It’s much less expensive to start an online business than a brick and mortar one. There are several business models that really don’t require much more than $11 a year for a domain name and $10 a month for hosting. But for some people, the technical aspect of putting up a website can become quite daunting. What can you do if you want to set up a business website but can’t afford to pay someone to do it for you?  Let’s reveal the secrets to building a successful WordPress website!

WordPress is becoming one of the most preferred choices for new beginners and established marketers alike. While primarily a blog platform, WordPress has so many different themes/templates, and plugins to work with that you can create a static website or a blogging based site that has new content added every day, quickly and easily.

When you purchase your hosting account, you will see that you can quickly add WordPress to build your site through your hosting control panel. All you do follow the instructions and click install. All of the techie hard stuff with databases and is done for you. When the installation is completed, log in to your admin panel in WordPress and begin adding Plugins, adjusting the Settings and creating the look and feel you want.

But what if you don’t know the best plugins to use, what they can do for you and how you can start getting the most from your efforts? Don’t fret! Kim Doyal who is better known as “The WordPress Chick” has come together with us to create an audio recording in which she shares her secrets.

One of the most important aspects to think about when designing your blog and getting it ready for the big wide web is your visibility. Did you know that there are thousands of blogs started each and every day? This makes the competition a little tough if you do not optimize your site the best way possible so people can find you first. Kim will show you the best way to increase your visibility, tricks for making your blog SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly, and how to encourage people to post comments on your blog. Comments will encourage other readers to participate and this in turn helps spread the word.

Kim also shares with you other tools and resources that she has found, tried and tested that will help you maximize your efforts while minimizing your time being spent. Who has all day to spend tweaking and playing around with their blog when business has to be done? These tools will help you increase your traffic and aid in the stickiness of your site.

There is no reason why a new beginner should be afraid to start their own website/blog today when there is excellent and affordable help from experts like Kim Doyal who are willing to spill the beans and help you start making as much money as you can. Check out the “Hanging with the WordPress Chick” audio recording. It’s only $17! Get on your way to a successful website and a ton of fun with WordPress.

PS. Here’s a handy little guide that I just developed that will help you get started building your online business.  You can have it for free, just because I think it will really help you!  Get Your Business Online in Less than 2 Hours and for Under $100!

We all need a quick little page thrown up on our site from time to time to promote a new product, service or class.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could quickly do that from within our WordPress website?

My friend, Kim Doyal, The WordPress Chick is going to show you how to do it quick and easy.

Here’s the link again in case you missed it for the video and the free report.  WordPress Video Marketing*

*affiliate link

If you liked, “How to use WordPress to build a Video Squeeze Page” please share it with your online friends by clicking the Facebook or Twitter link below.

I have been using Tungle for appointment and meeting scheduling.  Tungle integrates with my Outlook calendar and people who want to schedule a meeting with me can go to my Tungle.me page and easily set up a day and time.

Tungle has gotten even better!  Now for those of us who use WordPress or Typepad for our website platform, you can download the Tungle Plugin and have it easily integrate with our website or blog.

This new Plugin from Tungle makes scheduling of meetings fast and easy.  Download yours and start scheduling today!

Tungle Plugin

If you liked, “Easy Meeting Scheduling with New WordPress Plugin” please share it with your friends by clicking the icons below.

Writing has always been a popular means of expression. The advent of internet use has seen the evolution of writing from traditional pen and paper diaries to online journals or blogs. Because it is people maintained and mostly written in first person, a blog’s content is varied and diverse. Subjects may range from the absurd to the factual, and commentaries, opinions and observations on different activities, industries and mainly everything under the sun can be shared through this medium. A blog’s power and energy comes from interaction among its publishers and readers through comments and feedbacks given.

The release of automated publishing software has skyrocketed the popularity of blogging and catapulted it to the frontline as a valuable source of information because it simplifies and accelerates the process of publishing entries online. One of the most widely used blog publishing applications is WordPress, an open source software that is free to use.

WordPress is user-friendly and can be easily installed without any need for mind-boggling configuration or other technical nitty-gritties. One key feature of WordPress is its template or theme system. It can be edited, customized and personalized by simply moving or switching widgets thus eliminating the need for editing html codes.

Another practical feature of WordPress is its integrated link management. To drive traffic to your site, it is important to have it optimized in order to improve its ranking in search engine results.  What exactly is a search-engine friendly site and how is it done? The smart use of keywords will improve your site’s visibility and make it more accessible to your targeted audience. Luckily, you need not go through the daunting task of overhauling your whole website because WordPress allows every single page on your blog to be indexed. Taking time to make minor tweaks can go a long way in streamlining your site and helping it get the attention that it deserves. Don’t overlook the simple stuff like titles, description and text or content. To make your site search-engine friendly, read on and consider the following tips:

Blog Title. Adjust your title format so that the actual title of your post or article is displayed before your blog’s name or title. To catch a reader’s attention, make it short, sweet and simple. Writing a good description for your page gives the search engine and its users an overview of what your site is about before they actually visit it. Here is a great, free, resource to analyze your titles for emotionally connecting with your audience. http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/

Meta Descriptions. Take advantage of WordPress’ All In One SEO plug-in to type in keyword-rich titles plus matching description for your entries. Make your site description unique and relevant to the content of the page. Similar to blog titles, meta description tags are designed to provide a brief description of your site’s content. This will be used by search engines and directories for indexing.

Rewriting URL’s with permalinks. Updating and customizing the permalink structure on web URLs and making it more comprehensive enables your site to become more user-friendly and search-engine friendly. Tags can either be date and name based, numeric, or fully customized by the user.

Using breadcrumbs. Breadcrumb navigation helps give people a perspective on where they are on your site. It can be added using a variety of plug-ins such as WordPress Breadcrumbs, Yoast Breadcrumbs and so on.

Generating a sitemap. If your site has lots of pages, site maps are a quick and easy way to help users browse the contents of your site. Several plug-ins and functions can be incorporated to the template of your choice.

Use proper keywords when naming photos and images. Again, we cannot stress how important keywords are. To be search-engine smart, you have to consider everything. For example, by renaming a photo of a weeping willow tree as “weeping willow” rather than just 0001.jpg, it gets a better chance of being displayed on the search engine’s photo search results.

Avoid content duplication. Weed out duplicate content on multiple pages by using the Robots Meta plug-in.

Link to related posts. Link building is an important part of the SEO equation. Keep in mind that you should only link to sites that are relevant and complementary to your own. Spamming is a definite no-no.

To achieve presence online, you need to have an edge over the others. This comes with careful planning, excellent presentation and valuable content. SEO is just one way of gaining momentum.  To stay ahead of the game it helps if you know your niche, keep realistic goals, become adequately informed and exercise best practices. One of those best practices is to comment relevant blogs, which gives you a link back to your site.  So go ahead, let me know what you think of this post in the comment section below!

Oh and by the way, on Thursday June 3rd at 7 pm eastern, I’m hosting none-other than The WordPress Chick, Kim Doyal in my Social Media “T” Room.  Click here Social Media “T” Room for more details and to register.  The teleseminar is free, so join us!

If you liked Do You Want to Know Why Search Engines Love WordPress?

Share it with your friends by clicking the links below.

If you use WordPress as a blogging application or for your website, then chances are you already know how powerful, yet simple this platform is. Many popular blogs these days are built using WordPress, and the availability of widgets and plug-ins to customize each site is almost limitless.

So how can one choose the right plug-ins to install, without overdoing it and have your site suffer from plug-in overkill? As with most things, less is more.  I consulted with my friend and colleague Cyndi Papia of WordPress Guru and owner of Office To-Go to share her top WordPress Plugins with you.  And if you can only have a few plug-ins for your site, here’s Cyndi’s top picks to help you out.

1. Akismet – you’ll want something to stop SPAM comments from flooding your blog, so a SPAM filter is crucial to any site. Aksimet, developed by the WordPress folks themselves, is free for non-commercial users (and inexpensive for businesses – only $5 per month) and will help weed out those nasty bots and spammers looking to proliferate your comments sections is nonsensical words and trackback links.
2. All in One SEO pack – making your site easy to find to your audience is number one priority if you want it to thrive. This plug-in allows you to edit Title, Meta description, and meta tags for each of your entries – allowing search engines to look through your site more efficiently, using the keywords that your viewers are using to look for your blog.
3. Google XML Sitemaps – on the Internet, there’s no denying that Google is king of the search engines – if you’re not ranked on Google, you can forget about people finding your blog. This plug-in builds an XML sitemap just for search engines (including Yahoo! Ask.com and Bing), allowing them to index your site easily and retrieve it faster. Another bonus component? It notifies the search engines each time you put in a new blog post.
4. SexyBookmarks: Share/Bookmark/Email Buttons – let people share your content through email or on over 100 sites (including Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Digg, Delicious) right from your blog.
   
5. Backup Buddy – You back-up your data on your hard drive, so why not your site? Just because your site is not on a physical drive in your home, doesn’t mean it’s 100% safe. Server errors, accidents or even malicious hackers can easily wipe away your entire blog.  This plug in backs up your databases automatically onto a server, via email or download it manually.

Of course, these are just the plug-ins to get you started when you begin building your blog. You’ll find a lot more out there, whether you’re focused on design, functionality or security – there’s a plug-in that’ll meet your every need.

If you liked, Top 5 Essential WordPress Plug-ins

please share it with your friends by clicking the links below.

I just found these WordPress videos and thought you might find them useful.

WordPress Videos

They show how to quickly create a membership site using WordPress.

It’s actually a lot easier than I thought because apparently you don’t have to use multiple plugins – these videos show it being done with one.

Enjoy!

P.S These videos demonstrate 1 type of membership site, but I’m sure you’ll quickly see all the possibilities.

Check it out Now!

When I say “Membership Sites”, what’s one of the first things that comes to mind?

Residual income right?

Getting paid month after month is definitely a nice situation but here’s the problem. If you can’t get your membership site off the ground, you’ll never be able to enjoy the residual benefits of having one. And that’s where most people get stuck. Because they either make it too hard or they get caught up in the “technical” aspects of building a membership.

Here’s the good news…I found a solution that will make this a breeze for you.

It’s called WishList Member

If you like WordPress, you’ll LOVE WishList Member because it quickly (and easily) turns your blog into a full fledged membership site. It’s a excellent product and they have great support (including 30+ videos you can view for free before even buying the product).

Take a look: WishList Member Videos

I hope you enjoy them!

P.S If you sell any “digital products” online, you may also want to look at this as a way to deliver your products because it gives you greater control over who has access to your products

Here is the link: Wishlist Member

Links are what makes the online world revolve. Every site on the web looks for opportunities to link back to their site which increases rankings in the search engines.

Well, I just found a great tool to build that Link Love for anyone using the WordPress Platform as their website! It’s a Plugin called Link Builder and I just installed it here.

It’s a pretty easy install and once installed each time you put a link in your blog post or on a static page of your blogsite, a message will be automatically sent to a representative of the site informing them of the link. And gently asking for them to link back. Pretty Neat, right?

They explain how to set up the Plugin through a video on their site, so take a look and download it for your WordPress site. http://www.linkbuilder.com