Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Need a Web Site You Can Maintain Yourself?

Blogs used to be a great way to help you add fresh content to your site and help increase your visibility. They used to be used in addition to your regular Web site. Advances in content management have blurred the lines between conventional sites and blogs. Blogging programs have evolved into the most powerful and flexible systems available.

WordPress is a leading 'blog' program and it's completely free! Check out these great features:
  • You can create static pages and sections making it appear virtually the same as any other site.
  • It's great for new Web site owners who want to manage their own sites WITHOUT learning HTML code.
  • Easily allows you to take advantage of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) opportunities
  • Material can be easily categorized allowing effortless structure. A more orderly site will perform better with the search engine spiders. Search engines are all about structure. :-)
  • Categories let you effectively group relevant material together by creating URLs with anchor text (text that uses your keywords) and relevant internal links. This makes your site more easily crawled by the search engines.
Fresh Content
WordPress is specifically designed to handle the frequent creation of content. You can even create multiple updates (or posts) and schedule them to be published at a later date. So if you're inspired and get a bunch of content cranked out, you can schedule your blog to update automatically! This is great for vacations or times you are away from your office. Your site can continue to be updated with fresh content even though you're away. Making regular updates to your site will get it crawled more often.

Link Building
The nature of blogs and the blogging community lends itself to link trades more often than with a regular Web site. Other bloggers love to find related blogs to link to and recommend.

Social Interaction Via Comments
Commenting plays a big role in link sharing with other blogs. Being an active participant and commenting on others' blogs, naturally improves visibility. A feature I particularly like is the ability to turn off the comment option at the page level. So if there is a page where you don't want people to be able to comment, just turn off the option and it becomes a static page.

Viral 'Word-of-Mouth' with RSS
With a blog, RSS is automatic and built right in. With this feature, your blog can be included in blog directories and blog-specific search engines.

WordPress is another easy to use, affordable tool for the small business owner! It allows you to simplify your site maintenance and improvements. The beauty is that you will be able to more easily and quickly manage your site, spend less $'s on a Web master, have greater control, not have to wait on another person's schedule, and realize the savings over time.

If you have a hobby or a small site idea - why not give WordPress a try? Get started here.
To see an example of a site created using the free version of WordPress, visit PaulaBonelli.com.

Until next time - Ciao!

Friday, April 16, 2010

iPad and Android and Buzz - oh my!

Ever want to go back to the simpler days of lions and tigers and bears?! (Wizard of Oz). I sure do! Getting to the Emerald City would have been a piece of cake compared to keeping up with today's technological advances.

The lightning fast updates to technology get my head a-spinnin'. While I think most of these devices are REALLY COOL, I get exhausted thinking about how I'm going to get up-to-speed. Or if I want to. And just what should I choose from the menu of mobile and portable devices? And HOW CONNECTED DO I REALLY WANT TO BE?! Can I justify it for business? Cuz I sure can't for personal use.

OK so I'm ranting a bit, but it is overwhelming for this middle-aged gal. [That was hard to type "middle-aged" - I don't feel it but I suppose it's what I really am :-)]. I still haven't mastered everything my old Samsung phone can do.

If you are a techie and have and love these new devices - you have a ton of options that can streamline and simplify business across the places you are online. Android and iPhone have a TON of applications that can let you do just about anything from your mobile device. I'm a Google user and they have been keeping up quite nicely giving easy access to your advertising accounts, maintaining your social accounts, blogs, etc. right from your mobile. Now that's what I need so when I want to be away from my office, I can still keep up with my emails and even make posts to my blog, Twitter and Facebook account with one quick update. Pretty awesome!

Now I just have to fork over the $'s for a device that can do all this (anywhere from $100 to $300), then pay for the required data plan (an easy $30 or more extra each month to my current plan price), and then figure out how to use it to connect to all of these accounts. You can bet I'll screw it up - just like the other day when somehow my previous blog updates began spitting out one right after the other to all of you on my subscriber list! Grrr - that's the downside I'm not fond of. But you know what? I'm sure it's USER ERROR and NOT the technology!

I hope this finds you embracing the new technology just a little bit. I also hope you have a terrific day! As always, if there is a question you have, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me. Leave me a comment here or reply to the email you received about this blog update.

Ciao, Paula

P.S. Here's additional links to the details of what iPad, Android and Buzz are if you're really interested! :-)
iPad - tablet-sized computing device, developed by Apple, meant for internet browsing, media consumption and light content creation
Android - Google software for mobile devices that includes an operating system and key applications and games for Android devices
Buzz - Google social networking and messaging tool designed to integrate into the email program, GMail. Users can share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in "conversations" and visible in the user's inbox.