Blog

And no, that’s not a typo. As of March 29, my online marketing, web development and other services are now an official LLC in the state of NH: hasOptimization, LLC. Why hasOptimization? I’ll admit, the chuckle factor of getting to write lines like “this business hasOptimization” is a part of it. Aside from that, my initials are HAS, and optimization is what I do. I’m here to optimize your site, your marketing, your user experiences, and your data. My business is here to optimize YOUR business. So if you’re a client of mine, your business now hasOptimization. Coming soon, there…

Welcome to the slightly-delayed (thanks, holidays) fourth installment of my Organizing Your Blog series. Previously, we covered why you should organize your blog, how to set yourself up for success, and best practices for categories and tags. Today, we’re covering elements that improve the user experience on your site, keeping your readers around for longer and making them happier. Blog Organizational Elements to Improve User Experience Sidebar links: Now that you have good structures in place, make them work for you and your readers! Putting the tag cloud, category list or date archives in a sidebarthat appears on your blog is…

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been talking about blog organization. I’ve covered why you should bother organizing your blog, the basics of setting up your blog, and today I’m covering the ever misunderstood Categories and Tags. Categories Categories are the filing cabinets of the blog. You should define a reasonable set of categories that do not overlap, are not overly specific, and will cover most if not all of the content you plan to have on the blog. Six to ten is plenty for the majority of blogs, and it’s often good to define only a couple of…

Last week I discussed why you should spend time organizing your blog. This week I’ll start telling you how to go about organizing your blog, starting from launch. Is a Blog/Has a Blog If you’re launching a new website, think about the overall structure at the beginning to save yourself time and hassle later. Do you want the home page to be a static page, or do you want it to have your most recent blog posts? Is this a blog site, or a site with a blog? The answers to these questions will determine the information architecture of your blog;…

There are many, many reasons that people write blogs. A few of the most common are personal blogs, blogs for the purpose of drawing in traffic to a site,  informational blogs and photo blogs. While personal blogs may have the luxury of not paying attention to organization, the majority of blogs do not. Why is Organizing Your Blog Important? You certainly can choose to not make use of categories, tags, date archives and URL structure to organize your blog. You have that option. However, even for a personal blog I wouldn’t recommend it. You might want to be able to…

Q: OMG Facebook changed things and my reach has gone down the toilet and no one is seeing my posts and Facebook wants me to pay for Promoted Posts but I can’t afford it and this is killing my business! How can I get my Facebook Reach back without paying for Promoted Posts? –Posts Aren’t Getting EdgeRanked A: Okay, PAGE, calm down–it’s going to be okay. This article does an excellent job of debunking the issues surrounding Facebook’s latest changes. Here’s a quick recap: Facebook has historically NOT shown you all the posts of all the things in your news feed, even…

Just a bit late! September was a busy month personally, with a couple of weddings and every weekend booked solid. I’ll admit, blogging fell through the cracks, and here I am realizing that I didn’t post any new blog content in October. October found me partnering up with DSD Media Marketing, a great little company focusing on producing top notch video content at reasonable prices. Rhiannon at DSD thinks everyone’s website deserves a testimonial video or other video content! I’m looking forward to working with them, because they’re like the puzzle piece to my work. I do SEO, UX and…

It’s always a good day when I get to announce the launch of a new website, and this one has been a long time coming. The development of the Antonia Designs site has been plagued with vacations, indecision, and last minute changes as Antonia and I struggled to realize her vision within her budget. Ultimately I learned a lot in the process, which is always a good thing for me. The web is in no way static, and new solutions and options are always appearing when you least expect them. This was, for example, the first site that I built…

July was a very busy month! I joined a BNI group, which has been great for networking and marketing my business but has taken up a decent chunk of time. I’m also near-launch on a new website, organized a pretty smashing advertorial for a client who composes custom wedding music, and have been working on site reviews and new business development. I’m excited about working with some very interesting new people! In other words, writing on my own blog has been the least of my concerns. This month, I’m focusing on new business development while completing the aforementioned site launch,…

WordPress 3.4.1 appeared on most of the WordPress sites I work with over the last couple of weeks (this site included!). It brings with it a number of great new features, including: Live Preview for themes. This is going to make theme changes SO much less painful–you’ll be able to customize the new theme via the CMS before you launch it, reducing the ‘growing pains’ awkwardness of not having your theme look perfect on launch. Flexible headers: one annoyance I run into pretty often when working on a lightly customized theme is that the header size has to be changed…