WordPress offers a lot of flexibility when it comes to organizing your blog posts.  You create blog categories and tags on the fly as you write each article.  Other than having to put every article into a category (and it defaults to the “Uncategorized” category if you forget to select one!) there really are no hard and fast rules.  You can put the same article into multiple categories and create as many tags as you want to further classify the content.  When you first start out, this all seems great.  But after you’ve been blogging for a while, adding more and more categories with each post , you’ll notice that your blog eventually becomes cluttered and disorganized.  It’s hard to find older articles because you can’t remember which category you placed them in and the same articles keep appearing over and over because you put them in too many places.

The worst part is all of this duplication of copy can actually cause you to be penalized in Google.  Yup, that’s right.  According to the Google webmaster page on Duplicate Content, if “Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.” 

So what’s a WordPress blogger to do?  There are a few steps that you can take to better organize your blog and to stop the search engine robots from getting to those pages were there is duplicated content.

Better use of Categories and Tags.  The best analogy that I’ve seen to explain the difference between categories and tags is to think of them as the Table of Contents and Index of a book. 

The Categories are your Table of Contents.  These are the main sections of your blog.  They should be broad and descriptive.  Try to limit the number of categories to a manageable number – roughly around ten categories.  At one point this blog had over 30 categories, many of which had only 1 article and that article was typically in 2-4 other categories to boot.  I gave some thought as to what the main topics were that I was trying to focus this blog on and was able to narrow that down to just 8 categories. 

The Tags can be compared to the Index of a book.  This is where you can create many mini-topics to further organize your posts.  Your article most likely touches on many subjects that are important to your readers.  You can assign to each post as many relevant tags that you deem necessary.  For example, an article that I’ve place in the Social Media category may be tagged for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (if those topics are relevant to the article.)

Create a Robots.txt file.  A robots.txt file tells the search engine robots what they can and can’t look at on your web site.  For example, you can tell the robots not to index your category pages because this content is duplicated on the individual article pages .  Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t come with a default robots file.  The WordPress web site does recommend that you put one on your web site for SEO reasons and they even offer a good example of what a WordPress Robots.txt file should look like.

Use the More Tag.  The More Button  in the WordPress editor allows you to indicate where you want your article to break with a “Read More” link.  By using this built-in feature of WordPress, you can just show excerpts of your article on the blog home page, the category pages, and the tag pages.  This reduces the amount of content that is duplicated on your pages, because the full article only appears in one place.

Keep in mind that organizing your blog isn’t just for SEO benefits.  It will also help your readers more easily find the information that they are looking for so that a visit to your blog will be a more pleasing experience.

The website for Kids Unlimited Services Inc. was custom-designed to meet their unique needs. Built on WordPress, the website is easy-to-use and search engine-friendly. The staff at Kids Unlimited loves the ability to update their own web pages through the WordPress admin program. It allows them to keep the site up-to-date and helps them to better serve their customers.

Kids Unlimited provides services to in-home daycare providers, including referrals, home visits, food program and training. Because their program is voucher-funded through the state of Massachusetts, each provider must submit weekly and monthly attendance logs to get paid. Web Image Designs created a custom portal where the providers can log in and submit their attendance logs.

This provider information is stored in a database, which allows Kids Unlimited to retrieve the data and submit it to the state. The program has made everyone’s job easier by simplifying the whole billing process. According to Alyssa Noel, Billing Supervisor at Kids Unlimited Services Inc., “The new program is working great! All of our providers love it!”

WordPress was originally a blogging tool that has evolved over the years into a powerful content manangement system (CMS.) The blogging functionality is therefore integrated into the core of WordPress.

In most Content Management Systems, blogging is an afterthought which can be added on but is not integrated with the core. Since it’s not a primary function, most CMS systems do not have sophisticated features built into their blogs. WordPress, on the other hand, stands out in this respect. Because of its history as a blogging tool, there have been numerous “widgets” and plug-in modules developed for enhanced functionality. On Penelope James’ web site, examples of these modules include social media links, sharing links, email subscriptions, topics, archive lists and blog roll. These features help her growing list of followers to find the information they need and allow them to share it with others! It also allows for future enhancements to the site as new features are developed.

A WordPress Content Management System was the ideal choice to meet Attorney Dalton’s needs.

WordPress gives him the flexibility to update his own web pages by logging into his site using any web browser. The WordPress Administration interface is easy to use and editing pages is a snap. WordPress also gives him the flexibility to add, remove or even hide web pages.

Attorney’s Dalton’s website was custom designed to ensure that it’s unique and stands out from the competition. Web Image Designs has worked with a number of law firms, but you won’t find “cookie-cutter” designs as you might with some web firms that only design law sites. This is because our graphic designers work hard to understand each client’s needs and to find the unique characteristics of each firm. The end result is a unique look and feel that often exceeds our client’s expectations. That is our #1 goal.

Other Law Web Sites Designed by Web Image Designs

• Block & Roos, Business Law
• Bowman, Moos & Elder, Family Law
• Healy, Fiske, Richmond & Matthew, Family Law Attorneys
• Kathleen Stone Law, Business Attorney
• Law Offices of Susan M. DeMatteo, Family Lawyer & Mediator
• Levitt Law Group, Divorce & Family Law
• Looney Cohen & Aisenberg, LLP, Business Lawyers
• Lynda Robbins, Collaborative Family Law and Mediation
• Susan Lillis, Family & Domestic Law Attorney

QRSD wanted a web site for the overall district, one for the High School, one for the Middle School and one for each of the six elementary schools. Each one would be maintained by their respective staff. Each one required different pages with different content, their own news blog and their own activity calendar.

The WordPress Roles plug-in module was used to set permissions for the various users who would be responsible for updating the district and school web sites. It was critical that each user be given full permission to their own school’s web pages, but no permission to modify the other schools’ pages.

Quabbin’s many calendars were a challenge. We needed to write some custom PHP code to modify a WordPress Calendar module, so that we could display a combined activity calendar on the district web site but break out each individual school’s events on their respective web sites.

Parents, students and staff at Quabbin are thrilled with the new site, which is not only informative and inviting, but also serves as an important means of communication between home & school.

Other School District Web Sites Designed by Web Image Designs

• North Middlesex Regional School District

WordPress was the perfect solution for the new Hudson Public Library web site. They wanted a new look & feel for their web site as well as the ability to update the web site content themselves. The web site needed to be interactive and engaging as well as informative, so that their patrons would find it useful and would want to frequent the web site.

The library staff also researched a number of special features that they wanted to include on the web site. After a careful review of their specifications, we determined that WordPress not only met all of their criteria but would also give them many options for future growth and enhancement.

The library staff felt that their old web site not only looked dated but was no longer meeting the needs of their patrons. They researched their requirements by looking at a number of library web sites from around the country and came up with a wish-list of features that they wanted to implement on their new site. Some of these features can be seen on their home page, including:

• A carousel of new books at the library that are linked to the catalog
• A rotating, interactive display of news & events at the library
• Catalog Search
• Event Calendar
• Quick Links to frequently requested items, such as library passes

Since information changes daily, it was critical that the library staff have the ability to modify the web site content themselves. WordPress was chosen because it is a very user-friendly content management system (CMS) that will allow the staff to edit pages using a Word-like editor. It also enables them to easily add new pages to the web site as the need arises.

Because WordPress is highly extensible, we were able to add many of the “extra” features with minimal custom programming. WordPress has a large and growing set of plug-in modules that can be installed and configured to enhance the functionality of the web site. This not only helps to speed up development, but also keeps the cost down.

According to Deborah Kane, head of Technical Services at the Hudson Public Library, “The accolades keep rolling in – everyone loves our new site!“

Blocking Spam

Luckily, WordPress has a plug-in that works great in capturing spam.  Askimet will flag any comment that it considers spam so that they won’t appear on your blog unless you mark them as approved.  Yes, this causes a little extra work for you because you should be checking to make sure that no valid comments have been incorrectly labelled as spam.  I’ve found this happens rarely, but I keep checking just so that I don’t alienate a reader who has taken the time to comments on my blog articles.

Turning Off Comments

Recently a blog follower of mine who is an avid blogger herself – Giuilietta “the muse”- noticed that most of the spam she was receiving was on older blog posts.  She asked me if there was a way to turn off the comments just on these older articles which were bringing in the bulk of her spam.

This is very easy to do with WordPress.  Just edit the article, scroll down to the “Discussion” section & uncheck the box labelled “Allow Comments.”  Remember to press the update button to save your changes.  The comments will be closed for that article only & hopefully this will reduce the amount of spam you receive.

Blogs & Spam go hand-in-hand, but hopefully these suggestions will make your life a little easier & a little more “Spam Free.”

To keep your readers interested, it’s important to mix things up on your blog. In additional to text and photos, videos are a great way to add some excitement to your blog. It can be your own video or one that you’ve found on the Internet. YouTube is a fabulous place to find videos on just about any topic. Today, I’ve chosen to share with you a YouTube video on How to Embed YouTube videos in your WordPress Blog.

The key points are:

1. Find a YouTube Video you’d like to embed in your blog article
2. Click on the button and copy the code to embed in WordPress
3. Edit your page in WordPress, making sure you have the HTML tab active and not the Visual Tab
4. Paste the code into your WordPress Post and Publish it

Ta Dah! You now have video in your blog post. I hope you (and your readers) have fun with this!

I saw a tweet this week asking if anyone knew of a WordPress website that didn’t look “bloggy.”  I thought that was a strange question, especially since custom designed WordPress sites are what we do best!  So I tweeted back with a link to my portfolio but that question has been on my mind ever since.

Most CMS software is ugly right out of the box.  Simple.  Boring. And just plain ugly.  Do people really think that they are stuck with the look & feel of their CMS software right out of the box?

Sure, you could purchase a cheap template and install it yourself, but Buyer Beware: You get what you pay for (see related article on CMS Templates.)  Sometimes a cheap template can end up costing more than you bargained for.

WordPress web sites do not have to look “bloggy” at all.  In fact, most people wouldn’t be able to tell a well-designed WordPress site from a static web site.

Business owners should consider custom website design as an investment in their company.  There is no other tool in today’s business world that is more important than your website.  It’s a marketing tool, a sales tool and an educational tool.  Your website is often your first point of contact with a customer and you want to make a good first impression.

Custom WordPress Design can take your website and your business to the next level.

You may have noticed a 2 month gap between this post and the last one.  Wish I could say I was on an extended vacation, but I wasn’t.  And I haven’t given up on blogging either.  The reason I stopped blogging 2 months ago, is that I came to the realization that I was not happy with my current Content Management System and it was time to move on.  Since I was blogging on a weekly basis for about 9 months, that meant not only moving my web site but also moving all of the blog articles as well.  The more I blogged, the more pages I had to move, so I stopped.

The process was more painful than I thought and so this is why my first post back is to warn you – Be Picky.  Be Well Informed.  Choose your blogging software wisely.

My site was running on Hubspot – which by the way is a great product (I’ll save the details for a future post) – but it just wasn’t a good fit for me.  Because web sites are my business, I will often try new products and software before recommending them to my clients.  Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t, but in the long run I always learn something and believe that I can provide better services to my clients because of my experience.

The move was to WordPress.  In my humble opinion, if you plan to blog then WordPress is the platform of choice.  I’ve been working with WordPress for a few years now and my clients love it!

OK.  Now for the pain.  I decided not to change the look & feel because I just updated my site last August and am still very happy with it.  But I still needed to rebuild the site for WordPress and spent some time updating the copy.  Then I had to tackle the blog.  Transferring all of the blog articles & photos, adding SEO, re-creating the tags and categories – this was just the start.  As I was doing this, I realized that every article, every tag, every category, every archive — was on a different page and all of these pages were in Google.  ARRRRRRRRG!

When you move your blog or website to a new CMS or blogging platform, chances are the new software will have its own naming conventions.  So even if you keep the same content, the pages will most likely have different names.  This is especially true for your blog articles.  So I had to do something to make sure that Google could find my newly relocated pages.  Otherwise people would receive Page not Found errors, I would lose valuable traffic and hurt my page rank in Google.  So for each of these pages, I set up a permanent redirect to tell Google where each page was.  Luckily for me, WordPress has a plug-in for this, but I still had to manually type in the old and new names for each page.

Other downfalls to moving your blog…

1. You’ll lose your subscriber list.  You need to contact everyone on your list and have them re-confirm their subscription due to anti-spam laws.  [So please enter your contact info in the subscribe box at the left if you want to keep receiving email notifications of new articles!]
2. You also lose your comments.  There really is no way to transfer comments.  Bummer.

So heed my advice.  Choose your blogging software wisely.  Think long-term and make sure your cms software will support any future features you are hoping to implement.  You’ll be happy you did!