Way to go, business-person! You had your site built on WordPress, and now you’re enjoying the benefits of having a simple way to add and edit content to your business website. Not to mention, your blog is fully integrated in your site, which makes you look like a million bucks!

I like to think of WordPress like a fine automobile. It has great performance, and you look awesome driving it. But, it also requires that you take good care of it, or it will leave you on the side of the road, making you look somewhat less than awesome. I don’t want you to look less than awesome, so I’m going to show you my favorite way to keep everything humming along beautifully.

Wait. Don’t Click That Update Button Yet.

If you’ve looked at the admin side of your WordPress website, you’ve noticed that occasionally, WordPress announces a new update, and there’s a button at the top of the screen that says “Update Now.” It’s a very attractive button, and your finger, no doubt, is itching to click it, but have a little self-restraint. There’ll be time for clicking, but first things first: make sure your site is backed up.

Call In Some Backup

You need a backup, and not just when you’re about to update your WordPress site. Really, the point of a backup is that you are ready for the unfortunate circumstance that something awful happens to your site, like, it disappears, or suddenly gets hacked by crazy people, or somehow your logo just doesn’t show up, or your whole site’s copy turns into Pig Latin. Believe me, you don’t want your whole site to show up in Pig Latin. (Unless of course, you are trying to reach the well-educated porcine demographic.) Seriously though, backup is very serious. I’m serious. Really.

There a bajillion tools out there for backup, but I have a favorite one because of its simplicity. And it’s built to back up to an Amazon S3 account. Oh, and one more thing: it’s free. It’s Automatic WordPress Backup.

What’s great about this plugin is that once you set it up, it just runs automatically, silently giving you peace of mind that if something bad happens, you have a plan. A really good plan.

Enough intro fluff, though. Here’s how you set it up.

First, get an Amazon S3 account. Wait. Come back. I know you’re thinking this is going to be difficult, but it’s not. I’ve taken great pains to show you how to install the plugin and how to connect it to your brand-spankin’-new Amazon S3 account in this amazing theatrical production. Go ahead. Watch it.

Are you still there? Ok. Good. Hopefully, now you have your automatic backup rolling. Honestly, if you stopped there, you could easily be proud of yourself for a good day’s work. However, there’s a bigger reason why we’re backing everything up.

Now that you have a backup installed, every time you get that cool message from WordPress that it’s time to update, go to “Volcanic > Automatic Backup” and click the “Save Changes & Backup Now”. Give it a minute or two to work its magic, and then you’re ready for your 5 seconds of fame.

Mash That Button.

Now with peace of mind, go ahead and click that wonderful “Update WordPress Now” button at the top of your page. If all goes well, in a few moments, you will be updated to the latest version of WordPress. If all doesn’t go well, you at least have taken the right steps to keep your site from being permanently damaged.

Maybe you’re thinking you just won’t bother updating to the latest version of WordPress. That’s actually an invitation to hackers to come bust on your site, and you don’t want that. Basically, WordPress has good reasons for updating, and it’s usually to cover some minor security issue that you wouldn’t want to become major. So, don’t ignore it, or procrastinate. Seriously.

Questions? Throw them down in the comments below, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

The post How To Backup & Update Your WordPress Site appeared first on NearlyFreeLance.com.

Paying for SEO services to get your company to the top of the search engine results page has become a painful ritual for many business owners just like you. You dutifully sign the checks, and hope for the best.

It’s one of those situations where you really don’t know what that SEO company is doing, you just want to “rank high.” Sure, you figure they may be “gaming the system” a little, but that’s their deal, right? Well, let me speak to you as a friend, or at best a non-partisan advisor. Stop it!

I don’t mean that you shouldn’t hire a company to help you with organic search rankings. But, I do mean that you should stop being clueless about how that company is helping you rank well in Google. Ever since Google began feeding us our minute-by-minute dose of search results, businesses of (how should I say it?) ill-repute have set out to trick Google into returning their pages.

This, my friends, is called spamming.

You hate in your email inbox. Google hates it in their search results.

And now, they’re doing something about it.

Google is constantly tweaking their search engine to try to weed out people who are spamming the system. They’re punishing those people that are not playing by the rules. What are the rules? Well, Google spells it out pretty clearly in their latest post on their Google search blog (You did know that Google TELLS us what they’re looking for, right?).

Here’s what they said in their post titled, Another step to reward high-quality sites:

In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.

So if “keyword stuffing,” “link farms,” and other questionable and common SEO tactics aren’t going to work, what IS going to work to bring targeted traffic to your website?

Great content.

Simple, right?

Lemme’ see if I can explain.

Your first step in your SEO process is to make sure your site is easy for Google to read. That means that you should have a clear navigational structure where all of your pages can be reached easily. You should make sure your page titles and your heading tags state clearly what your page of delicious content is all about. You should make sure your site loads quickly enough that poor little Googlebot doesn’t throw his hands up in disgust and run away. Finally, you want to make sure you have an easy way to add fresh content to your site. The simplest way to do that is to install a blog. I prefer WordPress, but there are plenty of other options out there.

For some of these setup issues, you may want to contact an SEO company. Just be really clear on what you DO want them to do, and what you DON’T want them to do.

The second critical step for SEO is to determine what your customers want to know. This is really, really huge.

You can’t just set off writing about whatever pops into your mind. Well, you can, but it won’t help you with your search engine results, and that’s kind of the point of this post.

Instead, determine the topics, and the issues that your customers most care about, and then write down a ton of ideas that would fit within those topics. You’ll need to do this exercise every few weeks so that you stay fresh and also flexible with the current issues that your customers want to read.

Time consuming? Yep.

But, if you’re serious about bringing organic search traffic to your site, it’s worth it.

But what do your customers want to know? How about asking them?

You can use a wonderful free service like SurveyMonkey.com to ask your current customers why they started working with you in the first place. What frustration or need did you help them solve? What solution did you provide? Specifically, what were their questions that you answered? If you’re nervous to ask your customers what they think, then you may have a whole separate issue, and no amount of great content or social media strategy is going to save you.

Then, the third critical step for business SEO is to create a strategy that combines what your customers want to know with the specific words that people use to find that information. This is the essence of keyword strategy. There are a ton of wonderful tools out there that can help you with keyword research. 5 Tools to Take Your SEO to the Next Level

The fourth step for succeeding at SEO for your business is to create the content around all of this new-found knowledge. And do it consistently. Is this simple? Yes, yes it is. Is it easy? Well, for a while it is. But at its core, it’s hard work, and it’s just like any other really worthwhile endeavor. Write great content, and Google will reward you for it.

The fifth step for SEO brilliance is to make sure you measure the success of all of this online content marketing. There are some amazing resources such as Google Analytics that are free. There are also a ton of pay-per-month services that will help you determine what is working and what is not. Take the time to learn the tools and see what is effective for you.

Then, repeat and refine and measure, over and over. You get the idea.

That takes us back to the whole issue of hiring an SEO company. If you do hire one, make sure that they are focused only on the strategies that actually produce great content. That great content can be shared in social media spaces. That great content will get linked back to as well. That great content will impress your customers. See a common theme, here? Of course you do. It’s all about the content.

Some people have asked if we are a Massachusetts SEO company. I kind of shudder a little simply because of the tarnished reputation of SEO companies. Instead let me just say that we simply work with companies in Massachusetts and across the country to help them produce great content, and prepare their sites to succeed in search engines, and give them practical optimization tips. Oh, and if that results in higher targeted traffic, higher conversions, and greater social media engagement, then that’s wonderful.

Well, actually, we measure that, too, and we help create the strategies and do the research that makes it all happen…so I guess, yeah, we do SEO.

Just don’t say it so loud.

The post A Massachusetts SEO Company Comes Clean appeared first on NearlyFreeLance.com.

Listening to the marketing hype about social media, you would think that if you just create an “engaging presence” on Facebook, or Twitter, or YouTube, or whatever, you will create fans of your business, who will then do business with you. Your potential customers will be so entertained and amused and educated by your clever social strategies that they can’t help but come do business with you. And, that may actually happen from time to time.

But that’s not the real essence of social media.

The essence of social media is that it is like “word-of-mouth” given a technology twist. If you don’t have good word-of-mouth going for your company, you’re not going to fare very well in the social space, either.

How does social media work in reality, then? It starts with your business.

The fans of your business in the real world (not the fake, social one), those customers that you have already delighted, will be much more willing to identify with your business online by “LIKING” your page, or following you on Twitter. They are essentially extending goodwill to your company because they already believe in your product or service. Some people call this “advocacy.” I think that’s an appropriate term for it as well. They basically are returning the favor of how they were treated by your company. They are willing to tell their circle of influence that they actually endorse you. Think about that for a minute. Every “LIKE” takes on a much higher importance.

The IBM Institute for Business Value published a study in which they made the following observations from a survey of 1,000 consumers:

• The advocacy paradox – Is it the chicken or the egg? Most businesses believe social media will increase advocacy, but only 38 percent of consumers agree, and more than 60 percent believe passion for a business or brand is a prerequisite for social media engagement. Companies need to find creative ways to tap the power of the trusted social community.

I was pleased to find this study because their numbers back up my observations as well. Consumers are most likely going to engage on their terms and for their own reasons. No amount of telling people to “LIKE” this or “Retweet” this is going to change that impact.

That takes back to my title. I know it can sound a little harsh, but if you’re giving crappy service or selling an inferior product, Facebook isn’t going to save you. Instead of rushing to social media as a “silver bullet” think of Facebook as a way to give voice to those that you’ve already impressed. Sure, you definitely should still look for ways to give value for people engaging with your brand in social space, but don’t get carried away with the singular focus of trying to build “likes” from disinterested parties.

I asked some of NearlyFreeLance’s fans on Facebook to weigh in on what causes them to “LIKE” a page. Take a look at the conversation on Facebook. (You can view it even if you don’t have a Facebook account.)

It’s All About Timing

So, what about this instead? What if you determined the moment that your customers are most delighted with your product/service? Is it immediately after they’ve purchased from you? Is it right after you just delivered on something really cool? Is it when you just saved them $20?

Then, make the most of that goodwill, and give them an opportunity to return that favor on your social channels.

Why not use their email address (you did ask for their email address, right?) and send them a “Thank You” note right to their inbox, with a special offer, and direct them to your Facebook page? It’s a simple gesture that done right could help amplify the awesome word of mouth that you’re generating as a remarkable company. But remember, you give good service first. Then, ask for them to return the favor.

(You could offer a discount off their next visit once they like your page, by setting up an app with a Fan Gate on it, if you really want to up the ante.)

Am I saying that Facebook is not worthwhile? Absolutely not. It’s a critical piece of your online presence that should be handled well. But while many businesses are working on improving their online presence, what they really need to do is improve their real interactions with their customers, and then give those happy customers a way to return the favor on social media channels. See the difference? I’d love to hear your thoughts on why and how you interact with Facebook pages.

The post Social Media Will Not Save Your Crappy Business appeared first on NearlyFreeLance.com.

Literally.

Facebook is changing the size of your profile picture starting April 26. The new size will be:

160 x 160 pixels.

(For those of you keeping track, the old size was 125 x 125 pixels. See, they’re being very generous. Not bad for something that’s free…)

Social Media Examiner just published this note from Facebook.

“On April 26, we will be updating the size of the profile picture on all Pages. We are letting you know about this small change in advance so that you can update your profile picture on April 26. The new profile picture will be 160 x 160 pixels and will sit at 23 pixels from the left and 210 pixels from the top of the Page” – Mike

The post Your Profile Picture Is About To Get Bigger on Facebook appeared first on NearlyFreeLance.com.

If I were to hand you a bottle with some clear liquid in it, and ask you what is inside, after you gave me a “well you’re dumb” look, you’d say, “Water. Probably filtered or something.” Well, congratulate yourself on being smarter than Google and Bing, because even though they have written some pretty fantastic formulas they still rely on something very basic to decide what’s “in the bottle” on your web page. Those two items? Your page title and your H1 tags.

Think of it like a label on a bottle. See, these guys thought it was important to put a label on their bottle too, and you already knew what was inside.

Your page title and H1 tags are two key parts on every page of your website that you absolutely MUST maximize to make sure Google and Bing find your page when people search for your keywords. We call this “SEO” or search engine optimization, and page titles and H1 tags are a really important aspect of making your site work well.

To check your site, go to each page that has content you want to show up in search engines. Right-click on some text on the page and go to “View Source” and look for a “<title>” tag: It looks like this:

Make sure that the title clearly defines what your page content is about, and that it doesn’t just say something like “Joe’s Motors” or something equally lame. (Especially if that’s not the name of your company.)

Then, scan down through your page (you can use a “find” feature of your browser if you want to get high tech) and find the “<H1″> tag. If you don’t have one, that’s a problem. If you have more than one, that’s a problem. You want ONE H1 tag, and it should include the keywords that your page is about.

For instance, the bottled water people would use something like “Natural Spring Water” as their page title and their H1 tag. Now think about your web pages. What label would you put on each of them to tell Google what your page is about?

So, now what? What do you do if you find out that your site has all kinds of pages that don’t have a great title & H1 tag? First, breathe deeply. Second, contact your webmaster, or if you are already savvy, you have a website that you can update yourself. Jump in and update your page. And if you get thirsty while you’re working, make sure to have a bottle of water handy.

The post How are Page Titles & H1 Tags Like Bottled Water? appeared first on NearlyFreeLance.com.

This video shows you a powerful way to use twitter to help your business locally. When I show people this trick, usually they are blown away, because usually we’re looking at the Twitter stream, and we’re overwhelmed by the huge volume of random tweets and we don’t know where to begin.

I’m going to show you one simple tool today that will blow your mind and give you all kinds of creative ideas for how to use Twitter to represent your business in a geographic area.

To start, go to hootsuite.com. There’s a free permanent plan. Sign up for that.

Once you log in, look at the search field in the upper right hand corner. You can enter a term like “flowers” or whatever your search term is, and then instead of clicking the search button, click the little target icon.

That will bring back a live result of all tweets with that topic in your geographic area. The cool part is that you can click “Save As Stream” and now every time you log in to HootSuite, your geographic search is available immediately.

The post This Twitter Trick Makes Sense For Your Local Business appeared first on NearlyFreeLance.com.

Many businesses that we work with in Massachusetts, and especially around the South Shore are looking for ways to “optimize their site for SEO.”

For most business owners, there is hope that there is a secret, a silver bullet, that will take care of all of our marketing issues, and will immediately propel us to success.

Of course, there are SEO experts in abundance that promise that they can guarantee that you will show up on page one of Google results. But, from there the details get sketchy. That’s because for the most part, businesses that make brash promises are using techniques called “Black Hat SEO” which in a nutshell means they use un-ethical practices to “game Google”. Needless to say, Google has whole teams of people dedicated to bring these types of SEO schemes down, since Google relies on quality data coming back from their searches. So, in short, you can go that route, but be prepared for it to be short-lived and have long term impact on your standing with Google in the future.

Well, guess what? There really is a sure-fire method to be found for certain keywords by Google. If it makes you feel better, you can even call it “SEO Optimization.”

(By the way, that’s redundant, since the “O” in SEO stand for Optimization, but I digress)

You know what it is? If you want your site to be found because of certain content, make sure that your site is actually producing that content. Genius, huh? I won’t even charge you for that astounding advice.

In other words, if you want your site to rank well for “Painted Easter Eggs in Rockland, Massachusetts” you should spend your time writing really awesome (or at least fairly decent) articles, videos, podcasts, infographics, etc, that deal with “Painted Easter Eggs in Rockland, Massachusetts.”

Well, you might protest, “I don’t have that much to say about Painted Easter Eggs in Rockland, Massachusetts!” That may be true, but if you don’t have much to say about it, then you probably don’t really know that much about it.

In fact, that’s what Google is counting on. If your website doesn’t have a ton of great content about those Easter Eggs, then Google is convinced that your site is NOT about Easter Eggs. Are you following me, or have I driven the whole Easter Egg thing into the ground?

Now, forget Easter Eggs for a minute, and think about your business. If you are the expert on a subject, and you are since you started a business about it, you need to leverage that knowledge on your website by consistently creating helpful content about your business. That’s where a blog comes in. Make sure you have a blog on your site and that it’s easy to update. That’s critical. Without that piece, you’re just going to get frustrated.

(So, we’re assuming that you already have a blog installed on your site, and that it looks fantastic like the rest of your business website.)

That doesn’t mean you just write post after post about how great your business is. Nope. You have to write content that actually helps your customers. Write each post as if you were talking to one of your customers, explaining what they need to know. Or maybe the picture of a teacher teaching students might help. Explain the stuff that you take for granted. Believe me, your customers don’t know even a tiny fraction of what you know. That’s why they call you!

Write good content consistently for a while, and before you know it (actually it probably takes 6-12 months) you will notice that you are getting new business from your website. That’s because your content has told Google that when that customer searches for certain keywords, YOUR SITE is the go-to source!

It’s not magic. It’s not a silver bullet. It’s simple intelligent hard work. And it’s completely available to you to start right now!

The most effective way to optimize your site for search engines is to optimize your content!

For those of you already experiencing the joys of writing great content, what advice would you give?

The post SEO Begins With Content appeared first on NearlyFreeLance.com.

In my last post (which was just a little while ago) I gave you a great tip on how to make your website easy to update. Go take a look at that and then come back and get the scoop on writing great blog posts that will make a difference to your business.

Once you have your website running like a fine-tuned machine, itʼs time to leverage that simple-to-use platform to add content. Now when I say “content,” I donʼt mean just any old thing that happens to pop into your mind, your favorite quotes from movies, or even your old high school photographs. (Well, maybe every now and then, you can do something random. Especially if thatʼs your personality.) Itʼs time to put on your thinking caps and get strategic with the content you produce.

Now, at this point, you might think that you get a pass because you are landscaper, youʼre not a writer. Or maybe you fix computers and you donʼt have much to say. This is where you have to completely change how you view your contribution to your future customers. Instead of simply viewing your product or your service as the main value you can offer your customers, you need to begin thinking of what you know as a valuable commodity that can serve as your marketing front. This shift in thinking will help lay the groundwork for producing wonderful content that will help you introduce yourself to loyal customers and future fans.

Let me see if I can give you an example. A friend of mine is a drummer. He is an amazing drummer. Normally, I might change the names to protect the innocent, but Iʼm not going to. He deserves your attention. Heʼs John Parker and he has an on-the-side solopreneur business called Phatman Drums. He’s teaching drums and giving away free drum lessons online. John told me he has 4 goals for his business.

1. He wants to teach drum lessons to kids 10 and older in the Wichita, Kansas area.
2. He wants to get the word out about his availability to gig in the area.
3. He wants to be able to promote those events.
4. He wants to become THE hub of information about all things related to drumming in his community.

There are several wonderful things to notice about these goals that I think will be instructive for small businesses in all industries. First, notice that John has tried to narrow his focus, or at least identify the most likely candidates for his services. Heʼs looking to connect with young drummers and drumming fans in Wichita, Kansas. This is a critical step in learning how to create content for your website that matters: Identify your audience. Sure, there will be plenty of visitors to his site that donʼt match those profiles, but if he focuses on that sector, he will see much more success than if he forgets his audience. (A quick side note. If John notices a little down the road that his demographic is not what he expected, he can either change his content, or adjust his expectations of his audience. Thatʼs really outside the scope of this little book because weʼre talking serious business principles here.)

Second, if you look at point four above about becoming a HUB of information about drumming, you see that John has already realized the huge power of information. If you can become a trusted source of helpful information, you have been given an opportunity to talk about your services in a way that is not schmaltzy marketing, itʼs just reporting the facts. Thatʼs a pretty awesome position to be in.

Now, you may think, “Wait a minute. If I give my information away for free, why would someone do business with me?”

Thatʼs a valid question. The answer is that what you do with ease, other people can only do with great difficulty, if at all, but they really love trying. Thatʼs where the information comes in. If John can consistently give helpful information about drumming techniques, recording ideas, creative moments, and all of the things that he knows about, those most interested in that topic will look to him as the expert in that field. And who doesnʼt want to work with an expert?

For John, he has already begun exploring the idea of doing video tutorials, and webinars, and live seminars. All of these things are awesome ways to give away content of value so people will become customers and fans.

And this doesnʼt just apply to drumming. Honestly, any business can follow this content-driven model.

See why I said to get an easy-to-update site in the first point? Youʼre going to need to turn out awesome content, so it better be super simple to do.

Here are some tips to keep you going the right direction:

1. Keep an idea list. As soon as an idea for some content pops in your head, make a note. I use Evernote (http://evernote.com) which is a free app for making random notes on my phone.
2. Ask your current customers about the kind of information theyʼd love to hear.
3. Pace yourself, and use the “scheduling” feature of your WordPress site to write when youʼre inspired and schedule it to post at regular intervals in the future.
4. If you have an engaging personality, try doing some video posts or audio posts. (You might want to get a trusted friend to tell you whether thatʼs a good idea or not.)
5. Try to schedule a little time regularly. Otherwise, it will become a lower priority. Remember why youʼre doing this. Itʼs marketing your business.

Iʼd like to make another point about Johnʼs goals for Phatman Drums. Heʼs aware that his customers are local (In his case, heʼs looking for people who live in Wichita or who could get there easily.) but that doesnʼt lessen the importance of web presence. Thatʼs a huge mistake that some small businesses make. They assume that because their service is only available locally that the internet only serves as a billboard for their business. Thatʼs completely bogus because almost everyone in your community where you serve uses the internet to research and learn. And you want to make sure you are their guide throughout that process.

Have some ideas for blogging that you’d like to share? Put ‘em in the comments!

The post Write Profitable Content For Your Small Business Blog appeared first on NearlyFreeLance.com.

If you own a small business, chances are you have a website.

But is it easy?

Is it easy for you to update it and add new content?

Is it easy to connect it to Social Media?

Is it easy for your next potential customer to figure out what they should do next?

If you have a website these questions may really annoy you, especially if you just finished paying big bucks for a custom-designed website with all the bells & whistles, but no way to really update the content without depending on someone else to do it.

The more difficult it is to engage with new content, the less likely you’ll actually mess with it. After all, you’re plenty busy just keeping your business headed the right direction, right?

Many websites built just a few years ago require you to access the pages through software like FrontPage or DreamWeaver, and while those tools are wonderful for their applications, they’re not ideal for the business owner who simply and quickly needs to update his site. The worse scenario of all is having to submit your changes to another company to update content. Most likely, if you’re in that situation, you simply won’t update your site. And your site will suffer.

In my surveys of small business websites, many businesses are using the templates built in to Office, or maybe a free site by Yahoo. While these do provide one-click publishing to your site, they don’t provide simple and intuitive ways to add content. All of that complexity adds up to neglecting your website. You have better things to do than mess with learning new technology.

So, are you ready for a solution to this conundrum? Let me introduce you to the open source platform of WordPress. You’ve probably heard of it, and most likely someone told you that it is a great way to create a blog. Well, they would be partially right. It is a fantastic way to create a blog. It also happens to be one of the simplest, and most elegant ways to create a fully-featured website that isn’t just attractive, it’s drop-dead simple to add and edit content as well.

Since it is open source, there are thousands of templates that can be customized very quickly and in just a short time, and with little cost, you can be running a site that you’ll be eager to update. There are hundreds of plug-ins and add-ons that make WordPress sites do just about anything a small business might need to do.

For some business owners, you can do the customization yourself, for others, you may want someone to help you do it. If you’d like to get some professional assistance to make your new site easy, let me know, and I’ll help you out.

The post Is Your Small Business Website Easy? appeared first on NearlyFreeLance.com.

These two sites consistently turn out helpful information about social media and I think as a small business owner, you will really benefit from following them on Twitter or Facebook or, gasp, just go read their site…

Social Media Examiner || http://socialmediaexaminer.com

This site has an unbelievable depth of resources available for small business to make some really awesome social media moves. Sign up for their RSS feed and have new articles emailed to you, or follow them on Facebook or Twitter to get a constant supply of good ideas.

Jen Fong Speaks || http://jenfongspeaks.com

Jen Fong has a wonderful insight, particularly on the world of direct sales, but I think it really resonates with all of us who have our own small business. She addresses aspects of marketing online that often go unsaid, and she especially deals well with social media etiquette and professional behavior. Read her site often, and become more adept at leveraging social media in a way that makes practical sense.

The post Two Favorite Social Media Geniuses appeared first on NearlyFreeLance.com.