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Blogging

Get More Traffic to Your Business Blog

November 9, 2021 by Nancy Fields Leave a Comment

Best Ways to get More business blog Traffics thumbnail graphic for YouTube video

A few of my blog posts are attracting lots of visitors to my website each week, but they are older posts. Come behind the scenes. You’ll see want is working now and discover what will make my top performing posts even better. Step-by-step video below.

Improving my top performing blog posts

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Thankfully there’s Google Analytics so you can see your top performing pages.

[Read more…] about Get More Traffic to Your Business Blog

Filed Under: Blogging, business, List Building, video, WordPress

How To Remove the Date From Your WordPress Blog Sitewide…Plus

April 20, 2020 by Nancy Fields Leave a Comment

big broom sweeping dates off calendar concept blog post How To Remove Dates From Your WordPress Blog Sitewide
No Plugin Required!

Why Remove Blog Dates?

Dated content can seem old and no longer relevant, even if that is NOT the case.

If you don’t blog regularly and your last post is years old, remove the date to make your content ‘evergreen.’

Blog Post Dates Can Show Up in Three Different Places

  1. Excerpts on your Home page
  2. Excerpts on your Blog page
  3. On each Blog Post
Three screenshot views of where blog post dates can show up on WordPress 2019

How To Remove Your Blog Post Dates Sitewide — All At Once

This will remove your blog dates from all three places on the WordPress 2019 theme: (1) excerpts on Home page (2) Excerpts on Blog page (3) Blog Post

Go to your WordPress Dashboard —> Settings —> General

  1. Under Date Format select Custom:
  2. Delete F j, Y
  3. Click Save
WordPress 2019 screenshot of Date Format in Settings with areas highlighted to show how to remove blog post dates sitewide

How To Remove Dates From Each Blog Post Only

Go to your WordPress Dashboard —> Appearance —> Customize

  1. Select Additional CSS
  2. Add code this code: .entry-meta .entry-date.published {
    display: none;
    }
  3. Click Publish
WordPress 2019 blog page screen shot plus visual instructions how to remove blog date

NOTE: This code will remove all the meta data on your Blog Post: author name, date, Leave a comment
.entry-meta {
display: none;
}


How To Remove Blog Dates from Excerpts on Your Home Page

If you have a sampling of on your latest blogs on your homepage, and would like to remove the date, you’ll need to edit your homepage.

WordPress 2019 screen shots of blog excerpts on home page with areas highlighted to show how to remove the blog post date

Home page —> Edit —> Select Blog Excerpts area

  1. Select Block
  2. Click toggle button: when you click the button, it will turn from blue to white and your Blog dates will be removed
  3. Click Update button

Watch Me Remove Blog Dates From WordPress 2019

If you’d like to watch me remove blog dates, check out my video from my live 10-Minute Monday training.

Join Us LIVE On 10-Minute Monday

Would you like to attend my short trainings live? Fill out the form below, to receive an email invitation with a link to Zoom. You’ll also receive my guide on how to find great FREE images for your website, social media pages, or any promotion.

Hope to see you on the next 10-Minute Monday!

Filed Under: 10-Minute Monday, Blogging, WordPress

Jumpstart Your Business Blog

October 19, 2016 by Nancy Fields Leave a Comment

busy female executive illustrationHave you gone more than 30 days without posting a blog?

It happens. 

If you’re like me, when my personal and professional life get too busy, my blog is ‘the first to go.’ Unfortunately that means we’re not helping our businesses grow.

But I should know better because…

…if I don’t add 2,000 new words to my site each month, search engine robots, like Bing and Google, will loose interest in me. If search engines loose interest, it will be harder for customers to find me. (2,000 new words is about four short blog posts a month.)

And blogging:

  • adds new content which search engine robots love
  • builds authority
  • keeps me focused on my perfect customer
  • is conversational so it naturally builds KLT (know, like, trust)

The blogging platform that is perfect for business

In 2003, when WordPress began as a free blogging platform, I was building sites from scratch in Dreamweaver. The Dreamweaver sites:

  • didn’t have a blog,
  • they took months to build, plus
  • each time my clients wanted a “small” change, such as adding a new product, changing a price, or adding a new employee bio, it cost them more money.

Before long they were asking, “Can you teach my my office staff how to make changes?”

“Sure. If you want to buy Dreamweaver I’ll be happy to train them.”

Dreamweaver was expensive and the learning curve was steep. My clients wanted another solution.

Thanks to WordPress they could have the best of both worlds — a blog and a traditional website they could maintain themselves.

Free course to help jump start your business blog

If you haven’t jumped on the blogging bandwagon, or jumped off and want to give it another go, check out this free course from Blogging University called Websites: Build a Business Site.

You’ll need a WordPress.com account to sign up.

Even if you don’t take any courses from Blogging University, a WordPress.com account is still good to have because you’ll need it get a Gravatar, as well as use some useful WordPress plugins that will help your business website like Jetpack and Akismet.

See you around campus!

 

 

 

Filed Under: Blogging, business, WordPress

How I Created Over 80 Headlines Fast

September 14, 2016 by Nancy Fields 2 Comments

Boy Speed Driving in Box Car

I joined Jeff Walker‘s Launch Club in November 2015 to learn how to launch products and services online. Instead of doing things my tried-and-true way, I did what Jeff recommended.

My thinking was, if I’m paying an expert to show me the ropes, shouldn’t I follow their advice?

Lessons Learned

In the past I’ve written headlines after writing my blog post, web page, or e-book. Following Jeff’s advice I did just the opposite and achieved greater success.

How I Created Better Headlines — And More of Them

I first reviewed my notes about my perfect customer and thought about their problems and struggles.

Having only an vague idea of the type of product I wanted to create, I filled-in-the-blanks on headlines such as:

  1. How to_____________(solve a problem or achieve a dream) without ______________(normal undesirable solution)
  2. How to _____________ in 5 minutes
  3. 7 Ways to ________________(do something)

Jeff gave us eleven fill-in-the-blank headlines, and recommended writing out 50 possible headlines from the samples.

Some fill-in-the-blank headline examples seemed easier than others, so I kept writing until those headline ideas stopped flowing. By the time I finished I had 81 headlines! 

Not all were great, and it was difficult narrowing the list down to my top 10.

The next task was putting my top 10 headlines in front of a group of prospects to find out which headlines they liked best. Out of 45 people, one headline emerged as the winner — but only by one vote.

My biggest surprise was that the headline I thought would come out on top, ended placing near the bottom.

Headline Crafting Resource

How To Write Copy That Sells: The Step-By-Step System For More Sales, More Customers, More Often is a new book from an accomplished and seasoned copy writer, who also happens to be one of Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula superstars. 

In his chapter on headline creation, Ray Edwards  includes a headline template. I’ve also used Ray’s template to help me write better headlines:

  1.  The “How-To” Headline
    1. How to Write a Blog Post Every Day
  2. The “Transactional” Headline
    1. Try These 5 Tactics for a Week, And be Twice as Productive
  3. The “Reason-Why” Headline
    1. 7 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Social Media In Your Marketing
  4. The “Probing Question” Headline
    1. Why Don’t Doctors Get Sick?
  5. The “If-Then” Headline
    1. If You Can Follow a Recipe, You Can Write Better Headlines

Writing Headlines Not Your Thing?

Last week I spent the most enjoyable 2 hours writing headlines with my website client Victoria Travis. She needed to jazz up her sales letter and asked for my help.

Much to her surprise we started with the headline.

30 minutes into our session she protested, “This is hard. I don’t think I want to do this any more. Can’t we just work on the letter?”

We did work on her sales letter, but only after a few more attempts to draw out some stronger headlines. By the end she excitedly said, “I love my sales letter! I want to give you a testimonial!…

When I work with you, I feel I can say how I feel and you don’t ever seem to take it personally. That way I can stay in my ‘creative’ pre-frontal cortex and together, we create the very best work!”

Do you need help writing better headlines?

I’m not only a graphic designer who builds WordPress websites with all the bells and whistles, in my 20s I was also an editor at Glamour, Weight Watchers’ and Mademoiselle magazines — and I love helping people tweak their headlines and web copy.

Contact me by phone or email. Let me know how I can help you.

 

 

Filed Under: Blogging, business, List Building, Marketing Tagged With: headlines, How To Write Copy That Sells, Ray Edwards

How To Tag Your Website Images The Right Way

July 6, 2016 by Nancy Fields Leave a Comment

Imagine you’ve lost your eye site. How would you want someone to describe what’s in front of you?

When you’re tagging images for your website you need to put your ‘blind person hat’ on because people can look at an image and see its contents, but screen readers and bots (search engine robots) cannot.

Tagging images is good for SEO…

…It’s also a requirement if you want a good page ranking.

If you have images on your website that aren’t tagged, don’t worry. You can start today.

Finally, be descriptive when you’re tagging images, and use keywords when appropriate.

How to tag your images

  1. Resize your image(s) and put them in a file on your computer.
    Here’s what my file system looks like on my iMac. All images are put into a folder called “Assets,” and then subdivided into file names that make sense to me.Desktop Website Files
  2. Next, log-into your WordPress website. From your dashboard go to Media —> Add New
    NOTE: If your images are already in your media library choose Library. Click on the image you want to tag and begin at Step 6 below.WordPress dashboard Media Add New
  3. Click Select FilesWordPress Dashboard Media Select Files
  4. Navigate to the image on your desktop and click Open
    Once you choose your image you will be taken back to the Upload New Media page
  5. Click EditWordPress Dashboard Upload New Media window
  6. In the Edit Media page add a title
  7. Add Alternative Text (for screen readers & bots)
    1. if you do not add an alternative tag screen readers would ‘read’ alternative, which is not a good user experience
  8. Add a description (can be same words you used in Alternative Text field)
  9. Click Update

 

WordPress dashboard Edit Media page

 

Dos and Don’ts

Don’t use numbers or names that will not make sense to a screen reader, or bot. For example, the image I downloaded from Adobe was named AdobeStock_110326070.jpg. DON’T keep a name like this. Instead,

Do change the image name to something a blind person would understand such as “four-children-playing-tag-outdoors”

Filed Under: Blogging, SEO, WordPress Tagged With: keywords, tag images, WordPress

Blog Post Photo Not Showing Up on Facebook?

July 13, 2015 by Nancy Fields Leave a Comment

owl front face

Have you ever wondered why the photo you chose for your blog post does NOT show up on Facebook? Instead of your blog post photo, you might see your logo, or part of your website header banner.

Why Does This Happen?

If you don’t tell Facebook what information you want, the Facebook computers make an educated guess about what’s best.

What if you don’t agree with that choice? How can you tell Facebook what you want?

You need change the Open Graph protocol.

3 Ways to Tell Facebook What Photo to Display When Linking to Your Blog Post

  1. Manually add special “op” (Open Graph) meta tags to the head <head> of your website, or
  2. Use a plugin call WP Open Graph, or
  3. Use WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast. By default this plugin will display the first image on your blog post. If you want a different image, click the “Social” tab and insert the photo’s URL in the “Facebook Image” field: You’ll find the photo’s URL with your photo, in your WordPress media library.

Aren’t we the bee’s knees!

Filed Under: Blogging, SEO, Social Media Tagged With: Facebook

Does Google Think You’re a Nobody?

July 12, 2015 by Nancy Fields Leave a Comment

girl being bullied

Last week I stumbled upon a juicy MP3 from Copyblogger entitled SEO What You Need To Know in 2015 and Beyond, within which Sonia Simone compared Google to “a mean high school girl” because Google only cares about you if you’re unique and interesting: Otherwise you’re a nobody.

Why It’s Good To Be Popular

In the early days of the internet there were ways to “trick” the search engines to improve your page ranking, such as keyword stuffing.

Today, Google’s robots have gotten much more sophisticated. Not only will Google penalize your site for keyword stuffing, their update called Hummingbird, uses what’s called natural language recognition. ​Today the Google robots actually understand what you’re writing about!

The only way you’ll get noticed is if Google sees that others are interested in you.

What Does This Mean for SEO?

The experts at Copyblogger say…

  • You need to write properly,
  • you need to write what your audience cares about, and
  • you need to write something that makes your audience look good, so they want to share your posts.

3 Ways to Improve Your Search Ranking Immediately…and In This Order

  1. Draw attention to yourself by writing something your audience wants to share.
  2. Use language your perfect customer uses so they’ll find your great blog post. TIP: This is where keyword research comes in to play.
  3. And the LASTLY optimize your fabulous post.

How Do You Optimize Your Post?

Although it’s last on the list of importance, it’s still important. Here’s how to optimize your post:

  1. Write a great eyeball catching headline.
  2. Modify your permalinks by adding keywords.
  3. Think like an advertising exec: make your post sound irresistible in 160 words or less, and put it in your meta description tag.

Filed Under: Blogging, SEO

Building A Website? Why You Need These 5 Things

March 16, 2015 by Nancy Fields Leave a Comment

Five puzzle pieces arranged together

I’m a graphic designer who started out designing printed materials before web pages existed, and who continues to ask, “Why?” Here’s my take on why you need these 5 essential elements for your website:

1. Why do you need a webheader?

To tell your web visitor the name of your business and what you do (your tagline).

2. Why do you need content?

Search engines find your website by the words you use. At this time search engine robots cannot read an image, unless you describe that image in your Alt tag.

3. Why do you need a sidebar?

To give extra relevant information about you and your business.

4. Why do you need a free offer?

  • To give people a sample of what you’re selling, and
  • give you the ability to collect their names and email addresses so you can stay in touch with those who are most interested in you, your product(s), or your service(s).

5. Why do you need a blog?

To add new content to your site on a regular basis so that

  • search engine robots keep indexing your site,
  • visitors understand what you do, and
  • to keep you focused on your business and your customers.

 

Need help with your WordPress website?

I’d love to learn more about you and your business. Contact me today for a free 20 minute consultation.

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Design, Irresistible Free Offer, WordPress

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