This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

©2010 Lisa Marie Designs. All Rights Reserved.

Do you know what your top 5 keyword targets are? Here are a few of the available tools you can use to figure it out:

1. Google Keyword Tool – my fave, you can save results in .txt or .csv files
2. Wordtracker
3. Keyword Discovery

» Here’s a really clear and helpful article by Michael Martine of Remarkablogger on: WordPress SEO – Understanding Keywords

©2010 Lisa Marie Designs. All Rights Reserved.

A mildly snarky side note: I’ve noticed that these behind-the-scenes issues are some of the areas overlooked by the folks offering “ditch your web designer and build your own WordPress website” seminars. I’ve attended a few of these seminars and gotten some great information, but most of my clients would be hard pressed to navigate the process of setting up and customizing a WP site on their own. I’m very excited to empower clients by enabling them to update and maintain their own WP websites. But so far, I’m finding that the point at which that begins is after the site has been set up.

I’d love some feedback on this post…helpful? too snarky? want more in-depth info? Thanks for your input!

©2010 Lisa Marie Designs. All Rights Reserved.

1. WordPress.org – Straight to the source! Whether you’re looking for WordPress website Themes,  for Plugins to extend the functionality of your site, or to access their extensive library of information and tutorials, this is a great starting point.
2. wpskins.org – More WordPress themes. This site has a helpful “Search by Properties” area that allows you to search for themes by features that you want. FYI, do make sure to check the license of any themes you find here, they are not all available for commercial use.
3. WordPress Dashboard demo - A working demo of a WordPress control panel. Login using “demo” as both username and password.
4. COLOURlovers™ – Beautiful and easy to navigate site that helps you find color schemes and patterns for your site. I ask my clients to find a few examples of color schemes that they like and send them to me, it’s a very helpful part of the WordPress theme customization process.
5. GNU General Public License – The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works. It is the license under which WordPress is released.

©2010 Lisa Marie Designs. All Rights Reserved.

This is one of the questions I hear frequently from clients. They have an idea of what a hosting account and a domain name are, but it’s usually pretty vague and they’re not sure how it applies to them and the website they’re asking me to design for them.

So, here’s the analogy: building a website is like building your own house

Domain name (example: www.DomainName.com) = your parcel of land/street address

The domain name is the address or “URL” at which your website will be located. It’s how people will find you on the web. My domain name is www.LisaRoberts.com. A domain name is leased on a yearly basis, generally costing about $9 per year.

Hosting account = the house

Even though you’ve purchased a lot/address, until you’ve built the house, you still don’t have anywhere to put all of your belongings. A hosting account is the place where you store all of your site pages and content (on a server). A hosting account involves a monthly fee, sometimes payable in yearly increments.

Once you’ve leased a domain name (example: www.DomainName.com) and gotten a hosting account, your web designer can build your site and upload the content onto the server. Once the content is on the server, the website is “live” and anyone who goes to the URL/address can see it.

{If you’re in the market for a domain name or hosting account, take a look at the GoDaddy.com recommendation on my “Stuff I Like” page.}

©2010 Lisa Marie Designs. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Lisa Marie Designs. All Rights Reserved.

A website powered by WordPress doesn’t necessarily look like a blog, and it provides a way for you to easily manage and update your own website. If you are able to surf the web and are comfortable working in a program like Microsoft Word, you should be able to comfortably use the WordPress Dashboard.

One of the benefits of using WordPress is that you can have a website AND a blog. A blog is a great way to increase traffic to your website. Regularly publishing content (articles, links, etc.) to your website gives Google more content to search, and provides value to your site visitors. For example, I’m a freelance designer, so I publish articles that provide prospective design clients with helpful information about web design and working with a designer. It’s a great way to provide value to my visitors and also to help my website rank well in the search engines. Also, because the articles I publish contain helpful information, other people link to my site, helping to increase my traffic even more.

When using WordPress for your website, you can set up a static front page that doesn’t look like a blog, and then have a link to an “Articles” area on your site, where you can publish content-rich and keyword-dense articles. This “Articles” area is a list of your blog posts. All you have to do is write and publish a blog post, and the “Articles” page gets updated automatically. WordPress then tells the search engines that your site has been updated. It only takes a few minutes to post an article and Google finds them within a day or less. Then, others can find your website and your business.

©2010 Lisa Marie Designs. All Rights Reserved.

A general outline of the steps involved when working with me to create a WordPress website:

1. First, we use phone/e-mail discussions and a short questionnaire to get an idea of what style, size and functionalities you want for your web site.
2. I send you a proposal. This includes a price estimate, a timeline for the project and a detailed description of tasks included in the price quoted.
3. Next, we sign an agreement (the proposal can serve as a contract) and you place a deposit on the project, usually a 50% retainer.
4. We decide on a WordPress “Theme” as the starting point for the look of your site. You go to http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ to look at Themes and choose one you like.
   It’s important to choose a Theme based on layout structure and not on color scheme or graphics. For example, do you want a left sidebar? A left and right sidebar? Horizontal menu navigation? Once we choose a Theme, I customize the color scheme and graphics so that it is uniquely yours.
5. We discuss the direction of the Theme customization. What color scheme would you like? What kind of graphics? At this point it’s helpful for you to provide examples of color schemes or websites that you like.
6. I collect materials from you for your site content (button names, site copy, logo and photos).
7. The next step is for me to create a first draft of the Theme design, based on the ideas we discussed. I will post it online for you to review from your computer.
8. We will go over the customized Theme design and agree on changes, corrections and additions.
9. After you approve the revised Theme design, I add all of the site content. At this point I need to have all graphics, textual content, video, etc. in the proper format.
10. We both do a thorough review of the website, checking for errors. This is your opportunity to make any last minute corrections.
11. Set up a website hosting account with accompanying email and register/transfer domain name(s) as needed.
12. And finally, I will post your beautiful new WordPress web site to the Internet! Oh, happy day!!!

©2010 Lisa Marie Designs. All Rights Reserved.