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Transcription:
James Schramko here with a website news update.
Got some tips for you today about Genesis. If you’re using that platform, here are a couple of things we found that can really help your results.
Custom Description
1. Make sure you put a custom description for every post. Quite often with a new Genesis install if you’re not using any SEO plugins then it may not be putting a description at all. You can find the description below where you put your post content. I’ll show you what it looks like here.
No-Follow External Links
3. Third tip is to install external links plugin and what this does, it allows you to tick a box that says “no follow external links.” So when you put a link to an external site it won’t follow that and it will actually hold the page rank. This is important now since Penguin. If you use one of your sites to promote your other sites you may want to have no follow links so that they don’t think you’re some kind of paid link network or whatever. That’s good and it holds the page rank in your site.
Open Links In new Window
The other thing is you can open links in a new window which is really cool because people can click on links that go away from your site and do whatever they do and when they close that window or they’re finished, your site is still there. So if you’re advertising something or you’re an affiliate, then you may actually get more than one chance at people finding your content. They might go off and do whatever they’re doing, come back and find something else.
The Most Popular Package…
Our team is getting really good at tracking time. The most popular package that we sell from our web development website, ATLweb.com is actually the hourly package. And for that hourly package we’ll work on your website, we’ll work on opt-ins; we’ll work on shopping cart, checkouts. We do all sorts of stuff. Aweber, Office Autopilot, Nanacast, and ecommerce plugin for WordPress.
Now here’s the thing we’ve been finding lately to really help conversions:
1. Is make sure that you code the forms on your site to match your site so they look good and they’re integrated. Design is very important for conversions.
2. Make sure that your opt-ins are also coded to blend in nicely with you site and to look good. What we found works really well is putting your opt-in form above the fold with a video player.
And the way that you can do this with most sites, this is a simple customization that will get you a big result.
Thin Headers
Have a thinner header. Across the top you want a thinner header instead of taking up half the page with your big brand logo. Make them thinner and bring that content up the page. You’ll see this on most of my websites if you have a look at them, you’ll see they have a thinner header and the other thing that you’ll noticed across the top is we hard code our social icons in there. Our YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook. They’re all hard coded in there instead of using plugins. Plugins need updating, plugins can be incompatible with updates of WordPress and they bold the site down so we hardcode them in.
If you want us to help you do this for any of your WordPress sites, ask the team at support @ jamesschramko.com
Take a 5 hour package and treat us like your backend service supply and we’ll give you a ticket. You just go into the ticket and say do this do that and our team will be on it. They’ll track the hours and when we’ve used up all the time we’ll let you know and you can go and get some more. And that’s how it works really well for us.
You don’t have to go and hire a fulltime coder or programmer, the chances are it’s going to be too hard for you to get a programmer, Photoshop person, techy, someone to install and unload and backup. We have a whole team that can do that and we’re very effective.
We also have customers who orders lots of sites from us and we can get the price right down if we do a few custom templates and then we use that version and we keep reinstalling that with backups for you. We can get the hours right down on those sorts of jobs. If you have access to a lot of customers and you want bulk packages, talk to us, we’re happy to help.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this web update and I look forward to catching up with you soon.
Visit our iTunes channel and rate this podcast.
Please Comment Below:
Dave Newgass says
Hey James,
Thanks for the tips. Although I don’t use Genesis, it’s on the radar. I can bank those ideas for future use.
ALT Hourly is a great service you have. I have a few things to throw their way and NOW that includes making my header thinner. Stellar idea!
BTW…the outro is SWEEEEET! I’m liking that .
Cheers,
Dave
James Schramko says
First test run today for the outro bumper thank you Dave for the hat tip!
Damien says
James if you were going to use a plugin for social media icons, do you know of one that makes them look like the ones on the header of this site?
James Schramko says
Perhaps something like floating social http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/floating-social/
Damien says
It looks like that one only shows the share ones next to posts. I am looking for one that shows the follow icons clear and bright like the ones in your header next to the logo.
I will keep looking, thanks.
James Schramko says
Im sorry. We do not use any. Other readers may know?
Damien says
All good. I found one called “Floating Social Media icon” by Acura. Does the trick as far as plugins go. Thanks.
James Schramko says
Excellent Damien than you for sharing this