What Is SEO and Why Is It Important?

Search engine optimization is the strategic practice of optimizing a website to enhance its visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). The primary goal of SEO is to improve the website’s organic (non-paid) traffic by making it more relevant and attractive to search engines like Google. This involves various techniques such as optimizing content, utilizing relevant keywords, improving website structure, and enhancing user experience.

The importance of SEO to your website cannot be overstated. In a vast digital landscape where millions of websites compete for attention, SEO is the beacon that guides search engines to recognize and prioritize your content. When your website appears higher in search results, it is more likely to attract organic traffic, increasing visibility, credibility, and potential conversions.

Essentially, SEO is the cornerstone of online success, offering a roadmap for your website to navigate the complex algorithms of search engines and connect with your target audience effectively. It is a fundamental tool that ensures your digital presence is not just a website but a discoverable and influential entity in the vast online ecosystem.

Safeguard Your SEO Efforts or Be Doomed

Safeguarding SEO efforts during the migration to WordPress is paramount due to the potential impact on a website’s visibility and ranking in search engine results. There is a risk of disruption when transitioning to a new platform like WordPress. Here are some common concerns website owners have and issues to watch out for:

• Loss of traffic: Improper redirects, broken links, and URL changes can confuse search engines and users. This can lead to a drop in traffic and visibility.
• Damage to search rankings: Poorly executed migration can negatively impact your search engine ranking, requiring time and effort to recover.
• Duplicate content: Migration processes can sometimes create duplicate content, which is penalized by search engines.
• Website structure: Changes in your website structure and content can affect your keyword rankings and your position in the search engines.
• Broken features and functionality: Not everything might migrate smoothly, leading to broken features, forms, or payment gateways.
• Mobile responsiveness issues: Ensure the new site is optimized for all devices, as mobile usage is increasingly dominant.
• Inconsistent design and user experience: Maintaining a consistent look and feel across the new site is crucial for user trust and navigation.
• Downtime and inaccessibility: Migration can temporarily take your site offline, impacting user experience and potential sales.
• Data loss and security vulnerabilities: Data loss during migration can be disastrous. Ensure proper backups and security measures are in place.
• Performance issues: The new platform or hosting might not handle traffic like the old one, leading to slow loading times.
• Communication and stakeholder management: Keeping everyone informed and involved throughout the process is crucial to avoid surprises and disruptions.
• Unexpected challenges: Unexpected issues can inevitably arise, so flexibility and adaptability are key.

But There’s Hope

By understanding these common concerns and taking proactive steps, website owners can significantly increase their chances of a smooth and successful website migration. Failing to address these intricacies can result in a loss of link authority, diminished keyword relevance, and a decline in organic traffic.

WordPress, as a robust content management system, offers numerous advantages for website management. However, a seamless migration is crucial to preserve and enhance SEO rankings. The transition may introduce broken links and missing pages without careful consideration and strategic implementation. Additionally, inconsistencies could negatively affect the website’s performance in search engine algorithms.

By prioritizing safeguarding SEO efforts during migration, businesses ensure a smooth transition, maintaining their hard-earned search engine visibility and safeguarding the integrity of their online presence. This proactive approach not only protects against potential setbacks but also sets the stage for continued SEO success in the evolving digital landscape.

Keep reading to understand how our WordPress agency successfully protects your SEO during a WordPress migration.

Seamless Redirection Strategy

Setting up permanent 301 redirects in migration is crucial, especially for SEO. Imagine your website as a bustling city with intricate streets and alleys. When it undergoes a revamp, ensuring a smooth transition for both users and search engines becomes paramount. WebDevStudios employs a Seamless Redirection Strategy, using 301 redirects to guide visitors from older URLs to new ones. This maintains your website’s link authority and safeguards its rankings in the digital landscape.

Conserved Content Integrity

As the digital migration journey unfolds, WebDevStudios meticulously upholds the content integrity of your website. Content, URL structures, and internal linking are carefully conserved, ensuring that vital keywords and metadata retain their prominence. This meticulous preservation is not just a process; it’s a commitment to maintaining the SEO integrity that defines your online identity.

Enhanced Sitemap Submission

Search engines act as explorers in the vast terrain of the internet, seeking out new content to index. Crawlers understand your sitemap’s relationships. It helps bots index your pages better. As such, it is essential for SEO purposes that Google has an updated version of your new domain. WebDevStudios understands the importance of aiding this discovery process. Through the creation and submission of an updated XML sitemap, the experts ensure that search engines efficiently find and index the new pages on your revamped website.

Vigilant Error Monitoring

Even the most well-executed plans can encounter unexpected hiccups. WebDevStudios remains vigilant post-migration, monitoring for broken links, missing pages, and any anomalies that could adversely impact your SEO. This proactive approach ensures swift resolution, preventing potential pitfalls in the journey to maintaining and enhancing your website’s SEO standing.

Rigorous Testing Protocols

A meticulous eye for detail is the hallmark of WebDevStudios’ approach. Comprehensive testing procedures are in place to verify the correct implementation and functionality of essential SEO elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, and structured data. This commitment to quality ensures that every facet of your website aligns with SEO best practices.

Critical Crawl and Index Checks

WebDevStudios recognizes the importance of checkpoints in the SEO journey. Verifying search engine crawl and indexation of the new website pages is critical. Supported by tools like Google Search Console, this ongoing monitoring process keeps a finger on the pulse of your website’s progress in the digital realm.

Backlinks

Next, we recommend that you contact your content partners about updating old links to the new domain. This includes links from guest posts, partnerships, and directories. Doing this will ensure that the valuable backlinks you have acquired over time point to the correct pages on your website.

Transparent Timeline Management

How long should an SEO migration take? It depends on how big your website is, how much content you’re moving, and how many audits you need to do pre- and post-migration. In general, a 100-page website will take a lot less time than a 1,000-page website, which will take a lot less time than a 50,000-page website. It’s key to give yourself enough time to plan, develop a staging site, QA and audit, and then implement. At WebDevStudios, we encourage transparency and open communication about the timeline of your project so everyone is on the same page and has the same expectations.

Performance Boost and Speed Optimization

In the fast-paced world of the internet, speed is of the essence. WebDevStudios goes beyond the surface to enhance website performance on the new platform. By optimizing speed, the user experience is elevated, indirectly contributing to improved SEO rankings. Our experts leverage tools like Core Web Vitals to ensure this task is executed precisely.

More Than a Migration

A content migration isn’t just a content migration. It’s more than that, and our WordPress agency knows this. A content migration should be viewed as an opportunity for improvements and optimization, such as:

• Format and accessibility overhaul: Content can be migrated into more accessible formats and optimized for different devices. Also, the content can be restructured for improved clarity and user experience.
• Taxonomy and metadata upgrade: A migration can be an opportunity to create a more robust and efficient taxonomy and enrich content with meaningful metadata for better discoverability and organization.
• Workflow and collaboration improvements: A migration can be used to streamline content workflows. This is also a chance to integrate workflows with other systems. In the end, this could improve collaboration between content creators and editors.
• Compliance and security enhancement: New systems can offer tighter control over access, permissions, and content management. This improves security and compliance.
• Data-driven insights and optimization: New platforms can provide richer data analytics for understanding user behavior and optimizing content performance for continuous improvement.

Contact WebDevStudios to Safeguard Your SEO Efforts

In the intricate dance of website migration and SEO maintenance, WebDevStudios emerges as the guiding partner. Our team ensures that every step taken in your website content migration leads to an enhanced online presence. From seamless redirections and content integrity to vigilant monitoring and performance optimization, our commitment to safeguarding your SEO rankings is unwavering.

Trust WebDevStudios to navigate the complexities and elevate your website’s visibility in the digital landscape. Contact us to talk about your upcoming WordPress migration. We’ll use our expertise to protect your SEO during your WordPress migration.

The post How WebDevStudios Safeguards Your SEO Efforts During a WordPress Migration appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Content is King

With more than 1.6 billion websites on the internet, Google has to figure out how to rank them. There is no point in having a beautiful WordPress website if no one is going to see it. When a user searches for lawn services in Las Vegas, 37,000,000 results pop up. If you’re the new kid on the block and on the last pages, this potential customer will not find you.

Your next order of business, after you launch your WordPress website, is to start creating blog posts and quality content so that you can improve your ranking. Google takes hundreds of things into consideration when ranking your site, but content is still king.

It is very important that you write content your visitors love and publish consistently. Your rankings will suffer if Google recognizes that you’re not providing any value to your readers. Educate your readers and offer them helpful tips.

If you give, you will receive. Readers will view you as an expert in your field and will in turn support your business. You will improve your rankings if readers are spending large amounts of time on a page, scrolling down on the page, reading other content on your site, and returning to your site more than once.

Digital Marketing

Social Media

There isn’t a single business that can’t benefit from having a social media presence, which is another way to get people to your website. There are many platforms you can choose from: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and so on. You can build slowly over time or run paid campaigns to reach larger audiences faster.

Once you launch your WordPress website, research what platforms your competitors are on and start building your presence there. Sharing impactful content and posting frequency are key. You may need to hire a social media manager if you feel that you don’t have the time to properly maintain your channels.

Guest Blogging

Another way to get traffic to your site is by guest blogging. More established sites have lots of traffic and dedicated readers. After you launch your WordPress website, pitch offers to write a blog post for an established site as a guest blogger. You can then link back to your own website to help increase traffic. Be sure your content is high-quality and find sites within your industry. If you’re not an established blogger currently, you may have to start with smaller sites and build up to the larger ones.

Email Marketing

Would you believe that I have 35,000 emails in my Yahoo account? Even still, I do still read the newsletters sent to me from my favorite brands. Coupons galore!

Email marketing briefly became the stepchild of digital marketing as social media and paid advertisements started to become the preferred method to reach audiences. However, do not sleep on email marketing. You can see some great benefits if your messages are authentic and you send newsletters that focus on personal experiences and storytelling.

Continue to offer value in the form of eBooks, giveaways, sales and coupons. Mobile is now the preferred method to view emails, so you definitely want to make sure your newsletters are mobile-friendly. The ultimate goal is to get them back to your website.

Ongoing Maintenance

Our Director of Business Development, Jodie Riccelli, compared maintaining your website to getting regular oil changes for your car. It’s absolutely necessary that you maintain your car or you can end up with a blown engine, like me. I bought my first car at 18—a brand new Nissan Sentra. I didn’t get an oil change my first year, and my engine blew after going 10,000 miles over.

It is equally necessary that you plan for ongoing maintenance after your site has launched, which is why we highly recommend for you to transition to our Maintainn team once your site has launched. Maintainn will handle all of your site updates, monitor for security risks, back up your site, make changes to your site, if you need, and more.

One of the most important reasons you need ongoing maintenance is security. A hacked site can compromise your customer’s data, which can lead to lawsuits, loss in money, lost trust in your brand, etc. Having regular monitoring, constant security scans, and a response team can save you from this.

Also, your theme, plugins and WordPress itself releases regular updates. You could update these yourself, but beware that sometimes updates can break your site. Having a team like Maintainn handle these updates and any of the issues that arise is highly recommended.

Technology

Plugins and new technology are constantly being released. The way consumers interact with your site evolves with technology. Once upon a time, a blog post would’ve been an advice column in a physical newspaper.

Previously, websites would just have a contact page and customers would fill out a form if they wanted to be contacted. Then they would have to wait for you to reply back via email. Now, you can add a chat icon that allows customers to chat with you in real time. Users grow accustomed to these new technology releases and may disregard your site if it doesn’t offer a similar experience.

If your site does not evolve with the times, you will get left behind. New technology can help to improve your workflow and user experience.

Time

Time is a resource we never seem to have enough of. All of these steps above are critical to ensure your site receives the attention it deserves. Follow these tips and you’ll be on your way to online success. If you lack time, consider hiring professionals in each of these areas to help take your site to another level. I am sure you would prefer to be running your actual business. Let the pros handle your website.

Contact us when you’re ready to launch your WordPress website!

The post 5 Things to Consider When You Launch Your WordPress Website appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Know and Understand Your Target Audience

The first task in the design process is to gather and analyze user data to determine your primary demographic. This can be done via analytics if you have an existing web presence, or focus groups and word of mouth information if you’re new to the web. In either case, you have some information about your target demographic that’s grounded in fact. Knowing and not making conjectures about which group of people are responsible for the largest and second-largest percentage of revenue is an important first step in laying the groundwork for a successful design.

The goal is to build for and strengthen the relationship you have with your primary demographic but to enhance the experience of your secondary demographic, while not actively trying to alienate other users. Knowing that you’re attempting to attract engaged couples, for example, and tailoring your design choices toward that demographic will go a long way to ensure your website is clear, appealing, and mitigate any potential loss in conversion as a result of a change in website design.

Each group of people informs aspects of design including colors, type choices, imagery, and layout just to name a few. But they also inform physical interaction with the website as well. Baby Boomers on average need some hand-holding when navigating websites, especially those that are content-heavy, while the 25-35 age group would be more adept at website navigation, but also expect certain considerations by default. Age or disability may also limit your color palette or font selections. If your target demographic are dyslexic your font choices are fairly limited to ensure that they can read and navigate without issue.

Many people may see a dip in conversion or sales because the users are completely taken aback by the change; this is normal for a new website design. The successfully planned design will ensure that you bounce back from that downward spike. The number of design considerations that are directly impacted by your demographic(s) is broad and ever-changing, but it’s never a good idea to design for yourself or because “it looks cool” when your driving force behind your new design is to increase user engagement or conversions.

Have Goals

Before you even speak with a designer, it’s imperative to understand the goal of your new website or even why you need a new website. Understanding the purpose of your website and/or why your current website isn’t successful is important in preventing similar pain points and issues down the line.

I typically ask clients one simple question, “Why?” Why do you need a new design? Really think about that, because “it looks old” does not necessarily make a difference if you aren’t sure why you need a website, or who your users are.

Your website might be out of date or isn’t mobile-friendly, but that isn’t a good answer to that question. Sure, updating things and making sure you’re mobile-ready is a fantastic way to improve user retention in the short term, but it’s just a temporary bandage. Your company should know what the goals of your website might be: user account registration, sales, interaction, sharing, etc. Obviously, there isn’t just one point of conversion on a website or one reason a user might visit, but knowing that along with your target demographic(s) can provide insight into how the users will interact with your new design, how you can provide easy access to your point of conversion, and funnel users without additional effort.

The Website is NOT for You!

It’s for your users. Of course, you have control over the design in as much as it should follow your brand guidelines, but beyond that, the fact that YOU like a slider or YOU love the color orange doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to include those elements, especially if it could harm user interaction and retention. You need to think about your users first and push personal preference to the wayside, keeping in mind that you are most likely not in your target demographic or age range.

One of the most common follies of new website design is to fall into a trend. Every year there are predictions for the next, and there are endless lists of trends based on the most popular website designs from the big five: Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Those design decisions are based on data and planning and are made with a purpose. Apple may have a fatty animated header which informs the current trend, but adding this element to your website because it is the current trend or because it’s “cool,” and not because it improves the user experience, flow, or retention is a mistake. I’m going to go out on a limb and say unless you’re Apple, your product is not an Apple product. If your main source of revenue is user signups, that should be the first thing visible to a user on all pages in some respect (unless they’re logged in). If the first thing a person sees when visiting your website is unrelated to making that happen, your design has failed and your users will bounce.

Think about your users. Do you need to waste dollars on an app-like experience, or pages upon pages of dense content when a single HTML page and two paragraphs will get the job done? Be mindful of your goals and avoid trends to provide a more purposeful and timeless user experience.

Don’t Neglect the Content

Just because your design is in good shape doesn’t mean that your website will yield positive results. It’s important to consider content, content flow, content interaction, and client expectation when designing a new website. At a micro level, not considering “real” content may change the design in a way that isn’t favorable, pushing elements to new lines or cramping blocks that rely on white space to be successful. Since no content is created equal, an extra check in advance ensuring that your design and flow still function as expected, once the site is built, is greatly beneficial.

At a macro level, there are two reasons that your users are visiting your site: to get information and to do a thing. If either of those elements is abstracted by design, your website is a failure. In fact, content typically informs users enough to make an educated decision about what they want, where to get it, and how to get there. Providing content that is explicitly tailored to your users and your goals will provide an optimal user experience and direct and limit the design to bring focus to those goals. We’re not just talking about the “About Page” but information blocks and navigation, too. The biggest pain point for user interaction and user experience is just not being able to find the information they need at a glance.

Content in many ways is as important or more important than the design itself. The design may direct your users with proper formatting, call to actions, buttons, layout choices, etc, but content provides users with the ability to get the information they need and convert. The optimal and most direct path for a user helps to avoid frustration and cognitive dissonance.

Summation

Design is more than just pixels. The design gives a website purpose and an inherited understanding of users. Design controls user flow and direction. Design should build upon your brand and content and elevate the user experience on the web and mobile devices. Working design-first for your own personal tastes without an understanding of your users, the goals, or content your design will fail, no matter how “beautiful” your website might be.

Now, you’re ready to think about the future and the goals of your company, make informed decisions about your new website or app design, and really come to the table with a sound, rational reason for that amazing design.

The post Plan a Website Design Your Users Will Love appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Led by an amazing group of organizers, their passion for WordPress runs very deep and it comes out in the way in which their event was presented. I’m extremely proud of every single person on the WordCamp Phoenix organizing team, but especially Raquel Landefeld from a fellow agency, Mode Effect, who held the lead organizer position.  

This was my fourth time attending WordCamp Phoenix, but my first time speaking at it. I was invited to give my talk on “Eat, Blog, Love: How I Stopped Waiting and Started Doing.” I’ve spoken at over 12 camps in my tenure within the WordPress community, but this was only the second time I’ve given this particular talk (my first if you consider that I lost my original slides and had to create new ones for WCPHX).

The talk is centered around how I built my food blog, Dine With Shayda, on the WordPress platform, and how I use simple life tricks I’ve picked up along the way to create compelling content, market myself, and create a consistent flow of motivation to get things done. It’s part marketing, part strategy, part self-help.

For me, this was one of my most well-received presentations, which ended with a group of people hanging around for well after my talk picking my brain. One of the most popular questions asked of me was:

“When you’re starting out, should you focus on a content calendar or schedule for publishing content?”

To be honest, for my blog, I don’t have a content calendar per se. My rule is to focus on consistency, not necessarily quality. In other words, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

My single goal is to create as much content as possible, whether it’s my blog or social media channels, etc. Of course, you want a plan for how to distribute that content once it’s created, but don’t get hung up in trying to write X amount of posts with X amount of words. The minimum content requirement for SEO is 300-500 words. Focus on doing that type of post as many times as you can! Another great question:

“What tools should bloggers use to create and edit content?”

A lot of people assume that you need to invest a lot of money upfront to start anything, that you need the best equipment, like a fancy camera or editing software. Of course, those tools are extremely helpful and once you’ve proven that your content can convert, absolutely make the investment.

But fun fact: I use my iPhone to edit all my photos still, and I’ve upgraded to a Nikon DSLR, but nothing beats my iPhone. My tip is to invest in learning how to create compelling content over buying new toys. Figure out your aesthetic and become an expert at executing that through your content.

This was also a special WordCamp for me because, as a new hire at WebDevStudios and because we work remotely and we don’t always get to meet each other right away upon joining the company, I had the pleasure of meeting Shannon MacMillan and Aubrey Portwood, who are both Arizona residents and involved in the local WordPress community. They’re both two of our amazing developers and it was fun being able to meet some of my team members to help put faces to names, which I will say, is extremely important working in a distributed company!

With over 500 attendees, WordCamp Phoenix was one of the larger camps I have attended, but it never felt that big or overwhelming. The speakers were a nice mix of technical and business. They had workshops which covered plugin development, starting a WooCommerce store, and discovering your unique brand voice.

And if it’s fair to say, my favorite things about the camps are the people. I’ve become quite spoiled because I know how awesome WordCamps are. But if you’ve never attended or have only attended locally, I encourage you to go to more! The people that show up are friends old and new, business partners, vendors, potential hires, and some of the most genuine people you’ll ever meet. Being able to connect digitally through WordPress is amazing, but making time for in-person relationships is key. I like to remind myself that people like to do business with people, so any chance you get to connect with others in your industry on a human level, do it.

Big thanks again to the WordCamp Phoenix team for having us, we really appreciated it. Thank you to Raquel Landefeld, Carol Stambaugh, Betsey Cohen, Matthew Clancy, Justin Tucker, Andrea Self, David Ryan, Leslie Pico, and Corey Jenkins. Thank you to the volunteers who helped run registration, check in speakers, introduce speakers, support the happiness bar, and all the other ways in which you helped make WCPHX flawless. And to the sponsors, without your support, WordCamps wouldn’t be possible and for that, we thank you.

Keep up with where WDS will be next. Visit the Events section of our WDS Gives Back page.

The post Post Event Report: WordCamp Phoenix 2018 appeared first on WebDevStudios.

But First… an Overview

The Gutenberg editor will completely replace the current post editor you have been using with your standard WordPress installation. In other words, creating content in WordPress is going to be a whole new experience with Gutenberg. For example, if you’re creating a blog post, you may start with a block of text. Then you add a block that contains an image, and then you add another block of text. Each block can then be edited individually, including the order in which the blocks are displayed.

Two Disclaimers

There are two things I want to make clear before we go any further:

1. Until recently, I would have said the Gutenberg WordPress editor is a way of editing the content on your website, but as I’ve learned, the longterm plans for it involve the ability to edit all aspects of your website.
2. WordPress’ Gutenberg is still in active development and isn’t planned to be ready until at least April 2018. It’s important to remember that things will continue to change, even after you’ve read this blog post. Gutenberg will get better itself and third-party themes and plugins will get better at integrating with it.

For now, though, we’re only going to focus on how the Gutenberg editor affects the existing content on your website with a standard WordPress installation (not page builders; we’ll cover that another time). Now, let’s dig in.

Converting Content To Blocks

After you install the Gutenberg plugin, when you edit a page, you’re going to see the new editor. By default, Gutenberg will treat all of the existing content on the page as a single HTML block. As you can see from the screenshot, you have the ability to leave the page as-is and simply edit the page as HTML. This may be fine for users who are comfortable editing raw HTML, but that’s not why we’re here now, is it?

Just below the “Edit as HTML” menu item is another important item: “Convert to blocks.” When clicked, this button will convert all of the content into individual blocks.

If your page contains nothing but paragraphs of text, each paragraph will become its own block of text. If you have mixed content, like in the “Contact Us” page example, the text and shortcodes each became their own individual blocks. As you can see, the shortcode is now clearly defined and I can edit it, or any of the text blocks on their own.

While the visual in the admin area has changed, your website visitors won’t see a difference in the content. To them, it will look the exact same as it did before the content conversion.

Editing Individual Blocks

Now that content has been converted into blocks, we have the ability to edit each content block on its own. This is where the true power of the Gutenberg WordPress editor shines.

In this screenshot example, I am editing the top block of text. You can see from the available tools on the right, the font size and color can be modified, but I can also add a background color to the block of text as a whole. Also, I can add a unique CSS Class name to this block, which will make it easy to target for adding additional custom CSS.

The list of available editing tools on the righthand side will change based on the type of content you are editing. At the time of this writing, there are 23 different block types including Image, Gallery, Heading, Quote, List, Video and a whole lot more. There are also 35+ simple embed options from different sites (for example, YouTube). You simply drop the embed block where you want it to show up, paste in the YouTube video URL, and you’re all set.

Big Change ≠ Bad Change

In the beginning, I made the mistake of listening to all the complaining on the internet about Gutenberg. It helped form my early impression that Gutenberg was the devil before I had even installed it and given it a try. This was a huge mistake on my part as a large portion of those complaining about it probably haven’t even tried it themselves.

So, before you start looking at alternative platforms to run your website, I’m here to assure you that the sky is not falling. There have been other big changes that have come to WordPress (the Customizer comes to mind) that we all survived. The Gutenberg WordPress editor is a big change. And, most people fear change. I get that.

Many of my concerns were put to rest when I watched this presentation from WordCamp US. I suggest you do the same. Then, set up a copy of your site on a development server and install the Gutenberg plugin. Try it out for yourself.

I’ve only touched the surface of Gutenberg and how it will affect your website. In the weeks and months to come, I will be researching how Gutenberg affects page editors such as Beaver Builder and Visual Composer, and how it affects themes with their own page builders built in, such as Divi. There’s no need to fear change, but being prepared and informed is definitely a smart move!

The post How Existing Content Will Be Affected by Gutenberg WordPress Editor appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Introduction to WordPress Multisite

There is a good deal of information on the web about WordPress Multisite, but most of it dives too deep technically, or quickly shows you steps to set up a Multisite environment. I am going to tackle it from another angle, from the point of view of an outsider looking in (with possibly no technical background) wondering if WordPress Multisite will fit the needs of their organization. To help facilitate the discussion, let’s start with some terminology.

New Terminology

WordPress Multisite introduces new ideas into WordPress, and there are several new terms that come along with it. Below are the various Multisite terminologies defined to help provide a foundation in communication for the rest of the article.

• Network: The Network refers to a group of sites created on your Multisite instance. Though it is technically possible to run multiple networks on a single Multisite instance, we will focus on the basic single network that comes with Multisite. To keep things simple, you should be aware that some older literature referred to a Network as a Site.

• Site: A site refers to a single site within a network. These are sometimes also referred to as subsites, or blogs. Over the years, the term site has changed meaning to refer to the individual sites on a network. You may see reference in older literature that use the term site in the context of network.

• Blog: Another name for a single site on the network.

• Subsite: Another name for a single site on the network.

• Network Admin: This is a new section of the wp-admin area that appears in the Admin Bar after enabling Multisite on your WordPress installation. The Network Admin is where you will control the sites, plugins, and themes available to your sites.

• Super Admin: Super Admin is a new role that is available specifically for Multisites. Users with Super Admin access are allowed to access the Network Admin area and manage the entire network. Super Admins can access the dashboards of any site and administer them as well. The traditional Administrator account only has access to the sites it has permissions on.

• Subdomain Install: Network setup option that creates new sites with a subdomain of the primary domain. For example:
  • Primary domain: example.com
  • Site for Bob: bob.example.com
  • Site for Sally: sally.example.com 

• Subdirectory Install: Network setup option that creates new sites with a subdomain of the primary site. Useful when creating sites that all need the same look and feel such as corporate or language sites. For example:
  • Primary domain: example.com
  • Site for Bob: example.com/bob
  • Site for Sally: example.com/sally

What is WordPress Multisite?

You are undoubtedly familiar with WordPress. A content management system you install to manage your website content. Perhaps you have multiple websites, each with their own installation of WordPress running the site. Enter WordPress Multisite; WordPress Multisite transforms a single site into a powerhouse that can run an unlimited number (nobody has found a max number yet!) of websites from a single WordPress installation. In essence, it could combine all the individual WordPress installations you run into one single installation that supports all the sites. Each site can have its own domain, theme, and set of plugins utilized.

As an example of how I use the power of WordPress Multisite, I have several family members who have basic blogs set up to post their random thoughts. There are also several organizations that I have helped support over the years and test beds for new corporate sites running. Each of the site owners are able to manage their own content, while I ensure the network stays up and running efficiently with WordPress, and that all plugins are kept up to date.

Feel free to take a peek at a couple sites on my network:

• http://raeann.lobaugh.us/ – Sister’s site
• http://cara.lobaugh.us/ – Aunt’s site
• http://lewiscountychaplaincy.org/ – Website for the Lewis County Chaplaincy agency
• http://lobaughwedding.com – Site for Lobaugh weddings, currently featuring my wedding
• http://fetchfitness.clients.lobaugh.us/ – In-progress site for a friend’s business

You will notice there are subdomains and custom domains. WordPress handles both with elegance. By default, new sites on my network are created as subdomains of lobaugh.us and then a custom domain is applied when ready. Subdirectories are also supported. Subdirectories make it look like all the sites are part of the same domain. For example, in my network, my sister’s site could be http://lobaugh.us/raeann. There are good reasons to run WordPress Multisite in subdomain mode that I will get into in Part 3.

In Part 1, you were introduced to new terminology used by WordPress Multisite and provided a high level view of what WordPress Multisite is. In the following parts, we will cover why using WordPress Multisite matters, and how to determine if it could be the right tool for your organization.

The post What Is WordPress Multisite and How Can It Help You? (Part 1) appeared first on WebDevStudios.

“How do you find content?”

That’s one of the top three questions seasoned social media professionals are normally asked. Along with finding the perfect time to post and which social media channels to post on, business owners, entrepreneurs, and those new to digital marketing are often faced with the challenge of finding interesting and engaging social media content to share with followers. It’s not easy. And frankly, it’s a time-consuming process, but with a few thoughtful tactics, curating content to share with your Facebook and Twitter followers (and everywhere else you’re at) can be simplified. This is how we do it at WebDevStudios (WDS).

We rely on Buffer Content Inbox.
We use Buffer for social media scheduling, and our social media brand management includes three brands: WDS, Maintainn, and Pluginize. Juggling three brands that offer three different products and services, each with its own individual brand voice, can be a heavy load. Using Buffer helps a lot. One of the ways it helps is the Content Inbox tool.

With Content Inbox, you can add up to 15 RSS feeds per profile. That’s a lot of content. I recommend selecting the feeds of respectable and reputable brands that complement your line of work. So for example, let’s say your business sells flooring. It’s pretty safe to assume that your social media followers have interests in home decorating, DIY, and home buying. So adding the feeds and sharing the content of places like HGTV, home improvement companies (especially if they carry your flooring materials), and interior decoration magazines and websites are safe bets. Once you do that, you can open your Buffer Content Inbox daily to find various pieces of content to share. They won’t all be hits, but at least you’ll have quite a selection to choose from.

BONUS TIP
Buffer now offers a Chrome extension that allows you to easily add and/or schedule an article straight from the internet to your Buffer queue in one swift click. I highly recommend installing it.

We sign up for email newsletters.
The concept is the same as it is with Buffer Content Inbox. I sign up to receive newsletters from various places where I know I can find some good content options. Does it make for a heavy email inbox with many emails to sort through? Yes. But at least I have quick and easy to access to shareable content without having to search the internet.

We rely on social media.
I mean, seriously. What better place to find engaging social media content than on social media? Look at what your followers are sharing and either re-tweet them (which your followers will enjoy, especially if you credit them for sharing great content), or schedule the content to be posted at a later time.

We rely on our teammates.
Some of the best content I have ever discovered was because one of our own developers shared it with the company. What are your employees sharing on their social media or commenting on? Your team is a great resource of information.

We set up Google Alerts.
One of the first things I did when I started at WDS was set up a Google Alert for the term WordPress. Again, straight to my inbox, I receive relevant articles that I can share on our social media.

We stay current with news and trends. 
Things like changes in TSA rules for laptops, the new internet privacy bill, net neutrality, and “WannaCry” hacking are all current topics that affect our social media followers, most of whom are developers, marketing executives, key decision makers, and entrepreneurs. Stay on top of what’s going on in the world and keep your followers informed. They’ll appreciate it.

We have a blog.
Our social media goal is to share engaging content with our followers, and maybe we’re biased, but we think our most engaging content are the articles on our blog. Sharing content that your followers can benefit from is a great service to provide. But in the end, the best thing you can do for your business is to give them a reason to visit your website. Having a blog where you regularly update content is a results-oriented way to do that. If you don’t have a blog on your business website right now, make one. Write on it weekly. Share that content on your social media. Need inspiration? Look at the blog we designed and developed for Microsoft Office Blogs.

BONUS TIP
But how do you share content, especially your own website content, on Instagram? After all, the app doesn’t allow you to include a hyperlink within your post. Here’s our solution: we use InstaGo. I like using Instagram to promote our blog posts, which I normally do by creating an image that includes the title of the blog post I want our followers to read. Then, I just make sure the InstaGo redirect is set to that blog post and instruct our followers to use the ‘GO’ link in our profile. Super easy. Check out our Instagram feed to see what I mean.

Social media is not a fad or a trend. It is an important part of your digital marketing efforts (with an emphasis on the word ‘efforts’). Curating content to share doesn’t have to be a daunting experience. Use our tips to simplify your strategy, and sure enough, you’ll find yourself with all kinds of articles to share with your followers.

If you like this blog post, you’ll probably like the social media content we share, too. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Like us on Twitter. Connect with us on LinkedIn.

The post Simple Solutions for Curating Social Media Content appeared first on WebDevStudios.