Using a blog and social media to help a non-profit, in this case the Kentucky Coaltion to Abolish the Death Penalty

Recently I overhauled the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty’s (KCADP) online presence. This describes our approach and how I can help you or your organization make better use of the Internet.

Early on, KCADP’s staff and I determined that there were three objectives for its online presence (all of which should apply to similar non-profits):

• increase its membership
• keep its existing supporters engaged
• convert its opponents or disinterested people into supporters

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The only three WordPress plugins your website or blog needs

In my last post (Four easy steps to starting your own website or blog) I covered the basics for marking your territory online. Once you’re comfortable with using WordPress, however, you’ll probably want to add some features that extend its functionality.

That’s where plugins come in.

How to install a WordPress plugin

1. Find a plugin you want to install (the WordPress Plugin Directory is a great place to start)
2. Download it to your computer
3. Upload that plugin from your computer to your website’s WordPress plugins directory (wp-content/plugins/)
4. Activate the plugin in WordPress (Plugins > Installed)

There are thousands of WordPress plugins available (4,245 as of this writing actually), but the only essential ones are these three.

Askimet

Askimet is a spam filter for your blog’s comments. It’s a must if you allow comments on your website (it’s blocked at least 7,343 spam comments from this website).

Askimet comes bundled with your WordPress installation, so you don’t need to download it, but installation requires a few steps. They’re self-explanatory though and WordPress will guide you through them via the Plugins menu.

All in One SEO Pack

The All in One SEO Pack helps your website perform better in search engine results. While installing it doesn’t mean you won’t have to do anything else to improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO), it is a good first step toward getting more visitors through Google.

(For more information on search engine optimization, read my posts on the subject.)

ShareThis

You see that little green icon with ShareThis written next to it at the bottom of this post? This plugin is responsible for it. ShareThis makes it easier for visitors of your site to share your content with people via social networks and e-mail (marketers get paid a lot of money to refer to this achievement as “going viral”).

You want your website’s content to be spread around the Internet, so make it easy for your visitors to do so.

Promoting the website for Maestro, an English language institute focusing on American accent development

Cara Fulton was the president of the Global Links Toastmasters club, which I belonged to when I lived in Washington, DC. Cara is also the owner of Maestro, LLC.

Maestro helps people learn global English, English pronunciation, and how to speak with an American accent (known as American accent development, reduction, or modification). Maestro also teaches students how to speak English as a second language (ESL). Instruction courses are offered online or in-person in Washington, DC.

And Cara is an excellent teacher and speaker, frequently winning Toastmasters’ contests.

I’ve been helping Cara optimizing the Maestro website for better search engine performance. So far we’ve

• revised the text of the website to emphasize the keywords people use to find instruction on American accent development or mastering English
• reviewed 33 search engines for possible inclusion of Maestro’s website (it’s interesting how many second- and third-tier search engines come and go)
• created links to the Maestro website

While it can take a while to see the results of search engine optimization, there already has been an increase in the site’s visitors.

If you are interested in finding out how I can help your website become more visible in search engine results, please contact me.

Optimizing a website’s performance in search engine results

A few months ago, I described my work promoting websites’ performance in search engine results (in this case, the site is for Stoney Creek Farm, a bed and breakfast in western Maryland).

Here’s an update: Stoney Creek Farm has gone from 126 in a search on Google for “bed,” “breakfast,” and “Maryland” to 37. The goal is to get the site to appear as one of the first ten results (that is, on the first page of search results for those keywords), so we’re almost there.

To recap from my previous post, here’s how we managed to see such a vast improvement:

• rewrote the text of the website to emphasize the keywords people use to find a bed and breakfast in Maryland
• reviewed 53 search engines for possible inclusion of Stoney Creek Farm’s website
• exchanged or created links to the Stoney Creek Farm website
• researched sites on which to advertise (that is, pay for links), not just evaluating any direct increase in traffic they might cause, but also looking at how much Google values those sites

I’ve spent some time during the past few days following up on my earlier work and creating and exchanging new links, so Stoney Creek Farm’s website should get another bump in Google rankings by the end of the year.

If you are interested in finding out how I can help your website become more visible in search engine results, please contact me.

Promoting the website for Stoney Creek Farm, a bed and breakfast in Maryland

Last weekend my fiancée and I went to a fantastic bed and breakfast in western Maryland, Stoney Creek Farm. No, this post isn’t this site’s first advertisement (at least for anything other than my services). Stoney Creek Farm hired me to help improve its placement in search engine results.

I’m not going to get too detailed here about how I’m helping it, lest another bed and breakfast in the Washington, DC, area duplicate my work for its own site. In general though, my approach involves

• modifying Stoney Creek Farm’s website to make it more search-engine friendly; the original text was well written, but while potential customers value good prose, search engines don’t
• increasing the amount of sites that link to it
• submitting it to a variety of search engines

Perhaps the biggest challenge is trying to draw more traffic to its wedding page. As Margaret and I saw this weekend, the bed and breakfast is a fantastic venue for a wedding: it’s on a gorgeous historic farm, offers reasonable prices, and is just a short drive from Washington, DC; Hagerstown, Frederick, and Baltimore, Maryland; and Shepherdstown and Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

The difficulty however, is that there are a slew of websites that promote facilities for weddings in those areas, many of them just consisting of paid advertisements.