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Maximize Your BluDomain Site

July 21, 2009 By 2 Comments
The Power of WordPress & BluDomain

The Power of WordPress & BluDomain

I see it everyday, photographers have these gorgeous BluDomain sites that have the search ability and search marketing potential of a brick. In an effort to get their ranking up for organic search they build a Blogspot blog.

Guess what? That doesn’t work.

Why not?  Because it isn’t an integrated part of your site. What that means is that it doesn’t live on your domain.  It lives on a Blogspot.com domain. The search engines read that as a seperate site which does nothing to push your beautiful BluDomain site up in the rankings. What’s more, you leak visitors like a sieve…visitors are increasingly resistant to move from one domain to another. Even with  shared commonality like “yourdomain.blogspot.com” to “yourdomian.com” you are still asking them to leave the safety of thier initial landing spot, Blogspot.

So what is a person supposed to do? You were told that having a blog was the golden ticket. Well, it can help if you do it right.

Forget that separate Blogspot nonsense and get your self a self-hosted WordPress blog and install it on your domain on your BluDomain hosting account under your own domain name. Better yet, get a really kickin’ WordPress website and wrap it around your BluDomain site. Then you get all the power of the WordPress platform, full dialogue site capabilities and still have the BluDomain site as a stunning gallery.

Bingo, the best of both worlds.

It really is as easy as it sounds. Yes! If you don’t think you have the time or the technical skills to make it happen, you can always call/email us.  We’ll install your WP blog, import your Blogspot content into it, maximize it for Search Engine Optimization and fully configure it. Heck if you want, we’ll even take care of the custom graphics to make it match your branding and BluDomain site. Easy Breezy!  It just takes a couple of days.

Then you just keep on blogging (AKA” adding content”)and watch your whole BluDomain climb in the the search results.

Christine Boulton

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing, Website marketing

A website and a blog and a SHOPPING CART! All-in-one!

July 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Last year we began pioneering the concept of using WordPress not only for a blog, but even better using it’s content management system for a full website including the blog. Our clients saw instant search marketing results. Plus the new found ability to manage their own websites with lower costs. The win-win of a web/blogsite.

For the last few weeks I have been working to add a shopping cart to a new WordPress web/blogsite I am creating for a friend. We are doing the full site from art to design to programming/implementation. The purpose of the site is to market Trollbeads. The goal was to have a small business affordable website, that can be managed by the business owner and with superior front page organic search results, so the choice of WordPress was pretty quick.

But what for the cart? Third party shopping carts even from Yahoo or GoDaddy can cost $50 to $100+ a month plus transaction and processing fees. We wanted a less costly option with better styling options. We looked at ZenCart, osCommerce and WPe-Commerce. All of them were good and provided an excellent low cost self hosted cart with the ability extension. I was familiar with ZenCart from some other projects but wanted to try something a little different and that would not have the standard Zencart look.

WP e-Commerce is what we used for Trollbeads Trail. Like many WordPress plugins, it is free with full functionality and the upgrades with a grid layout and really cool drag and drop cart are very inexpensive. It is a little complex to setup (all shopping carts are to some degree), but very straight forward once you understand the application’s terms (the developers are from New Zealand).

The finished look is outstanding and the SEO power over the first 30 days has been even better than expected. So much so that we cloned it for a second site for the same customer replacing the existing website for her jewelry store, Santa Fe Trail Jewelry.

This is excellent for anyone wanting to increase their item sales or rental potential while keeping expenses as low as possible. Take a look at the finished site, remember it is all WordPress even the shopping cart, and let us show you how we can put this feature to work for you -

TrollbeadsTrail.com Screencap

Filed Under: Announcement, Clients, Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

What Makes a Website a Dialogue-Site

July 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment

It is well recognized that to convert a prospect to a client requires a dialog.  In the past that had to be done with a personal presentation, conversation, a phone call, a series emails or a combination of all.  The website was just a static information resource.  Now we have advanced the website to be a large page of the dialog, to become a Dialogue-Site.

A Dialogue-Site will,

  • Allow for the simple additions of new information, images and files.  Done as easily as creating and sending an email.dialogue
  • Integrate your blog within your website, directly increasing the ranking or your website and reducing traffic leakage due to people’s resistant to click into new sites.
  • Dynamically, automatically display featured content in different locations on main page and other pages within your website.
  • Allow site visitors to rate your content and even post comments.  Even support comment threading allowing true discussions to evolve on particular subjects.
  • Automatically post notifications of any new information to Facebook profiles and page and Twitter.  Yes your website will automatically Tweet your changes and also post your Tweets to the front page of your Dialog-Site.
  • Create XML sitemaps, save them and confirm notification of Google, Bing and Ask search engines to retrieve the new sitemaps.  All automatics every time you make a site change.
  • Built-in social media links on every page allowing your site visitors to bookmark and note your site on their social profiles and within their favorite social media/networks.
  • Site content syndication.  Allow off site subscriptions and reading of your site and its content updates via feedreader or direct email.  At not cost to your or your subscriber.
  • Easily add new features and pages.

See an Example of a dialogue-Site

Filed Under: Marketing, Social Media, Website marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

WordPress Chosen as New Website Solution for 200+ Member Event Association

July 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

When the Tennessee Wedding & Events Specialists Association decided to replace their old website they had a long wish list. First it had to appeal to a very web savvy target market and be easy to use across multiple generations.  It needed to be updatable and expandable.  It needed to be fully optimized for both social media and search and compatible with mobile devices. It needed to integrate membership accounting functions such as membership applications and online renewal. What they chose was a website built entirely on a WordPress platform!

capture

TWESA turned to the experts at the Agency@Think to find a solution. What they got was more than they expected.

TWESA.com is a full website including extensive galleries, blogs, video and member listings all built on a WordPress platform.  It is fully integrated into social media such as Twitter and Facebook, even the calendar has its own RSS feed.  This is just what visitors see.On the non public side, members are able to post to the site as well as update their listings.

The Agency@Think included a member’s only blog that functions more like a Facebook wall or a Twitter feed. Since the private blog is fully optimized for mobile devices, members can use it as an instant way to communicate with each other while working an event. The importance of having a private one to many back channel means of communication on a busy event day is priceless.

Also an important factor in choosing WordPress was the ability to incorporate membership accounting functionality. The site now has the ability for new members to apply and pay online, members to renew or upgrade online and automatically bills members when their annual dues are up. The system generates full reports on member billing and accounting activity; eliminating many dollars previously paid to an accountant for billing and record keeping. Because WordPress integrates so easily with so many plugins, the Agency@Think was able to set the payment function up completely with in PayPal eliminating the need for and expense of a traditional shopping cart.

Search Engine Optimization is important for any website. Previously TWESA had been paying over $200 a month for SEO. With the new site, because it is built on the semantically correct WordPress Platfom the site is virtually self-optimizing. With each new post or listing the site’s search power increases. But at the end of the day it is results that count.  The new Dialog-Site website has increased search engine referrals over five fold in just its first 30 days, with no additional advertising or other time expense.

According to Vicki Sanders, President of TWESA, “When we started this project I don’t think we fully grasped the possibilities. The Agency @Think understood our needs and not only showed us what was possible, but even added functionality that would benefit us that we never even knew existed. Many of our members have WordPress blogs that they loved. So we knew how well WordPress worked for that but we were surprised at how well The Agency@Think was able to use WordPress to build an entire website on those strengths.”

Filed Under: Clients, Marketing, Social Media, Website marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,