her newsletter, shortly after I posted my SEO post on this site.
It is a sharp read, about being realistic in your SEO campaign. It doesn’t sugarcoat anything, so if you are looking for someone who is going to tell you they can get you to #1 overnight, this is not the place. This is actually why I trust Jill - she doesn’t make false claims, she is realistic about what it takes to get ranked well in the search engines. If you are looking for instant gratification, her article may not do the trick. It will, however, talk about realistic steps to take to make your site rank well consistently!
After reading it, I contacted Jill and asked her if I could mention it here. She promptly gave me permission and sent me a link to where it is posted online. I think it is a great read about setting real expectations for your SEO campaign.
I especially agreed with these comments under the subheading of What Exactly Is Good Content?:
Good content is unique. Really and truly unique. It is creative ideas that simply popped into your head which nobody else in your space has thought of yet…
And it’s (say it with me) making your site the best it can be for your site visitors AND the search engines.
And, be sure to read her section called It’s About Targeted Traffic, Not Rankings - which starts with:
As we move forward in this industry, webmasters, site owners, and SEOs need to shift their focus from asking how they can get this keyword to this position in this engine to how they can get more targeted traffic and convert it into customers.
For some reason, lately, people are asking me more and more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I figured instead of writing directly to each of them, I’d put a post together to share what I know with everyone. This way, you might be able to start doing some of these tips, yourself.
Recently, I had written an email to one of my business associates (Eliana at Sidewalkcafedesign.com), who asked me what I could share with her about SEO. I am using that info to start this conversation.
Since I wrote this for someone with a bit of SEO knowledge, if something doesn’t make sense, let me know.
Also, if, by chance, you are an expert in SEO and you are reading this, please feel free to provide ‘constructive comments’ - if I did get something incorrect. That way, we can all learn from the experience.
Before I begin, I want to emphasize these two things:
1. The Search Engines don’t share how they factor their ranking systems.
The content in the below post contains many of the best practice examples I have learned, about how you can possibly help your site. They are things I do for my clients, based on things I have heard (from reputable SEO firms), but I don’t guarantee to get you to #1 using content from this one single post. That takes a lot of time and effort. These are just ideas to help you along the way.
2. Check the date of this post.
Since the search engines are always changing, if you are finding this post a year or two from now than I’d like to say “Hello to the future” and remind you that the search engines change their algorithms constantly. However, since most of these are best practices, they should not hurt you, even in the future. Though it is wise to look for newer posts, to stay current.
Alrighty, then, here we go:
It is critical to get the appropriate keywords for your site, so let’s address that for a moment. It doesn’t matter what you as the site owner think people are searching for. What matters is what people really are searching for, not the terms used in your industry or internally in your office, but what the person looking for your product or service is typing in as their search term. Know how people are searching, then put those words in the title, description, and keywords (as mentioned in a bullet below) and, especially, in the content on your site. Because, let’s face it, it doesn’t make sense to have them appear in the code, if you are not using them in your copy
Write the content (a.k.a. copy or text, as well as any image captions) of each page, in a natural voice. Don’t try to force the use of keywords. But, after you write the original content, go back and see if there are appropriate places where you might be able to change the sentence to appropriately include that keyword. You need to remember, it must be easy and natural for the site visitor (the person) to read that sentence. Search engines are getting very sophisticated and are now learning to read the sites like a human, so even more reason (not that you needed any) to write for the human visitor’s experience
When Search Engine spiders (a.k.a. crawlers and robots) come to your site, they start at the top of the home page (viewing the site’s code, which also shows the content), so make sure you include good keywords high up on the page
There are behind the scenes things (in the site’s code) called Meta Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords – that the search engines will read. Make sure you or your web person takes advantage of these sections and include the appropriate keywords.
Meta Title: This is what appears at the top of your browser window and as the title for a Google Search Result. Each page’s title tag should contain the keywords that are used in the copy on that page.
Meta Description: The description should be no more than 160 characters and should tell folks what they should expect to find on that page. This content is often what Google uses as its description for your search results
Meta Keywords: Current wisdom is that the Meta Keywords section of the code aren’t being factored into the search ranking formula, because people used to ’stuff’ them with inappropriate words (high ranking words that weren’t relevant to their site, in an attempt to rank higher). However, it is still good practice to include your appropriate keywords in the Meta Keyword field, because you never know when that factoring might change.
Make sure each and every individual page (or blog post) has a relevant Meta Title, Description and use of Keywords – don’t just use generic Meta data on all pages.
H1 tags (headlines) should contain strong keywords. Too often I see people write the word Welcome as the first and only thing for the headline on the home page – big mistake and waste of a good keyword opportunity!
Write for the human experience. Yes, this is kind of a repeat of what I wrote a few bullet points above, but it is that important that I kept it in here twice. Search Engines are trying to emulate the visitor’s experience, so make sure you write for the visitor, not just the search engines. (After all, if you’re ranked #1, but then when folks get to your site, they can’t connect with the content or easily navigate through your site, then you are loosing them.) The human visitor is who will be buying your services or products, not the search engine robots, so the humans’ experiences are always top priority.
Image (and other media) File Names and Alt tags should use keywords. Often I see image files called something like 10008438.jpg. Since the search engines see those image files, why not, when appropriate use a keyword. After all, that might help you, too, if you need to find that image file, later, you know what it is called. And, alt tags don’t only help the search engines, but also someone who is visually impaired and using an audio reader to ‘hear’ the content of your site
Use clean urls (no “?” and stuff like that in the url address) - here is an example:
Bad Url (this is for example purposes and not a real link): http://www.uniquethink.com/?site_id=619&page_id=25384&id_sub=25384
Isn’t the second one clearer to understand - plus, from what I have been told, most search engines don’t read anything after the ?, anyway.
It seems the search engines think it is less important to link to other people (though it is very nice and I link to people I like all the time). I have heard it is more important for them to see other sites linking back to you. Links from other ‘authority sites’ (For example: Relevant, well known sites, in your industry), that send folks back to your site, weigh heavy to the algorithms – so, it is just as important to get people linking back to the site. Besides, if you can get folks linking back to you, their audience is also learning about you - so it is a win/win situation. How to get those sites to link back to you is a post of another color (a.k.a. a future post)
It also helps to have links from one page to another – on your site - A site map and Internal links directing from one page to another seem to help index more pages of your site
The other big factor that search engines take into account is FRESH, RELEVANT, ORIGINAL CONTENT that is CONTINUOUSLY ADDED
As for Wordpress, specifically:
Search engines love blogs, because the main concept of a blog is to continuously be providing fresh, relevant, original content
Wordpress doesn’t merely wait for the search engines to come to the site (like a traditional site does), but it also pro-actively sends each post (not pages, but posts) to the search engines – that is why I use the blog as a marketing tool (re-purpose newsletter content, use it for case studies/success stories, articles…) So, each time you write something, as a post, it gets submitted to Google (and others) upon publishing, thru RSS
Wordpress is set up well to help with a lot of the above mentioned items – like clean urls, putting in alt tags, H1… and there are great (free) plugins – like the All-in-one-SEO tool that make it really easy to add appropriate customized titles and descriptions to any page/post
OK, that is a lot of info. So, why not start with the obvious, keywords. Take note about what I mentioned about them. Don’t use what you think are important keywords, but instead find out how your prospects might be searching for you. Then start using those terms naturally within the content of your site. Then come back to this post and find another tip from above and start implementing that one. You can also contact me. I give a 1-hr free consultation to potential clients and we can use that hour to review these tips or talk specifically about your site.
Again, if you have any tips or suggestions of your own - feel free to share that, or any constructive comments, below.
I will be updating this page with more info, but wanted to get it up and running now, so you can get these plugins up and running now:
Akismet: Spam Filter for your blog comments - here is what they have to say:
Who can? You have better things to do with your life than deal with the underbelly of the internet. Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again
All-In-One SEO: The ultimate in search engine optimization plugins! Here are their comments about the plugin:
Automatic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) out of the box for your wordpress blog …
This plugin is streamlined for some best practices for Wordpress SEO. While it gives you many options the defaults reflect the settings I recommend using.
Google Analytics Plugin: To me, there is no question, you need Google Analytics for your site stats. It tells you everything other than the visitor’s name and what they were wearing. You’ll know where in the world they are, what type of computer they are using and…most importantly…which of your pages they perused. This plugin allows you, in a few easy steps, to add the powerful Google Analytics script to every single page of your site/blog - even before you write it! Now that is power! Not that you need to know what they say about it, but here you go:
The Google Analytics plugin for WordPress lets you easily add Google’s web tracking script to your site
Broken Link Checker: I love this plugin! It is new to me, but one of my favorites already! Too often links go bad, this plugin checks your complete site and lets you know if there are any links that don’t work anymore. Here is what they wrote about it:
Sometimes, links get broken. A page is deleted, a subdirectory forgotten, a site moved to a different domain. Most likely many of your blog posts contain links. It is almost inevitable that over time some of them will lead to a “404 Not Found” error page. Obviously you don’t want your readers to be annoyed by clicking a link that leads nowhere.
FYI: This link checker also checks for images that are now missing! Brilliant!
Here are additional plugins, that you may need:
Exclude Page - If you want to hid pages from your navigational bar, this plugin is great. This is one you may or may not need, depending on the theme (template) you choose. Some theme developers are now including this option for you. Here is what they say about it:
This plugin adds a checkbox, “include this page in menus”, which is checked by default. If you uncheck it, the page will not appear in any listings of pages (which includes, and is usually limited to, your page navigation menus).
ShareThis: A great social media tool. It lets you give folks a way to help share your posts with the world. Here is what they have to share about their plugin:
ShareThis makes a WordPress plugin that provides an unobtrusive way for your visitors to post your site content to various social bookmarking sites, or send a link via e-mail & other communication channels (like Facebook and MySpace) to a friend.
Cost-effective Branded Take Out Boxes - OK, I admit, I love left overs! Nothing better than getting to re-enjoy more of the delicious meal I hadn’t gotten enough of the night before. Plus, maybe it’s my grandmother’s voice in my head, but I can’t throw food away, so if there is any of my meal left over, it’s coming home with me. Recently, when I asked Leaf for a To-Go box for my sweet potato fries (which are too good to end up in the trash), they came back with an effective, yet low-cost branded box. On it, in pencil, the staff had written the words Leaf 6/26/09, drew a quick image of a leaf and wrote Fries underneath. I thought this was brilliant, and as you can see from the image I took, it didn’t take them more than an extra 15 seconds, but it made a big impression on me, because:
