But who has time to write all that information to attract the visitors and prospects?  How do we ever compete with awesome sites like Dooce or Pioneer Woman?

I propose a new paradigm that will let you do what you do best: your business.

1.  Set up the BEST possible brochure site for your business.

This site should include:

• strong keywords, well researched to place high in search engines
• magnetic headlines
• pages that are perfectly optimized with keywords in natural places,
• demonstrative imagery that supports the text,
• compelling call to action buttons/forms
• back-end software that is top of the line to keep the site working smoothly for as long as possible,
• software that also keeps search engines happy with fast-loading sites and valid code
• as many pages as necessary to:
• demonstrate your products,
• overcome objections,
• create community,
• display authority,
• compell action

2.  Set up listening stations to catch and respond quickly to conversations

Listening stations should be set up in the form of alerts, instant messages or texts to your phone when certain events occur.  Events are:

• tweets
• Facebook shares
• Facebook comments
• posts on blogs
• comments on blogs
• website reviews
• media articles/posts
• Youtube shares, comments, posts

 3.  Community Management

This is simply another word for social media management.  The idea is to create a schedule of when and where to be daily, weekly, and monthly to manage the community and add value to your community.  If you can’t afford to hire a community manager, it can take as little as 10 minutes a day to visit, set up content to auto-post that day or week.  And respond to a few visitors.

4.  Quarterly Review

However – a little warning here – this is not a set-it and forget-it scheme.  Things change so quickly on the internet that a review every couple months is absolutely necessary so your online marketing doesn’t become stale and out-dated.

Review these things, at a minimum each quarter:

• site function
• site security audit
• keyword relevance
• listening station relevance, effectiveness
• test call to action buttons for better conversion
• test headlines for better conversion
• freshen up the offer for every new season

Optional:

• separate out an audience segment and create a targeted landing page
• review offline marketing plans and create landing pages for those visitors
• renew testimonials
• update images and videos
• review & update the “About” page (most often visited)
• add information scattered throughout to extend authority and authenticity

Work a little less: Do a little more

Because you have a business to run, the website has to be only part of your overall marketing plan.

That is why we recommend setting up the website and listening stations to run on auto-pilot with minimal input from you.

Community management will pay off in spades, if you are authentic and consistent – providing value for your readers, not just asking for money.

Review these guidelines quarterly.  Keep the online stuff do-able and under control, then you can have more time to do your thing!

What do you think?  If you put this into play, will it free you?

Penny’s Pick: the Program

I’m sorry you have to go through this.  But you must have software to run a good website.  Or if you’re a total geek, you don’t.  But I strongly doubt anyone with a Star Trek affinity, Sheldon-quirkiness would stick around my blog for long.  So to the rest of us – lets tackle the selection of software as painlessly as possible.

The program for your website, must be:

• affordable
• easy to use
• secure
• extensible

I’ll just skip to the chase: WordPress fits the bill.  It didn’t used to fit all the bills.  But it does now, with few exceptions.

The stuff that we might like to make it even better:

• SEO assistance
• easy to brand
• anti-spam filters
• paypal buttons/ e-shops
• calendars & schedulers
• user management
• privacy settings
• event planners
• copyright protection
• photography showcases
• social network integrations

Yes – you can get all of that too, with no more than a couple clicks.  It will be easier if you have Sheldon as a neighbour, but even if you don’t, you can figure this out.  Each piece of software that has the ability to integrate into WordPress and extend its capabilities is known as a plugin.  WordPress has thousands. Literally.  Here’s a look at some of our favorite plugins.

For those of us in Penny’s shoes, WordPress is a no-brainer.

1.  Add the Google Authorship Plugin for Multiple Authors by Keyword Strategy (search for Google Authorship from within your Dashboard – Plugins – Add New screen).  Don’t forget to “activate” it.

2.  This will add a new field in your Profile page.  It looks like this:

3.  Add your Google+ Profile URL.  An example Google+ url is provided.  The “Location” and “Width” is referring to the Google+ badge that is automatically added to your site.  On The Vacation Gals, it looks like this:

   I recommend changing the “Location” box to “hidden” because its really not that pretty, is it?

Of course that sent me into dizzying interrogation mode to find out – who was the intended victim of this attack; which sites were attacked; and the big one: why?

Our techs let me know:

No one account was causing these issues, rather it was a coordinated, distributed attack against multiple sites on the server.

Who was the target?

Random sites on the server’s primary shared IP were targeted. These attacks do not often target random sites such as this attack did…

That means that random sites on our server were attacked.

How to Stop the Attack:

We have placed a hardware firewall in front of the server, and malicious traffic is being mitigated. 

It is stopped but the server will likely remain under attack for the next few hours.  The techs at HostGator are actively monitoring the sites.

Who did this?

As the attack’s true source is hidden, there is little we can do to discover the cause of the attack.

Unfortunately it is unlikely we will ever know.

Conclusions

Unfortunately being a webmaster and owning a website comes with a certain amount of risk.  The ‘bad guys’ are out there seeking vulnerabilities and just generally wreaking havoc (similarly to our offline lives).  We keep up with all the best practices, security enhancements and monitoring that is available to us.  But just once in a while someone becomes the victim.  This was one of those times.  Because of excellent monitoring, backups, and 24 hour technicians, our downtime was minimal and any real damage was prevented!

This should be an excellent reminder to keep your sites backed up and up to date.  Out of date software is the number one cause of vulnerabilities online!  So please – keep your WordPress, plugins and themes up to date!

Questions?  Leave a comment or drop me a line at cathy at desperatelyseekingwp dot com.