Real World Examples

So I was hanging out at my local McDonald’s letting the kids play on their indoor playground when I looked at the paper lining on the food tray. It highlighted a historical figure in my state’s history. It also had a big fat QR Code displayed at the bottom. Scanning the code brought me to a local radio station’s online contest via my smart phone. A couple of days before this, I had gone to a Meetup where the speaker wore a giant QR Code around his neck rather than a name tag. If you wanted to, you could scan him and get all of his contact information and websites. OK, THAT was a little awkward, but imagine if he had the code on his business card. He could provide an introduction video right there via mobile. Needless to say, this got me thinking about how it could be applied to all sorts of business things.

QR Code in a Nutshell

It’s a graphic code similar to a bar code that holds information which can be decoded by a reader installed on your mobile phone. You can use these little gems on any print material or on your website (like the one in this post *hint*hint*). The code can hold information like:

• an URL
• text
• phone number
• SMS message
• services like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Flckr, YouTube, etc.
• Google Places/Map
• vCards
• and More

QR Code Generators

You can generate your own code for free. Here are some applications that can create codes for you.

• Google’s QR Code Generator
• Delivr.com
• QRStuff.com
• Listing of more from QR Media

Uses

• 50 ideas from Erica Glasier
• Here’s advice from Mashable
• For photographers

Do you have ideas for QR Code uses? Please share them in the comments.

How to Scan a Code

This is for Brian, how’s this for an explanation?

What is the difference between Posts and Pages? This is a common question for WordPress or blogging newbies. I thought I’d take a stab at providing an analogy to help illustrate the roles of Pages vs Posts in a blog or website. Oh, and I added a little more to the story too. See if you can pull out the references.

Let’s do a little imagery exercise, shall we?

Have you ever been to a festival or event where vendor tents are lined up and down each side of a path? Well, for our exercise, we are going to visit a Craft Beer Festival (sorry, but I love me some craft beer!). So I want you to picture a wide, pebbled path set in a park with large, shady oaks. Now add white tents, set side by side, on both sides of the path. Now add people walking from tent to tent, stopping at the ones they find interesting. Got it in your head? Good.

Now enter you.

You stroll down the path and stop at the first tent, which has a small crowd gathered in front. Everyone is listening to a presentation given by a Speaker from within the tent. He is speaking about The Best Order in Which to Add Ingredients to Brewing Beer. You look around the audience and see a couple of heads bobbing up and down in agreement to what the Speaker is saying. Others are raising their hands to ask questions and still others are talking amongst themselves, discussing what they are hearing this Speaker say. As the Speaker finishes, you notice another one within the tent getting ready to give her presentation. So you decide to hang around to listen to her presentation on The Optimal Amount of Liquid for the Best Taste Bud Coverage During Beer Test-Tasting. During this presentation, you notice the sign on the tent declaring it the  ‘Science of Crafting’ tent. You listen to one more Speaker before moving on.

The next tent you visit turns out to be the ‘Beer Ingredients’ tent. It is dedicated to giving presentations on the best ingredients to use in crafting your beer. And the next tent is the ‘Tools’ tent which is dedicated to presentations on the tools of the trade in crafting beer. As you continue visiting each tent, you discover that each one has a unique purpose at the festival but still connecting with each other through the same subject – craft beer.

Behind the Scenes

The festival is planned by the Festival Coordinator. This person decides which tents are set up and in what order. They also hire the Speakers and decide in which Tents they will give their presentations. Sometimes the presentation given by a Speaker can be relevant at more than one tent, so the Festival Coordinator may book the Speaker with multiple tents. This is why you saw the Speaker that talked about the order of ingredients at the Science of Crafting tent give that exact same presentation at the Ingredients tent. And that’s also why the Taste-Bud-Coverage-Speaker also spoke at the Tool tent since her presentation discussed specific tools used to capture the optimal amount of brew.

In order to make sure the Festival runs smoothly, the Festival Coordinator employs a Tent Manager to handle the logistics. The Tent Manager is responsible for the setup, breakdown and movement of tents along with keeping up with and enforcing the scheduling and placement of the Speakers. Want to move a Speaker from the Ingredients Tent to the Q & A Tent? No problem, just tell the Tent Manager, and he’ll take care of all of the details.

Still with me? Do you see the resemblance yet?

Well, in this scenario, the festival is your website or blog. You are the Festival Coordinator and WordPress is the Tent Manager. Pages are the stationary tents in your site. Visitors to your site stop at the Pages that interest them in order to learn about different things revolving around your festival.  They may stop at your ‘About Me’ tent, or your ‘Subscribe’ tent or perhaps they prefer to visit your tent containing Speakers on one specific category.

As you might have guessed, the Speakers are Posts. Posts can’t have their own tents (Can you imagine how convoluted your festival would be with that many tents crowding the path?), so they depend on the Pages to give them an opportunity to give their presentations (a.k.a. post content) to an audience. And since Posts have the freedom to move around (unlike Pages which are hooked to the ground), they can be present in as many places as you, the Festival Coordinator, want them to be.

And therein concludes my attempt at an analogy involving Pages vs Posts. I sincerely hope it’s clearer than mud!

Descriptions are displayed underneath the titles in search results for Google. There are several points you need to remember when writing the description tag:

1. Google does not use it to help with rankings, however, search terms are highlighted in the description so attention can be drawn to your link.
2. Google only displays around 147 characters before the rest is cut off with an ellipses.
3. If you do not provide a description, Google will either pull it from DMOZ or they will pull if from somewhere within your text.

So if it doesn’t help you in ranking, why bother with it? Well, it goes back to visitor psychology. The description is that extra bait you can use to lure visitors into reading your post or page.  Let’s look at an example:

The first example shows a description that is poorly worded. It’s too long and it doesn’t cover the key points of the page before it’s cut off by the ellipses.

The second example shows a best practice description except for the name of the site that’s included at the end of the description. Don’t include your site or business name in the description. There is no purpose for that and it takes up precious character spaces that could be put to better use.

The third example is automatically generated from the article. It doesn’t tell me what to expect from the page.

If you were scanning these search results which page are you most likely to choose and which one gives you more confidence about what you will find if you click on the link?

How to add a description to your post or page

Using Headway, you can add the description in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) section while you are editing your post or page.

If you are not using Headway, then you should use the All in One SEO plugin and fill out the description. Again, scroll down to this section to fill it out while in edit mode for a post or page.

How to write the description

1. Use one or two short sentences that tell the viewer exactly what they will find on the page if they click on it. Remember, my testing showed an average of only 147 characters displaying in the search results for Google. So keep it short and sweet.
2. Keep the tone conversational like you are talking to them personally.
3. Do not stuff keywords into it, but you can use the main keyword once in order to take advantage of  highlighting of those words from the search.

For example: The description for this post is “Want to know why you should include a description tag in your posts or pages? This article will answer that and tell you how to add and write it.”

Anyone want to post one of your descriptions in the comments to see how it fares? How do you go about creating your descriptions?

Each one of your posts has two titles. The first one, the Post Title, likes to be the center of attention. It’s the exciting, pretty one that shows up at the top of all of your posts. Its job is to flirt with and seduce visitors into reading your post.

The second one, the Post Title Element (which I’ll refer to as Post Title Tag only because that is its common name), is the shy one that lives in the background html. It’s job is to claw and fight it’s way into search engine results so that potential visitors can find your post. It also acts as an ambassador to the post when it is displayed in re-Tweeted links or your post is shared with other social sites. So this title not only has to be enticing like its visible counterpart, but it also has to be clever enough to rank high in the search engines.

Both of these titles should get equal attention from you if you care at all about succeeding with your blog.

This is why:

From a search engine perspective, Post Titles are seen as just another sentence within the content of the post. By itself, it doesn’t generate any extra go-to-the-head-of-the-class points when it comes to ranking in the search engines. The Post Title Tag, however, DOES give you extra points and those points can be increased or decreased depending on the keywords you use. So paying attention to this title can have a huge impact on getting traffic.

How to create a post title tag

By default, WordPress copies what is written as the Post Title into the Post Title Tag. So if you have not been paying attention to it, you can feel comfort that at least something was added there even if it hasn’t helped you in SEO. Now that you are aware of it, you can go back and edit the Title Tags from your previous posts.  Use this best practices list to help you create your tag title:

1. Keep the title between 60 – 65 characters. Search engines limit the amount of characters shown in the results so limiting your title to this length guarantees that the whole title will be displayed.
2. Try to keep it clever. Since this title is displayed in the results and in links listed on other social sites, it still needs to be able to entice people into reading the post.
3. Use one or two keywords and place them at the beginning of the title.
4. Use branding at the end of the title by adding your business or site name. As long as the actual title is within the 60-65 character limit, I wouldn’t worry too much about being able to display the business name in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). This will display in other areas where it is more important for branding.

Headway makes it simple to add a custom title tag. Just scroll to the “Search Engine Optimization (SEO)” section below your post editing window and add your title there. In this example, you can see what I’ve written in the Title Tag for this post.

If you are not using Headway, and your theme does not have any built-in configuration settings, then you can use plugins such as All in One SEO or I found a really nice detailed Title Element plugin called SEO Title Tag.

For character counting, Google has a character counting gadget you can add to your iGoogle page, or you can use this free online tool.

For Key Word ideas, you can use the free Google Keyword Analysis tool.

Your Task

If you haven’t addressed the Post Title Tag in your posts, then take the time to re-write at least 5 title tags from previous posts for practice. You can do more if you want. From here on out, make it part of your post writing process to create a custom Post Title Tag for your articles.

In these videos, I show you how to change your site from having a blog home page to a regular static home page. These are based on using the Headway Theme.

How to Hide the Home Page Title

For example, my first layer (the Foundation Layer) contains these Parts:

• Domain Name Registration
• Website Hosting Account Registration
• Domain Name Direction (after receiving hosting account information)
• Administrative Email Account Registration (with Gmail so I can go ahead and get a Google Account login for other Google-owned Parts)
• WordPress Installation (just the installation of the platform, not the bells and whistles plugins)
• Headway Theme Installation
• Aweber Account Registration – for managing mailing lists
• Feedburner Account Registration (Using Google Account login)
• Google Analytics Account Registration (Using Google Account login)

Once this layer is finished I can move to the next layer which is to configure WordPress. Here I only make the necessary changes that will get me started on the next layer and leave the rest of the configurations for later when I’m working on Parts that are specific to them.

Here is a short list of layers added after that:

1. Design and Layout layer (this takes the most time of all the layers)
2. Communications Layer (this includes the Subscriber Parts, Contact Part, About Page, and Newsletter Template Part)
3. Foundation Content Layer (write 6-10 posts for your blog that establishes what it’s all about).

Finishing each layer is a milestone in the development process which helps add to the feeling of accomplishment. Furthermore, this allows me to efficiently build only the parts that are needed, when they are needed and it allows me to release my site more quickly into the wild. For example, you can actually release your site in a soft release (releasing your site without a big announcement) after you have reached the Foundation Content Layer milestone. This gives you a start in the proliferation of your site throughout the web, allows you to continue building out your site and you can still pick up subscribers along the way.