Personalized profitable websites for authors
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.
You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Thankfully there’s Google Analytics so you can see your top performing pages.
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.’
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
Go to your WordPress Dashboard —> Appearance —> Customize
NOTE: This code will remove all the meta data on your Blog Post: author name, date, Leave a comment
.entry-meta {
display: none;
}
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.
Home page —> Edit —> Select Blog Excerpts area
If you’d like to watch me remove blog dates, check out my video from my live 10-Minute Monday training.
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!
Have 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.
…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:
In 2003, when WordPress began as a free blogging platform, I was building sites from scratch in Dreamweaver. The Dreamweaver sites:
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.
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!
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?
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.
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:
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.
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:
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!”
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.
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.
…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.
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”
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.
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.
Aren’t we the bee’s knees!
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.
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.
The experts at Copyblogger say…
Although it’s last on the list of importance, it’s still important. Here’s how to optimize your post:
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:
To tell your web visitor the name of your business and what you do (your tagline).
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.
To give extra relevant information about you and your business.
To add new content to your site on a regular basis so that
I’d love to learn more about you and your business. Contact me today for a free 20 minute consultation.