This reminds me of website navigation in the 90’s and early 2000′s. Remember how designers would make the navigation buttons subtle, hidden, and teeny, tiny — in the interests of design elegance. Back then, we at AEC were pushing for upfront & elegant navigation as it’s conducive to people clicking around the website and reading more.

The same is true for the email sign up box and social media icons. If you are committed to social media and inbound marketing, you want to the links and sign ups to be prominent on your site.

In the above photo you see the fun website of  TV host / health  / wellness / eco-consciousness coach Giselle Achecar. I didn’t design this site but I like the style and the prominent social media.

On the left is Chick Boss Premier Jewelry. I consult on their website and handle their blog and social media. Each page has a call to action for their online store, their Facebook, Twitter and email newsletter. That’s because we want every site visitor to keep in touch and go to the store once they’ve gotten to know us.

The same is true for the email sign up box and social media icons. If you are committed to social media and inbound marketing, you want to the SM links and blog and email sign ups to be prominent on your site. And it can look great!

Have a site you like that does this well? Want to share how you’ve done this on your site–drop me a line in the comments section below!

Also, here’s a blog post from Hubspot with 50…yes, 50 social media icons in different styles to rock your web design.

Karen Nierlich is an internet marketing consultant in Albany, CA. She and others at AEC help clients thrive on the internet through website development, design and inbound marketing consulting. See the Almost Everything Communications portfolio.

Artist’s Website Requirements

1. Updates/ Social Media/ Blog. Usually the artist, musician, writer, or healer wants to be able to update their website themselves. Sometimes they want a blog, FB and Twitter icons set up so they can promote their website. This is the main reason I recommend WordPress Websites. WordPress is a blogging platform,  it’s easy to update, and it’s easy to add links to FB, Twitter and other social media and plugins that allow for sharing.

2. Aesthetics As artists, musicians, healers we usually have some aesthetic requirements! We want the site to look great and be personalized to match our art. There are 1,000′s of WordPress templates, and they are easy to customize so that’s another reason I choose WordPress for artist friends.

Samples of WordPress Websites for Artists, Musicians, Writers & Healers

Asma Salehi is a painter friend of mine. About a year ago she translated a children’s book she remembered from her childhood in Afghanistan and we set up this WordPress website at that time. The site is flexible so she’ll be able to use it to promote her different art projects moving forward. Under $1000.

Stories of Seniors This fun blog about seniors and elders is written by my sister. The design isn’t custom like the other samples. It’s actually a free WordPress template she selected. This site needed no design work making it the most inexpensive. Under $500.

Psychotherapy for Pregnancy Loss with Donna Rothert - Donna had an existing site but was ready for a different look and feel. She selected colors and artwork and we discussed the site outline together. She had hosting and a domain already which she sent over. We at Almost Everything Communications set up the template and designed the header. For her we loaded the content and the links and made some small changes to the existing keywords. Cost about $1000.

Journal of a Moss Enthusiast is my own art blog about moss. Tod, our Senior Programmer & my husband, put this WordPress Website together for me. I picked the font, photo, and wrote the text. It has a blog sign up and social media buttons so people can follow my blog. Under $1000.

Prices and Process

I listed the prices above. These projects I do as hourly projects as each client needs different amounts of design work, planning and set up help.

Inexpensive WordPress Website Software Set Up would look something like this:

• Hosting and domain(s) purchased by client
• Client outlines site and writes content
• Client picks a free WordPress Template and any photos they’d like to add
• Client gets .5-1.5 hour(s) of training on WordPress, Blogging (optional) &  Use of Keywords
• Installation of relevant plugins, Google Analytics and social media icons and links.

Karen Nierlich

Karen Nierlich is a internet marketing consultant for Almost Everything Communications. She enjoys consulting with clients about marketing strategies, blogging, keywords and much more. She is also a photographer and you can see her work at www.iheartmoss.com.

Notes about Free or Nearly Free Websites: Often artist look at one of those website tonight packages you can find on GoDaddy.com or Yahoo.com. Frankly, I haven’t set up one of those site and so I don’t know so much about it. However, when I do see those websites they usually look canned or very dull and they usually can’t be optimized.  Meaning you usually can’t place keywords on the site to help people find your site on search engines. I know this is the case for iWebsites* from Mac.

*I recommend iWebsites only for weddings, events and family photos. These sites look good but can’t be optimized. So they are perfect when your audience is only your friends and family.

WordPress Website for Berkeley Secret Garden

My web design team and I were delighted when we got the referral to work with Berkeley Secret Garden (BSG), a Berkeley retail business that specializes in equipment and supplies for indoor gardening. Knowing that BSG has one of the most unique storefronts in Berkeley (even for Berkeley), we knew we’d get the opportunity to do some fun and creative design for them.

The owner at Berkeley Secret Garden and I quickly agreed we wanted to replicate the blue & purple sunburst with the flowers and butterfly from his store facade for the website design. The font for the banner is called Sketch Rockwell. It’s by Artill Fonts, in the category of handwritten at Urban Fonts. The butterfly is hand drawn by our graphic design staff to match the one on the store facade.

Businesses like BSG have attracted and maintained loyal clientele over the years by having personality and not being afraid to show it. In addition to the unique storefront, the people who work at Berkeley Secret Garden are indoor growing experts and really into plants. The owner also owns 3 dogs and often day-sits other dogs. So a visit to the store includes being greeted by a large but friendly dog. The website includes a page of profiles of the employees AND photos of the dogs.

Finally, this site for Berkeley Secret Garden is a WordPress website because it’s an ideal platform for a local business. It’s ideal for blogging and installing other social media, using keywords for search engine optimization and for quick and easy in-house updates. Here’s the first blog post. Regular blog posts help grow website traffic.

First BSG WordPress Blog Post about Compost Tea

In the San Francisco Bay Area, NARI (Nat’l Ass. of Remodeling Industry professionals) is a powerful organization that helps professionals in the remodeling industry such as contractors, architects, and interior designers, etc. Their new WordPress website has a modern design, a member database, an online membership application, online payments, a blog to help grow traffic to the site and lots of photos of member’s award-winning projects.

One of the challenges for the project was to create a homepage design that balanced the Board’s desire for a clean and elegant design with the need to have a website that was highly informative and represented the organizations’ multiple goals.

Goals for the website included information for homeowners looking for a contractor or other remodeling professional, information for members about upcoming event and information for prospective members who’d want to be impressed by the caliber and activities of current members. The Board also wanted space to recognize sponsors and carry ads. Viewing the website you can probably see how these goals are incorporated into the homepage design.

Here’s a table that shows how the organizations’ goals are carried out on the homepage:

Homeowner’s seeking a Contractor: Red “Find a Remodeler” Button in top right, banner in the middle with 2 projects and quotes from satisfied homeowners. Repeat of “Find a Remodeler” button below events.

Members’s Looking for Event Information: Event information front and center. Event button first on right on main navigation.

Prospective Members’s Looking for NARI Information: Image of Annual Golf Tournament with quote about efficacy of NARI networking, letter from the President to prospective members, join button on main navigation and join button for vendors as well.

Among the new elements on this feature rich site is the members directory or “Find A Remodeler” section. Here homeowners and members can search for NARI members by selecting a remodeling need like historical restoration, kitchen baths, or architects and see results for that category. They can also search by name, or type in a category or a city to search on. We’ve built several organizational directories. We’ve come to prefer this layout with the categories down the left side and the results on the right side.

Another goal for the group was to build traffic to the site and potentially generate traffic for their member websites. Each month they publish a email newsletter that goes out to members. In the future, they’ll be publishing the newsletter articles to the blog and seeding each post with relevant keywords. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that publishing content regularly to your blog can help grow traffic and reinforce the keywords on your website.

If your organization is looking for a better website in 2012, please give me a call. Almost Everything Communications works  with organizations such as trades groups, non-profits, Chambers of commerce to build interactive and informative WordPress websites that attract new members and make it easy to connect and communicate.

I’ve probably read over a dozen books about success; this one contains none of the annoying, obtuse, illogical, bizarre parts I’ve had to apologize for in other success books. Hardy’s book contains all the advice you’ll find in other success books…honestly it’s amazing how the advice is so similar book to book. However this book is very concise and easy to read.

The chapters are titled The Compound Effect in Action, Choices, Habits, Momentum, Influences and Acceleration. For me, Habits was the most influential at this time. I’ve had a lot of success scheduling activities into my week and developing routines. I’ve talked about routines making things happen in this blog. I exercise several times a week, have daily family dinners, write 3 blogs (struggle with that a bit) because they are scheduled into my day and week and month. Some high achievers schedule their whole year in advance. I’ve worked with people like that and it’s something Dan Kennedy (motivational author) says he does.

I was inspired to adjust my routines by The Compound Effect. The larger % of my routines are around health and family life. After reading the book, I decided to get up 45 m earlier so I could do my health routine earlier and have an hour for an 8 am work routine before the start of my work day. That hour is for blogging and improving my website traffic. Then I check our bank accounts and the work voice mail and get to work on following up with prospects and then ongoing projects.

I hope you’ll make time to buy a copy of The Compound Effect and read it. If you do, please leave a message here for me and other readers about what you found most helpful for where you are now.

__________

Karen Nierlich

Reuvekamp Builders Berkeley

We recently launched a new WordPress Website for contractor Jeff Reuvekamp at Reuvekamp Builders of Berkeley and Orinda. Jeff wanted a site he and his staff could update in-house. Also, he’d invested in some professional quality photographs of his work and wanted to show them off to full effect.

When clients have excellent photos and want them to be the focal point, we go for a minimalist and clean design. That way the design doesn’t compete with the photos. In this case the colors are white, beige, with small amounts of royal blue and very small amounts of deep red. On the homepage, you’ll find a rotating photo gallery and inside the WordPress site has a photo gallery organized by project type ie. kitchens, baths, exteriors.

His photos however have lots of color. In Berkeley, he’s had the opportunity to work on many of the elegant craftsman and shingled bungalows that abound. There homeowners want to replace or restore the shingles, wooden windows, wooden stairs, built in book shelves and tile fireplaces. His woodwork is traditional with a contemporary twist. Out in Orinda, you’ll find all styles of houses from Mediterranean, ranch to contemporary / modern. Of course, these houses also benefits from Jeff Reuvekamp’s attention to wood, metal, tile details.

Jeff was a pleasure to work with. He and his staff are well-organized, timely and easy to talk with. Do take a look at the amazing wood work on Reuvekamp Builders, Berkeley & Orinda.

——————-

Karen Nierlich

Karen Nierlich is an internet marketing consultant with the web design and development firm Almost Everything Communications (AEC) in Albany next to Berkeley. If your firm is ready for a new website or website redesign, feel free to call her at 510-527-9920.

Google’s Top Secret Algorithm (meaning rubric or formula)

Google keeps the algorithm secret that it uses to rank websites and decide which websites get the top spots on search engine results.  It’s a secret for a good reason. Web people are constantly trying to “game” Google and find ways to to get better results for the obvious reason that higher rankings equals more traffic and more business to their websites or clients. Additionally, Google is constantly tweaking and making big and small changes to ensure that worthwhile website content come up high.

Nevertheless, web marketers do research on what works on Google so the following list of what Google likes or the Google Algorithm is based on what works:

-Unique Page Titles & Descriptions on Each Page

(every page or main page search engine optimized with unique keywords)

-Frequently Updated Content

-Number of Pages on The Website

-Links from other Websites to your website; also called back links or inbound links.

(hey, Google is a computer it’s looking at things it can count. It’s judging popularity by how many sites are linking to you.) Non-techies sometimes think links on their site are helpful to their own site. They’re not, though they are helpful to other sites and can be helpful if you exchange links with others…so that people link to you and you to them.)

-Company mentions on Social Media

- Starting sometime last year Google started counting how often your website is mentioned on social media.

-Age of the Domain Name…

older domains have more credence with Google as do domains that are payed for 12 months or more.

This list covers several of the most important ways the Google Algorithm measures the quality of your site. There are others…in fact the Google website says there are 200 factors and that they change those factors some daily.

Karen Nierlich is an internet marketing consultant who helps small and medium size business clients thrive on the internet. If you are planning a new site, and want a high level of customer service and feedback on what works online, contact Almost Everything Communications (AEC) at 510-527-9920.

How to Loggin to WordPress

When launching a new WordPress website for a client, I give them a 20 minute tutorial on how to use the edit tools to do a website update. I’m going to start at the top and share with you everything I share with my clients including how to add a photo, how to add an internal or external link etc.

LOGGING IN to the WordPress Dashboard

Your web person will give you a login link like this sample one: http://almost-everything.com/wp-admin/(sample) You’ll also need a Username and a Password.

WORDPRESS POSTS vs. PAGES

Once you are logged in, you’ll find yourself on the WordPress Dashboard. I’m going to show you how to do a website update.

Click on the Pages button and All Pages of your site (see image below). This index will show the first 20 pages of your site. If there are more than 20 pages, use the search pages box in the right hand corner or the next page function also in the top right hand corner to find those pages.

To Edit a page just mouse over the space below the name of the page. A short menu that says edit / quick edit / trash / view will appear. Edit is to add or delete content, photos etc. Quick Edit just lets you update the page name, slug and a few other things like that.

What WordPress Pages Look Like

EXPANDING THE EDIT BOX

Expand WordPress Edit Box

Once you are logged into the Edit mode you’ll find a blue scroll bar that allows you to see different parts of the text. You can also use the lower right corner of the edit box to expand what you can see in the edit box. Very helpful for longer pages. However, it’s hardly visible. Look for it by your name and the date and time…where there is a little triangle texture. Grab hold and pull down.

Update Button

SAVING WHAT YOU EDIT

On the right hand side of the screen you’ll find a box with a bright blue update button (in photo at right). Clicking saves your changes and uploads them to the site. You can use the preview changes button to see your changes.

WYSIWIG Editor – HOW TO ADD A LINK

This is the most important part of the tutorial. The WYSIWIG Editing tools (acronym for what-you-see-is-what-you-get) look a lot like editing tools you’ll find on Microsoft Word and other places. There a few things that differ and are particularly helpful; one of those is the add a link feature. You’ll find the add a link / delete a link button in the middle of the top line and it looks like a sideways figure 8 or a link.

How to Make a Link in WordPress

First, use your cursor to hightlight the text you want to link, then click the link button. Add the .url. There is a title space where you can put a keyword rich description of the link. Finally, I also advise clients to click the box for “open in a new page” as it helps keeps visitors on the page.

You can use the link tool to add internal links between pages. Linking your most important keywords internally is likely to help your SEO. You can also add links to other sites with ease. This is great for exchanging links and providing helpful info. Use judiciously as you do want to keep visitors on your site.

HOW TO ADD A PHOTO

How to Upload a Photo on WordPress

Above the WYSIWIG editor there is a line that says Upload / Insert. Click on the icon to add a photo. This works the same as Facebook, Picasa, Snapfish, etc. When starting out, click on Browse to select a photo from your computer. Later on, if you are reloading a photo that’s you have used before, find it in the media library. That’s another feature I love.

Again. Each photo receives a title and an alt. tag or alternative tag. The alt. tag is one of the items that Google analyzes when accessing your website so include it every time.

APPEARANCE SECTION of Dashboard, including Users & WordPress Plugins

Tread carefully in the Appearances section as this is where all your site files reside.

If you wish to add a user, do that here. The new user will receive an email with their password.

Also, if your site has plugins you are likely to receive notices to update the plugins and the WordPress template itself. Ask your web developer about whether it’s OK to update the WordPress template and plugins.

HELP MENU for other tasks

Wahoo! Last but not least, the Help menu is located in the upper right corner (see image below). The help section has photo examples like this post and you can search it by topic. Quite helpful really!

WordPress Help Button

Write me a let me know if this is WordPress Tutorial and steps to update your WordPress website was helpful to you.

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Karen Nierlich is an internet marketing consultant in Albany, CA helping small and medium businesses thrive online. If you are looking for expert consulting on your WordPress website and web presence, contact her at Almost Everything Communications or 510-527-9920.

WordPress is fairly new and often misunderstood. WordPress is the most popular of all the blogging platforms and sometimes business people don’t understand it’s not just for blogs. On the contrary, it’s an excellent platform to build or rebuild your business or organizational website. In fact, a WordPress Website can look the same as sites built in .html or joomla or other programming languages.

Since making it’s debut in 2006, WordPress has attained great popularity. Of the “top 1 million” websites, 14.7% are WordPress websites and of all websites, 22% are WordPress. More impressive, WordPress is the most popular Content Management System in the World according to two sources, W3 Techs and builtwith.com.

For those not familiar with the term “Content Management System”, it means administrative tools you can login to make changes to your site. It’s a system by which non-techies can control the text and photos and other aspects of their website.

There are two major features of a WordPress website that make it very attractive for business websites. One is the built-in Content Management System that I’ve already mentioned. Websites have little value unless they are regularly updated. With the WordPress Content Management System, a business can easily update without the high cost of going to a web programmer for ordinary and sundry changes.

Secondly, the WordPress Content Management System also makes it easier to optimize your site for search engines or include unique keywords on every page.  In brief, let me say you can see all the keyword phrases in one place. On a standard .html site, this was not possible and one had to dig to find the keywords assigned to each page.

If you have any further questions about a WordPress sWebsite, feel free to read other posts in this blog or give me a call.

Karen Nierlich is an internet marketing consultant with Almost Everything Communications. The firm helps small and medium businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area thrive online. Call 510-527-9920 about programming projects, design and internet marketing.

Two Actual Blog Comments from the AEC Blog

I get a lot of questions about the blog comments feature on the WordPress Website. Frankly, this applies to any blog or blog website.

Some business people want to know if it’s best for the blog comments feature to be on or off. The answer to that is generally “yes,” because it’s the nature of a blog to invite discussion, questions or even disagreement. This allows you to respond and build relationships online. The good thing is that comments are moderated (though you can turn off this feature) so if its spam or a non-constructive blog comment or whatever crazy thing, you can delete it before it appears on the your blog.

Another common question is about the pages on the WordPress website and whether one typically has comments on those pages. Typically not, but you can have comments if you want. The pages of the site are usually devoted to business information ie. about, services, philosophy etc. Owners usually feel that comments would distract from the facts about their business.

If you have questions about creating a WordPress Website or anything web-related, hey, I’ll do my best to answer. I’m good on health & motivation kinds of questions as well. If you want a company that can do an awesome job building and managing a website project, give me a call at 510-527-9920.