Website credibility is one of the most important factors in whether your small business’s website works like you intend it to. Most websites exist for the purpose of making a sale – and sales is all about establishing trust with your potential clients.

The sales pitch doesn’t have to be a hard sell, by the way. For example, many blogs are intended to showcase someone’s expertise as a way to entice people to do business with them – one of the reasons why I think every business website should have a blog.

Plain and simple, no one is going to hire you to perform a service, or buy a product from you, through your website if (1) they don’t trust you, and (2) they don’t see that trustworthiness conveyed through the website.

There’s been a lot of research done on this topic, particularly at Stanford University. BJ Fogg of the Persuasive Technology Lab there says that your website’s credibility is a powerful thing because it gives the power to do two things to your visitors:

• Change their attitudes by getting people to think positively about, or feel comfortable interacting with, the website.
• Change their behaviors by getting people to complete a transaction, return to the site again, recommend the site to others, etc.

The PTL also published a widely circulated list of 10 guidelines for boosting your website’s credibility, a lot of which was the inspiration for my points below. That being said though, I think that one of their guidelines stands out above the others as the top way that visitors establish the credibility of your website.

The #1 way visitors establish credibility is…

…by looking for your contact information.

It sounds simple, and it is really. How easy it is for visitors, and more importantly, for visitors who are potential clients of yours, to find your contact information says to them: hey, there is a real person behind this business and this website. Here’s their email address. Here’s their phone number. And here’s where they’re located.

Displaying your contact information also tells people see that you really are a legitimate business that they can do business with – especially if there’s a phone number combined with a physical address. When there’s contact information available, coupled with some of the other things I’ll talk about below, that’s a major red flag that says that your business isn’t credible, and that they should take their business to someone who is.

Why is this so important?

Because in general, people like to do business with other people. We sometimes assume that just because someone is visiting a website means that they’re comfortable communicating with you electronically, when that’s not always the case.

There are plenty of people out there who do their research by looking at websites, but still prefer to pick up the phone and actually speak to someone when it comes time to make a transaction – myself included. If you hide your phone number or other basic contact information, all the people who prefer to do business that way will be turned off if they can’t find a way to call you.

That’s why on this website, I have my phone number prominently displayed in 2 spots on every page – in the top right of the header, and in the footer. That number is listed along with my email address AND a link to a contact form that people can fill out. And wouldn’t you know it – well over half the new project inquiries I get are people calling me over the phone to make first contact.

…but also by your website’s design

Now, granted I’m a web designer and study websites for a living, but when I visit a website, I can tell within the first few seconds all I need to know about the business behind it. That’s the power that design has on your visitors – they may not notice the same details as I do, but they’re doing the same thing.

So what are some design elements that people look for in order to establish your website’s credibility? Here a few of the more notable items:

• Do the colors reflect your business? – Design elements such as the color scheme need to be chosen carefully because colors can have many different meanings. Your website should use colors that someone would expect to see for whatever business it is you’re in.
• Does everything work properly? – Websites that don’t work properly leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. That makes you seem less professional, which translates into decreased credibility. Your designer should test everything before the website launches – not after.
• Are ads and promotions unobtrusive? – There are few things more annoying than seeing affiliate ads all over your website, especially when they make your content hard to find. This might make people think you either don’t have anything to say, or you’re hiding something.
• Am I asked to login unnecessarily? – Don’t ask your users to log in to view content on your website if they don’t need to. Doing so makes it seem not as professional, especially if it’s to do something very basic that shouldn’t require logging in, like commenting on a blog.
• What’s your search engine status? – If you have decent placement in search engine results, you’re doing something right. Whatever that is, keep it up, because a website that (a) can be found, and (b) that the search engines have found before, is one that is credibile.

…and by your website’s content

While your design is important, once people get past the design and start looking at your content, if they don’t see what they’re looking for or expecting to find, they’re going to just as easily be turned off.

What are some content elements that visitors look for on your website in order to establish credibility? Here are some of the questions they’re asking themselves:

• What is your URL? – Does the website have its own URL, or is it hosted through some 3rd-party service? If you have a business website, the URL should be your business’s name or some variation of it, if the name isn’t available. If it’s not, then I’m wondering what’s going on.
• Are you on topic? – You should only publish content on your website that’s related to the services you provide or the expertise that you have. Don’t talk about random other topics – it’s not the place. Staying on topic will give visitors a focused message about you’re offering.
• Is your content current? – People (and search engines) like to see websites that are updated frequently. If one article on your website has a date stamp on it from 2006, that’s fine – but if they all do, your website looks dated. It also makes me wonder if you’re still in business.
• Is there an “About” page? – Visitors want to know who’s behind the website and what their expertise is. You should always have an “About” page or section to tell people who you are, why you’re in business, and who the relevant people at your business are (with photos).
• What service/product are you selling? – Visitors like to see what it is specifically that you’re offering them. Not vague generalities and promises, but specific products or services. Even better is if you mention who your product or service is intended for, so I know if it’s for me or not.
• Do you promise what you can’t deliver? – Want to ruin your credibility instantly? Tell someone that you don’t offer a service or product, and have them respond that they saw on your website that you do. Will they trust what you’re saying after that? Probably not.
• How much info do you ask for in forms? – Say you have a contact form for new clients to use. Do you really need to know anything other than the person’s name, email, phone number, and their comment? No, you don’t, so don’t ask for it – they’ll wonder what you’re doing with it.

Thoughts?

What else do you think builds a website’s credibility? What have you come across in your experience that has made a website more or less credible? Share your thoughts with everyone by leaving a comment below!

Now, these usability components won’t tell you specific rules for how to design a website or write content for one. What they will do is pose questions about many factors related to the design and content of your website – factors that ultimately contribute to a visitor’s perception of, and satisfaction with, your website.

How you decide on the answers to these questions goes a long way towards making sure that your website does what’s supposed to do: communicate information to visitors in the hopes that they’ll enter into some relationship with your organization or business. (That relationship can be many things – at minimum though, it can be defined as some transaction of information between you and your visitors.)

So let’s take a look at some of the specific components of usability. To make it easier, I’m breaking it up into three smaller categories – design-related, content-related, and user-related.

Design-related

Web designers have a lot of control over a website’s usability, and for good reason too – so much of our perception of a website centers on the visual and on the design tools that help visitors navigate the website. Here are some usability components that web designers have influence over:

• Findability – Does the design make it easy for visitors to do the basic tasks that they’ve come to your website to do? It shouldn’t be a stumbling block in the visitors’ path – findability means letting people find where they want to go quickly and without confusion.
• Utility – Does the design and functionality allow your visitors to complete the task that they’ve come to the website to do, or does it get in the way? For example, does a website make it easy for customers to find and purchase a product?
• Accessibility – Accessible design lets all visitors understand the content on your website. Designers can ensure this through such things as good color contrast, proper font sizing, good link text (and not using “click here” as the link text), etc.
• Scanability – Does your design make it easy for your visitors to quickly scan your website and understand what it offers them? Good, clean design with properly spaced, properly colored, and properly sized elements will help do this.

Content-related

Web content writers also have a large role to play in a website’s usability, because after all, the content is what visitors are coming to the website for. Usable website content is also:

• Useful – Does your content provide the information that your visitors are looking for? Useful content is on the need-to-know basis. Tell your visitors what they need (or want) to know in order to complete a transaction with you; anything more will confuse them.
• Valuable – Valuable content gives your visitors something that they can’t find elsewhere, and has a strong connection with their why they’re searching for it. It will also make it more likely that they’ll come back to your website in the future.
• Credible – Why should visitors trust your website? Is the content fact or just your opinion? How rich is the content compared to similar websites? How current and accurate is the information? All of these factors, and much more, go into building your content’s credibility.
• Accessible – Is your content written in simple language that all visitors can understand? The clearer the language, the more usable your website is, especially when taking into consideration that not all visitors have the same web literacy level.
• Scannable – Can visitors scan your website and see headers, links, etc. written in simple language that clearly tells them what the content and your website is about? For example, the link to your about page should say “About”, not “Who We Are”.

User-related

The last person that plays a big role in determining a website’s usability is ultimately the one who the website is intended for: the visitor. It’s their perception of a website that matters the most. Your usability decisions will certainly impact on their perception, but there are some things you can’t control for.

Here are some of the usability components that are most strongly perceived by your visitors:

• Learnability – Is it easy for new visitors to accomplish basic tasks the first time they’re interacting with your design and content? You can bet that a website that’s difficult to learn to use will have few transactions and few people coming back to it again.
• Memorability – When users come back to the website after a long period of not using it, how easy is it for them to re-figure out how to use it again? To establish consistency, consider using the same terminology in any redesigns of your website.
• Satisfaction – How pleasant do your visitors think the overall experience of using your website is? If your website doesn’t get in the way of them doing what they want to do, that’s good. If there are so many problems that they give up in frustration, that’s bad.
• Errors – What happens when someone does the wrong thing on your website, such as filling out a form wrong, or clicking on a broken link? Your website should clearly communicate what went wrong and how they can avoid it in the future – it will go a long way.

Thoughts?

What other components do you think there are to your website’s usability? What have you experienced while visiting other websites that has contributed towards them being usable? Share your thoughts with everyone by leaving a comment below!

Case in point is a client I just finished working with. He has years of experience in his field, and his company is a 1-stop shop for all the needs people have when it comes to his particular service. He’s the personality behind the business, and the new website reflects this – which makes him a perfect candidate to start blogging.

How blogging helps your business

When he first asked me about blogging, the advice I gave him was based on my own experiences as a small business owner who blogs, and was that it could really help his business if he blogged regularly on your website. (Especially since he was already using WordPress.)

Here are some ways that blogging can help your business:

• Helps you reach out to clients and potential clients
• Establishes you as a subject-matter expert
• Gives you free publicity through search engine results
• Brings more web traffic to your website
• Makes your website more lively and friendly
• De-mystifies your business and makes it (and you) more approachable
• Lets you easily provide news, specials, etc.
• Helps you communicate in a timely fashion
• Builds a following of readers or visitors, who might turn into clients one day
• Provides technical support, online documentation, etc. – again, all part of establishing you as a subject-matter expert

I know that writing regular blog posts has helped my business out tremendously. One of the biggest benefits is that it helped me find my voice when articulating web design concepts to other people. Ultimately I think this has translated into a confidence in my professional skills and abilities.

Of course, the increased web traffic and better search engine results certainly hasn’t hurt either. Some of the posts that I’ve written have received a great deal of web traffic, none of which would have found my website otherwise. And since Google and the major search engines factor in the context of your website and what you’re writing about, the more keyword-rich content on it, the better off you’ll be.

Just remember…

While blogging is a great way to benefit your small business, I try to remind people that success with blogging isn’t easy and doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of hard work, but that’s a concept that any small business owner already knows.

So if you want to start blogging, here are some things to keep in mind as you get down to it:

• Leave time to write regularly – Give yourself time to write. You may be swamped already, but set a schedule and stick to it, even if that means only publishing content once a week. No one says you need to publish content every day anyways.
• Keep expectations in check – It took me over a year to get 100 subscribers to my blog, but I don’t define success just by my subscriber count. Given the other benefits that I’ve received from blogging, I think I’m successful. So what do you expect to gain from blogging?
• Learn to write different – Writing for a website is much different than the more formal writing that people are used to. You might not find your blog voice right away, but keep at it, do some research into how to write for a blog (see some of the links below), and you’ll ultimately find it.
• You have info people want – As a small business owner, you have knowledge that people want to know – that’s why they’re coming to you in the first place. If you’re able to translate that knowledge into quality blog, people will find it and want to read it.
• Think journal entry, not thesis – You don’t have to write a lengthy dissertation for each blog post that you put together. Keep it short and on topic, and you’ll get your readers more engaged with what you’re talking about.

If you want more information about the art of blogging, there are a lot of great websites out there that can provide a ton of content for you to look through. I read some of these myself, so I can personally recommend them:

• Copyblogger
• Daily Blog Tips
• Problogger
• 25 Blogs About Blogging (great resource list)

Thoughts?

If you’re a small business owner who blogs regularly, do you have any tips, success, or advice that you think others might benefit from? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts with everyone!

With that in mind, I’ve compiled my definitive list of what plugins you should use with WordPress. All of the plugins that are listed below I have personally used and have experience with. Some of them are already listed in a previous post I wrote about essential plugins for your WordPress website or blog, but the list below is a much more comprehensive list covering more categories.

Note that all the plugin links below are to that plugin’s page in the WordPress plugin directory. By going there, you can not only download each plugin, but you can also find out more information about installing or troubleshooting it.

Administration (a.k.a., Client Pleasers)

• WP Custom Login Form Image – Lets you customize the WordPress login form by using your logo instead of the WordPress logo.
• WP Lite – Simplifies the editing interface by letting you hide “unnecessary” items from the WordPress administration menu (even the Dashboard), along with post meta controls on the Write page. Useful if WordPress is being used by those people who aren’t the most technically savvy.

Authors

• Author Image – Adds author images to your website simply by adding a PHP tag in your theme files. Users can configure their image in their profile.

Blog Organization

• Popular Posts – Displays a list of your blog’s most-viewed posts; the output can be customized in many ways.
• Similar Posts – Displays a list of posts that are similar or related to the current post. The list can be customized in many ways to fit your own blog.
• Top Level Categories – Remove the prefix before the URL to your category page – URL.com/work/ instead of URL.com/category/work/, for example.
• WP-Cumulus – Display your blog’s tags, categories or both using a Flash movie that rotates them in 3D.

Calendars

• Events Manager – Manage event information and event listings on your website through an easy-to-use administrative interface.

Commenting

• Akismet – Checks your comments to see if they look like spam or not; you can review the spam it catches in a separate section from your regular comments.
• Better Comments Manager – Allows you, as the blog administrator, to respond to comments from within the admin panel rather than by going to the website.
• Comment Redirect – Redirect commenters who just made their first comment to a page of your choice.
• Live Comment Preview – The simplest way to get live comment previews on your site, so that commenters can see how their comment will look once it’s displayed on the website.
• Recent Comments – Displays a list of the most recent comments on your website that can be customized in many ways.
• Subscribe to Comments – Lets commenters sign up to receive an e-mail notification when another comment is made to the post they commented on.
• Thank Me Later – Automatically sends an e-mail to your commenters; it’s a great way to say “thanks” to your visitors, and prompt them to further engage with your blog.

Content

• Broken Link Checker – Checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.
• Embed Iframe – Lets you embed an iframe into a WordPress post or page. Useful for embedding such content as Google maps, Google calendars, YouTube videos, etc.
• Featured Content Gallery – Used to create a customizable rotating image gallery anywhere within your WordPress site, which can be managed through an easy-to-use interface.
• Improved Include Page – Allows you to include the contents of a static page into a template with several options, such as displaying the page/post title, the full content vs. the excerpt, etc.
• My Page Order – Set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface, rather than using the default method of setting page order.
• Search Everything – Adds search functionality to your website without modifying any template pages.
• WP-Print – Adds a print stylesheet to your website that lets your users print just the content of your post or page.

Excerpts

• Advanced Excerpt – Customize the excerpt length by character or word count, and determine what HTML characters will be displayed in the excerpt.
• Thumbnail for Excerpts – Easily add thumbnails wherever excerpts are shown.

Forms

• cforms – Add multiple forms to your website, which you can insert in sidebars, pages, posts, etc. You can also customize the look, the form fields, and other administrative data.

Images

• Lightbox – Creates a sharp, modern-looking overlay for images when you have thumbnails of an image and want to allow your visitors to view an enlarged copy.
• NextGEN Gallery – Lets you create photo galleries and albums to insert on any post or page through an easy-to-use interface.
• WP-UnitPNGFix – Fixes the PNG transparency problem in Internet Explorer 6.0.

Navigation

• Breadcrumb Trail – Add breadcrumbs anywhere you want in your theme.
• Multi-Level Navigation – Lets you create and style a horizontal drop-down navigation through an easy-to-use interface.
• WP-Pagenavi – Adds a more advanced page navigation system to your blog archives for when you start to accumulate a lot of posts over time.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• All-in-One SEO Pack – Lets you optimize your title and META tags with content and keywords of your choosing, while also helping you avoid the duplicate content found on WordPress websites.
• Google XML Sitemaps – Automatically creates XML sitemaps of your website, which you can then submit to the search engines to help them crawl your website easier.

Security

• Login Lockdown – Adds some extra security to WordPress by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from a given IP range.
• WP Security Scan – Scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions.

Site Optimization

• Database Backup – Back up your WordPress database in case something catastrophic happens to it.
• Shockingly Big IE6 Warning – Shows a warning message to anyone viewing your website in IE 6.0 about why it’s bad to keep using that browser, along with links for them to upgrade to more modern browsers.
• WP Super Cache – Helps you speed up your WordPress website or blog significantly by reducing the workload on your server when someone visits it.

Social Networking

• Sociable – Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages, etc.
• Twitter for WordPress – Display your latest Tweets.

Thoughts?

How many of these plugins do you use on your WordPress website or blog, or have heard about? If you already have a WordPress website or blog, or design them for clients, what plugins do you use that I haven’t listed here? Share your thoughts with everyone by leaving a comment below!

Let’s start by making sure that you understand what exactly keywords are, and then I’ll go over some tips to help you choose the keywords you should optimize for.

What exactly are keywords?

The term “keywords” gets thrown around a lot when people hear about search engine optimization, but do you know what a keyword really is?

Keywords, or keyword phrases, are specific terms that people use on a search engine to help them find a website, service, product, etc. Things like the name of your business are obviously keywords, but so are the services or products that your business sells – basically, anything that people might use to search for your website.

8 easy ways to find keywords

Creating a list of keywords to optimize for isn’t that difficult. What is difficult is finding variations of those keywords that will make your website more competitive in related search engine results.

So what are some of the ways that you can find keywords for your SEO efforts or campaign? Here are some easy ways to come up with a broad keyword list to start working from:

• Make a list – Start by writing down what it is that you do, i.e., what specific products or services you offer. Add to that list your business name and your location, and you have a good starting point. These are the most basic keywords that you should optimize for.
• Check out the competition – Take a look at some of the websites of your competitors, especially the ones that rank well in search engine results. You should be able to spot their keywords easily enough. What are some of the keywords they’re using?
• Ask your past customers – Finding out how people found you in the past is a great way to know how potential customers are searching for you, especially if you can find out what keywords they searched for when they came across your website.
• Ask outsiders – People looking for a specific product generally know what keywords to search for. But what about the people who don’t know what keywords they would use to search for a particular service or product? Getting their input can be just as valuable as people “in the know”.
• Internal search results – If you have a search tool on your website, take a look at some of the search phrases that people are typing in. By looking at what people are searching for, you can get an idea of what keywords you could optimize for.
• By using free research tools – There are plenty of free keyword research tools out there, although I prefer Google’s keyword research tool. You can type in a word and it will give you related keywords that you can sort by search volume, search competition, and more.
• Include Common misspellings – It might not be a bad idea to include common misspellings of keywords that people often use. Words like “accommodation” are often misspelled, so include some of the common variations that people might use.
• British vs. American English – There are some words that are spelled differently in the British version of English than the American version of English. “Colour” vs. “color”, “theatre” vs. “theater”, etc. Depending on your market, you might want to take these into account.

Your goal in finding keywords in any of these different ways is to put together as broad a list of keywords as possible. Why do I say that? It’s because now you’re going to take that list and start whittling it down, making some strategic decisions about which of those particular keywords to actually optimize for.

3 criteria for choosing keywords

Choosing keywords is much different, and arguably more difficult, than just finding keywords. You don’t want to optimize for every keyword common to your service or product that you’ve found – in fact, that would be poor SEO strategy, and you probably wouldn’t rank very highly if you did so.

Search engine results today are all about providing the user with the content that most matches the intent of what they’re looking for. You want to choose your keywords accordingly so that they match that intent as best as possible. In order to do that, there are three key properties that you want your keywords to have in order to benefit your optimization efforts the most. You want to choose keywords to optimize for that are:

• Relevant – Choosing keywords that no one uses will make it very unlikely that anyone will find you. For example, are you optimizing for “accommodation”, which sounds very formal, or would it be better to use “hotel” instead? Think in terms of how people actually speak.
• Specific – Optimizing for the most general keywords is very difficult, since  everyone else is doing the same thing and competing for those keywords. While you should still include general keywords to some degree, if you can find more specific keywords, you might be better off.
• Local – Make sure that you incorporate your location as one of your main keywords. Search results aim to be as relevant and specific as possible to what someone is looking for, and this will help narrow down the results significantly (depending on where you live).

Only when you’ve gone through your initial list and narrowed it down to the targeted keywords that you want to optimize for are you ready to do something with them. From the web design perspective, there are 9 places to insert keywords on your website, so work with your web designer, web developer, or web content writer to make sure they’re used where they can and/or should be.

Thoughts?

How do you find and/or choose keywords that you want to optimize your website for? Share your thoughts about this topic and anything else I’ve mentioned here by leaving a comment below!

(Word of warning: what I’m about to talk is a more advanced topic intended for those who have an interest in building, or working with, WordPresss theme files. I’m assuming that you have at least a working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and PHP in order to understand what I’m talking about.)

What are conditional statements?

Conditional statements are simply some logic that tells the WordPress database what content is displayed (and how that content is displayed) based on what conditions that page matches.

At their most basic level, conditional statements look like this:

<?php if ( ) { ?>
<?php } else ( ) { ?>
<?php } ?>

Basically what this says is that there is a certain condition, and if that condition is met, then display whatever HTML, CSS, PHP, etc. is specified there; if that condition isn’t met, do this instead. So far, so good, right?

What conditional tags can I use?

Within a conditional statement you’ll find what are known as conditional tags. Basically, these little tags call a particular piece of information from the WordPress database. There are conditional tags for most things in WordPress – pages, posts, categories, tags, etc.

The WordPress codex goes into more detail about all of the conditional tags that are available, but some of the most basic and popular ones are:

• is_page()
• is_single()
• is_category()
• is_author()
• is_home()

Using them is pretty simple – you can identify the page/post/category/author by ID number, slug (name), or title. This might make more sense with an example.

Say you want to apply a specific condition to your “About” page. That page has the database ID number “3″, the title is “About Us”, and the slug (name) is “about-us”. You could use any of those in the is_page() condition as follows:

• is_page(’3′)
• is_page(‘About Us’)
• is_page(‘about-us’)

The same applies to all of the other different uses. Say you want some particular links to appear in the sidebar when someone is on a particular category page – let’s say the category is “Apples”, and it has a database ID number “5″. You could use the is_category() condition like this:

• is_category(’5′)
• is_category(‘Apples’)
• is_category(‘apples’)

More complicated uses of conditional statements

Now that you know what a basic conditional statement looks like and what conditional tags are available to use, we can really have some fun incorporating them into your WordPress theme.

Head’s up: this is where it will start to get a bit more complicated. But let’s go through a few examples for you to get an idea of the different ways that conditional statements can be used, and hopefully you’ll pick up the gist of how to use them.

Example #1: Multiple conditions

Let’s say that you have 3 pages on your WordPress website. You want to display an image on one page, some text on another, and nothing on the third.. What would this look like?

<?php if ( is_page('Apples') ) { ?>

    <img src="apples.gif" />

<?php } elseif ( is_page('Oranges') ) { ?>

    <p>This is my text.</p>

<?php } else { ?>

<?php } ?>

This is what I call a multi-conditional statement. Basically this says, “if the page is the page about apples, then display the picture of the apples; if the page is the page about oranges, then display that text; and if it’s neither, then don’t display anything”.

One note about multi-conditional statements: you can have as many different conditions as you want. If you have 20 different categories and want to display 20 different things in the sidebar of each, you can do that – there’s no limit.

Example #2: This OR That

Let’s say you want to display a particular piece of text at the top of a single post OR for a particular category page. What would your conditional statement look like?

<?php if ( is_single('Apples') || is_category('Vegetables') ) { ?>

    <p>This is my text.</p>

<?php } else { ?>

<?php } ?>

The “||” basically tells WordPress to display that content if the the page/post/etc. meets either the first condition OR the second condition. If it doesn’t meet either, then it won’t display anything.

Example #3: Apply the same condition to many things

Let’s say you want to display some text at the top of both the page about apples AND the page about oranges, while not displaying that text at the top of any other pages. What would your conditional statement look like?

<?php if ( is_page(array('Apples','Oranges')) ) { ?>

    <p>This is my text.</p>

<?php } else { ?>

<?php } ?>

This will display the exact same thing as in example #1, and you’re probably asking yourself, what’s wrong with writing it the long way, like I had in that example.

Technically speaking, there isn’t anything wrong with doing it like that. It’s just that combining your conditions is the simpler way of doing things and easier to maintain. Say you want to update the text that’s displayed at the top of both pages. Would you rather update it once, or have to do it multiple times? I’d rather do it just once.

Example #4: Using variables

Variables are another way of calling information from the WordPress database. Often used in plugins and in your WordPress loop, you can also use them within conditional statements.

Let’s say that you want to display in the sidebar a list of links to the sub-pages of a particular parent page, and you want that list to also appear on the parent page as well. What would your conditional statement look like?

<?php if ( is_page('Fruits') && $post->post_parent=="Fruits" ) { ?>

    <ul>
    <li>List item</li>
    </ul>

<?php } else { ?>

<?php } ?>

In this case, we’re using the $post->post_parent variable to say that we’re applying the condition to all the sub-pages of the “Fruits” page, as well as the actual parent page itself, which we’ve identified with the other condition.

Example #5: “Is Not” Conditions

Continuing with our use of variables, let’s say that you want to display an image at the top of all pages that have the “Fruits” page as their parent page EXCEPT FOR the page about bananas. What would this look like?

<?php if ( $post->post_parent=="Fruits" && !( is_page('Bananas') ) ) { ?>

    <img src="fruits.gif" />

<?php } else { ?>

<?php } ?>

Here, we’re using the “&& !” to say AND EXCLUDE the page about bananas from the condition that we’re applying to every other sub-page.

Thoughts?

Using conditional statements within your WordPress theme files is a great way to help cut down on the amount of code that you’re writing when you create a WordPress website. This makes it easier to maintain in the long run, and is a great way to take advantage of the database-driven nature of WordPress.

Do you use conditional statements on your WordPress website, or when you’re creating a WordPress theme for a client? If so, share your thoughts about them with everyone by leaving a comment below!

Although there are lots of places that I’ll talk about where you can use your keywords, as you’re designing the website and writing the content, you don’t want to do is overload them in every available spot.

Yes, the goal is to take advantage of all the opportunities you have to incorporate keywords on your website. You shouldn’t be doing so in a way that’s going to make your website less usable though. Use your keywords in these places in ways that are relevant to your content and that improve your website’s usability.

In terms of the keywords themselves, I can’t tell you what keywords to use – that’s dependent on your business and on your keyword research. Once you have your keywords though, here are 9 places where you can put them to improve your website’s SEO.

In your header

1. Title tags

Title tags are the first places that the search engines will scan, and they are what appear as the actual link on the search engine results page. This is one of the most important places to emphasize your keywords, so make sure that the title tag on each page uses your most important keywords.

The title tag is also what your visitors will see in their web browsers, both in the title area and on tabs (if they’re using tabbed browsing). This is one of the areas where it’s tough to remember that SEO isn’t just about pleasing the search engines – it’s also about pleasing your human visitors. They will use the title tag as a primary means of identification and navigation, which is why it needs to be written well-enough to please both parties – definitely not an easy feat.

2. META description tag

Within your header, there are a number of hidden META tags that only the search engines will see, and the META description tag is one of these hidden tags. On the search engine results page, you can generally see the META description tag by looking at the chunk of text underneath the link.

When writing your META description tag, it’s extremely important to be as concise as possible. The search engines generally only look at the first 150 characters of the description tag, so you only have a limited window in which to get your keywords in. Some search engines only use a part of it before taking some content from elsewhere on the page, so it’s even more important that you incorporate your keywords right up front in your description.

3. META keywords tag

It’s still being debated how much weight the search engines give to the META keywords tag. In the early days of search, websites used to cram this tag full of any and all keywords or keyword combinations, in the hopes that the search engines would grasp onto something.

Most search engines learned from that and have changed how they weigh this tag in the search algorithm. Now it’s all about how the META keywords relate to the content on your page, which is why you need to use keywords that are relevant to the website in general and to the page in question specifically.

In your content

4. Headers and Sub-headers

One of my 10 tips for improving your titles and sub-headers is to put any keywords you’re using in them up front. Doing so not only emphasizes what comes in the content below, but is useful for people scanning through your website quickly. Just try to keep it clear, concise, and relevant when doing so.

5. Page content

Your page content is reason your website’s exists in the first place, and it’s the backbone of everything else on your website. It’s also what people link to (and links are another contributing factor to SEO) and what will draw people to your website in the first place.

One big consideration when writing your content is keyword density. While your best bet is to incorporate your targeted keyword phrase into your content as often as possible, you want to be careful not to overdo it. You’re not trying to sell your product to search engines; you’re trying to sell it to people, and if your content reads horribly, it can make a bad impression and most likely decrease the chance of making a conversion.

We’ve all seen websites where the keyword density is so high that the content reads horribly. As long as you’re simply aware of the phrase you’re targeting when you’re writing the content, you should end up with an adequate keyword density, probably within the 3-5% range. It’s alright if the targeted keywords stand out when you read through your content; after all, that’s what the person was searching for, and seeing it emphasized will reinforce that they have the information they need to make their decision.

Also remember the 1-to-1 rule: 1 page of content should be optimized for 1 keyword.

6. Link text

One of my reasons for avoiding using “click here” in link text is that it’s not SEO-friendly. Search engines use the strength of your links in their algorithm, and one of the things that determines link strength is whether the link text using specific keywords in it.

Use specific keywords in your link text helps them estimate how relevant that link is. It also helps build the relevancy of a particular page to a particular keyword phrase.

With all of the places on your website where links are, this doesn’t apply solely to links within your page content. It applies to your main navigation links, to your breadcrumbs (as I mentioned already), to your footer links, etc. It’s all about association, and you want the search engines to associate certain keywords with your website in general and with specific pages on your website in particular.

Bonus places

7. Breadcrumbs

Another common navigation tool on websites, breadcrumbs can help people pinpoint where they are on your website, as well as how to get back to where they were previously. As with any place you have words on your website, your breadcrumbs are another opportunity for you to incorporate your keywords. Just make sure that the breadcrumb links provide enough detail about what the pages are, without being overly length – 1 to 3 words at most.

8. ALT and TITLE attributes

While these attributes were created for usability purposes, they don’t have to be used solely in those ways. They can also be used for SEO purposes in the sense that they’re another opportunity for you to incorporate additional text onto your page – text that contain the keywords you’re optimizing for.

I’ve written previously about using the ALT and TITLE attributes properly, but the important point is that you shouldn’t write them with only the search engines in mind.

Keep them relevant to the element in question, and don’t use them to either duplicate content elsewhere on the page or to stuff them full of keywords to the point that they become completely unhelpful. Above all when it comes to them, think usability first, SEO second.

9. Embedded file names

What I’m referring to as embedded file names are things like web pages, images, etc. These aren’t necessarily things that people will see within your actual content – they’re just ways that you can get more keywords onto your page.

How you write file names should be a no-brainer, but it’s important that you not give them a generic or vague label. People will see the file name of a web page when they hover over a link, so using a file name that contains the keywords that the page is about is useful from usability purposes. (This is one of the main reasons why you should enable your permalinks in WordPress; with HTML websites, you have an easier time controlling the file names.

When it comes to images, why name your image files something vague such as “image01.jpg” when you can name it something that includes a keyword instead? It’s not something that someone will see or that will really make a difference, but it’s just another spot where you can get the keyword onto the page for the search engines to see it.

Thoughts?

There are a lot of competing schools of thought when it comes to organic SEO. What are some of your practical tips for incorporating keywords onto your website? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below!

What is a call-to-action?

A call-to-action is the fundamental reason that you have a website in the first place. In web marketing, it’s defined as something, either a design element or some piece of content, that compels a visitor to take some specific action that you can measure to determine whether your website is working or not.

Every type of website you can think of has a call-to-action built into it, although of course some websites are better at emphasizing it than others. Calls-to-action provide focus for your website and if done right, give direction to your visitors for what you ultimately want them to do. Examples of a call-to-action include:

• Make an online donation
• Request an appointment
• Purchase a product
• Fill out a request form
• Register for an event or program

What makes a call-to-action effective?

Unfortunately there are no easy answers to that question, and there are plenty of people out there who ponder that question every day. While every website and every situation is different, there are some general guidelines you can follow when making your calls-to-action, both from the content and the design perspectives.

Also keep in mind that you should continually test whether your calls-to-action work or not. There are some free tools out there that will give you a good start at this, especially from Google. Their analytics tool will tell you what people are looking at on your website, while their website optimizer can help you test different combinations of calls-to-action in order to see what works better.

Writing calls-to-action

Using the right words appropriate to your website will drive people to take the action; using the wrong words can distract them, at best, or cause them to leave your website, at worst. With that in mind, here are some tips for writing effective calls-to-action:

• Lay the groundwork – Before someone is willing to follow one of your calls-to-action, they first have to recognize a need that requires them doing so. Telling your visitors the benefits of taking that action will help give them the motivation to actually do so.
• Use action-oriented words – Using an active voice encourages people to follow your calls-to-action, and also helps people scanning your website quickly identify what your call-to-action is about. This is also one of the reasons you should avoid using “click here” in your link text.
• Have one on every page – There should always be at least one call-to-action within the content on every page of your website – no page should be a dead-end. Ending your content with a call-to-action tells visitors what the next step is and keeps them moving on your website.
• Limit the number and keep them distinct – Having too many calls-to-action on a website can be confusing for your visitors. Limit yourself to only a few, and keep them distinct so visitors know what the primary call-to-action is, as well as what you want them to do first from the choices.
• Keep your forms short and clear – Unless someone has a compelling interest, many people see a long form asking for unnecessary information and won’t fill it out. Follow some of my other tips for writing clear instructions if your main call-to-action is a form.

You can also look through a previous post that I’ve written about improving your titles and sub-headers for some tips that are just as applicable to writing effective calls-to-action.

Designing calls-to-action

Web designers can have a lot of influence over how effective calls-to-action are. Following general usability and design guidelines help make the website as effective as possible. Here are some tips for how to do that:

• Put it above the fold – You want your main call-to-action to be visible wherever people go throughout your website – almost like your logo. The right side of your website’s header is a natural location to do that; any other lesser calls-to-action can go in sidebars, above the fold as well.
• Use images for emphasis – Images or icons get people’s attention because they get noticed by your eyes before content on a page does. Buttons also do the same thing and are great to use because they stand out against text AND imply action by their very nature.
• Choose contrasting colors – If you’re using a button as your primary call-to-action mechanism, use a color that contrasts with your main colors for maximum effect. Just don’t choose a color that contrasts so much that it becomes too hard to ignore when reading the content around it.
• Consider homepage placement – We all know how important your homepage is, which is why you need to make it as usable as possible for your visitors. Your main call-to-action should be prominently placed on it where people will really see it.
• Use some white space – The more white space around your call-to-action, the more people’s eyes will naturally be drawn to it. Crowding your call-to-action in with surrounding content will decrease its effectiveness as it gets lost in the overall noise of the page.
• Make it bigger – Size isn’t everything when it comes to your call-to-action, but making it bigger definitely makes it more likely that it will get noticed. Just don’t make it so big that it totally overwhelms the rest of the content on your website – find the right balance.

Thoughts?

Creating effective calls-to-action are a HUGE topic and business for a lot of people, so I hope that this gave some good, introductory guidelines for making your calls-to-action more effective.

Have you had any particular success working with calls-to-action on your website or on a website you’ve done for a client? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts and experiences!

There are many people who fall into the category of lower literacy when it comes to websites. Some researchers estimate that as much as 50% of the U.S. population can be defined as having a lower literacy, while 30% of total online users can be said to have the same.

What’s discussed below is definitely something worth considering and applying to your website, especially if you think that a significant proportion of your visitors fall into the lower literacy category.

Higher literacy vs. lower literacy

The most important thing that I can emphasize up front is that when I use the term “lower literacy”, I’m not talking about people who are illiterate or unintelligent. Quite the opposite in fact.  People who have a lower literacy are able to read – they just struggle with it to some degree depending on the particular medium in question. In this case, I’m talking about lower literacy as it pertains to websites.

In general there are some common characteristics of people who have a lower literacy:

• They have trouble scanning text
• They need to go through content word-by-word
• They’ll often find themselves re-reading long, unfamiliar words

People who are otherwise highly literate and intelligent might actually have a lower literacy when it comes to websites. Older people in their 50s, 60s, etc. are a perfect example of this. Anyone who has sat and watched how their parents use a website knows exactly what I’m talking about – some of those characteristics describe them perfectly.

Higher literacy is just the opposite. People who are highly literate, especially on the web, are able to look at a website quickly, scan it for what they’re looking for, and interpret what’s on the website and what the website has to offer them.

If you think this describes you perfectly, you’re not alone – there’s a significant gap in web literacy levels between older and younger generations. Younger people have been using websites for a greater percentage of their lives than older generations have, so they’re that much more familiar with them. Add in the fact that older generations tend to be more “afraid” of computers than younger generations are – such as clicking the wrong link, filling out a form, etc. – and you begin to account for that generational gap.

Lower literacy on the web

So how does lower literacy manifest itself when people use websites? Here are some common habits that lower literacy website visitors display:

• Reading the navigation – Lower literacy visitors tend to read through all of your navigation links first, and then choose the option that best meets what they’re looking for.
• Narrowing the field of view – Lower literacy visitors will read through content line-by-line, giving them a particular narrow focus that they might find hard to zoom out from.
• Skipping over information – If something becomes too complicated, then lower literacy users are more likely to completely skip over it, potentially missing something important.
• Accepting as “good enough” – Digging deeper requires a lot of reading (which can be challenging and time consuming), so lower literacy users skip, usually looking for links.
• Avoiding search tools – Lower literacy users might have difficulty spelling the search terms, and then when they see the results, have difficulty processing out-of-context content.

How to design for lower literacy users

How can you improve your website’s usability for lower literacy users in order to make it work for a broad audience? Here are some suggestions:

• Prioritize your content – Place the most important content at the very top of the page, where readers who might otherwise give up after a few lines will see, and keep any other important information above the fold. This especially applies to your call-to-action.
• Avoid confusing navigation links – The links in your main navigation(s) should be written so that they’re as intuitively as possible. There’s no need to be creative and write “Who We Are” when writing “About Us” will do just as good a job instead.
• Improve your in-content navigation – Follow some of the basic recommendations to improve your page titles and headers, and you’ll not only break up the content for higher literacy users, but keep lower literacy users from getting frustrated.
• Avoid distractions – Design elements like Flash banners can serve a useful purpose on your homepage, but on internal pages, avoid anything that moves or might otherwise be a distraction. These really get in the way when you’re trying to concentrate, which lower literacy users need to do.
• Use a consistent page design – Unless there’s some compelling reason otherwise, every page on your website should have the same general feel to it, and should include all of the major navigational elements. Consistency is the goal – something that lower literacy users struggle without.
• Make effective links – There are things that both designers and writers can do to make links more effective. Follow some of these recommendations – such as using icons on particular types of links, or making the links scannable – to help lower literacy users navigate your website easier.
• Simplify form instructions – Forms give many people trouble, so you can imagine the trepidation with which lower literacy users fill them out – especially if giving away personal information is involved. Keep your instructions clear to avoid unnecessary confusion.

Do some of these tips sound familiar? If so, it’s because many of them are also general usability guidelines that you should be following anyways when creating your website. If you’ve already tried to incorporate many of them into your website and think that it’s as user-friendly as possible, then lower literacy visitors shouldn’t have much of a problem using it.

Thoughts?

Is lower literacy something you should be concerned with if you have a website? Or do you think it’s dependent solely on who the particular audience for that website is – no different than gender, profession, interest, etc? Share your thoughts with everyone by leaving a comment below!

My recommendations are what I consider the absolute basic things that you need to do as you start working with WordPress. There are a lot more things that you might consider doing and that others have recommended doing – Cenay Nailer in particular recommends 22 things that you should do after installing WordPress, while over at Pro Blog Design they recommend 10 things to do.

A lot of the things that others recommend I’ll find myself doing later in the design and development process. I don’t think they necessarily need to be done the very first time you log in to your WordPress admin panel, which is the perspective I’m coming from.

So without further ado, here’s my list of 8 basic things that you should do right after installing WordPress.

1. Change the admin password

After you’ve installed WordPress and configured the installation, WordPress gives you an automatically generated password to use the first time you log in. This should be a no-brainer, but make sure to change that password to something that you can remember easier.

Never changed a password before in WordPress? It’s quite simple – just go to the Users panel, click on the “admin” user, and scroll down the page to where you can change your password.

2. Enable permalinks

By default, WordPress generates a link using database strings – http://www.example.com/?p=N, for example. It’s not the most usable or SEO-friendly format, which is why most people choose to enable permalinks. That way, links will appear a lot nicer – http://www.example.com/about/, for example.

To enable permalinks, you need to upload an HTACCESS file to the root level of your website, and then give it read and write (0666) permissions, which you can easily do with most FTP programs. Then, go to Settings > Permalinks to enable them in any of the given formats or customize them in your own format.

For more information, including what an HTACCESS file is, read through the “Using Permalinks” page in the WordPress codex.

3. Activate the Akismet plugin

Akisment is plugin that is highly recommended for use on your WordPress website – so highly recommended, in fact, that it’s already included when you first install WordPress onto your server. It blocks spam comments from appearing on your website, which is a big concern, especially if you have comments enabled on your website.

When you activate Akismet, you need a WordPress API key in order to complete the activation. You can get one by registering your WordPress website at WordPress.com, which is different than WordPress.org.

4. Upload and activate plugins

Now might be a good time to install any plugins that you know you’ll need on your WordPress website. You can always add more or remove any at a later time, and of course there will probably still be some configuration that you’ll need to do in order to get everything working properly on your website.

If you’re new to WordPress and don’t know what plugins to install, take a look through my list of essential plugins for your WordPress website or blog for ideas.

5. Customize the login screen

I’ve written elsewhere about the benefits of customizing the WordPress login screen, and it’s something that I like to do for any clients that I build a WordPress website for. It helps make it easier for them to use WordPress, and is a little extra touch that can go a long way towards making the administrative experience more personal.

The method I detailed involves working with the PHP and CSS files that come with the WordPress installation. That’s fine to do if you want a fancier login screen, but the drawback to it is that when you upgrade your WordPress installation, you’ll lose all that work.

I found a nice plugin called WP Custom Login Form Image that I started using instead, which lets you customize the image that you’ll see on the WordPress login screen. This way, my clients will still see their logo on the login screen, no matter how many times the version of WordPress changes.

Why do this here? Because it’s a simple touch that might otherwise be overlooked later on, I think it’s just best to do it in the beginning.

6.  Change the default category

WordPress sets up a default category for your posts called “Uncategorized”. If you don’t want that to display the word “Uncategorized” to display on your website though, you might want to consider changing the name of the category.

This is generally a good idea to do because you never know when you might forget to select a category for your posts – it’s happened to me before, and I personally don’t like seeing “Uncategorized” display as a category on my blog.

There are two ways of doing this, both simple to do:

• Rename “Uncategorized” – You can edit the name of the “Uncategorized” category like you can any other. Simply go to Posts > Categories, and then edit the category name to whatever you want it to be.
• Choose another category as your default – Create a new category with a name of your choosing, and then go to Settings > Writing. Towards the top of the page you’ll see a drop-down menu where you can change the default category to the one you created.

7. Upload your theme files

Now that you’ve taken care of some of the preliminary settings, you’ll want to upload your theme files so that you can really start to design your website.

Use an FTP program of your choosing to upload the theme files to the wpcontent > themes folder. Then, go to Appearance > Themes, and activate that particular theme.

If you’re using an already-developed theme, then your WordPress website should pretty much be good to go. If you’re a designer, this is where you can start developing and testing your design.

8. Make theme files writable

When I’m creating a WordPress theme, I create the files in Adobe Dreamweaver, and then upload them via FTP to the server. After the website is launched and the responsibility for it gets turned over to the client, I have to think in their shoes. Not all them have Dreamweaver or want to use FTP, so they’ll need a way to update those files on occasion.

That’s where the theme editor in WordPress comes in – which in my mind is one of the more underrated tools in WordPress. This is the spot where someone can edit a particular theme file without needing any special software on their computers. (It just assumes that they have a working knowledge of PHP and CSS.)

The one trick is that you need to give write permissions to your theme files in order for them to be editable in the theme editor. You can do this the same way that you do with your HTACCESS file when enabling permalinks.

Thoughts?

After you install WordPress, what are some of the things that you do to get it set up? Are there things you do that are different for a client’s WordPress website as opposed to your own WordPress website? And finally, is there anything that you think should be on this list that I didn’t include?

Share your thoughts with everyone on these questions and more by leaving a comment below!