Tips For Creating A Website Using The WordPress Platform For Your Online Business That Generates Sales
The possibility of creating a business on the Internet, and being successful, is based upon three specific factors. The first factor is having products that people actually want to buy. Second, you need to be able to drive traffic to those products so that potential buyers will be able to purchase what is available. Finally, you need to have your products on a website that is absolutely professional.
By professional, this is not merely representative of its appearance, but the way that the website is actually constructed as well. Not only do you want to convey professionalism to those that arrive at your site, you need to construct it in such a way that it is easy to navigate and that the search engines spiders will be able to index it quickly. This article will address tips for creating a website that generates sales on a regular basis.
Creating A Professional Appearance
The first step of this process is creating a website that is going to build confidence with visitors that your website, and your products, are completely legitimate. If you have ever been to a website that looks like it was created in the span of five minutes, you more than likely clicked away, leaving as quickly as possible. However, if you go to a website that has a good layout, not too many graphics for distractions, and presents the products in a very organized manner, you will probably take the time to see what is offered, and potentially purchase something for sale.
Proper Website Structure
The next thing that you should do is consider the structure of the website itself. Everything that you have done up to this point has probably been on the main page. In order for you to get indexed for multiple pages in multiple keywords, it needs to have what is called a silo structure. If you are building your website on a blog platforms such as WordPress, a silo structure is simply organizing all of your pages and posts into what are called categories.
Categories can be set on either the left or right side columns, preferably the right, so that people can click on each category to see what products you have to offer. An example of this would be having a website that is selling televisions. Each of the categories would be for a different type of television categorized by either size or brand names. By structuring your site in such a manner, it makes it very easy for people to navigate through your site to find the products that they want, and it also makes it easy for the search engine spiders to quickly spider and index the content, ranking it properly on the web.
The final step for creating a profitable website, once you have your main page and the silo structure organized, is to add what are called outbound links and interlinking. Outbound links simply refer to having a hyperlink on each page that is pointing to a website that is ranking well for a specific keyword. Let’s say that you have a page, sticking with the television example, that is specifically targeting 42 inch LCDs. You should have one link on your page that is selling 42 inch LCDs pointing to the number one ranking site on Google for that exact keyword.
This will improve your chances of helping your website rank on the first page of Google, or other search engines, for that exact keyword as well. Second, you will want to do what is called interlinking. This means that you will have links that are pointing to other articles or posts on your own website that are discussing a similar topic. For instance, on your page for 42 inch LCDs, you could also link to other pages that have LCD TVs. By doing this, you are not only making it easier for visitors to find different sizes and brands of LCD TVs, but it will make it much easier for the search engines to properly rank each of your webpages, and your website, on the search engine listings.
Avoid Clutter
One of the primary rules that almost every web design professional follows is to avoid clutter on your pages. Clutter merely references the fact that you should not have too many links, images, or advertisements on each of your pages which can become very distracting for the visitor. You want to create each webpage so that there is one specific focus for your customer once they arrive. For example, going back to the LCD TV pages, if you would like them to potentially by a 42 inch LCD TV, you should not have multiple links going out to plasma TVs, or links to purchase other LCD TVs on that page.
You should only have one image of the TV that you would like them to purchase, one outbound link to an authority site, and one link at the bottom that is interlinking that page with another related page on your website. Of course, you will want to put a title and description for the product you are trying to sell, but this is designed to help people make a decision as to whether or not they should purchase the product on that page.
Million Dollar Network Marketer Shows You How To Create A Blog That Generate Consistently 20-100 Leads a Day For Your Business!
10 Must Have Wordpress Plug Ins For Effective Websites
WordPress plug ins are the go to way to add functionality to your site, helping improve SEO, load time and add various features easily and inexpensively. Knowing what the best plugins are, and which ones are needed for every site, can help you set your WordPress site up for success from the get go. The secret is to find powerful, up to date plugins, that offer a lot of functionality with only one script.
WordPress SEO by Yoast
WordPress SEO by Yoast is essential to easily add an easy way to customize the titles and meta tags of all the pages on your site. The plug in adds full and detailed SEO functionality to your site, providing a way to customize the meta tags and titles on all your pages and posts.
The plugin also provides detailed SEO analysis so you can ensure your posts are optimized for the keywords you are hoping to rank for. This is essential to ensuring your site ranks well in search engines, and you get as much organic traffic as possible.
WP Super Cache
This tiny plugin is important to helping your site load fast and run smoothly. Considering users are pretty impatient, ensuring minimal loading time is key to keeping them on the site, and ensure they become repeat users. The plug in is also free, making it a total steal.
Anti Spam Bee or other Spam Filter
Using a spam blocker is important to control the massive amount of automated comments that pour in, and it can help you manage your comments by blocking and weeding out spam comments. There are many plugins available to help with this function, some paid and some free. Anti-spam bee is a great option that will effectively block the majority of spam comments, reducing the number of comments that need sorting through.
Asikmet is one of the higher rated paid spam filter options, providing quality, advanced filtering to weed out automated posts and spun text. The plugin is lightweight and highly rated, making it one of the most commonly used spam filtering options for WordPress sites.
JetPack by Wordpress
Although JetPack is automatically installed, it’s important to activate the plug-in and set it up to gain the full functionality and take advantage of the powerful features it provides. The plug in was designed with the aim of being the one-in-all option for websites, and provides you with a way to seamlessly integrate social media, auto post new content, create custom galleries and slide shows, edit code and a host of other features. It is a powerful addition to your site, providing quality functions straight from WordPress, and the best part is that it is completely free.
It’s generally best to try and keep the number of plugins running on your site to a minimum, and this is where JetPack is simply amazing, and ads all the functionality you could need fully integrated and easy to set up. The massive amount of features, functions and options make this plug in a must have for WordPress websites.
Advanced Code Editor
If you are a developer or designer and build sites from scratch, using an advanced code editor can help save you time and effort, providing additional functionality to the editor section. The plug in provides several color formats for the code, as well as a way to jump to a specific line of code, or search for a term. This is can save a lot of time spent scrolling through thousands of lines of code, and can make even simple edits much less complicated.
The plugin also provides a way for you to easily save the theme to your computer, without needing an FTP set up. This functionality is amazing, and is great for theme developers or professional developers. Giving them a way to back up their work to avoid losing it. Installing an advanced code editor plug in is essential to developing themes in house.
Monetization Plug Ins
If you are hoping to monetize your plugin using Adsense, affiliate marketing or sales, adding the plugins necessary to properly monetize your site. The best plugin for you will depend on the particular scheme you are going with, and what your methodology is. Regardless of what you are selling, it’s important to make sure your plug in performing well and allows you to optimize your links for optimal sales performance.
In some cases this might include adding widget plugins for Adsense side modules, or sales banners. If you can’t find a plug in created specifically for the company whose product you are promoting, choose a plug in that provides an area for you to enter a custom code to your WordPress widget. That way you can use the code provided by the company for sales and advertising.
Lightbox for Wordpress
If your site has a gallery, portfolio or is image heavy, using a light-box style plugin to display your images in an aesthetically pleasing way is key. Remember to make sure the plug in you choose is responsive, allowing the pictures to re-size, fitting on to any screen size. This is very important to ensuring your website is accessible on mobile devices, expanding your user base.
There are many different types and options, so make sure to choose the one that best suits the style of your site, or that it is easily modified to suit your needs.
Installing WordPress plug ins is a great way to add additional functions to your site, enhancing user experience, and building your user base rapidly. Installing plugins that help with SEO, social media, code editing or even adding forms, is important to creating a site that converts well. Although many plugins are free, there are some that cost, but bear in mind that it can be well worth it to boost your site’s visibility in search results and social media.
Make sure to install these basic plugins, ensuring your site has the best chance possible of making it big.
In conclusion, your main goal for creating a website is to make it as simple and organized as possible. Regardless of the products that you are offering for sale, as long as you can present them in a professional manner, and organize all of the products that you want to sell so it is easy for people to navigate on your website to find what they want, you are going to make sales.
You simply have to remember that once a person is able to trust you, something that will be conveyed by creating a professional website in this manner, you are going to improve your chances of making consistent sales on a regular basis online. Hopefully these simple tips for creating a website will help you make more money this year.