#3 on Google in less than 19 Minutes: What’s the true power of a Business Blog? Well, you know I always focus on conversions. But before you can convert a visitor to a customer, you have to have visibility. And once your Blog gets accepted as a trusted source for information in your market niche (about 2-3 months of steady posting at least twice a week for new blogs), then your latest posts will go up fast — and rise to the top if your content is good.

A case example is a blog post on camp cooking contests we put up Saturday morning at SportsExposBlog.com, during their four-day tradeshow, where each day selling more tickets is a key to success. Within 19 minutes, that post was #3 on Google for the search, “Cooking Contests, Salt Lake City.” Great for immediate, and targeted visibility for those interested in reviewing cooking contests.  It’s still in position #4 on Google as I write this post.  Another client, Tom Hale — an Adwords Expert Extraordinaire — regularly sees his posts register high on Google in under 10 minutes.

SEO Technique Tip: First, the business blog for SportsExposBlog.com is developed on the WordPress platform, which out of the box provides a number of ways to Optimize for Search Engines. Then, we used a professional SEO plugin called HeadSpace (see articles about how HeadSpace works here ) and configured it for the phrase “Cooking Contests”, and the locality, “Salt Lake City”, for that specific post. It worked.

Why WordPress as a CMS? Last week I was at the Portland Search Engine Marketing Professionals annual Search Fest — a day of seminars and trainings on tips, traps, and techniques for this rapidly evolving field. There, a sales rep. told me that WordPress was not a CMS. Huh? Funny, it seems that Ford Motors, Comacho Cigars, CNN, the New York Times, and a host of other Fortune 500 players didn’t get that memo. They’re all enjoying the strengths of WordPress as their primary Content Management Solution. Of course, the sales rep. was, well, repping his own proprietary CMS based on Microsoft’s unpopular ASP.net platform.

There are several platforms out there offering CMS solutions, ranging from Cold Fusion, to Open Source PHP/MySQL, to Ruby on Rails, and ASP.net. Check around, and you will find many more options in the PHP realm, of which WordPress is arguably one of the top five choices. Way back in 2007, WordPress won “Best Open Source Social Networking CMS” from Packt Publishing.

What’s the best CMS solution for your company? Well, WebFadds, of course, can make the case for WordPress. But I admit, you’ll see some great contenders out there. A young fellow on a plane I took to Salt Lake City last week showed me an impressive proprietary CMS built in the Ruby on Rails environment. One big choice is Proprietary (you pay one company for a license and rely on them to continually improve your CMS) versus “Open Source” (the initial core program is free to download and install, and upgrades are free).

WordPres wins again, since it is in this initially “free” category.  But to be frank, free is not really free. You will want to custom configure and tweak it for maximum SEO and administration optimization — and that costs some money. But I think you’ll see that WordPress still wins when you compare your R.O.I. to other systems over the mid-term.  And, optimization with WordPress is not just about SEO — you’ll also streamline your content administration wrok.

Contact me — I’ll be pleased to work with you to find the best solution for your R.O.I… and, take a look at this overview: CMS WebSite Solutions with WordPress.

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What actions do you want visitors to take at your website?: Seems like a logical enough question for you to ask during the development process, right?  Strange then, that I was at a Search Engine Marketing seminar this past week where three different companies had put their sites up for review, and one could not answer the question, one wasn’t sure what their prospective customers were searching for, and another had a “buy” button that did not lead to a shopping cart.  That’s why I always insist on identifying key landing pages and conversion routes when you first make your site map (a conversion happens when a visitor “converts” to a lead or a customer).  Begin with the end in mind. Always know what your visitors must do at your site so that you will meet your business goals, and precisely where at your site the action should take place, and how you will persuade them to do it.  The rest is optimization — I’ll chat with you more about that in future issues.

Speaking of chat… did you notice that you can contact me quickly via chat in my sidebar at WebFadds.com?  Stumped, need a quick fix or troubleshoot?  Just jump over here and page me via two different chat systems — Google or Skype.  Your choice.

A forms creation plugin I use on most development projects: CForms for creation of professional contact forms on your site, has been updated and revised to work with WordPress 2.7 (you have upgraded to 2.7, haven’t you?  If not — do so soon for the great new streamlined admin. features, for security, and so the latest plugins will function well). 

Let’s have a closer look at some favorite CForms Features:

• Multi-Part / Multi-Page form chains

• Multiple forms on one or many pages / posts

• Tell-A-Friend functionality, see Help documentation

• File attachments / Upload, fully configurable per form

• Multiple upload fields allowed

• Cloning / duplication of forms

• Drag and drop form management

• Timing of forms (start & end dates)

There are other forms plugins for WordPress — around a dozen — but none I have found offer the features and functionality of cForms including the built in CSS styling of forms:

Above, CformsII admin. links appear on your sidebar (lower left), and the “Styling” link gives you a number of preset (but editable) CSS looks for your forms (red arrow).

Best of luck and success online -

Scott

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