Taking a Look at Google PageSpeed Insights
Do you know how fast your website loads? Do you know what to fix if your website is taking a while to load? If you don’t know the answer to those questions, it’s time to start to using Google PageSpeed Insights today. It will give you a score for mobile and desktop loading times (because they will be different) and tell you different ways you can speed up your site. So let’s take a look at what PageSpeed Insights is and how it can help you and your business.
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Small Business Planning
Introduction to Small Business Website Planning
Every small business needs a website to be found online. But it can be tricky. This video series will walk you through all of the steps for a great website.
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Do you need a new website?
Are you thinking about building an website for your business? Before you do anything, you need to figure out if you really need a new website.
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Planning for a New Website
So now that you know your business needs a new website, we still have some more questions to ask of yourself and your business. The answers to these questions will help you create a plan for this website that you can give to the developer. And in the end, that will make everything go much smoother and quicker. So let’s create that plan!
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Why Websites Cost What They Do
As you’ve gone through this process of building a new website, you’ve probably started to wonder how much this is going to cost you. And the unfortunate truth is that it’s going to cost you a good chunk of change. So let’s talk about what you’re paying for in a website and why they end up costing what they do. Hopefully by the end of this you’ll feel at least a little bit better about the price aspect.
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Self-Development vs. Hiring a Developer
So by now you’re probably wondering why you can’t build the website yourself. The answer to that is complicated. In some situations, yeah, that would work for you. But in most other situations, it is better to hire a developer to build it for you because it saves you time and money in the long run. So let’s figure out which direction works the best for you.
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What is Ecommerce?
Ecommerce websites are all of the rage these days. Given everything that’s happening in the world, creating an online store has never made better sense. So over the next few weeks, we’re going to dive into the ecommerce realm as we steam towards Black Friday.
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Top StudioPress Themes for Ecommerce
One of the best parts of WordPress is the multitude of great, prebuilt themes that you can use and change for your website. And no place is better at doing that than StudioPress. So let’s go through some of the top StudioPress themes for ecommerce.
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What You Need to Know About Ecommerce
Creating an online store is no small task. There is a lot that goes into it. From what you use to create the website, to web hosting, to sales tax to how you turn the online order into shipped product, there’s a lot you need to know before you start. This isn’t something you just do in a weekend. So today let’s discuss what you need to know about creating an ecommerce website.
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Exploring Your Options for Creating an Ecommerce Website
When it comes to creating an online store for your business, the good news is that you have a lot of options. And all of the options vary in price, so you will find something that works with your budget. The only trick is figuring out which one is going to work the best for your business, both for your budget and needed functionality and control.
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Top 4 WordPress Ecommerce Plugins
When it comes to creating an online store for relatively cheap, WordPress is going to be one of your best options. And that’s because of the extensive number of quality ecommerce plugins that can help you start selling right now. So let’s go through the list of top plugins you might want to use for your online store.
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How to Plan Out Your New Ecommerce Website
In order for our new online store to be successful we first need to plan it out. After all, as Benjamin Franklin once was misquoted for saying, “failing to plan is planning to fail.” And with ecommerce websites there is a lot to plan out, from the technical side of things, like the service, web host and plugin/extensions to use, to the offline process, like sales tax, processing the orders and figuring out who’s in charge of the website.
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Introduction to SEO
Where does most of your website traffic come from? Without looking at your data, I can tell you the answer. It’s search engines. And search engine optimization helps you get more clicks from search results. So let’s take a look at what SEO is.
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How your code affects your SEO
Before you can really start to work on your SEO, you first need to make sure your website’s code is built and ready for it. Why does this matter? Search engine crawlers don’t see the page the way you and I do. They just see the code underneath. And they use that code to correctly index your website for the proper searches. So let’s learn more about how code affects SEO.
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Keywords and SEO
When you go to Google to search for something, what do you put in? You put in keywords. So when you’re working on your SEO for your website, your content needs to be focused on keywords that your target market is searching for and trying to rank for them. So let’s talk more about keywords, keyword research and how that plays into SEO.
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How linking affects SEO
The main way that search engine crawlers get from web page to web page is through links. And it’s a way for them to figure out a website’s popularity. So if your website is linked to in a lot of places, the search engines are going to think your website is popular and rank it higher in their results. Hence why link building is so important.
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Sitemaps in SEO
Something that you’re likely to come across in researching SEO is sitemaps. Sitemaps aren’t the biggest part of SEO, and you’ll want to focus your efforts on other aspects first. But they are crucial for getting search engines to index your website and show your pages in searches.
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Tracking your SEO efforts
Finally, our last step in the SEO process is to track our efforts. After all, you’re going to want to see if what you’re doing is actually working or if you need to go back to the drawing board. So today, let’s go over some of the tracking tools — spoiler alert: it’s Google Analytics and Google Search Console — that you can set up and implement to see if you’re SEO efforts are working, how people are coming to your website and more information to help you make smart decisions.
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What is a Content Management System?
The vast majority of websites you visit these days are built using a content management system. They use anything from WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and more to create websites and display content. And if you’re in the market for a new website, you’re probably going be using a content management system. So let’s talk about CMSs.
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What is WordPress?
WordPress blows the competition in the CMS world. According to W3Techs, 34 percent of all websites use WordPress as their content management system. So it’s no surprise that you might look at it first if you’re building a new website for your business. But what is it exactly? And how might it help you create and run a website for your small business?
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What is Drupal?
Next on our list of content management systems in Drupal. While Drupal isn’t near WordPress’ popularity, it is still used by a lot a major companies and has a great community around it. And if you’re looking to do complicated things or want better scalability, it might be the CMS to use. But what is it exactly? And how might it help you create and run a website for your small business?
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What is Joomla?
Next on our list of content management systems in Joomla. While Joomla isn’t near WordPress’ popularity, it is still used by a lot a major companies and has a great community around it. And if you’re looking to do complicated things or want better scalability, it might be the CMS to use. But what is it exactly? And how might it help you create and run a website for your small business?
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What are Wix and Squarespace?
Finally, let’s talk about the elephants in the website creating word: Wix, Squarespace and website builders. To be clear, these aren’t like the content management systems we’ve been talking about. But they do come up in this conversation often. While I’m not really a fan of them, I do understand that they have a place in the online ecosystem. And there might be a time when it’s right for you.
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What CMS works best for you?
Okay, so we’ve talked about the top CMSs plus and Wix and Sqaurespace. So which one is right for your new website? Well, that all depends. Really, it just depends on your situation, what you need, what you want and what you’re comfortable. There’s no one right answer for everyone.
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A Look at the Google Site Kit Plugin
If you’ve got a website, you’re probably going to want to hook it up to some of the Google tools that are offered like Analytics, Search Console, Tag Manager, etc. But each of those service require different things you need to do in order to connect them to your website, including adding lines of code. Fortunately, the Google Site Kit plugin, introduced in November 2019, makes it super easy to connect your website to those services and allows you to see some stats inside your WordPress dashboard.
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A Look at the Best WooCommerce Themes
WooCommerce is a great WordPress plugin that can turn your website into an online store in just a few minutes. But sometimes the styling can look a bit off if your theme isn’t created with it in mind. So here are four of the best themes sold by WooCommerce to help you quickly create a great online store.
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Taking a Walk Through Easy Digital Downloads
If you’re looking to start selling digital products through your online store, you’re going to want to take a look at Easy Digital Downloads. It’s similar to WooCommerce, but built to handle digital products specifically. If you sell software, you’ll want to look into this.
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Taking a Walk Through WooCommerce
When it comes to WordPress and ecommerce, there’s probably no better plugin than WooCommerce. Seriously, take a search for WordPress ecommerce plugins, either through Google or the Plugin Directory, and see which one pops up with the first result. I’m willing to bet that it’s going to be WooCommerce. So let’s take a look to see what it is and if it might help your business.
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Top 4 WordPress Ecommerce Plugins
When it comes to creating an online store for relatively cheap, WordPress is going to be one of your best options. And that’s because of the extensive number of quality ecommerce plugins that can help you start selling right now. So let’s go through the list of top plugins you might want to use for your online store.
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Top StudioPress Themes for Ecommerce
One of the best parts of WordPress is the multitude of great, prebuilt themes that you can use and change for your website. And no place is better at doing that than StudioPress. So let’s go through some of the top StudioPress themes for ecommerce.
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Accessibility Testing Tools
Your website needs to be accessible. Everyone should be able to use it no matter what technology they use to browse the web. It’s both good morally and can help cover you on the legal side as well. But how do you know if your website is accessible? Are there any tools that can help you figure that out? Fortunately, the answer to that is yes.
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How to Properly Show Videos on Your Website
People love videos. And they are a great way to show off who you are, what your business does and more. But videos are a drain on website resources. So here’s how to properly show videos on your site.
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Staying within your website's design
If there’s one thing that annoys me as a web developer, it’s seeing website owners, editors and authors who think they are web designers and create pages that, well, let’s just say they don’t look good. Don’t do that. Your website is designed the way it is for a reason. So use it as intended. And leave the designing to the professionals. Your users will thank you.
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Web Accessibility: Skip Links
Another fix you can make to your website is using skip links. This is a small section that is usually hidden on the screen, but is available when it’s tabbed on to or to screen readers. And it allows people who use the keyboard, screen readers and other assistive technology to skip having to move through the header and navigation each time they visit a page. So let’s learn about how you can add skip links to your website.
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Website Accessibility: Color Contrast
Another fix you can make to your website is using the correct color contrast. This is something that’s geared more to web designers and developers that control the colors on the website more. But if you run a website, there’s a lesson in here for you. You should always make sure your text is readable. So let’s learn about how you can make sure your color contrast is correct.
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Website Accessibility: Headings
Another one of the most prevalent, but easiest accessibility fix is using the correct heading structure. Screen readers and other accessibility technologies use the heading structure to help their users find their way around the page. And using incorrect headings hinders them. So let’s learn about how you can make sure your heading structure is correct. Because everyone — everyone — should be able to access your website.
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