It’s time to stop seeking website development for dummies.
Time to restart website development for shrewdies.
I’ve left my web business ticking over for a few months, but now I need to restart. What better way than to start a new web business site, documenting the key stages and discussing alternatives.
The first step is always to develop the concept. What are the aims and objectives of the business. In short, a web business plan.
I like to take a new look at old issues. Trying to set up a web business on free WordPress.com, means a reassessment of the way I look at Search Engine Optimization.
SEO for WordPress is a popular bloggers theme. Since very few people, including myself, are in a position to test all aspects of SEO and real advantages of different techniques, I end up looking for consensus and relying upon available tools.
The best form of SEO is always excellent, information rich, interesting to humans, content. Is it worth tweaking beyond this?
The first SEO adjustment I always make to standard WordPress is to change the Permalinks to show the postname. I get rid of the date, for simplicity. WordPress.com does not allow a change, but is set to include the postname anyway, so I’m happy with that, and can live with the extra date information.
Then I setup my plugins to handle meta keywords, meta description and sitemaps. Most SEO commentators claim meta tags are dead, or at least dying. I like to keep them as it prompts me to focus on them, and check my writing for relevance. I also believe that they might generate a small amount of traffic through the lesser search engines that do use them, and even Google still uses the description for many of its listings.
Free WordPress.com does not set meta keywords and descriptions (at least not in this theme), so it is time for a rethink.
I normally use Tags In The Head to set the Optional Excerpt field as the description. This does not apply in free WordPress.com – the excerpt appears as only on category views and searches as an introduction to the page (in some themes?). Theme dependency aside, it’s time to focus on making that all important first paragraph do it’s job. For this project, from now on, I’m going to drop excerpts and triple check my first paragraphs.
Keywords play 2 important roles – a search engine role, with focus on what people are searching for, and a content role, which highlights a topic that people might look for related information on. Both these functions can be found in a wonderful free tool on No Title. That article links back to one of the best WordPress sites ever – lorelle.wordpress.com. I will write more about this tool and Lorelle’s site in my step by step guide to a free web business in a week.
So how important is the lack of meta tagging the head of the page? To be honest, I don’t know yet. I am going to proceed without it, and document it later as one of the benefits you get when you host your own WordPress site rather than rely on the WordPress.com site.
If anyone wants to test this further by setting up similar sites on free WordPress.com, compared with hosted WordPress, I am quite happy to donate some server space.
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Yesterday was my first look at wordpress.com. It is too early to truly assess it’s suitability as a free web business platform, but first impressions are good.
I have been using WordPress on my own server since October 2006. My reasons for investigating it’s potential will become clear later. I was extremely impressed with the standard features, ease of use and potential for expansion. It soon became clear to me that this was a brilliant platform for building a web business on, with sufficient flexibility to take on virtually any form.
So how does the free version stack up?
My first thought is that there is much more in it than I thought there would be.
My second thought is that I wonder how long it will be before I miss the ability to add plugins – or is that just a distraction I am best without?
My third thought is that the only way to prove if it is any use is to actually use it.
My web business in a week model relies heavily on having a step by step system that you can work through to define and reach your goals. This is the ideal opportunity to adapt my system for a free web business at wordpress.com
The fact that you can have as many free web businesses as you like, leads me to my plan for the next few weeks.
I will use the private posting part of this website to develop my notes for a new project. You can use this method, or your own word-processor, or something like Google docs. I will explain your options in more detail as I go through the day by day processes.
I have to do it this way, as explaining how to apply my step by step model takes longer than actually doing it. I will spend one hour per day on my new project, and as long as it takes to document the process. When I launch my project, you will see exactly what to expect with one hour per day.
