Carol Hurst, a mortgage broker specializing in Reverse Mortgages in the North Georgia area was a delightful client. Although her parent company, Diamond Mortgage, had a company website, Carol knew her clients well and wanted to be able to speak to them in her own voice and provide them with the information that she wanted them to have. Carol deals with seniors and her motto is “Because Trust Matters”. It was very important that New Tricks design the site so that her client’s could get a sense of who she was and begin to trust and like Carol before they met. Her son had tried to build a WordPress website for Carol but it it not easy to do a branded WordPress site when you are just starting to learn the program. So he suggested his mother contact New Tricks to design the website. We enjoyed working with Carol on her website design. She gave us clear expectations and then let us deliver. Carol is 62 and she is proof of the New Tricks motto, It’s Never Too Late!

Judi – I must  take time to let you know how happy I am with my site –I’ve got some tweaking to do – and some ‘getting comfortable’ with adding, changing, etc.  And, I’m definitely going to depend on you to direct me on the path to getting folks to my site, however, I just announced my new site at staff meeting on Wednesday.  Of course, Diamond is very small company but all my peers loved it.  One guy called me yesterday after he’d checked out your site and made the comment that “WEB ENVY” was exactly what he was experiencing.

I can’t thank you enough – and I couldn’t be happier and more thankful that Daren knew you!!!

Carol Hurst
Because Trust Matters
http://www.yourreversemortgagerep.com

I met Bret about six months ago and was impressed with his drive and energy. He has been a member of my Catapult marketing group and has started his own web design company. It is a mutual fan club.

Judi Knight is a great to work with and her New Tricks team are definitely on top of their game. Judi and New Tricks are dedicated to overall customer satisfaction, but more importantly, doing things that actually work. So many times Web Development companies try to shove off some basic package on you the way ‘they’ think it should be done. Instead, New Tricks takes the time to listen to their clients and guide them in a direction that will ultimately help them reach their goals.

- Bret Phillips – Web Devils

Before

After

Antoine found us through the Atlanta WordPress Users Meetup Group and needed some help getting his static website moved over to a WordPress site that would be easier to maintain and get better search engine optimization. He paid for about 6 hours of consultation and training and I redesigned his header and logo. He is finishing up the site content now before it goes live. Here is what he said:

I contacted Judi to help me convert my static html site to a wordpress site, she was very cordial and professional, she went above and beyond and exceeded my expectations.My website now looks good and it’s super functional. I recommend Judi to all business owners wanting to increase traffic to their website.

-  Antoine Rached
Diminished Value of Georgia
Independent Insurance Adjuster
Independent Auto Appraiser
GA License # 2712433

Testimonial from Score Workshop Coordinator:

I’ve been meaning to write to you since you did the workshop,  Why What and How to have a Great Business Website— a month has gone by, hasn’t it?  I want you to know that the evaluations were fantastic!  Absolutely RAVE reviews!   Most people don’t say much specific, but I thought you’d want to hear the few that bothered to do so.

Kudos for “Laid out the info in plain language”  “well organized” , “easy to understand”,  “excellent step-by-step tutorial”.   Several noted  your “tips and tricks” and “do’s and don’ts”

As always, there was one who felt it was over his/her head — that’s pretty much par for the course.  There’s usually someone else who complains that it was “too basic” but not this time.  I would conclude that you struck exactly the right note.

Thank you!

Sandy Perkowitz
Score Atlanta

Note: I will be doing this workshop again in August in Atlanta. Stay Tuned.

I am using a WordPress Plugin called Scribe. It is the bees knees for small businesses wanting to get the most out of organic search engine optimization of their posts on their WordPress Sites. New Tricks offers a marketing group for small businesses with WordPress Sites in Atlanta. We meet weekly for an hour and a half to go over topics such as search engine optimization and really work on meeting each businesses marketing goals.  We have been having a lot of fun with this  Scribe Plugin since it teaches and corrects your efforts to write organic SEO content. Here are some of the best practices Scribe suggests to rank well on your search terms.

Search engine optimization (SEO) in a nutshell is the practice of improving the traffic to a website. Organic SEO should not try and trick search engines ( black hat SEO) . It is best if it comes from good organic content written to show in the  natural results of a search engine.  It helps to understand how to provide  your information-rich content in a way that is naturally weighted by the search engines by following the so called “rules” of  search engines. Her are some current best practices.

To Start

The first step to writing content a post  (or page) is that is search engine optimized is to determine the primary topic. This will be your keyword phrase or initial keyword and should be the central theme for the post content. The more closely the post is related to the keyword phrase, the more relevant the page will be ranked by the search engine. The goal for good SEO is to write a full post about the topic of your one keyword phrase.

Content Title

Here are the Scribe guidelines for writing titles or headlines:

• The title length should not exceed 72 characters. This will ensure the full title is visible in a search result, increasing the likelihood of a click-through.
• The title length should include at least 4 words.
• Include the keyword phrase in the title. This will increase the relevancy of your content for that keyword phrase. In addition, the title usually becomes the headline for the SERP, and including the keyword will increase the likelihood of a click-through.
• Include a Primary Keyword toward the beginning of your Title to increase the relevancy of the keyword within the search engines’ indexes.

Description

The description will generally be the “snippet” copy for the search result. Depending on the website that hosts your content, the description may also be used as a subhead for a press release, serve as the first paragraph of a web page or be the <meta> description − only seen on the SERP. When writing the description for the content, follow these basic guidelines:

• The description length should not exceed 165 characters. This will ensure the full description is visible in a search result.
• Include the keyword phrase in the description. This will increase the relevancy of your content for that keyword phrase.
• Include a Primary Keyword toward the beginning of your Description to increase the relevancy of the keyword within the search engines’ indexes.

Body

When writing content for the body, follow these basic guidelines:

• The body length should be at least 300 words, ideally centered on one or two keyword phrase(s).
• For keyword density, each keyword or keyword phrase should not represent more than 5.5% of the total words on the page. Otherwise, the search engine may consider the page to be keyword stuffing.
• To give a keyword phrase additional emphasis, bold the first occurrence of the keyword phrase in the first paragraph of body. Including some content in a bulleted list is another way to add emphasis.
• Include one hyperlink for every 120 words of body content spread out evenly down the page. For example, 500 words of content should include 5 hyperlinks with approximately each paragraph containing one hyperlink. Be sure not to “spam” or “keyword stuff” your content with a paragraph of keywords linked to the same web page over and over again.
• Include a hyperlink at the beginning of the body in order to show prominence.
• Ideally, hyperlinks should link to content that is relevant to the keywords, preferably to an interior page of your website, but when linking to another website, link to an interior page. In other words, do not link to a website’s home page if there is an interior page that is more relevant to the keyword phrase.
• As an example, consider a relevant hyperlink to be included in content focused on “home medical supplies” is a link to an article about “The increasing need for home medical supplies” at http://www.timelymedicalnews.com/supply. Following are four acceptable ways to link to the article:
  1. “According to Timely Medical News, home medical supply needs have more than doubled since 2005.”
  2. “According to Timely Medical News, http://www.timelymedicalnews.com/supply, home medical supply needs have more than doubled since 2005.”
  3. “According to a new report, home medical supply needs have more than doubled since 2005.”
  4. “According to http://www.timelymedicalnews.com/supply, home medical supply needs have more than doubled since 2005.”

DEFINITIONS OF TERMS

Keyword – a word (or combination of words) that describes the topic or subject of a piece of content. It is also a word or combination of words that are used in a search engine to search for a topic or subject.

Primary Keyword – a term developed by Scribe™ to designate the keyword(s) or keyword phrase(s) in a piece of content that are most likely to result in an organic search listing based on Scribe’s analysis of the content and the keyword usage.

Keyword Analysis – a proprietary process utilized by Scribe™ to determine the keyword(s) or keyword phrase(s) in a piece of content based on popular search terms. It includes a report on the rank, prominence, frequency, density and search volume of the keyword(s)/keyword phrase(s), and provides related terms, along with their search volumes for comparison.

Related Keyword Tag – words or combinations of words added to a piece of content that describe the main topic(s) or subject(s) of a piece of content.

Keyword Rank – a proprietary algorithm developed by Scribe™ that determines the value of keyword(s) or keyword phrase(s) in relationship to a piece of content and to each other. Keywords are ranked in descending order of importance as either Primary, Important, Significant, or Not Emphasized.

Keyword Density – the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears in a particular piece of content in relation to the total number of words in the content. It is usually represented as a percentage; the higher the number, the greater the density. Current SEO best practices suggest that a keyword’s density be less than 5% for one piece of content.

Keyword Frequency – the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears in a particular piece of content. It is usually represented as a whole number; the higher the number, the greater the keyword frequency.

Keyword Prominence – a proprietary formula developed by Scribe™ that determines the value of a keyword or keyword phrase based on its relative placement within a particular piece of content. Prominence is rated as either Very Low, Low, Medium, High or Very High. The higher the prominence, the more favorable the keyword/keyword phrase is presumed to be weighted in the content by the search engine algorithm. You should strive to achieve a Prominence rating of high or very high for your Primary Keyword/keyword phrase for a page. However, all keywords/keyword phrases on a single page should not have a high or very high prominence rating to minimize the chance that search engines will consider you guilty of keyword stuffing or spamming.

Keyword Research – the act of exploring keywords. The process frequently involves reviewing search volumes of targeted keywords and alternative keywords to determine which keywords to include in content.

Keyword Stuffing (or keyword spamming) – adding an excessive number of keywords or keyword phrases to a web page or repeating a keyword or keyword phrase excessively on one page in place of relevant content. It is typically a technique used by those trying to “trick” the search engines into ranking a website in organic searches.

Trend – the approximate search volume of a keyword or keyword phrase over the past 12 months. Trend is helpful to identify seasonality of keywords that may have a low volume but are on the rise.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page) – the web page(s) containing hyperlinks to related content provided by a search engine in response to a search query. Usually, the results page returns both paid ads (sponsored links) and organic listings.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – the practice of improving the traffic to a website from the organic or natural results of a search engine.

SEO Best Practices (white hat SEO) – utilizing search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that align with the guidelines of the search engines’ ranking algorithms without the use of trickery. Examples of trickery include using hidden text, duplicating content, link farming and keyword spamming, to name a few.

The Scibe LowDown

Scribe is a Premium Plugin which means there is a fee for this plugin unlike most WordPress plugins which are open source and therefor available free.  The basic scribe package will be adequate for most as it costs 27.00 which gives you the ability to use it to check how your post rates 30 times in a month. Most people I know are not posting more than once a day so this works out fine. Unfortunately, the number of unused evaluations does not roll over to the next month. But, you are able to use it on more than one site. So you can share it with a friend if you don’t do 30 posts a month.

It is very easy to use and makes writing great optimized posts a game – by giving each post a score that you can work on and change. I love to try and get it my scores to 100%.  The whole things appears on your admin area when you are writing or editing a post. Couldn’t be easier. You should give it a try.

• Do you need a website you can keep up to date and modify yourself?
• Would you like it to have a blog component?
• Would you like to be hooked into the social networking capabilities of Facebook and Twitter?
• Do you need graphics, content or a brand new image?

We can do your whole website from scratch from Logo to SEO or we can create a branded look for a WordPress website you did yourself.
We can give you tips on Social Media and SEO or we can do it for you.

If you have been thinking about making a change you are in the right place. Sign up for the newsletter above and or Contact us today, we can help create a WordPress website for you and teach you how to use it to grow your business! Be sure to take a look at some of our website designs on our portfolio page.

Working with Images

One of the biggest problems non-graphic artists have when learning to maintain their websites is the whole issue of working with their images. Web 2.0 sites really rock with photos and images to demonstrate a topic or can be used in a long blog post to break up text into manageable sized chunks.

Image File Types and Purpose

It helps to know a bit about file types. If you don’t know your JPEGs from your GIFs image formats, this is for you. First, lets talk about file compression.

There are basically two ways of saving images, lossy or lossless (no, I didn’t make those up). If an image is saved in a lossy image format, it means the format being used discards some of the “unimportant” image information. However, the resulting image file is smaller. Lossless retains ALL the image information. OK, now that you know that, here’s a overview of the most common image formats.

1. JPEG – By far one of the most common image formats. It’s primarily used for photographs. It is a lossy type of format, but most people can’t really see the difference. You can adjust the amount of compression when saving a jpeg image, so you do have some control over the final output quality. JPEGs are extremely popular since they compress into a small file size and retain excellent image quality.Keep in mind that the more you compress a JPEG, the more “pixel” it will tend to look. For the best results, save your JPEGs at the “medium” or “High” setting (your imaging software should bring up this option when you go to save as a JPEG). I really can’t see any image degradation in most pictures saved at the medium settings.
2. GIF – Another popular format, especially on the web. It’s a loss-less format that’s ideal for graphics. GIFs can be either static or animated. If you’ve ever seen a graphic on a web page that was animated, you’ve seen one of these animated gifs. Hit your Refresh button and check out the WorldStart logo at the top to see an animated GIF (it only runs the animation once). Most of the time GIFs are used for non-photographic type images. Buttons, borders, stuff like that.
3. BMP- This is the standard Windows image format. It’s loss-less and works well for pictures or graphics. It’s an uncompressed file format, so it takes up lots of disk space. It’s also the standard format for Windows wallpaper.
4. PNG (Portable Network Graphic) is a loss-less image format, properly pronounced “ping”. It was designed to replace the older and simpler GIF format. Like GIF you can make transparent images for buttons and icons, but it does not support animation. A PNG file can generally end up being twice the size of a JPG and three times larger than a GIF and some browsers, such as older versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape, incorrectly render them. I don’t see it taking over any time soon.
5. TIFF- It’s a loss-less format that can use file compression (called LZW compression). It won’t result in as small a file as a jpeg (which is why it’s not used on the web), but you do retain all image quality. When compressed, the file is usually about half the size of the original file.

Image Size

Right out of our 8- 10 megapixel cameras these days, our photos are huge. The photos that you download from your little bitty memory chip are high resolution ( 300 dpi) and maybe something like 2500 pixels or more. Often we are in a hurry to upload a photo to our site so we grab it and upload/insert it. WordPress will actually take it that size if your web hosting company doesn’t limit the size of an upload. But that is really a problem that will start to bloat your site, among other problems.

What is needed here is a handy dandy method to batch resize the photos in a folder on your computer. I have found a great little free program that will do it for you in an instant. It will take all of your photos and create a smaller version ( I choose 400 pixels) and then it will place the smaller version right next to the original sized photo in your folder that it was in. To get this free program go to this site and download it.

The awesome Batch Picture Resize in action shown in the screenshot on the left.

The size of resized images that are output is controlled by the name of the application. To rename the application, click on the icon to select it and do one of these things: press F2 key, click in the text under the icon, or right-click the icon and select Rename command in the menu.

I renamed my program to PhotoResize400.exe.

How to use it?

• Download PhotoResize400.exe and place it on your desktop.
• Open Windows Explorer to your photo files.
• Select the photo or the entire file that you would like the photos re-sized and drag and drop JPG files or folders with JPG files on to the the application icon on your desktop.
• The tool will re-size JPG images and save them next to the originals. Names of the new pictures will be based on the original names, with a suffix indicating their size. For example, the re-sized version of MyPhoto.jpg will be called MyPhoto-400.jpg, where the number 400 indicates the size of the picture.

For a Mac Users

Try this re-sizer program from K Studios. I haven’t tried it since I don’t have a Mac but several people have assured me it works great.

Cool Downloading Gadget

This falls in the category of a very cool new trick. Sometimes something comes along that truly makes one’s life easier. I know there are always new technologies coming down the pike but how many times do you get something and you can barely understand or ever use a tenth of it? So now I am here to share with you what might be one of your most used devices of the year. Introducing Eye-Fi. This is a little orange 4 gig memory card that goes into your camera to replace your old one and then it is magic. You go stand within ten feet of your computer and depending on which level you get it will 1) upload all of the photos on it to your computer, or 2) your computer and a website (like Flickr) or 3) your photos and movies to your computer and a website. Now how is that for a dream answered?

“About” Pages

Smashing Magazine has a great post on “About Pages”. It may not be relevant for some sites but I liked the concept that you can have some fun with these pages. And since people do business with those that they Know Like and Trust, it is worth putting some thought into yours.

This is a funny little video from Network Solutions on getting on the basics of getting your business online!

The Atlanta WordPress Users Group is going to be held at 130 Krog at New Tricks Atlanta Headquarters on Wednesday, April 21 at 7:00 PM. This is the 17th meeting of this popular Atlanta Meetup Group. Jack Kennard and I, Judi Knight, his new co-organizer, will give a basic presentation on how to go about getting a WordPress site up and started. I have written a recent post on moving your site from a WordPress.com site to a .org site and it pretty much outlines the material that we will cover. The presentation is planned to last about an hour including time for questions and answers.

Jack and I would like try and find a format for the group that can satisfy the diverse levels of experience in this group. So after the presentation we we will break into smaller discussion groups so beginners and more advanced members can talk about the things that are pertinent to their issue and get questions answered on both basic and more advanced topics. We are trying to work out the schedule so that there is little something for everyone.

With all of the interest and talent in our Atlanta WordPress Users’ group, we also want to give others a chance to present, so please, don’t be shy. Let us know if you have a topic you’d like to hear more about or if your would like to do the presentation for an upcoming meeting.

Some suggestions have been to have a meeting on the new features of 3.0 and another presentation on WPMU (multi-user version) and Buddy Press. So stay tuned, and keep in touch. I hope to see you Wednesday!

I won’t go into all of the many reasons you might want to move your blog from WordPress.com to self-hosted version which is available from WordPress.org. However, some of the reasons are:

• your url is www.yoursitename.wordpress.com rather than www.yoursitename.com unless you pay extra to have your own domain mapped to that .com account.
• limited to the 60 or so themes that come with the .com account.
• cannot customize the themes.
• limited to the plugins that come with the .com account  which reduces functionality of your blog.
• can’t easily hit a button after posting to send to twitter or facebook ( that is functionality available with many with .org plugins).

The list goes on. I am assuming that you have made the decision to make the switch. Now What?

1. Purchase a domain. You get a free domain when you purchase web hosting through BlueHost, my favorite hosting company.
2. Get a hosting account with BlueHost. It costs 6.95 per month. You should go ahead and pay for two years since search engines like to see some evidence that you plant to be around for a while. If you bail on this project later,  BlueHost will give you a refund  prorated for time you haven’t used.
3. After getting the hosting account, go to the c-panel of BlueHost and go to Applications. You will see the WordPress “W” which will will take you through a 1 minute install process. Install  WordPress on the root directory not the subdirectory option ( unless that is what you want to do. ( root directory: www.yourdomain.com, not on the sub-directory: www.yourdomain.com/subdrectory name.)
4. Write down all of the passwords carefully; For BlueHost, for WordPress and settings for FTP ( file transfer program such as Filezilla which is not necessary but helpful).
5. You now have WordPress installed on your own domain. If you already had a domain registered with a different company, say Go Daddy, (do not get hosting on Go Daddy since among other things,  their database sites run slow) But leave your domain hosted there and go there ( or wherever your domain is registered,  to put the BlueHost DNS numbers in the nameservers  ( NS1.bluehost.com and NS2.bluehost.com)  This will point your domain name to your new site on the BlueHost account.
6. Go to your new WordPress site ( www.yourdomainname/wp-admin)go to the dashboard and set up all of  the Settings. Pay attention to the permalinks settings.
7. Now time to clean up your .com blog by getting rid of spam comments and such to prepare for the export.
8. Go to your old .com site’s dashboard to Tools- Export and export the blog file and save it to your desktop.
9. Go to your new site’s dashboard to Tools – Import and find the file on your desktop to import into your new site. Be sure you check the option when it presents itself to bring in all attachments.
10. Now you are ready to choose your theme and customize it as well as choosing your plugins setting them up and adding widgets to your site. There are lots of great tutorials as well as good books out on how to get the most out of your WordPress.org account. If you aren’t good with graphics, you can hire someone to spruce up a theme and get it all set up for you and then you can take it from there.

But you are not finished yet! What do do with your old site? Google does not want duplicate content sitting around the Internet so here is the plan to employ if your site has been going for a while and has a lot of traction. If it hasn’t been up long and you haven’t been serious about it then just delete the original .com blog. But if you have lots of search engine traction and links and so forth then there is a way to do this.

I have researched the answer to the best practices for making sure the original blog gets pointed to the new one. WordPress.com has come up with a post explaining a trick  that will allow you to have the old one redirect to the new WordPress.org site automatically. It seems that to do this, it only works if you had the domain on the old site first. So the first step is going through the procedure to do that with your DNS (name servers settings)  of your original.com account. Directing the domain there will temporarily cause the new account to be down.

But not to worry, then once that is set up you can redirect the old site  to the new one and then go in ( to Go Daddy or where ever the domain is registered  and change the DNS back to those of the new site ( if  you used BlueHost then they are: NS1.bluehost.com and NS2.bluehost.com). Then all is well and all links and everything point to the new site. Here are the specific directions from WordPress.com on how to do this.

If you are local, please join us for the Atlanta WordPress Users’ Group to meet Wednesday April 21 at New Tricks Word Headquarters in Inman Park.