I love Wordpress.  There are a number of different reasons why.  I think they are great for small businesses looking to get a let up in the search engine results.  In the last month, we’ve built websites for businesses in the Scranton area and they are already ranking well in Google for a number of longtail terms, a number of which have lead directly to sales. 

One of the first reasons why I love Wordpress is the fact that it’s so easy to install on to a server.  Who doesn’t like not having to deal with all that messy code?  No thanks!  The less code I have to look at in a day the better.

The second reason is the fact that search engine spiders love crawling a site built with Wordpress.  The fact that it’s a blog means that there is always new content added to the website which means they are constantly coming back to crawl the site.

The final reason is the fact that it’s so user friendly.  Almost anybody can sit down and write out a blog post while maintaining the everyday SEO functions of it as well.  It can be customized to fit any business niche or user experience.

How you customize it, however, is the difference between an ordinary blog lost in the search results on page three.  While an optimized Wordpress blog is right there on the first page, getting visits and making you money.  In order to do this, you need to optimize Wordpress for even further performance using plugins.  Here is a list of plugins that Mystic Liquid have been using on all of our latest blogs built.

Akismet - You need this plugin if you are running a blog.  There is no question about it.  The good news is it comes pre-installed with Wordpress.  Askimet helps you out fighting spam.  Even an average blog gets hundreds of spam comments on a daily basis. Activating Akismet eliminates this annoying problem. The best part is Akismet automates the entire process by running a multitude of tests on potential comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks to ensure their validity.

Related Posts – I use this plugin to find other posts related to a current one using keyword matching. You then have the ability to display those related posts at the bottom of each article. It’s an excellent way to keep visitors on your blog for a longer amount of time. 

Adsense Deluxe – If you are monetizing your blog or running one just to make money from Adsense then this is the best plugin you can find.  Adsense Deluxe lets you automatically insert Google Adsense with little or no effort involved.

WP-Cache – This plugin is a must if you are expecting a large amount of users to visit your website on a daily basis.  It creates a caching system which allows your site to run faster and more responsive.  WP-Cache works by creating static versions of your pages which are then served to your visitors without querying the MySQL database.

Google Sitemaps - This plugin is a must if you expected to be taken seriously by the search engines and we know how important that is.  The google Sitemaps plugin automatically creates a Google compliant sitemap of your Wordpress blog.  What this means is that all of your pages are more easily indexed in Google.

Wordpress Dulplicate Content Cure – The name of this plugin says it all.  While duplicate content isn’t the kiss of death for a website, it’s still something you want to avoid in order to not be penalized by the search engines.  The duplicate content cure plugin prevents search engine spiders from indexing Wordpress pages that contain duplicate content by making your archives and category pages nofollow.

What are your favorite Wordpress plugins?  Feel free to share them in the comments.

Mystic Liquid was created to help the small business owners in our local area grow their businesses through interactive, easy to use websites. I like to think that’s what allows us to stand out from the competition as a Scranton website design company. One of our first recommendations to these businesses is to get blogging.

I’m going to let you in on a pretty important business fact. Blogging is a proven and effective marketing tool for a wide range of businesses. While it may seem obvious to those of you who already are aware of this, there are far too many small business owners missing out on customers and sales because they are not using blogging as a marketing tool.

The problem is so many people don’t either realize a blogs full potential or they have far too many misconceptions about them. Here is a list of four of the most common reasons they don’t want blogs along with Mystic Liquid’s counter-argument:

As you can see a well run blog can greatly enhance your business’s exposure to the world. Don’t be one of those people who miss out on this great opportunity by letting these misconceptions keep you from giving business blogging a chance.

With the growing popularity of Web 2.0, we have seen an increase in the number of client questions about creating a website geared towards the social media realm. Mystic Liquid loves the challenge of it too.

Socially optimized websites present a unique set of challenges compared to a static website. I’m not saying one is better than the other. It all depends on the purpose of the website. What I’m saying is personally I like the challenge of creating a website whose content is based around the involvement of its users.

We run into different circumstances and problems in building and maintaining these sites all the time. Sometimes a website owner just doesn’t realize the amount of work involved with running one to going with a social media campaign for a market that just won’t work for it. You never know how these things will turn out but that doesn’t mean you can’t try.

Here are the five most common reasons why a social media website doesn’t last and fails:

• Don’t expect everyone to find and fall in love with it – The online community has less attention span that five year old kid told running unsupervised in a toy store. Worse yet, competition for those quick attentions is getting more competitive by the day. Your website better contain a compelling purpose for those users, but first you need to get them to your site in the first place. We try to do this by gearing as much content as possible to the target audience and then letting them join in on the conversation.
• Don’t be a bad webmaster – People are joining your social online community for two things: to find information on something they find interesting and more importantly, to have fun. You take either of these factors away from your site and expect to also lose traffic and members. There is no quicker way to do this that by being an over-controlling site owner. You want your website to be an environment in which people feel comfortable participating. It creates loyalty to do so. Studies have shown that once people begin participating in a community, they feel a sense of ownership. This is what motivates them to keep participating. What I’m trying to say is, let everyone feel like they are all owners and part of something big.
• Don’t forget about it – You are spending a lot of time, money and effort into building a website. Why do all that and then walk away from it? Owning a website takes hard work. Owning a socially optimized website takes A LOT of hard work. Expect to visit your website regularly for maintenance. By participating constantly, you encourage others to do so as well. If you forget about your website, so will everyone else.
• Don’t make your website overly complicated – It’s a website for people to enjoy themselves on, not an IQ test. If a user needs more than a minute or two to fully understand your website’s organization or flow, don’t expect them to stay. They are bouncing. Stay away from clutter and get right to the interesting stuff. Try to let your social site grow organically through member contributed content.
• Don’t take it too personally – You know that saying you can’t please everyone all the time? This is no where more true than on a social website. I know that you can sometimes be a little protective of your website since after you all you built it from scratch but that doesn’t mean you should let a commenter ruin your day by giving some criticism. My advice is to keep a sense of humor about things and maintain your perspective about the larger picture.

Don’t forget that an online community or a socially optimized website is all about user communication and interaction. Encourage others to get involved and most importantly, have fun!