Times Change

Some time ago I needed an X-ray. I went to the hospital reception and was told to follow the blue line on the floor. Great idea, however I needed several X-rays by the time I arrived, I had walked into so many trolleys whilst looking at the ground.

When I first started creating websites it would take several months to get sites listed on search engines. One would write a site, generally half a dozen pages or so, add a few keywords and a description to the code and wait for it to all happen. It was infuriatingly slow, there were debates as to whether one should submit sites to the UK and/or the US versions of the search engines and whether submitting to both would cancel each other out.

My recent record for site submission is about 40 seconds. That is from the time that I made a blog post live to being able to find it on Google. 40 seconds.

Nowadays sites are much larger entities, this one already runs into hundreds of pages, it’s a blog and although the posts all sit in a single page, that page is effectively a placeholder for as many posts as I write. Click on the title of the posts and you will see that they open up into their own page.

New World Order

Clearly there is a need to ensure order so that firstly people find your site through search engines and secondly so that once at your site they can find the information that they want. If one were to nip down to the local library and find that they had decided not to classify their books you would probably either,

1. Leave and go and find a more organised library
2. Find something unexpected but interesting to read

The same goes for blogs, ultimately your work will get lost in an ever increasing pile if you don’t implement a good system early on. OK so you aren’t going to implement the Dewey Decimal Classification system but you can and should implement some category system.

For Categories and Tags, Read Contents and Index

Quick Search (Categories)

A brief exercise. In the sidebar of this site you will see a drop-down called “Quick Search”. I could have called it anything and it says ‘Select Category’ on it because this is what the tool does. Your readers can use the category selector to filter out all of the bits that they don’t want to read and find the bits that they are interested in. It’s like the contents list at the beginning of a book.

Play around, go on, try it.

So your reader can click on the drop-down, find a subject that interests them and find they are presented with a subset of your posts.. It’s a hierarchical system eg Transport>Bicycles>Gazelle, all in all a very powerful tool.

I recommend that my customers start by considering a category structure as a paper exercise before a WordPress site is to be created. This is normally quite a difficult process that includes a fair amount of soul-searching and self-analysis. It is unlikely to be a completed item ‘at-the-off’ but it is essential. It will ask questions about what you do and what the site is to do and communicate.

Using WordPress to Create Categories and Tags

Once created on paper WordPress provides a number of ways to create and develop the category structure through the dashboard.

1. Under the “Posts” tab you will find a link to the categories page where you can add a new category either as a standalone item or as a sub-category with a parent. For instance the parent of ‘Cars’ in my system is ‘Transport’.
2. When creating a post, a categories box appears where you can either assign your post to an existing category, or create a new category. This is a particularly useful tool because your blog will develop and hopefully the category structure will develop too.

So to tags. We are now back at the beginning (sort of), you may recall that I mentioned keywords being applied pages. Keywords are words that people may use to search for. Whilst being related to categories they may not necessarily be the same.

As a simple example, Aston Martin is undeniably ‘transport’ but if you Google transport you will probably find information about busses and tubes. (yep- I’ve just checked it, you do).

Instead you might search for “luxury + car” and sure enough, page one Google a reference to Astons.

So in this example Transport is “Category” that Aston Martin might be in but “Luxury, Fast, car, James Bond, Aston, Martin” are the tags that people will use to find the post .

Again WordPress allows you to apply tags to your posts. These tags will act as keywords that will help people to find your posts through searches.

This probably all sounds hopelessly long-winded, it isn’t though. It will become second nature to you when writing posts. The bottom line is that you will help people find their way to your site and then find their way round when they are there.

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You Need Energy

We all need energy

Energy, in a word, energy. The difference between a blog and a static site is that the blog will generally develop and grow, but this won’t happen without some form of input. (my Mac grammar checker told me off for using that term the other day, told me it was jargon).

So what for does this energy take, what do we do to aid the ongoing development?

1. Blog. The first thing to is to actually write some posts, ideally fairly regularly. It’s not rocket science, why would someone visit your site if there is nothing new to read?
2. Keep a Focus. Yes this is a bit ‘do as I say, not as I do’. I have previously commented the eclectic nature of this blog, but… Keep a focus, yes of course embellish, express your human qualities, but make it clear what the boundaries are.

Hold on there, you haven’t done yet, back to the keyboard.

1. Tag your posts. When you write a post use the “post tag tool” to create some relevant tags. This will help search engines make sense of your post, put it in the correct box if you like. Ultimately it will help people to get to the post.
2. Categorise your posts. Similar to above. A strong category structure is essential for the search facility to work properly. If you have a fairly wide working remit a good set of categories will help viewers mine down to what they are looking for quickly.
3. Social bookmarking. Submit your post. Make sure Twitter, Stumbleupon, and the rest know about the post. Tweet your own posts, this blog has a Share This button, and a Tweetmeme button that allow me to self promote pretty easily. Beware though, no one enjoys total self promotion and adulation, but, if your post helps others, or helps promote your customers then why not?
4. Give something for free. It may be advice, it may be something that will helps others without costing you too much time. What goes around comes around.
5. Blogroll. Well we used to call them links. Again this site has a few and one of the (many) strengths of WordPress is that you can categorise them. A good set of links is a resource to others and a gift to your associates.

So what will my competitors make of this, won’t I be giving my secrets away?

The bottom line is to get real. Your competitors may already know all about you, who your suppliers are who your customers are. I would suggest that if they do you must be doing something right already for them to know about you.

The alternative scenario, the competition hasn’t even heard of you. Now there’s a thought.

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Many of my website customers forget how to create their posts for WordPress blogs that DesignCredo have created for them.

So, lets see how to,

1. Upload an image to WordPress
2. Create an HTML heading
3. Use a plugin to add a page title and snippet
4. Attach the post to a category and add a tag

This is a simple walk-through, easy enough to follow. It shows how to add some text, upload and insert an image.

In addition it offers a brief introduction to HTML, but nothing to worry about.

If the video seems blurry select a higher quality via the tab on the RH side of the control bar.

For the record this was the first attempt using a MacBook Pro with Quicktime to record. It was run through iPhoto before uploading to YouTube, ain’t macs great?

Breaking all of the rules it was unscripted and a single take. View it as a tester. You can also view the video here

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I am a slow speaker, I know I am but once many years ago this was really brought into focus when I was trying to teach a friend how to ride a drop handlebar bicycle. She fell off at the point that I had said “take your hands off the lower part of the handlebars” and never got to hear me say “slowly, one at a time and move them to the top of the bars”. She survived (we didn’t). The point was that the communication clearly failed.

Why Mining

Frequently I hear people say things like “I need a website” or “I need an A4 brochure”. Rather foolishly some might say, I usually engage in a bit of Why-Mining by asking “why?”

To aid communication the emphasis is on the why not the mining. Why-mining is an effective although slightly annoying tool. Quite simply people frequently tend to already hold many of the answers that they seek, they just need someone to stand in front of them and ask them “why?”

“I need a four page A4 brochure”
“Why?”
“Because my competitor has one”
“Why does it need to be A4?”
“Because thats what they always are?
“Why do you need four pages?”
“Dunno”

Eventually you will get to bedrock and even if this bedrock is “I don’t know”, that will be a good place to start.

The bottom line is that what we at DesignCredo are trying to find out is what is the customer’s story, the unique thing that they are trying to communicate to others.

Form Follows Function

Yes there are standards, paper size, press size, envelope size, but surely the function of a piece of print is to communicate a message, some information, your story, whatever that is. The same goes for websites or any other communication aid. Most websites offer an entry point and frequently a contact point. And yes your story may be similar to your competitors but hopefully it will be a bit different and that difference will be your selling point. And your story may fit neatly on one, two, four pages but it might not.

My Daddy Plays With Apples

Ask most children what their parents do and you won’t get much sense from them. When young I thought my father was in a jazz band when he in fact flew in aeroplanes. But then I thought that the man who came round to sell insurance was Lee Kuan Yew the prime-minister of Singapore where we lived when I was five.

The problem is that if one asks many adults what they do one may struggle to get much more in the way of sense from them. This is frequently the first great stumbling block when designing websites. Good people, able people, talented people often struggle to be able to say what they or their businesses actually do.

Initially I found this surprising but now I seem to have become somewhat resigned to it, I expect it to happen, I frequently pre-warn customers,

“You will reach a point where your new website asks questions about what you do”.

In truth there is a lot of trust needed between the client and the designer, quite often searching questions will need to be asked in order to get the website right. The designer really needs to know the ins and outs of your business in order to get the site working well. It is relatively easy to create a website. It is a much more considered piece of work to get the website to communicate the appropriate message.

Don’t Stop Me Now

Further to this websites need to be forward looking. It isn’t good enough to design a website for now, it will date horribly. In order to make your site future-proof you will need to trust your designer enough to share your plans and of course you will need to be able to articulate these.

DesignCredo specialise in WordPress sites. The appeal of these blog-sites is that they put the customer back in control. We offer expertise in setting the site up creating the look and extending the functionality of the site whether it is improving the PubSubHubbub capabilities or improving the SEO setup of the site. We have a lot of experience in making sites work effectively for search engines, we have faith in the WordPress platform. In addition we will probably encourage you to become more active in social networking, particularly Twitter. We expect content to be searchable on Google within seconds and minutes, we will help make your site perform.

However this means that ultimately our customers share the responsibility for making the sites work well. For us this is a good thing. Good businesses are thriving organic things that constantly develop. Why shouldn’t their websites be too?

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Exeter design company Design Credo is extremely pleased with the initial performance of the WordPress website that they have created on behalf of Topsham’s Nest interiors. The site has well and truly hit the ground running with large numbers of visitors already viewing the site on a daily basis.

The built-in capabilities of this WordPress site enable us to see that within days of going live the site is getting extremely good viewing figures. This is like having hundreds of extra people looking around the shop on a daily basis.

The website is based on the WordPress platform but has been designed to give a strong visual appeal. DesignCredo have undertaken photography for Nest Interiors to strengthen their existing stock of images. The site aims to capture and convey the rich visual appeal of the Nest Interiors shop.

Great SEO results

A great website is of little value unless it can be found. Of course searching on the company’s name puts it top but more relevant search strings such as ‘new + england + style + furniture + devon’ perform extremely well, less than a week from the site being live. Further to this simple search strings such as “Lexington + Devon” provide first page Google results with more detailed searches such as “Lexington + Chesapeake + Cushion” giving a position 1 on a worldwide Google search.

This is extremely important for a company selling quality brand items such as those from Lexington. Putting it simply Nest interiors although based in Topsham near Exeter in the South-West of England are able to create national and international interest.

Add to this the inclusion of PubSubHubbub technology to ensure almost immediate submission of website developments to Google and we have a very search engine friendly site.

However, this is just the start. Design Credo will use various collectable data to monitor where site-traffic comes from and will continue to develop content that will create a good hit with Google searches.

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Search Engine Marketing is a must if you are to going to get people to view any website. Nowadays everyone seems to be an SEO specialist, at least they do in Exeter and Devon, I imagine it is the same throughout he UK.

I am more aware of the abilities of WordPress than other blogging platforms so this is what I will use as my reference point. I have to say that I am totally enamoured with WordPress, I think it is great, but first a bit of general knowledge.

WordPress comes in two distinct flavours

1. .com Most people start with a free WordPress blog which you can start straight away and I would recommend you to go and sign up. If you blog a for a while and chose to migrate to self-hosted this can be easily done.
2. .org If you have access to hosting then self-hosted blogs open up a world of possibilities. You will need hosting with a database which is necessary to store all of the posts, images, comments and information about the site. My hosting supplier now throws one in with even the starter hosting package. You don’t really need to understand about databases (MySQL) but it can be quite interesting looking around, seeing how all of the data and information is organised.

WordPress can be thought of as a modular entity.

1. Core
   The site itself, everything that is needed to make it work. This includes a user friendly interface that will allow you to update the site without knowing about web deign.
2. Themes
   There are a huge number of available themes that make the basic WP blog look different (1 column, 2 column, colours styling etc.)
3. Plugins
   These add to the functionality of the blog, they make it do more things, (display images in galleries, add contact forms, etc. )

Search Engine Friendly Blogs

It helps if your blog has a focus and a appeals to a niche. Write with a clear view of your target audience, in particular what your readers are looking to find and what words they would use to search. Incorporate these words in your text. These keywords are fundamentally important.

WordPress plugins add to the functionality of the blog. In particular there are a range of SEO aids such as;

• XML sitemap generator
  This will enable the blog to develop an XML site-map that helps Google and other search engines locate the pages in your site. (you can get a plugin to create a people friendly site-map such as the one on this site).
• HeadSpace
  This lets you create a good page title and meta description. These two items are very important. Gone are the days when ‘Home’ was a good page title, it needs suitable keywords. The Meta description is what will generally appear in the Google snippet, the bit of information that appears when your page has been found on Google. This should be descriptive and keyword rich.
• Share This buttons
  Make it easy for people to share your site. Not strictly SEO stuff but it all helps.
• Twitter feed and Tweetmeme buttons
  As with Share links Twitter is a great way to network.Don’t underestimate the power of other social media such as Twitter and Facebook, cross-link your accounts try to keep a similar focus with to your blog, otherwise you will fail to appeal to your niche. There are a huge number of sites that will do the job for you, have a look at the Google search results for designcredo. There are loads of re-tweets and niche re-tweet sites in this list. Good news!
• WordPress Stats
  Statistics are your source for data that lets you find out how many people use your site and how they find you. You occasionally will find unexpected results.

I will finish with one further plugin PuSHPress (a PubSubHubbub Plugin For WordPress by Joseph Scott)

This plugin adds PubSubHubbub ( PuSH ) support to your WordPress powered site. The main difference between this plugin and others is that it includes the hub features of PuSH, built right in. This means the updates will be sent directly from WordPress to your PuSH subscribers.

I have recently mentioned PuSh with WordPress and my experience is that WordPress is quite PuSHy as it stands. I am currently developing a WordPress blog for a customer (several as it goes) but the one that is nearing completion has found it’s way on to Google already. This is a tad annoying because the location that it was Googled at is not it’s final resting place so in this instance the PuSHy little blog has caused me a bit of work. For now I will leave PuSH as a topic to return to.

The bottom line is that blogs should no longer be seen as SEO problems, my experience is quite the opposite. Within a couple of hours notification of the first draft of this blog had been returned to me via Google Alerts (SEO, Exeter) but in the same alert I was informed that the post had already made an appearance on another site. Don’t forget, this is organic search engine marketing my investment is time not money.

Yes, yes, time is money I know…

At Design Credo we design websites. We are equally as happy to set up a blog for you. This includes researching theme styles, editing them to suit and branding your site. We will install and configure the plugins and most importantly guide you through the interface. Give us a call (07790 322176) or contact us here.

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Andrew Butler is a surprisingly common name, there are a lot of us about. In the UK there are a number of Andrew Butlers who are involved in different forms of photography. There is another, called Andrew Butler, who runs is a company of Chartered Surveyors in the Midlands. I know because he has the .co.uk domain, I wanted it. He also has the .com, but not the .net (I have that).

So to the stats.

This blog is ‘early days’ for me, ‘just a bit of fun’. WordPress blogs generate stats and  one record that I have is of the following search terms used to find my blog ‘andrew butler let and managed’. Sure enough, throw these words back into Google  and you will be lead to my blog, a tad annoying if you are trying to rent a house in Nottingham. (Note to self remember that there are other search engines out there).

The bottom line here is that if you understand how the search engines work your websites will work better. I suspect there are many in the property business who would love to rank fourth in Google for a simple four word search. Looking to see how it happens is the start to controlling the process.

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