WordPress Group, Great idea! // Telekinetic Marketing

GT
849 days ago

Hey, Karen:

Thanks for starting this WordPress group. I am not (yet) a WP owner, but expect to be soon and I will look forward to tips, ideas and inspiration that other members can pass along to me.

My current blog is on a different blogging platform, but I have TONS od friends and marketing associates who say WP is a better, far more user-friendly service to use. I am looking forward to learning more about it.

GT :-)

Karen Blundell

Karen Blundell
849 days ago

thanks, GT. I'll be happy to help you with your WordPress questions.

Sal

Sal
849 days ago

You'll love WP GT. I couldn't function without it. There are sooooo many plugins and widgets, too that you can do whatever you want with it. The RSS feed and ping link really make it easy to keep some traffic coming and going, too. I'll be watching this group.

GT

GT
849 days ago

Thanks for the insight and encouragement, ladies. I am expecting to make some changes soon to my main marketing website – i.e. switching hosts and moving the static Index file to a WordPress php file. Once the switch is made, I know I'll be looking for some WP info and inspiration! GT :)

Karen Blundell

Karen Blundell
847 days ago

just an fyi, when I made the switch to WordPress back in 2005 I went from hardly any traffic, to a significant increase in traffic because of some SEO tricks I implemented with the help of a friend. Within 6 months I got my first top 10 listing in Google. This was just by installing a couple of plugins and a few small tweaks that took less than an hour to implement.

Yeah, GT, I think you'll love WordPress.

Sal

Sal
847 days ago

Karen - do you use pinglink.com? And syndication? Those two things really work for me. What kind of tweeks did you make?

GT

GT
847 days ago

Hey, Karen. I have several IM friends who have experienced the same thing - switching to WP and seeing their traffic and SERP listings improve - so that is why I have been making plans to switch. Can't wait to get that project going!

Aimee Vo

Aimee Vo
847 days ago

Hi Guys,

Thought I start of with a list of plugins I find useful:

Add Sig: Lets you add 1 of 3 custom signatures to the end of any post. You can use it at the end of newsletter posts to tease the reader and encourage them to sign up for the rest. (They only get the main article on the blog.)

Platinum SEO/All in one SEO Pack: Makes on page optimization so much more easier. No messing around with title descriptions and title/meta tag and since Wordpress is a Google property - its a given that either one of these plugins will help you with ranking.

Dagondesign Forms: easy to create forms

Exclude Pages: Hides pages from navigation menu

Tweetmeme: Allows readers to retweet your posts on Twitter - increasing traffic

Theme Tester: Allows you to test different themes without changing what your visitors see until you happy with the look

Ultimate Google Analytics: lets you add google analytics to your website/blog

XML Sitemap: I find that Google digs you more if you have a sitemap - this plugin should generate one for you.

HANDY TIPS:

Want a static page to make your blog appear like a website?

Create 2 new pages, one called 'Home' another one called "blog"
Login to wp-admin, under Settings, click on Reading
On the side of 'Front Page displays" , select "A Static Page". Underneath this, you should see "Front Page" and "Post Page". There should be a drop down box for each, for the 'Front Page" - select the "home" page you created to appear as the static page. For "Post Page" - select "blog" page you created.

Removing Dates: Sometimes you just don't want dates to appear on your posts. Here's how to remove them:

Under Appearance, Editor, go to your post.php template (and take a copy of it in case of accidents) locate the part where it says date etc and comment it out by inserting this "//" before the date (without the quotes).
OR if you are lazy, there should be a "date exclusion" plugin - however I try to keep plugins to a minimum.

(Looking forward to your favourite plugins and tips

'll add more later to this section)

Jared Alberghini

Jared Alberghini
847 days ago

Awesome info Aimee!

You should start a new discussion topic here with those resources... "Must Have WP Plugins" or something...

Karen Blundell

Karen Blundell
846 days ago

@Sal, no I don't use pinglink.com (by the way, that domain must be for sale now, because it's parked). Instead I use a fairly large ping list that I add to Update Services in the writing settings in WordPress. I believe I posted that for you?

I use Google's Feedburner for my feed and a really good plugin called Add-to-Any so people can grab my feed.

I'll post some of the tweaks I've done in a separate thread tomorrow. My brain is fried tonight

nRehman

nRehman
836 days ago

Wordpress has made our online working environment much more easy and fast atleast for every one. Great discussion topic, looking forward to knowing news and resources from you in your upcomming add ups.