It’s work, like cleaning the cat box. Maybe with a little imagination added.

Apps A Platform

For whatever website software or service you use to create your website, WordPress, Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, you will need to do at least a cursory search on “__________  get more visitors on my website” with the blank filled in with the name of your web app or service.

If you search on a blank space, you’ll need to read all my posts before you can leave this website.

As punishment.

Doo-Hickeys And Widgets

You’ll want to know the names and locations of certain tools these platforms provide to help with the tasks I mention below. Not all of them, just the ones you’ll be using regularly.

Like when you describe what’s wrong with your vehicle at the auto repair shop.

The thingy making a noise.

Don’t Complain!

These web apps want you to succeed so that you will tell your friends all about how wonderful they are!

For whatever web app you choose, concentrate on it’s positive aspects.

It is counter-productive to obsess over an option or feature that is missing or not perfekly done on your chosen platform.

Remember to turn on the spell-checj also.

Gideon’s Garden by Tom Stier

Self-Host For The Self-Most!

If you opt for a self-hosted WordPress site, your hosting plan should be at least in the $20/month range.

Business level hosting plans are better able to handle the amount of resources required by your site as you build your initial visitor base.

If you have a budget in mind and would like to hire someone to help you create your website, ask them what would give you the most promotional bang for that budget.

If you have no budget for setting up and creating an initial website on your app of choice, expect to spend hours reading tutorials for your chosen web platform.

You’ll learn a valuable skill that will last for days!

Optimizing For Visitors

Your visitor wants to see what they expect to see on your website.

The imagery and message need to jibe with that expectation.

If they came for a product, they need to see detailed images, information and cost.

Asia Luna by Tom Stier

If they came for high-end design, your presentation and ‘wow’ factor will be a priority.

The requirement for both is a a quick loading, logical, convincing presentation.

Be A Tool

Sadly, visitors will see your website as just another informational tool on the web. A brief stop on their never ending quest for whatever.

That’s why you should only ever ask just your friends how much they love your website!

Being a tool can be discouraging.

Especially if you’ve spent thousands of dollars and sweated decisions over each and every pixel.

Themes And Templates

WordPress has the most extensive choice of page templates (called Themes) of any of the web apps.

WordPress lets you see how your website looks with different Themes before committing to one. Other web services don’t have this feature.

I’m favoring WordPress here, see. Wink, wink.

Keep in mind as you look through the templates and Themes that the highly regarded ones were designed by professionals.

These Themes can represent hundreds of hours of design and coding.

If your reaction is negative toward everything you see, you are probably not being realistic about how websites are used by the public.

Which is Whambam thank you, mam.

The Money Pit

The biggest cost involved in website creation is usually due to a site owner wanting every page to look exactly a ‘certain way’.

If you are a designer, promoting cutting-edge design, this might be required.

But, going against convention can be expensive. You can do it, but human visitors and Google probably won’t care.

When in doubt, or with no design budget, go with a simple template or Theme.

Your images, headlines and body text will become the design.

The Wine Cellar Of Your Website

When Google comes by, they check the basement of your website first.

Is all your HTML properly bundled and tidied?

Does your site look great on a phone and tablet?

Do your pages have title & description meta tags?

Are you paying Google for ‘protection’?

Google wants your website to have title & description meta tags for every page.

If you persist in making pages that only have a video or image on them, you will want to made sure there is at least something entered for these tags.

The individual page title and description meta tags and page thumbnail are what Google and social media platforms use for your listing.

Google is also interested in the content on your site pages, specifically new content that they can match up to a specific search term a specific searcher is specifically searching for.

So, be specific.

Sweet Success

There comes that day when a certain product-poem-picture-post-article-newsitem you have posted on your website strikes a chord with the public.

There is a swell of music. The clouds part.

You’ll know just how well your piece of content is doing because you are tracking analytics data for your website.

Google sends you a congrats email!

You’ve created the teaser link to your website page on social media. You can see who’s coming to your page from those platforms.

People who aren’t family members start sharing your post!

The Formula

You now know the formula that works and have the opportunity to capitalize on that success by doing it again.

Your page is linked to from other sites that have more visitors than you. People click through to read your post.

Some stick around to read more stuff.

Some people subscribe to your site.

And best of all, after having done all the tasks I mention in this article, your web presence is firing on all cylinders, and you are ready, ready, ready to rock ‘n roll!

The post Task 1: Optimize Your Website For Visitors And Google appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.

WordPress was originally designed for blogging, but has since evolved into a full content management system. It’s a simple matter to add a new Post, and since adding other content types, such as Properties (for Realty Themes), Portfolio (for Gallery Themes), or Products (for eCommerce Themes), use the same interface, it gives the owner the ability to do as much of the work populating the site as they want.

My function in this process can be just in the conceptualizing & setup process, or more if the site owner doesn’t want or have time to do continual content addition. They are then free to use my services or not depending on how much time they are willing to spend learning WordPress.

Peter Barrett Sculpture by Tom Stier

Starting your WordPress website

First, you’ll need a domain name, then a hosting account & WordPress installed on your hosting account.

I can host your site on my Managed Hosting. Managed means I monitor your hosting daily and deal with any issues with the service, usually before it becomes a site-down problem. You can find your own hosting, if you prefer.

Next, I’ll install WordPress on your hosting account, along with my favorite group of WordPress Plugins. I’ll create  a one page placeholder site showing your business & contact information, with one full image. This is important to do as soon as possible to begin indexing by Google.

GoDaddy, for instance, will use your domain as an advertising page until you establish a site on your domain.

The placeholder site can then have it’s design replaced with a Premium WordPress Theme, usually with no interruption in the site visibility.

Go Premium

A Premium WordPress Theme is a great bargain compared to designing from scratch. Premium Themes typically represent hundreds of hours of design and coding work, and display your text, product and images beautifully.

I still marvel at the typography on some of these Themes after years of seeing sites with ‘dot matrix’ personalities.

The process of selecting a Theme with my assistance is done at my hourly rate. We can meet at your local place of business or a internet cafe to do this. Wi-fi is required. Or you are free to research and choose a Theme on your own.

I have 12 years experience in working with WordPress Themes and have a pretty good sense of what are the better Themes, and who are the more reliable Theme developers.

The selection process can take as little as one or two sessions, then we should be ready for the Theme license purchase (between $50 – $100 paid directly to the developer) and then for the install & setup.

Home sweet home

The home page for most Premium Themes is typically the most complicated setup task. For example, when I look at most websites, I see several content areas in the typical home page.

At page top is the global site Header which usually contains a business logo, location and contact info. Below that is the site global horizontal navigation. Global means it appears on every site page.

Under the Header is a still or image slider that displays sliding images linked to Posts or Products the site owner wants to feature. Sliders are tricky because visitors will usually only tolerate one or two slides before moving on (or down or off the site).

Below that are Widget areas featuring several advertising-style images in a grid. These give a visitor an immediate visual hint of what the site has to offer.

Lenoxology Store by Tom Stier

Visitors rule

Imagery is important because visitors don’t  really ‘read’ a website. They give it a quick scan to confirm that it is what they thought the site would be. If they don’t see that it is, they leave within seconds.

Visitors don’t like to be hit with long complicated lists of links, all seemingly with the same priority.

They also don’t drill down though pages and sub-pages on a site to find something.

Prioritizing is usually a problem with mature sites, having hundreds of Posts, Pages or Products. The solution is to keep it simple and use Social media and WordPress tools to direct users to just a few items that you want to feature on a continuing basis.

Posting the page link to a specific page or product on your Social media is a great way to get visitors to look at what you want them to look at on your site.

The post The Best Way To Start Your WordPress Site Is To Just Start appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.

“Tom, what is the difference between domain hosting and web hosting?”

This got me to thinking that what might be needed is a real world analogy to picture the relationship between the two. Something like the computer/real desk ‘desktop’ analogy we are all so well familiar with these days.

I think one could find the domain/hosting analogy right in your own backyard.

In your car!

After you purchase a car (this could be analogous to your internet project, i.e. website) you need two items to take it for a spin (legally, at any rate).

One is a driver’s license and the other is a vehicle registration.

On the web, domain names act as a type of registration. They tell the whole world that this unique identifier, your .com, belongs to only your vehicle (website), and your website alone.

The Registrar keeps track of the billions of domains and makes sure that the correct owner matches the correct domain name.

The registrar also keeps track of the “driver” that currently  houses this unique domain, the web hosting location.

Because, now that you have this unique domain name (registration), there is still the necessity of having a license (hosting) to ‘drive’  that 4 wheeled domain where as many eyeballs as possible will see your cool new wheels.

As with a driver’s license, you need to have a hosting account if you want to put your website to work. This is the place where you put all the files that make up your website. Like your license, you can even have your smiling face on your website!

As in license and registration, domains and hosting are items that need to be maintained in good order and recurring fees paid if you want to keep your site “on the road.”

I almost forgot about insurance, which is also something you need to stay on the road. I guess that would be the ‘insurance’ of having a good developer driving your internet marketing efforts!

So, next time you are in the market for a solid web presence that was previously owned by a little old lady that only took it out to do occasional local marketing, come on down to tomstier.com and kick a few tires!

The post Driving through domains and hosting appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.