C and S Software LLC

Whether you’re just getting you business started and you are still learning how to improve your online presence or you have had a site for a while and you just aren’t happy with it, you may have heard of WordPress and might be wondering what WordPress is. Simply put WordPress is a publishing platform used for building websites and blogs. It allows for a highly customizable user interface. WordPress powers millions of websites worldwide, and many big brands use WordPress: CNN, PlayStation, New York Times Blogs, People Magazine, and even Ford- they all use WordPress! Pretty impressive list of users, if its good enough for the big boys, its good enough for your site. Still not convinced?!? Here is my:

Top 9 Reasons Why You Should Build Your Website On WordPress

Reason 1: WordPress is not going anywhere

As an open source CMS (Content Management System) it has taken the world by storm – as of August 2011, “14.7% of the top million websites in the world” are powered by WordPress. WordPress is often praised by web designers, web developers and users alike for its ease-of-use. This is part of the reason it has become so popular, and why its growth just keeps on accelerating. I love stats, so here is a few more good ones: two years ago, WordPress was used by approximately 8.5% of the top million websites in the world, so to jump from 8.5% to 14.7% in one year alone speaks volumes for how popular WordPress is becoming, and how much people love this platform! Here’s my favorite statistic:

As of August 2011 WordPress powers 22% of all new websites. – Rao, Leena (19 August 2011). “WordPress Now Powers 22 Percent Of New Active Websites In The U.S.”. TechCrunch

Reason 2: WordPress is no longer just for blogging.

A long time ago, when someone said WordPress, everyone automatically thought of blogging. While it is still the best solution to use for blogging, it has come a long way and has become a very comprehensive Content Management Suite used to power many different types of websites, including business sites, job boards, sites featuring classified ads, etc.

Reason 2: WordPress is cost-effective…its free!

It would cost a lot of money to have a custom CMS developed that could do the same thing that WordPress does; so why not save money with WordPress? There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, with WordPress being freely available and customizable. Like WordPress, the plugins are generally free as well. These plugins are usually not only free but open source as well. This means that like WordPress, you can edit them if you need to.

Reason 3: WordPress is Flexible

A great thing about WordPress is, as I mentioned above, that it’s completely open source – which means that the source code used to run WordPress is available to the general public. This means that anyone on the planet can modify the code if necessary and customize WordPress even further to be what they need. Often, this isn’t necessary, but it also means that any plugins and themes (templates) created for the platform are also open source! Imagine a world-wide community working together to add more features and functionality to WordPress – you’re not limited to only being able to use specific employees or developers to produce customizations, which means it’s a powerful CMS system ready to do what you need it to, it’s flexible, and easy to customize.

Reason 4: WordPress is SEO friendly

Search engines such as Google love WordPress because it uses well-written code. If you’re looking to get a head start with Search Engine Optimization, WordPress is the way to go for your website and/or blog. While I am on the topic, adding fresh relevant content to your website is easy with WordPress which is highly recommended as part of your online marketing strategy since it tells search engines that your site is alive and well, thereby increasing your website’s rank and your chances of being found via organic searches.

Reason 6: WordPress Has Cheap Premium themes

Themes are what provide WordPress its design, it’s what connects the CMS to the end user. WordPress is very flexible and adaptable. While there are some pretty good free themes, I have found that for $70 bucks the good premium themes are simply worth every penny. Most need almost no customization!

Reason 7: WordPress Makes it easy to find a solution.

Plugins are basically add-ons that can be easily installed in the WordPress dashboard area to add features that are not part of the core code. If you need a specific feature or features that are not built-in, there are literally thousands of plugins available to enhance WordPress’ functionality. In almost every case so there is likely a solution already developed for any thing you need – the possibilities are literally limitless!

Reason 8: WordPress is supported by worldwide community.

Because WordPress is open-source, there is literally hundreds of thousands of people who are working to help make it better. You will find WordPress has a very actively supported worldwide community of WordPress developers, and users! WordPress is updated regularly, with new functionality, bug fixes, and security fixes. Also, because there is such a large community surrounding WordPress, any developer can work on a WordPress-based site to update it, make changes, etc., so you will never be held ransom by any one designer or developer. YOU own your website!

Reason 9: WordPress is easy to use!

This is maybe my favorite thing about WordPress. You don’t have to be a technical genius to learn how to use WordPress. I always tell my clients: if you know how to use a Microsoft Word, (and lets be honest who doesn’t?) YOU WILL be able to easily update the content on your WordPress site. You don’t have to be a web designer to update your content. That’s the magic of WordPress! Beyond editing content, WordPress offers a backend administrator interface that’s visually easy to navigate and very effective. Everything is organized in a logical manner, so it’s easy to find what you are looking for, weather it is adding/editing a page, Adding/editing a post or article, uploading images, managing users, etc. WordPress is the best Content Management System to use to build your website!

It is for these reasons and more that SMM Inc. exclusively with WordPress. If you’d like to have your own WordPress-based website and/or blog, please contact us – we’d be happy to help!

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In this posting I will teach you how to blog for cash. It is possible to make money simply by setting up and running a blog. The great thing about this is you can start your blog while you are working a normal job and build it up by adding new posts and features. I think this is one of the best ways to make money online so let’s get started explaining the process.

The very first critical step is to identify what subject your blog will be about. I would start brainstorming and come up with about 10 different subjects that interest you. These can be anything you like, if you enjoy a hobby that might be a good place to start. Another idea is to jot down subjects that you do not know about but would like to learn. A third tip is to ask yourself one simple question, if you could do anything you want for a living, what would that be? You can start to live that dream by choosing that topic and doing research and posting up blog posts about the things that you find out. I would recommend that you keep the subjects something that you are interested in because you will need to spend some time writing and researching before you start to make money from your blog.

Once you have your possible subjects next head over to Amazon and do a search on each of those subjects. See if there are many books about those subjects and pay attention to the number of reviews on each of the books. If there are many books and a large number of reviews then this is a good indication that people are interested in the subject and may be a good subject to create a blog around it. I would caution you to try to have a narrower niche then a general one. For instance if you like learning about health then I would try to break it down a bit further. You may choose dieting, exercise, a type of exercise or diet. A more narrow niche will help you because there will be less completion. If there are very few book and reviews in Amazon  then, I would stay away from the subject. It may be something you’re interested in but you probably will have a hard time making any money from that niche.

The next step is to come up with a name for your blog and register for a domain name for that name. Try to get a .com, .net or a .org domain name only. The best place to get one is Godaddy.

Next you will need to get a hosting site. I recommend that you use WordPress for your blogging platform so do a search in Google for WordPress hosting and purchase it. This should not cost you more than $20 per month.

The next step is to point your domain to the web hosting address (called the IP address). This is called a DNS change in the Godaddy system and is a simple adjustment. Next set up WordPress in your hosting plans control panel. This also is a very easy process with just a few clicks. Once WordPress is set up then you can log into the WordPress admin area and select a theme. There are many free themes that you can use which will give you a very nice look and feel to your blog.

Once everything is set up it time to start writing blog posts about your chosen subject. I recommend that you write as often as you can. It would be great if you can add 3- 4 new posts every week. As you add more Google will find these posts and you will start to get visitors to your blog. After a period of time you will get more and more visitors. Next you need to set up your blog to start making you cash.

One of the best ways I can teach you on how to blog for cash is by using affiliate products. You would do reviews of related affiliate products on your blog so when your visitors read your postings, click on a link you have in the posting and buy the product you get a commission. Amazon has an affiliate program so you may want to start there.  Do some additional searches on the web for affiliate programs that match your topic of your blog.

Another way to make money on your blog is with Google Adsence. You will not make allot money using this program but it is easy to setup. Google will pay you to display ads on your site for them. You will get paid when someone clicks on one of the ads.

Charging for ads on your blog is another way you can make cash on your blog. You can put up a page on your blog with the info related to advertising on your blog.  If you have good traffic numbers you can make allot of money advertising for other companies on your blog.

Lastly you can put something together that is related to your niche and sell it on your blog. This can be a book as a PDF download, Kindle book, phone counseling or any other type of service that will fit for your chosen niche.  This probably is the best way to make the most cash for your blog. If you build up your blog with allot of solid content then people will trust you and buy the products and services that you are offering.

I hope this post was a helpful one if you are thinking to start a blog and wanting to know what is the best way of how to blog for cash. I would like to hear your thoughts, please leave a comment below.

Creating advertising campaigns on Facebook may be one of the best ways to get some fantastic new leads for your business. The great thing about using Facebook to advertise is the cost per click is much less than trying to use Goodle adwords to advertise your business.

Facebook ads can be narrowed down by geographic and demographics so if your potential customers are only in your city, you can specify that and also you can narrow down age bracket, gender, marital status and much more. By identifying the criteria when you set up your ads you will have a much better success rate and click through rate than by just the simple matching keyword that Google Adwords provides.

Another great tip I can give you is to try to set up a number of ads with the same wording and different pictures. I recommend trying at least 5 – 10 different pictures. I am amazed each time I do this because the picture really does make a big difference. You want to run the ads for some time to see which ones have the best click through rate which will lead to overall lower cost. You can track this by simply adding a parameter at the end of your landing URL like ?tid=1 for your first ad ?tid=2 for second etc… For example if the URL you are referring to is your domain name then the first ad would be http://www.zebramusic.com?tid=1. This will help you track which ad is performing better.

Another good tip for using Facebook ads for business is advertising your Facebook fan page in the ad. This is a great way to help to start build your followers on Facebook and I have also noticed since you are linking internal to their network the cost seems to be much less for these types of ads then linking to an external web site from Facebook.

Finally another thing you can do is advertise a free giveaway like a short PDF document on something related to your field of expertise for an opt-in to your mailing list. You would direct the traffic directly to the squeeze page from the ads. This is a good way to help build up your mailing list so you can market to this group of people and build a relationship with which will extended well over the time of you running your ads on Facebook.

Make sure you set a daily budget for your ads (I recommend at least $10 per day) and let them run for at least one week. You can then evaluate and remove the ads that are not performing well. I also recommend that you start with the CPC option. Facebook does have a CPM option which you will get charged every time your ad is displayed but not necessarily clicked on. You only want to pay for the clicks so your potential clients and see what you are offering in your ad.  You may go from there and try adjusting the wording on a few more ads with the proven images to see if you can get better click through rates which will reduce the costs of your ads.

I am a huge fan of Facebook ads for business. I have personally used them with great success and I think you will find them useful too. I would love to hear your comments about this post, please leave them below.

A questions I get quite often is what is the best way to do local SEO for businesses. When you want to gain a great spot in a search engine such as Google you have to do your research when you are creating your pages or new blog posts. It does no good to try to optimize your page or post with a keyword that does not get searched on or has way too may competing pages.

The first thing I do when I start with SEO is to go over to the free Google Adwords tool and type in the keyword I think may be a good one for the page I am working on. For a local business you need to include your city in the keyword. For instance if you are a plumber in Miami you might first try Miami plumbers. See what the the tool tells you. Generally I avoid keywords with less than 200 monthly searches.

The next step I do for local seo for businesses is go to Google and try the keyword that I choose from the keyword tool with quotes around the entire keyword phrase. The idea is to get a keyword with the least competing sites. I try to only use keywords with less that 20,000 competing sites. Sometimes that is hard to find but I usually try to get close to that number.

The last step I do for local seo for businesses is add a new page and name it the same as the keyword, add an image with the alt text as the keyword, use at least on H2 tag with the keyword and add the keyword to the meta tags and description of the page. if you are using WordPress I also add the keyword to the WordPress tag which also does seem to help. Also I add the exact keyword phrase a few times in the of the page or blog post.

I hope this helps you with your local seo for businesses. I would like to hear some feedback on this topic, please leave a comment below this posting!

Did you know that YouTube is the number 2 search engine in the world only outdone the giant Google? Also did you know that Google owns YouTube? It’s all true and by coming up with a good strategy for YouTube can not only communicate your message to potential customer but can also help improve your results in Google which will ultimately increase the web site traffic coming to your web site.

So now you know that creating videos and uploading them to YouTube is a great idea, you may be wondering what you need to get started? Depending on what business you are in a simple computer screen recorder may all you need to create nice videos for your business. For instance if you have a landscaping business you can create a PowerPoint slide show with just a few slides on how to take care of your grass in the hot summer months. You can go over watering tips, fertilizer, dead spots and how to fix them, etc…You will need to purchase a decent microphone and screen capture software. I like to use The Snag it software for this because it is very inexpensive and easy to use. It does a great job and will produce good results for you.

Another good idea is create a case study video where you go over what the customer wanted and then show some before and after pictures and talk a bit about how you went about doing the work for your customer.

If you’re not shy about being on camera then you can create some simple how to videos showing how to create or do something related to your business. Again a case study or a process video with short stops along the way of a project and showing your progress on a project can work very well here. You will need an inexpensive camera to do this but a you can start with a friend recording your video clips with a decent phone camera.

You probably will need to edit the raw video once you have completed it. Windows Movie Maker is free and works well for this function. You may already have it installed on your PC so just do a search and start using it. If you need more editing power I recommend Corels Video Studio Pro. This software will a little time to come up to speed but it is really pretty easy to use and make nice videos.

Your videos do not need to be long in length as a matter of fact I highly recommend that you keep your videos under the 10 min mark. Make sure to put your web site address and contact phone number so any positional contact can get in touch with you.

Make sure you name your video with keywords and add keyword tags on YouTube that fit with your business. Your videos do not have to be motion picture quality and will help get you some attention on the web!

WordPress is a wonderful platform for small businesses to use for their web sites. Here are six reasons that you should consider if you want the most of your web presents for your small business.

Google loves Wordpress
Google will quickly and efficiently index all of your web pages and new blog posts so you can be found by potential customers that are looking for your services or content that is related to your work. This means more traffic to your site, more leads and possible more jobs in your field of expertise.

Easily to Update
Wordpress contains an administration area that will allow non-tech people to easily update the content on your web site whenever you want. No more calling your web site designer just to update some wording or pictures on your web site.

Can Be A Blog or Web Site
Wordpress can be set up with set pages just like a standard web site, just a blog with posts that you add frequently or a combination of a web site and a blog to give you the best of both worlds.

Social Media Integration
Plug ins can easily be installed in your WordPress site to allow for easy integration for Face Book, Twitter, Google Plus and more social media sites. This will help spread the word about your services to friends and associates that people that come to your site can spread. Many of these plug ins are free and pretty easy to install and configure.

Look and Feel
Wordpress themes make it easy to adjust the way your web sites looks without adjusting any web site HTML code of the site. Even if you have a web designer setup your site and you find a new WordPress theme that you would like to implement for your site it can be switched by them quickly and efficiently.

RSS Feed
All WordPress sites come standard with a RSS feed. RSS stands for real simple syndication which can be synched to your Twitter and FaceBook fan page to automatically be updated when you add a new blog posting. The feed can also be broadcast out to many consuming RSS feeds which will further the reach of your blog posting outside of just your own web site domain.

As you can see there are many reasons why you should be using WordPress for your web site. If you have an existing site the content can be ported over to a new WordPress site at your same domain name. if you don’t have a site yet, WordPress is the way to go and will help you to be successful on the Internet. With so many other web sites these days on the Internet competing for your positional customers for attention, doesn’t it make sense to give your business an edge by switching over to WordPress?

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If you own a small local business I am sure you know that it is very important to have some type of Internet marketing to help get new customers. These days potential customers turn to the Internet first when looking for a service that your company can provide. This usually means a simple search in Google to see what companies are available and what they look like on their web site. Don’t take my word for it, ask your friends and family where would they go to find a local painter, handyman, yard maintenance company or pest service? I would bet most would say Google!

With this simple fact in mind it is now critical that you have a good web site that looks great, is easy to navigate, has some information about what you do, and has an easy to find phone number so any potential customers can call you to schedule an estimate or service.

With so many different ways to market your business now, I believe a good web site that is optimized for search words that potential customers would be using when trying to find a business like your is still the best bang for your buck and absolutely critical for your business. Oh course we can help you with this work and now there are many little things that can make a huge difference in how Google sees and ranks your web site.

It’s actually quite simple, have a well designed properly optimized SEO web site and you will beat your competition, if you don’t you can bet that your competitors have thought about this and are reaping the benefits that the Internet can provide to help them grow their business.