Google stated in their blog that WordPress was the best content management system and blog for SEO.

Authority SEO WordPress Web Development and Website Design Offers:

1. Custom and professional website designs that integrate your existing brand
2. Added features to turn your blog into an eCommerce store, your own social media site, community forum, and more
3. All WordPress development built with the best SEO practices
4. Easy to upload your own videos, photos, podcasts, and unique content

What is WordPress and Why is the Best Website Platform to Choose

WordPress is a content management system software that allows that works both as a standalone website builder and a blog.  A content management system allows the user to add content, edit information, change banners, and more from an easy to use web based admin.  A website owner only needs an Internet connection to make the changes they want to their website on a daily basis.

WordPress is now used by over 25 million websites all around the world.  As an open source web platform, WordPress has thousands and thousands of new features being created for it to make building the best website for your business easier, faster, and more affordable.  Many great features do not have to be built from scratch which makes having a professional designed website more affordable for the average business owner.

Authority SEO has built tons of different WordPress websites for many different uses.  WordPress allows a web development team to customize and create any look and feel they want while still delivering the ease of use the website owner needs.

Ways to Use WordPress

1. Business or personal blog
2. Professional business website
3. Affiliate marketing website
4. Community forum
5. eCommerce online store

Featured WordPress Blog – ITM Trading Blog

Authority SEO built the blog for ItmTrading.com with WordPress.  One the main advantages from an search engine optimization stand point is that we incorporated the blog into their existing website and matched their existing look and feel.

ITM Trading Blog Features:

1. Content slider on blog home page
2. Call to action buttons on right sidebar
3. Featured Post in right sidebar

Highlight at the bottom of every page with Youtube videos, client testimonials, and Facebook like button.
Customized ability for ITM Trading to change out any aspect of the home page, sidebar, old posts, add videos, and more.
Subscriber sign up that sends an email to all subscribers every time a new post is updated

Authority SEO also combines their WordPress website design skills with the best aspects of SEO.  Every page has the ability to be optimized for the search engines.  Authority SEO also trains you the website owner on the proper ways to add new content to maximize your own ability to add to your site.

If you go to the ITM Trading blog at www.itmtrading.com/blog you then want to click posts to see the professional organization around how the posts are viewable to the web visitor that makes them easy to find the write information they are looking for.

The main reason that Authority SEO likes working in WordPress is that it allows us to take your vision for your site and turn it into a functional website that ranks well in the search engines, is easy to use for the web user, and delivers that branding that your company desires.

Contact Authority SEO About WordPress Web Development, SEO, and Website Design

Please, fill out the form or call (866) 610-1655

Authority SEO Offers

1. Web Design
2. Programmer and store customization
3. SEO solutions
4. Complete online store set up

Zen Cart before any customization offers essential aspects like SEO for all product pages, web based admin for processing orders, complete shopping cart, multiple ways to create sales and discounts, multiple options for payment checkout, and more.

Featured Zen Cart Store – NaturesOrganicMarket.com

Natures Organic Market uses the Zen Cart platform to handle their online business of selling organic and Green products.  With Zen Cart you have the ability to turn your online store into any look and feel you want.  The PHP files allow for customization of any of the new features business owners are looking for.

Key Features

1. Unlimited category structure
2. No need for web developer to change out promotional banners
3. Customized product pages with big “Add to Cart” button
4. Featuring on sale items, customers who also bought items, and best sellers
5. Article content management system

Zen Cart can be built to handle thousands of products or a boutique store of just a few.  Using a complete online solution offers  benefits of that are subtle though highly effective from displaying shopping cart totals, showing recently purchased items for returning customers, displaying percentage off products, and more.

One of the main benefits of using Authority SEO to develop your Zen Cart store is that all aspects of the online store are created with effective Internet marketing and search engine optimization strategies.  You won’t have to build your online store only now figure out how to market it on the web.  Authority SEO works with you to develop your store around the best ways to drive targeted traffic that generate sales for your new online store.

Contact Authority SEO About Zen Cart Web Development, SEO, and Website Design

Please, fill out the form or call (866) 610-1655

Important to keep in mind then optimizing your home page is all the different ways people may find it.  Your home page can be visited through Internet search, business cards, radio or tv advertising, or even clicking from somewhere else on your site.

The big question is it designed to maximize your goals?  Most business owners don’t even know that they are losing money every day because visitors don’t know where to go when they land their home page.

5 Steps to Instantly Improve Your Home Page Conversions

1. Objectives: do you have specific objectives for your home page.  I have found that many companies have never taken the time to decide on what is most important and thus what goes on the home page.
2. Priorities: Take your list of objectives and organize them into three categories which are top priority, secondary priority, and minor priority.
3. Scorecard: Create a scorecard or key performance indicators for each priority that will effectively measure the success of each one.
4. Design: Now take your priorities in order of importance and design your home page.  A visitor has about 5 seconds to determine what is most important and where or not they will stay on the site.
5. Test: Important to test different elements on the site for effectiveness.  Many companies spend hours debating a particular feature on the site instead of letting the public decide which one they like better.  Also, important to test competing elements like different banners that draw the eye’s attention.

Bing is working hard to catch up all the features that Google’s webmaster tools offers so I would check back frequently to check for updates.  Mostly likely Google and Bing will index your site differently so take advantage of this valuable resource. (http://www.bing.com/webmaster)

Websites don’t have to be expensive to be effective.  They just have to be set up correctly from the beginning.

Top 10 Web Design Tips for Small Business

1. Domain name: chose an obvious domain name that is either you company’s name or keywords that represent what you are selling.
2. Hosting: don’t take your hosting for granted.  Poor hosting companies can have your site crash and not have the tech support to get it back up.  I personally use GoDaddy.com Hosting Plans for everything now as I haven’t had any issues and they have good customer service.
3. HMTL vs. Flash: flash looks cool though it gets annoying once you have been on the site more than once.  Also, flash doesn’t get indexed by searched engines.  You want to make your professional website in html.
4. 8 Grade Level: You have to make it obvious to what you are selling and who your target audience is.  If your visitors have to guess you will lose most of them.
5. Warm and fuzzies: That is what I call them.  Make it easy to find your credentials and biographies of who you are.  You want to build trust with your audience.  Certifications, associations, and other outside agencies like the Better Business Bureau support your online trust factor.
6. Testimonials: showcase testimonials from clients or customers.  You can also let customers comment on their orders through automatic services.
7. Photos: don’t clutter your website.  You graphics and photos to break up the text though don’t over do it.
8. Navigation: search engines index text navigations only.  Also, as most computers are wider than taller having your navigation horizontal makes it easier to fit in every person’s monitor.
9. Keywords: you want to do research on keywords people are searching for your business.  It is important to understand your audience more than you just deciding what keywords they should be searching for.
10. Measure: put analytic software on your website so you can measure everything from traffic sources to what they do once on your website.

OpenId is your Internet profile that you can use on many websites so you don’ t have the need for many different usernames and passwords.  Over 40,000 different websites support the use of OpenId for user profiles.

At the bottom of the post just click the icon to log into your OpenId profile and add your comment.

Clean and professional web design works no matter what business you are in

No matter what business you are in or the reason for creating your website there are common themes that all successful website abide by.  As you are creating your website you always need to remember you have 5-10 seconds to make a person stay on your web page.

5 Things that Every Website Most Have

1. Professional: when you go into a brick and mortar store to buy something, what do you think when the store is a mess?  This works the same of websites.  Clean and professional always work to matter what business, product, or service you are offering.
2. Navigation: make your navigation easy to find and use.  I have seen websites with fancy flash for a navigation which can be confusing, plus lacks good search engine optimization.  You want to make it easy for visitors to find the information you want them to and they are looking to find.
3. Colors: have you ever looked at a website and it gave you a headache?  The color scheme has to easy on the eyes.  This also works for the text.  Often websites get too artsy with the colors and text and you can’t read anything on the site.
4. Call to Action: every page of your website needs a “call to action.”  This is what you want people to do next on your website.  The best place is in the right hand navigation as people’s eyes move from left to right and diagonal across the page.
5. Test: most website owners don’t test their links and their new web pages they add.  It is so easy for a photo to not be formatted or a link to not work.  It takes just a minute more to test your new page and it is well worth it.  This also goes for periodic checks as things can just stop working for some reason.  Another way to know if something isn’t working is to see a sudden high bounce rate on a certain page.

Click on any website and your eyes go some where.  This may sound obvious though have you ever looked at where your eyes go on your website.  Does your landing page instantly let the visitor know what your site is about, the quality of your site, and where to go or what to do next.  Each of these aspects are key to getting web traffic involved and spending time on your site.

Want to give your web page a free test?

Fivesecondtest.com offers a free service that allows people to test what they see and click within 5 seconds.  You upload a photo of your website or the web page you want to test (must be less than 960 wide) then people are able to take your 5 second test to report back what they saw.  Each test is given a link that you can send to your Twitter, Facebook, or other media to help spread the word for people to take the test.

Take Authority SEO’s test at http://fivesecondtest.com/test/zZkDWMMB

First, what is bounce rate?  Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site without ever clicking on another page in your website.

Inside Your Website Factors that Affect Bounce Rate

1. Design: Think about websites that you have visited that annoyed you and you immediately left.  Do you have any of these aspects on your own site?  Lots of clutter, sharp colors, flash animations, and especially noise from music or virtual presenters can lead to high bounce rates.  You have 5 seconds to connect with your visitor, so you don’t want them instantly annoyed or not knowing what your site offers.
2. Content: As more and more websites write content for the search engines as everybody wants to be ranked, many writers have forgot that it is still people who read your content.  It doesn’t matter how much traffic you generate if people don’t find your content well written, helpful, and written in a way that enhances your brand.
3. Navigation: To stop bounce rate a person has to click another page on your site.  How hard is it for a person to determine what to do next on your site?  I call them funnels which are the paths that you want to lead people down to support their buying decision or getting involved decision for your website.  You should have an attracted and easy to understand option on every page of your website that leads people into the funnel you want.
4. Technical: If you see high bounce rate on a page you want to check to make sure everything on the page is working.  Are you going to keep reading in a website that has bugs and issues when you land on the pages?  One more key factor to technical issues has to if people have to download components to view aspects of your page.  Most people are wary of these types of programs as they don’t want spyware on their computer.  Your best bet it to find solutions where people with any browser will be able to view your media.

Top 5 Reasons to Own a Blog for Your Business

1. Simple: it is the easiest way to create new content online.  If you can handle typing in a Word document you can handle a blog post.
2. Authentic: a blog is written from the author’s point of view.  Good blog posts are free direct advertising and offer the reader insights into the author’s knowledge base.
3. Free: you can get a blog created for free from sites like Blogger or WordPress, there are others.  Find a professional looking theme and you are off and running.  I do find for minimal expense you can set up a blog under a unique domain name with a custom template.
4. Credibility: you increase your brand my sharing your expert knowledge on your subject matter.  Readers of your blog will build trust with yourself which can lead to business down the road.
5. Online Visibility: blogs have their own search engines.  Checkout blogs under the drop down of your Google search page.  Blogs give you access to visitors who are not looking for answers from standard websites.

Check out Authority SEO clients’ blogs from our portfolio page

Content management systems are web based admin tools designed to make adding and changing content on your website easy and affordable.  With a simple internet connection you can log into your back office to add articles, change pages, and showcase sales or specials you are running.  With CMS you don’t have to send your items to your IT guy and wait till he gets around to you.

Top 5 Keys for Choosing the Right Content Mangement System

1. Easy to use: make sure you demo how the CMS will work.  It should be easy to use and it shouldn’t be any harder than typing in a Word document.
2. Website Control: all banners, branding, marketing, navigation, and content pages should be easily accessible and editable by you the online business owner without any need for IT programming.
3. SEO tools: for effective internet marketing and SEO you want the CMS to create search engine friendly urls (yourdomain.com/keywords) and the ability to add custom meta tags for every page on the site.
4. Business applications: the CMS platform should have the ability to integrate your business applications that seperate you from the competition
5. Flexible: as new features and products come available you want a CMS that has the ability for customization and the easy ability to add html code from new programs