Squeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Well, it looks like my readers are going to have to prepare themselves for boudoir pics of me and MY NEW iPAD! Trada announced on Saturday morning that our collective voting efforts worked and that I was the proud owner of a new iPad.

In all seriousness – thank you.

This is what community is about. It’s not about ME winning an iPad – it’s about being ABLE to reach out and garner a response. I’m fortunate that I’ve build a community where people listen when I write. So I owe each and every one of you a HUGE thank you.

For reading, commenting, voting, emailing, tweeting, sharing and coming back post after post. Without you – my readers – I’m just a crazy lady with a keyboard. (Fine – I’m a crazy lady with a keyboard already, but since you listen, it keeps me out of the asylum.)

Now, a bit about Trada – have you ever wondered what it would be like to have HUNDREDS of  PPC experts working on your online marketing campaign (instead of just one or two)? Here are just a few cool tidbits you might like to know about this Boulder-based gem:

• Advertisers reduce their CPA by an average of 10% after joining Trada
• The average campaign has 24 (!!!) PPC experts working on it at one time
• Trada campaigns have an average of 10 times more relevant ads than before joining the market place.

Don’t believe the hype – see how it works. I was turned on to Trada by seOverflow, an incredible Denver-area SEO firm that I’m fortunate enough to work with on a regular basis. I’m looking forward to their full report!

Now – go forth, prosper, do all that Vulcan shit and tell Monday to kiss your ass. And thank you for being part of my community.

Whaaaaaaa?

You heard me. It’s a myth.

After you give that article a read, pop back here and check out 3 handy tools for repurposing content. I briefly covered the subject in my guest post over at Copyblogger last week, but here, I’ll add a bit more detail designed to kick start your Monday in killer content style. Awwyeah.

eZine Articles: If you’re not using eZine Articles to repurpose your existing content, you’re a dink (yeah, I called you a dink). While you may have to slightly reformat your articles to adhere to their self-serving link and keyword density limits, their page rank and command of presence within search engines is, without a doubt, unprecedented in the article distribution market. Handy idea for repurposing content using eZines: take some of your older content and snazz it up. Upload to eZines and adhere to their guidelines. BAM – fresh backlinks to your website or blog.

Tumblr and Posterous: Two powerful tools on the web for content producers and (ahem) anyone paid to get their clients noticed online. These are ideal places for repurposing content. Have a look at each and see how they can enhance your current marketing and promotion strategies. There are subtle nuances in each, yet they are both remarkably easy to use and if you’re always on the run, you can even blog from your phone or via email. N-A-S-T-Y good. Nasty, I say.

Your Blog: Helloooooo…if you’re doing article marketing and you’ve got a corporate website, your blog is ready and waiting as a repurposing tool for your content. But wait – I thought we just used OTHER tools to repurpose BLOG content? Grab a Snickers, kiddo. Look around your world – you product content every day. Brochures, presentations, leave-behinds, white papers, case studies. It’s ALL great fodder for your blog! Take your non-digital content digital and your already digital content to a new level through your blog. I’m not going to share all my nifty tools, but take 10 minutes today and think about what you’ve got and where you can use it. Hear the little voice that calls at you from across the keyboard, “I’m your blog – use me like yesterday’s newspaper.” Wait – you might actually want yesterday’s newspaper. There’s good content in there!

Now that we know there’s no duplicate content penalty (and hey – I even learned something from the SiteProNews article…goes to show ya), start thinking multi-purpose instead of single use. Think in breadcrumbs instead of loaves. Go forth and repurpose. Watch your backlinks multiply. And all was good on a Monday morning.

Enjoy!

I met Brian Clark (finally) back at Blog World in 2009. He knew I was a SEO copywriting geek and he pinged me early this year with a question: he had a cool new WordPress SEO copywriting plugin and would I mind giving it a beta test?

Does a monkey fling poo?

Not a moment later, I found a nifty zip file in my inbox. Enter Scribe.

If you’re using a WordPress-powered content management system or blog, it’s essential. If you’re a copywriter producing article marketing content for distribution around the web, it’s like mother’s milk. Here’s why:

• It Thinks Like a Search Engine: It’s all very well and good to think you’re TELLING the search engines what you want them to see through coding meta data like page title, description and keywords, but what do search engines really see? Scribe tells you and helps you pull your head out of your backside before your content goes live.
• It Acts Like a Coach: When you run the Analysis tool, it not only tells you what it sees, but it tells you how to fix it. Hells yeah.
• No Blog Needed: Maybe you’re a copywriter who churns out article marketing content and you have to be careful about keyword density (I’m talkin’ eZines here, folks…). Scribe had a web-based standalone version accessible from anywhere (one you sign up) that catches any boo boos before the big bad submission engines get ahold of you. I lurvs. A lot. (Not alot.)
• It Ain’t Free (and nor should it be): If you want cool free tools, check out HubSpot’s awesome arsenal. The Scribe tool ranges from $27/month to $97/month. Don’t believe it’s worth the cash – try it 30 days for free and see for yourself. I did.

Here’s a screenshot of the analysis tool once it’s run (these are the results for the post you’re reading right now):

Here are a few things you need to know about WHY I’m pimping this plugin:

• I work in the SEO space and have sent referrals for this tool over to SEO firms with whom I work.
• I’m all about anything that’s going to make my job easier.
• Brian’s group is all about feedback and he PERSONALLY responded to a list of improvement/expansion suggestions I sent over.
• They’ll be releasing versions for additional blogging platforms in coming months.
• It takes writers out of the position of thinking like writers and makes you look at your content in a different way – a way that better serves clients.

Will it make you a SEO copywriting pro overnight? Hell no. But it WILL make your path to understanding how search engines read content less bumpy. Read more about the Scribe SEO Copywriting tool and see why I’m jazzed. Have a delightful Monday.

You wanna hug this word jumble?

(As a primer, have a gander at HubSpot’s When Two Worlds Collide: Social Media Marketing & SEO post – great recap of the Search and Twitter news of the past 24 hours and some excellent graphics as well)

Let’s talk search. I’m most always sporting my SEO hat when generating online content. Except on Twitter. I have a feeling that’s going to change in short order as we witness the interwebz becoming the interweb. HubSpot touched on the potential affects the Social Media/Search “Group Hug” will have on how content is handled on a move forward basis. Great post and worth 15 minutes of your time to read in-depth (link is above). For the sake of time and attentions spans, I’m opting for bullet points to lodge my concerns:

• CRAP OVERLOAD: There’s a lot of crap on Twitter as it is: spam, affiliates pumping links. Get your shovels now because the term “crapload” is about to be redefined.
• SPONSORED TWEETS? FUGGHEDABOUDIT: With Google and Bing jumping into the real-time search pool, every Tweet is now “sponsored.” Linkjuice be damned, the Sponsored Tweet pool has been peed in. Will it matter WHO sends the tweet now if it’s all about links and keywords?
• ALGORITHMS: If Google expands its ranking algorithms to include Tweets, holy shit: lock up the women and children. How will they weight Retweets against original posts? Are Retweets the goal? Will gamers set up bogus accounts on an even larger scale to pump up their link juice?
• URL SHORTENING SERVICES: bye-bye unless you redirect. Ow.ly – go ahead fix yer shit or get in the breadline now.
• VANITY URL SHORTENING: get yours today. Better yet, hope you got it yesterday.
• SETweet? Keyword stuffing in 140 characters or less. Colloquial conversation just got a stick shoved up its backside.
• VOLUME: With SEO firms, affiliates, PR peeps and businesses themselves all interested in rankings, will we be inundated with link blasts to drive rankings? How will the algorithms compensate?
• THE BLACK HAT IS BACK: Prepare yourselves. With SEO black hat practices having been re-engineered by affiliate marketers who put up 10 fake blogs to pump links back to a single site, I dare say that we’re on the verge of a whole new “think tank” determining the newest ways to game the system.

Some thoughts for the folks over at Google and Bing from a lippy blogger who wears her SEO hat with a rakish tilt:

• New Algorithm Bling: I know your coders are already pissing their pants when it comes to adding social to search. Think long and hard about how initial postings of Tweets will be weighted against Retweets, please. Each will have its ramifications.
• The Double-Edged Sword that is Volume: Twitter users with large communities enjoy the viral spread of good posts through their network. The power of the Retweet. Will your algorithms penalize, reward or find the delicate balance in popular posts being shared in high volume VERSUS gamers who artificially generate high sharing volumes?
• Keyword Emphasis: How will you weight Tweets that are keyword optimized? A core component of search, will the new algorithms encourage keyword loading in social posts or find a way to value the colloquial texture of social media as we currently know it?

Answers will emerge in time, but Google and Bing aren’t in the social game. They just acquired access to it. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on other considerations for the Big Boys of Search to take into account as they grab real-time search by the balls and tell it what’s what. Leave me a comment below.

WordPress Plugins Come in All Shapes and Sizes

In this final installment of Your Website Sucks, we’re rapping about WordPress plugins. By now, you’ve read about Three Reasons Your Website Sucks (and one simple fix), some awesome premium WordPress themes and the power that CSS brings to a WordPress-powered website (thanks to Jason Nelson of Visual Adventures Web Design, WordPress-powered site specialists).

A WordPress plugin is simply an add-on for any self-hosted WordPress installation. Like plugins for Firefox. They are the Legos of WordPress, adding virtually limitless functionality to a simple WordPress-powered website or blog. Today’s post will list the ones that I find critical for my own installations and I’d love it if my readers added their own must-haves in the Comments section below.

SEO Nova

If you’re not running the THESIS theme, you’re going to need a kickass SEO plugin. I was turned on to SEO Nova by @Trypnotik, who had previously turned me on to the Headspace plugin to meet my SEO needs. SEO Nova goes beyond both Headspace and the popular All-in-One SEO Pack plugin by leaps and bounds. You can code the page title, description and meta keywords, but you can also specifically code each post and page of your site to varied index/follow settings. Oh. My. Gawd. It has a savvy master control panel to set some universal settings site-wide as well. Visit the SEO Nova site and grab a look-see. This site and RedheadedFury.com both run SEO Nova.

SocioFluid

Every blog or website should have a social bookmarking application. My choice is SocioFluid. Simply stated, I like the rollover/grow-shrink effect that catches a reader’s eye. You can custom select which social bookmarking sites show up in the bookmarking bar as well as set the size of the icons and designate whether they appear at the top of a post or bottom.

Social Homes

Wanna encourage visitors to connect with you on your other social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook? I use SocialHomes. Pick your sites, enter your site-specific information, drop it in a widgetized sidebar and you’re good to go.

Akismet Spam Control

Spam blog comments suck serious nuts and Akismet controls them (albeit, sometimes too well) with ease. Akismet is already installed on every self-hosted WordPress blog – you just need to activate it with a WordPress API key.

Google Analytics for WordPress

If you’re not running Google Analytics as a component of your site’s metrics, for the love of God, why not? It’s the Google Monster, granted, but it’s pretty damn savvy for tracking your traffic, sources and helping you determine ways to generate revenue from your site through AdWords and AdSense. Google Analytics for WordPress is a simple plugin that requires the cutting and pasting of a tracking code and BAM! You’re off and running.

This week’s guest blogger is Jason Nelson with Visual Adventures, a web design firm that specializes in custom WordPress-powered websites and blogs.

First, I must apologize for the use of acronyms – nobody wants programming languages spelled out, though. I’ll use some silly analogies in this so non-dorks can understand what the hell I’m talking about. (I would loose all my street cred if I didn’t make it sound just a little techy though.)

Most of the acronyms in this article will be referring to programming languages. Programming languages are just like spoken languages. If you want to order some nice wine, better learn French or Spanish. If you want to get into manufacturing, Chinese might be your best bet.

Let’s go over just a couple of these to clear the air for this article. HTML is your basic web page coding. It tells the computer that certain text is a paragraph, or a heading, or to display a linked image. We’ll leave it at that for now so as to keep this simple.

CSS and style sheet will be used synonymously in this article. We’ll explain what they are in the next part.

What is CSS?

“CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation (that is, the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL.” Thank you, Wikipedia. Whew!

In other words, CSS is a language used to make web pages display a certain way. Now why is that important or interesting? Read on and find out.

What Can CSS Do?

With a style sheet, you can tell certain page elements to display how you want them to. For example, maybe we want the text to be white and the background to be black. We could do the same with HTML with font and body tags, but by linking an external style sheet, we can apply those styles to the whole website and leave our HTML coding simple and clean. Now why would we care if our HTML coding was a few lines shorter? Well, search engines read HTML coding, but they do not read the CSS.

The simpler and clean your HTML is, the better off your website will be for search engines. The fewer lines of code you have, the easier things are for those smart, yet very dumb search engines to deal with.

You can even change out a style sheet linked to a document and voilá, your whole site has a completely different design! Check out csszengarden.com to see some amazing examples of exactly this. It’s the same webpage (HTML coding) with hundreds of unique versions created by changing the style sheet and some images.

Why is this Special? (and why should I care?)

Prior to CSS, web page layout was done with tables. Yes, those same tables you use to make a chart for something like financial data. Tables were put within table cells and it quickly became a mess of code (kinda like that last sentence if you don’t know anything about programming web pages in tables! Messy…). If you’ve ever had to work on someone else’s site that had a bunch of nested tables, you would know the disaster I’m talking about. For the non-dorks out there, nested tables = messy birds nest of code.

More interesting, however, is how it can be applied to a software system like WordPress (blogging and web page management software) or an ecommerce system. Most of these have been coded in PHP so that they can interact with a database. PHP coding has tendency to scatter HTML code like a toddler having a heyday with your recently completed 1,500 piece jigsaw puzzle. If would be very difficult to track down all the pieces and put in your own various bits of code for colors and layout. Future updates would be an equal challenge. PHP code talks to the database, gets what it needs, and cooks you up an HTML page that you see on the screen. With a stylesheet, you can then tell the cooked up HTML page to display the way you want it to. No need to sort through the jigsaw puzzle. Not so sure you’ll want to let the toddler still have his heyday, though.

Life becomes simpler and the possibilities with design are endless. Think of how much more productive you would be if you actually knew where that stuff you’re looking for every day is located!

CSS coding goes beyond the skill level of your Average Joe with a website. More importantly, it lets Average Joe only have to worry about his content while some over-caffeinated-latte-addicted-loft-dweller (read: web designer) can relax knowing that Average Joe isn’t going to try and put blinking text on his beautiful design. (A design that he feels really belongs more in a museum than on the web, but seeing as the web has a larger audience, this situation is acceptable.) Most of the WordPress templates that you can purchase are built in CSS (stylesheets). That’s why YOU can go into Mr. Web Designer’s design and drop your content in without fear of screwing-up the page layout and graphical elements.

If you’re looking for a custom WordPress theme, it’s simple for a web designer to either tweak an existing theme (remember CSSZenGarden.com?) or develop a new one for you entirely. The themes Erika talked about in her last post (especially THESIS) can all have a custom CSS Stylesheet overlaid to meet your particular demands.

See? CSS is good for all of us! Mr. Web Designer can now let Mr. Site Owner update some of his content. Mr. HTML now has a more successful relationship with Ms. Search Engine. The web can be a more beautiful place. Can’t you feel all the love in the air?

Feel free to drop me questions below in the comments and I’ll check in throughout the day. You can also email me directly at jason@visualadventures.com. Thanks for having me!

SEO copywriting for the web is an art. It’s not about slapping any old words on a web page and waiting for the traffic to magically appear. As an SEO copywriter, I work with a team of other professionals to help make a client’s website successful: SEO firms, sponsored search specialists, web designers. The most challenging conversation I ever have with a new client is “words do not traffic make.” But they’re a damn good place to start.

While search engines are pretty doggone smart, they’re also pretty dang dumb. You have to tell them what’s important. You might have the most awesome doggie supply business on the planet Earth but if the search engines (and hence, all your prospective customers) don’t know that, you’re screwed. So what’s the key to breaking it down Barney-style and spoon feeding the search engines?

Keywords, keywords, keywords.

Today’s blog is a few simple steps you can take and tools you can use to start thinking like your customers and spoon feed the search engines exactly what they should know about your website, your business and who they should be sending your way.

• Pretend you’re a customer. Stop being the business owner for a minute and put yourself in your customer’s shoes. When they go to the web, what are they typing into that Google Search box when searching for what you’ve got in spades? Here are some simple steps you can take to find out!
  • The Google Test. Play around in Google and act like a customer. If you sell doggie supplies, key in search terms like dog bowls, online pet supplies, online dog supplies, etc. See what comes up.
  • Snoop Around Your Competitors’ Yards. You know who they are, so why not pay their websites a visit? When you land on their home page, use a right click of your mouse to get a pop-up box that says view page source (Chrome/Firefox) or view source (IE). Click that. It will open up a new window that will show you all of that web site’s meta data (information that the site is giving to search engines). This includes keywords, page description and page title. Sneaky – make notes!
• Dig Deeper: Keyword Research Tools. Using free online resources like Google’s Keyword Tool, you can type in multiple keywords and keyword phrases (a single keyword would be dog, a keyword phrase would be online dog supplies). You can then let Google (master of all that is Search), tell you how popular those keyword combinations are! Why is this useful?
  • Because Google is smart and you are dumb. Google knows data and spends more time that you and I have combined compiling data. It knows who is searching for what and how often. But their hard work can help you choose the best search terms to focus on for your web content.
  • Same but Different. Google will show you synonyms and other related phrases (proof that Google is smarter than you and me). You might type in dog supplies online, but it will also give you the following:

• Be specific. I don’t know about you, but when I look for things online, I’m rarely looking for “dog supplies.” I’m looking for a medium Furminator brush. Being generic in Search Engineville is the kiss of death. The more specific you can be, the better for your web copy and behind-the scenes meta data. Here’s a hierarchy as to what your keyword selection should look like from your home page on down:
  • Home Page: general keywords (online pet supplies).
  • Internal Pages: more specific keywords (online cat supplies/online dog supplies)
  • Sub Pages: even more specific keywords (cat litter boxes/online cat food/cat scratching posts)
  • Category-Specific Pages: very specific (Furminator brushes)
  • Product Specific Pages: freakin’ specific (Furminator dog brush/Furminator cat brush/Furminator Medium)
  • The goal is to drive traffic with your web copy and meta data to the point where a site visitor doesn’t have to dig through your site to get what they want. If you’ve ever left Target because you couldn’t find what you were looking for, Target failed in its marketing. More websites than not do this very (bad) thing.

So, you’re doing keyword research. Awesome. Start a spreadsheet with what you’ve found or just make a list in a document that you can keep handy. This information helps a copywriter (an SEO-savvy copywriter, not one that’s used to working with print medium or is a wiz at editorial work) understand your products and business. Your SEO copywriter (if any good) will then take that list and do a little digging of their own and then be better able to craft web copy that works for both the search engines and your business instead of just giving you what anyone is capable of: word on a web page.

SEO copywriting takeways for today regarding keyword research and selection:

• Think like your customers and figure out what they’re typing into Google.
• Check out your competitors – there’s nothing wrong with finding out what already works (and doesn’t)
• Test your results with free online resources like Google’s Keyword Tool (because it’s smarter than we are)
• Understand where to use general keywords and where to get more specific
• Make a list of your research to help the other key professionals in your web campaign understand your business, your products and you target audience.

Next Monday, tune in for the reason your web copy needs a pool boy and a plumber. It’s called specialization of labor, and SEO copywriting will get your web content tuned-in like a well-staffed corporation!

Did you miss installment one in this series? Read Why Your Web Content Isn’t Working.

Are you subscribed? Don’t miss out on the next installment of the SEO copywriting blog series on RedheadWriting. We publish every Monday/Wednesday/Friday! Get a dose of The Redhead straight to your reader of choice or via email – just go to the top right hand side of this screen and clickity-click!

Website content is the undisputed king – search engines rank you by it, people rate you by it, and most of all, it’s the number one tool (in conjunction with a solid website design) that tells your visitors who you are, what you do and what you can do for them.

But your web copy isn’t working. WTF, over?

Today’s post is the first in a series of five posts that will cover website content. As a reminder, installment two in my WordPress Series will be published this Wednesday (catch installment one Three Reasons Your Website Sucks and One Simple Way to Fix It here), so if you haven’t subscribed, have a lookie-loo at the right hand side of this page and subscribe via RSS feed or email. Let’s face it – you get a lot of crap in your inbox every day…why not get some crap you actually want to read?

Most people think that the mere act of having a website is their ticket to instant traffic and an exponential increase in sales. Yeah – you’re wrong. There are two key components that go into a solid website: content (king) and design/coding (a piss-and-vinegar queen that’s bucking for the throne at all times). A pretty website alone, while nice to look at, isn’t going to result in higher traffic or sales. It needs the compliment of coherent, purpose-driven content. Now, before I get the commenters who think I’m being sexist by putting forth that a website is a patriarchal entity and the matriarchal figure is subservient (blah-blah-blah)…it’s a metaphor. The king and queen compliment one another and work together to create a web-based kingdom that:

• Is sticky (keeps visitors on your site)
• Lets visitors know what you want them to do (click here, buy this, subscribe, submit a form)
• Converts visitors to customers (creates revenue or another desired result)

In the words of Mel Brooks: It’s good to be the king.

Any old words slapped up on a web page simply won’t do. There’s a tried and true method for developing coherent and conversion-oriented web copy that works. The next four parts of this series will cover the following topics:

• Do Your Homework: Audience Identification and Keyword Selection (WTF is a keyword?!?!)
  • Who do you want to visit your site and why? This post will delve into how to think like your target audience and how to do the research for your entire site that will result in web copy that speaks to your audience and more importantly, speaks to the search engines. Search engines are smart, but you’ve gotta tell them what they want to hear.
• Specialization of Labor: Why Each Page of Your Website Should Have a Job
  • Ever worked in a company where everyone was the sales/marketing/administrative staff/lead developer and CEO? Too many cooks in the kitchen! We’ll look into why each page of your website should have a clearly defined purpose and talk about how that helps the search engines and your business simultaneously. Copy rules here, and it takes a polished pen/keyboard to write purpose-driven text that gets you where you need to go.
• Who Loves You, Baby? The Importance of Links and Anchor Text
  • Expanding on the idea of specialization of labor, we’ll discuss why the specialization you committed to will help your website from both the inside AND the outside. There’s a heavy importance that search engines place on links (both internal and inbound from other sites) as well as the way you create those links – anchor text. Stop pasting URLs and hyperlinking the words “click here.” Do it right, reap the rewards.
• It’s Not Over Until It’s Over: Revisiting Your Site, Making Revisions
  • When you’ve finally achieved a site that works and one that’s got a design and the complimentary copy to do what you expected it to do—you can’t just let it be. We’ll go over the importance of analytics, competitive analysis and how to stay one step ahead of your competition through some smart “tweaks” to your web copy and site meta data to ensure that as the months and years roll by, your site isn’t left in the dust with the dinosaurs.

There’s a lot of crap lurking out there on the interwebz, but your website doesn’t have to belong to the Crap Club. Follow this series of blog posts and take your website from crap to content-rich in a few easy weeks of reading. We’ll see you next Monday with Do Your Homework: Audience Identification and Keyword Selection, and don’t forget to catch this Wednesday’s installment in my WordPress series and how it can be used as a tool to help you build a solid website.

Holy hell. Look at your website.

It sucks. No, seriously: it really sucks. The chrome off a Studebaker’s fender type of suckage. The kind that it took someone who knew just enough to be dangerous to achieve.

Houston: we have a crap website. That is confirmed.

The first reason your website sucks? I have no idea what it’s about or what your business does when I get to your homepage. I mean, thank god someone posted a bit.ly link on Twitter or else I never would have come here on my own. All I’m seeing is a boatload of words and a tiny stock image at the top of the screen. I could be reading a pamphlet for interstitial cystitis for all I know. It’s possible you’re in real estate because there’s a little picture of a house and your big, shiny mug all over the screen. Then again, you could be an animal shelter because all I see is pictures of a woman surrounded by dogs. Personally, I’m lost.

The second reason your website sucks? The search engines can’t find you. It’s pretty obvious that when you put your website together you felt that any ol’ words on the page will do. When I pull your site’s source code (go ahead, blink…I know you have no idea what I’m talking about), there’s no meta data, your pages are all named www.mywebsite.com/afbijkaf6^&()^%^#$, or everything on your site is in Flash (which is totally brutal for search engines and site vistiors alike). If Google can’t find you, good luck on generating traffic. Aren’t you glad you paid that cheap (or maybe not-so-cheap) web firm $249 for your site?

The third reason your website sucks? I have no idea what I’m supposed to do when I get to your homepage. Your site’s navigation is so confusing that I would probably be able to come up with a bipartisan-approved solution to the heath care question in this country before I can find your “Contact Us” page. That is, if you even have one. So, I quit. I’m going to work as a lobbyist for the American Medical Association because it’s an easier gig than trying to find anything on this digital abomination you call a website.

But there’s a simple way to fix all that ails you. And it’s called WordPress.

Not WordPress.com…I’m talkin’ WordPress.org. If you’re thinking about redirecting a WordPress.com-hosted blog to your own URL, I’ll issue you a pre-emptive bitch slap now and tell you to read Stop Being a WordPress Whore.

“But that’s for bloooooooooooooooooooooooooogs.”

Really?

RedheadWriting is powered by WordPress. So is RedheadedFury.com.

So are www.copyblogger.com

www.chrisbrogan.com

www.ourayicepark.com

Yup. All powered by WordPress.

The beauty of a self-hosted WordPress-powered website is that everything you need to be successful is available in a simple, easy-to-use, and FREE package! Just think: you can have the website you always dreamed of for your business (or blog, or whatever) and if you have opposable thumbs – YOU can manage your entire website yourself! Soup to nuts.

This blog is the first blog in a series that will cover WordPress as a tool for website development. Here are the topics of the next installments in this series:

• WordPress Themes – Out of the box and onto your site solutions that are more than just pretty pictures. We’ll explore the genius behind DIY Themes’ THESIS theme and those available from Woo Themes and iThemes as well. Themes can single-handedly help you avoid the perils of poor navigation design and are easily tweaked (yes, that IS a technical term) to meet anyone’s aesthetic demands.
• The Power of CSS - What the hell is CSS? My guest blogger, Jason Nelson of Visual Adventures Web Design (and WordPress CSS Style Sheet guru), will tell you in plain English and show you how a friendly web developer can take your WordPress-powered site from blah to BAM!
• Plugins: they’re not just for lamps anymore – WordPress plugins are like Legos for your website. You literally plug them in and watch them go. We’ll cover some of the cool things they can do for your website and how these and wise theme selection will solve that pesky SEO problem once and for all.

Subscribe now via either a reader or email updates (look on the right hand side of this screen) and don’t miss the rest of this awesome series. I hate to see websites that suck and there’s really no reason for them. If you ever wondered about the power of WordPress, here’s your chance to learn the basics…and for FREE.

I never said I was easy, but WordPress is…and my advice is the right price.