Ginga WordPress Design Development. Sydney, Australia, Boston, USA

As a developer of WordPress Solutions since the software arrived on the scene in the mid 2000′s I have seen many developments go through our Sydney, Melbourne Boston and Miami studios and the one thing that is always a constant is the need for the business owner to take responsibility for the continued success of the website. To me the design should be in the simplest form possible to allow users to get to the information as quickly as possible.

The moment you begin thinking about wanting things on your site for purely an aesthetic purpose is the moment you start to lose the core principal of interface design. Concentrate on what your users want to see and hear on your website. Here is a breakdown of some important tips and advice to make sure your development is a success.

Choosing a Domain Name

Your domain name should be as close to your business name as possible. If you are starting a new venture, then you should either go for a .com or a country specific name such as a .com.au (for Australia) and .co.nz (for New Zealand). Remember this one important note – I call it “out the door” policy. If someone is leaving your home or office and they are walking out the door and ask that simple question – “what’s your domain name?” and you have to explain it’s spelling or something special about the name, then it is the wrong name!

Branding & Design

So you have a logo? Great, next thing you must do is to create a style document, one that instantly gives your brand understanding and recognition. A style document also explains font usage and other elements that guide the web design, printing, signage etc. Here is a little list of minimum requirements that should accompany any logo.

This way anyone who works with your brand understands exactly the requirements that must be met.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) + Unique Content

We all want our websites to appear higher in search rankings and you can be assured you will get a truckload of enquiries from SEO firms telling you how you can appear higher in search results. Truth is they are for the most part useless and a waste of money.

Only one thing rules in SEO and that is a proper framework (WordPress is perfect) and the second thing is unique content. Unique content means articles, posts, pages links all written by you that directly targets the audience you want. Let’s use this article as an exmaple.

We have a headline “WordPress Design & Development for success on any budget!” we have the bosy content (everything you are reading here) and we also have tags. Tags in WordPress are unique identifiers within a post. These should only be keywords such as people, places and items of importance. In this instance I am using these tags, WordPress, Web Design, Domain Names, SEO, Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Optimization, Branding, Logos and Logo. These are all common terms and I do not expect to get great results from them. However if I continually write about these terms then the more and more pages I will have in Google and other search engines under these terms.

Ginga ranks highly in search terms such as WordPress Web Design Sydney because we take the effort to continually write about WordPress, Web Design and we have an office in Sydney. We have only opened up our WordPress Studios in Boston and now Miami and over time we will continue to rise for those terms as well.

Remember, you put the effort in and you get the results. If not – then do not expect empathy from your developer. The problem with this route is it takes time, but once you get there all the rewards will come. So make the effort now and get the rewards later. You can of course choose to combine this with Search Engine Marketing (paying for search positions) but the moment you stop paying is the moment you lose position.

We all want to be successful online and there is no shortage of companies offering you a quick way to get to the top of Google results. However the majority of these companies are useless and even if you have short term success with them you will need to continually pay them to keep those results.

Another problem with these businesses is that they are flouting Google’s rules and as many have recently discovered, Google is on the lookout for them! Google adds over 500 new rules to their search algorithm each year (so stay away from anyone who pretends to have worked it out) and the recent update dumped so many of these companies down the order. So my advice is to ignore them entirely and save your money.

So how do you become a success online with Google?

Simple, write effective unique content regularly targeting your audience and the location with which they operate – the more specific the better! If you are a local business write locally, mention places and local business names, invite others to write for you as well – ones that can compliment your offering. WordPress allows for multiple authors with multiple levels of permissions!

Being Effective

How do you do this effectively? You set aside time each week to write articles and post them regularly. Set aside a few hours on a specific day each week and take no calls or appointments during this time without any reasonable exceptions.

Regular Complaints and Excuses

If a client complains to me about their search results, I immediately look at their website and see how often they write articles. I can bet you my last dollar that they would have neglected this and to them I feel no pity and only offer them the advice I am offering you here.

Another regular excuse is not having the time. WordPress allows you to write from anywhere on any device including your mobile phone, so there is always a time where you can write an article an post it live. As an example I am sitting here on my laptop in a park waiting for a friend (who is usually late) so I just thought about writing this little article.

WordPressCMS

WordPress is the perfect tool for a successful online business, be it in services or to a lesser extent (not for long) with products. WordPress allow you to easily write news articles just like this one from any location where you have a connected device, WordPress is available through your browser on your Desktop, Laptop and has apps for your iPad or Mobile iPhone, Android and Blackberry.

You can write today and schedule articles to go up at different times, you can add audio, files, video, images and links quickly and easily.

So there is no excuse with a good clean supported WordPress website. There are plenty of resources online to learn and also a number of WordPress books on Amazon – although with WordPress these books quickly become out of date as the software is updated regularly.

WordPress recently released WordPress 3.1 and we have already begun deploying this update across all 500 WordPress Website Accounts.

WordPress 3.1 “Reinhardt” was named after jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and the release features a redesigned workflow which when logged in gives you an admin bar strip across your website and a new streamlined writing interface that hides many of the rarely used panels by default to create a simpler blogging experience for newbies.

There’s a lot more in it for us developers as well with the new Post Formats support which makes it easy for themes to create portable tumblelogs with different styling for different types of posts, new CMS capabilities like archive pages for custom content types, a new Network Admin, an overhaul of the import and export system, and the ability to perform advanced taxonomy and custom fields queries.

Following closely my friends at WordPress it looks like the new version of the world’s number one open source CMS will be out sometime in mid December 2010. There are some very cool features that are included.

Internal Linking

This is one of the features I have been waiting for. Adding internal links as you know is very good for SEO. So having the ability to also go through your current site and find links to update is also a cool feature.

Admin Bar

As I use WordPress.com as well, I could see this being included. Allows you admin access to the sites backend whilst viewing the live site – from the live site. A nice little addition. Especially for developers who are completing a website and need to jump in and out regularly.

Ajax Admin Screens

Again a feature I have been waiting for, I do a lot of heavy content websites with hundreds and sometimes thousands of posts and pages. Being able to get deep into a sites quickly and accurately is important and this feature will be welcomed.

Improved UI for Searching/Browsing Installed Themes

Not a big deal for me, but for people who like to continuously upgrade themes (developers nightmare) this is a nice little feature.

Post Templates / Post Styles

An absolute brilliant idea. Being able to separate styling by post type. As an example if the post is a video you can select video template, photos gallery – photo gallery template. Tumblogs do this very effectively and this is a huge leap forward for the guys at wordpress and designers will love it – although it will be more work. Basically, this allows designers to style posts accordingly.

Advanced Taxonomy Queries

This feature creates a much simpler way to run advanced queries. For example, right now there is no way to ask for posts that are in the “Health” category but lack the “Diabetes” tag. This causes users to create complex cat systems to simulate multiple taxonomies. This will make sorting of posts and other post types much easier for developers.

Simply Fit is a mobile personal training service which means the trainer comes to you and you can work out at your favorite location, either at home, office or enjoying the great outdoors. All the equipment is provided for you.

‘A Traveling Swede’ is the title of this site. It is a small website for the writings and musings of an intrepid traveler named Marica Hansson. The site uses a Magazine style theme and is a great mix of imagery and information.

One of Australia’s most celebrated artists, Sally Seltmann now has a Ginga Website to coincide with the launch of her much anticipated single Harmony to my Heartbeat. Sally Seltmann is an award-winning songwriter and singer. She has previously released albums and performed under the name ‘New Buffalo’, and is well known as the co-writer of the Grammy award nominated hit song ‘1234’, performed by Feist. Sally now returns with Harmony to My Heartbeat, the first single from her new album, due for release in early 2010.