Welcome to another edition of Sites Weekly.
In this week’s edition, you will find links to articles about the following:
- Content. Expert tips on how to optimize your content for local SEO
- Design. Boost your creativity with these free apps
- Technology. Do you know the basics of optimizing for voice search?
- Strategy. Don’t get empathy fatigue
- Bonus. “Get the week’s top ten hand-picked resources about health, wealth, wisdom, and travel … without the noise and fluff.”
But first …
Last week on Sites
Last week, I discussed SEO-friendly tips that will make your WordPress site faster. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Last week’s episode is based on a blog post over at Copyblogger by Loren Baker, the founder of Search Engine Journal.
Listen: [22] 6 SEO Friendly Tips to Improve Site Speed on WordPress Blogs
ICYMI: Authority Pro was launched!
Authority Pro is a fresh new design by our Lead Designer Rafal Tomal and the team at StudioPress. The big idea behind this specific design is to help you put the full extent of your expertise on display.
Learn more: Authority Pro for WordPress: Demonstrate Your Expertise and Build Trust
Genesis tips from Brian Gardner
Because the Genesis Framework is built with functions and filters, adding a widget in between posts is fairly simple. Here are the steps Brian Gardner used to do that on his own website.
Read: How to Insert a Widget Area in Between Blog Posts.
And now, on to this week’s links …
Content: Expert tips on how to optimize your content for local SEO
To do SEO right, whether it’s local SEO or general SEO, your SEO strategy needs to be baked right into your content marketing strategy.
So I’m listing this post here, in the Content section, instead of in Strategy or Technology, as a reminder of that very important point.
Local SEO for WordPress: How to Improve Your Local Search Rankings (Search Engine Journal)
Design: Boost your creativity with these free apps
I prejudged this article before I read it.
I figured the apps it listed would all be geared toward designers. And while certainly any designer will benefit from them, non-designers will as well. If you do anything that involves creativity — and let’s face it, that’s basically everyone — then one of these apps could be beneficial for you.
Best of all? They’re free!
5 free apps that can boost your creativity (Creative Bloq)
Two of the most important decisions you will make about your WordPress website are your theme and your hosting. Wouldn’t it be great if they worked together to make your website more powerful?
Now they can.
Discover why over 213,675 website owners trust StudioPress.
Technology: Do you know the basics of optimizing for voice search?
This week on the Sites podcast, Sean Jackson and I dive into the topic of voice search. It’s one I’m generally familiar with, but I’ve only recently started learning the specifics so that I can optimize my content more specifically for this growing area of search.
If you want to learn more about optimizing your site for voice search, listen to this week’s episode of Sites and read this article:
Voice Search Optimization 101: What Marketers Need to Know (CMS Wire)
Strategy: Don’t get empathy fatigue
You can’t really turn anywhere online for advice about content marketing without running into the term empathy. There’s good reason for that: it works.
Still, when we hear a buzzword over and over and over and over again, we can start to take it for granted, or overlook it, or just get plain old tired of it.
If that’s happening to you with empathy, this article will convince you that it’s worth staying enthusiastic about and focused on.
The One Marketing Buzzword You Should Actually Care About (The Content Strategist)
Bonus article: “Get the week’s top ten hand-picked resources about health, wealth, wisdom, and travel — without the noise and fluff.”
Are you a regular reader of Further yet? If you aren’t, I highly recommend it. I recently purged many of my email subscriptions, but this one was a no-brainer to keep.
I’m going to link you to the homepage, and you can check out the latest issue by clicking on the “Sample” link.
The best way to consume Further is via email, so be sure you subscribe to “get the week’s top ten hand-picked resources about health, wealth, wisdom, and travel … without the noise and fluff.”
And no, Brian Clark didn’t ask me to include this, nor does he know I’m doing it. 🙂 I just really got a lot out of the issue titled “The Pursuit of Excellence,” and wanted to share.
Further: Keep Going (Brian Clark)
So …
Which of the ideas in these posts will you put to good use immediately?
I’ll be back with a new edition next week.
Keep building.