Erich Stauffer

Tag: Wordpress

  • WordPress Plugins

    I use WordPress for all of my blogs and mini-sites. Here are the plugins I recommend:

    • Add to Any – It’s important to turn off the annoying hover feature by clicking the box “Only show the menu when the user clicks the Share/Save button” under Menu options.
    • All in One SEO – be sure and fill it out for the whole site and for each page/post you create
    • Akismet – prevents spam comments so use it
    • Cbnet Ping Optimizer – prevents you from getting banned from blog directories by refreshing a post too often
    • Cforms – best email form plugin
    • Google Sitemap Generator – keeps google updated with pages as you make them-builds google a map
    • Related Posts Plugin – gives options for displaying other posts at the bottom of a post, based on tags
    • NEW – Enhanced Recent Posts – include or exclude categories from listings of recent posts.
    • Redirection
    • Yoast Breadcrumbs
    • WP-Page Navi
    • Robots Meta
    • Image Widget – add images to widgets from within the widget.

    Please write your favorite WordPress plugins in the comments below. Contact me if you need help with WordPress in Indianapolis.

    Tools for Listening and/or Monitoring

  • Comments Sense

    There are as many ways to run a commenting system as there are ways to comment. In this post I talk about some of the main strategies and how common sense sometimes doesn’t apply.

    There are main choices to a comment system:

    1. Turn comments off or don’t use them.
    2. Turn comments on with a website, but filter for spam.
    3. Turn comments on, but if a website is added, don’t allow.
    4. Turn comments on, allow all comments with or without a website.

    Michael Hyatt, a popular blogger and public speaker, uses Disqus for his comments system and encourages people to not just comment, but to backlink as well. This means that he falls into the 4th category of allowing all comments with or without a website. Michael knows this helps the commentor with their SEO and yet he still allows it.

    Douglas Karr’s site, DKNewMedia also uses Disqus for it’s comment system, but he falls into the 3rd category which doesn’t allow comments with a website. Doug is a social media guru and knows a lot about SEO and blogging so he probably doesn’t want his Google juice spilling out all over the Internet’s floor.

    I don’t use Disqus, opting for the standard-issue WordPress commenting system. I use Akismet to help filter for spam and I manually approve or decline comments. I will allow links to websites in comments as long as they are relevant and not obscene. This puts me in the 2nd category.

    And instead of giving an example of the 1st category of no comments at all, I wanted to mention Ed Dale‘s commenting system of choice: Facebook comments. Ed believes in the transparency that Facebook comments provides. He likes knowing exactly who is making the comment. In Facebook comments you don’t have the opportunity for a website backlink, just a link to your profile. (more…)

  • Indianapolis WordPress Development

    Erich Stauffer is a WordPress implementation shop serving the greater Indianapolis area. We specialize in developing web sites for WordPress using professional web design techniques. WordPress is an open source, fully supported content management system (CMS) that was originally developed for blogs, but can be used for almost anything. We chose WordPress because it allows our clients to manage their own content if they so choose, not to mention all the built-in functionality like search and RSS.

    Another one of WordPress’ greatest features is the ability to add software called plug-ins that add functionality for SEO, web forms, or social media, just to name a few examples. And for those who stay up at night worrying, WordPress has backup tools and we at Erich Stauffer use international web port monitoring to make sure your web site is up at all times.

  • Juice Extractors

    Cost Publishing had us design a custom WordPress theme for their new Juice Extractors mini-site. We chose a clean, white look, but don’t let that fool you. There’s lots of bells and whistles (or apples and oranges in this case) going on under the hood.

  • Self-Hosting Tips for WordPress

    Thinking about hosting your own WordPress domain on your own server? Here are a few things to consider.

    If you use our hosting you are using a linux-based server running WordPress on a SQL database. If you hosted it yourself you would still have to have a linux server with access to a SQL database unless you wanted to convert the site to flat files that could run on any type of server. WordPress is a content management system originally developed for blogging that allows a user to login and make changes to their site, add, or remove content. Flat files are the old way of displaying a web site, which requires manually editing a file, then uploading it via FTP.

    The domain is hosted and registered with 1and1, the largest hosting company in the world. The actual server is in a data center in Kansas City, Kansas. It gets regular maintenance, backups, and has redundant power and cooling systems. We are happy to facilitate the change of your domain, but you should know the requirements of the website first.

    My recommendation is for you or your new IT department to get full FTP and WordPress access to the current account as a first measure followed by signing up for their own hosting account with 1and1, BlueHost, or HostGator (which all support WordPress) before buying and setting up your own Linux server with access to a SQL database. There are other security concerns too to take in consideration when you invite the public into your private network. A capable IT technician should be able to build adequate ‘DMZ’s and firewalls, but the safest, easiest, and cheapest route is to have your own hosting account.

    What we offer is management of a hosted account. This includes keeping WordPresss’ software up to date, checking to make sure your plugins (WordPress programs like web forms) still work properly, checking for uptime, and sending monthly reports. This also allows us to make minor changes to text when you need it. We charge $125 a year for this service. Compare that to buying your own hosting account for $60 a year then having to do all of the maintenance and reporting yourself. If you have the trained manpower and it makes sense to go that route, we will provide the files to do so and unlock your domain when ready. Your IT department would be responsible for pulling the domain over, setting up the SQL database, installing WordPress, and installing the theme. Any assistance to these items would be billed at our $65 an hour rate.

    Just let us know what you decide to do. We are here to help.

  • Keyword Metrics for Success

    Research and Analysis Metrics

    Micro-niches are identified as the number one keyword receiving at least 80 searches per day and websites containing that keyword being less than 30,000 globally. The key is to find that sweet spot on the matrix of high traffic and low competition. To do this, find keywords which match the following criteria:

    At least three keywords other keywords within the micro-niche with similar criteria must also be identified, if not, start over.  Top ten competition for the top four keywords has to be penetrable within the time allowed (usually no more than 30 days). Once you find five total keyword phrases you can begin to create a website, market, and begin testing.

    Metrics to consider are:

    • Domain age
    • # of back-links to domain
    • # of back-links to page mentioning the keyword
    • # of back-links from .gov or .edu domains
    • Exists in Yahoo! Directory?
    • Exists in BOTW (Best of the Web) Directory?
    • Exists in DMOZ (ODP) Directory?

    Need more web directories?

    If the competition has a young domain age, a low number of back-links, and does not exist in any of these directories, then the market is penetrable.  If the opposite is true, stop and start over.

    Check to see that related products are both available to be sold and are being sold by others.  If either is not true, stop and start over.

    If both of those tests pass, then make sure the products are giving a referral amount that you deem acceptable.  If not, stop and start over. Otherwise, you now have products in a penetrable micro-niche that are profitable to sell.

    Marketing and Testing

    Begin by setting up a place to place your products.  This is where your marketing efforts will point back to.  It can be a Squidoo page, Blogger, or WordPress.com or WordPress running on your own domain.

    If you are using Blogspot or WordPress, install Google Analytics to track traffic.  If using Squidoo or Hubpages, there are tracking mechanisms built into the site. You can’t manage what you are aren’t measuring so track everything you can.

    Use the following chart to give you an idea of how to setup your web site for maximum keyword use and Google dominance.

    Once you have content on your primary landing pages and sub-pages, begin to create back-links to your site by placing links to the domain, the blog posts, and the the product pages on social bookmarking, social media, and in blog comments in your related market.  Be sure to add links from .edu and .gov domains. You can search Google specifically for blogs on those domains manually by using the following syntax:

    site:.edu “post a comment” –“comments are closed” “[enter your keyword here]”

    Track the incoming page hits.  Testing for viability can begin only after your product’s page is receiving at least 200 hits per day.  If you are not getting 200 hits per day, then try these things first:

    • Increase the number of blog posts on and off the site using other services like hubpages and squidoo – then promote all of the new posts again
    • Make sure you are promoting on at least 30 different sites for each post – you can use services like ping.fm or trafficbug to assist with this task
    • Pay to have your site listed in the Yahoo! Directory
    • Pay for Google Adwords or Bing (Microsoft) AdCenter
    • Add pictures with descriptive text to get hits from search engine’s image searches
    • Add video to Youtube with links and comment on other videos in your micro-niche
    • Make sure you are posting to Twitter and Facebook regularly and engaging in conversation, not just promoting

    If after 30 days or at your own set threshold, you are still not receiving 200 hits or more per day, your product is not viable.  Consider selling your website on Flippa or Sedo.  You have just found one of your 1 in 8 failures.

    If you do have over 200 hits per day, but are not getting conversions, first try changing out your ad copy, images of the products, and/or placement of the two on the page.  If after changing all three of these variables and still your conversion rate (revenue) is below your expenses, then sell your domain and start over.  If not, you have a profitable online business.

  • Top 5 Quick and Dirty Hosted Blog Publishing Services

    Whether or not you have your own domain, sooner or later you’re going to have the need for a hosted blog platform to create more backlinks.

    Webories, the web directories web site, has two articles on hosted blog publishing services* (“Top 5 Hosted Blog Publishing Services” and “Top 5 Hosted Micro-Blogging Publishing Services”) that I would like to add to with my top 5 ‘quick and dirty’ hosted blog publishing services. Some of these are new to me, but they come recommended by The Challenge, which I also recommend for anyone starting out making money online.

    1. LiveJournal – a free blog publishing service centered around it’s users. There are paid options to make it more secure. “Discover global communities of friends who share your unique passions and interests.”
    2. Xanga – “The Blogging Community” is a free blog publishing service. It’s ad based, but paid options reduce the number of ads. You can also get a personalized URL (domain name). If you do, make sure it contains your primary keywords.
    3. Blogger – Blogger is an easy way to share your thoughts about anything. There are a host of features to make blogging as simple and effective as possible and integrating with Google Adsense is a snap.
    4. Identi.ca – Identi.ca is a micro-blogging service. Join for free to share short (140 character) notices which are broadcast to their friends and fans using the Web, RSS, or instant messages.
    5. Posterous – Posterous lets you post things online fast using email. You email us at post@posterous.com and we reply instantly with your new posterous site. If you can use email, you can have your own website to share thoughts and media with friends, family and the world. And they don’t care what anyone says, “Posterous is NOT a micro blog!”

    *A blog publishing service is inherently hosted by someone else who manages the server, its software, and its settings. It’s a kind of software-as-a-service, or SAAS thing. Blog platforms, on the other hand, is blogging software that you host on your own server or hosting company’s server. You manage the software and its settings. A good example is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.com is a blog publishing service while WordPress.org is a blog platform. They both use the same software – the difference is in who maintains it: you or them.

  • Don’t Forget About Weebly

    Webories, a web directories web site, has a post entitled “Top 5 Hosted Micro-Blogging Publishing Services”, but one web site they missed was Weebly.

    Weebly is a San Francisco, California based company that was founded in 2006 with the mission to help people put their information online quickly and easily. It now enables 3 million people to easily create personal sites and blogs or establish web presences for businesses, weddings, classrooms, churches, or artistic portfolios – just to name a few examples.

    In early 2007, the Weebly founding team joined a seed funding program called Y Combinator and began working full-time to make the Weebly service spectacular. Weebly was named one of TIME’s 50 Best Websites of 2007 under Web Services, and they have continued to improve Weebly’s feature set and ease of use ever since.

    Amescreative says, “Weebly is in a class by itself in many ways since it allows you to build a true website, and not just a blog, but it’s drag and drop interface can be confusing and frustrating for some. It however offers a lot of customization options if you are a programmer or going to use one to customize your site,” and goes on to compare with Tumblr, which was mentioned by Webories, “Tumblr offers a good mix with extreme ease of use for novices along with easy customization options for programmers or designers looking at it for the first time. Tumblr’s balance between these two important aspects are what make me recommend it as the best solution in most instances. If you want a more complete site, go with Weebly, and if you want to do it all yourself as a novice WordPress might be a good choice, but Tumblr is easier to use that WordPress in my opinion and while not doing everything that Weebly does, gets close.”

  • Erich Stauffer Web Design

    Erich Stauffer WordPress Web Design and Development for Small Businesses in the Greater Indianapolis Area

    When our sales managers started to realize that what customers really cared about was the ability to control their own website, they realized that they were not just selling great looking web design and SEO services, but control and access to their websites, and the ability to change text or add pages as needed. From this point it was decided to be more transparent about the content management system (CMS) they were using to support their clients: WordPress.

    WordPress is an open source CMS, originally used as a blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL, but has since been expanded to be able to support almost any web site. It has many features including a plugin architecture and a templating system and is used by over 12% of the top 1 million websites.

    The most popular CMS in use today, WordPress was first released on May 27, 2003 and has since added features like integrated link management, a search engine-friendly permalink structure, the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to posts, and support for tagging. Finally, WordPress has a rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers like us to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install.

    By embracing WordPress and having more upfront pricing, we think this greater transparency will lead to a better customer relationship over time. If you are interested in working with friendly, professional, and experienced WordPress developers, contact us today.