Logo credit: WordPress.org

WordPress is a blog platform. But did you know it can be used as much more than that? You can use WordPress to run just about any kind of site you can imagine — blogs, static-looking business sites, forums, directories, membership sites, and more. With flexible templates and a huge collection of available WordPress plugins, it’s really capable of serving as a fully-functioning content management system (CMS).

One of the biggest benefits of using WordPress to manage a business site or professional portfolio site is that a single installation can manage both a static-looking professional website and a fully-integrated blog. The blog doesn’t have to appear on the homepage, and the pages on the site don’t have to follow the blog’s formatting (such as listing blog categories in the sidebar).

Let’s talk about why this combination (or hybrid) type of WordPress site can be beneficial to business owners and independent professionals. Then I’ll share an example (my own business site and corresponding blog), including some tricks and tweaks you can use to achieve the same thing as simply as possible.

Why Would You Want to Run a Hybrid Site on WordPress?

There are several reasons you want to consider hosting a “static” business site and your blog together on a single WordPress installation. Here are some examples:

• You only have to login to one administrative panel to update everything on your site and blog.
• You only have to make design updates to one site and one set of template files (or one stylesheet) rather than doubling your work by having to repeat it on the main site and then the blog separately.
• You can update everything online — no need to update your static portion offline and upload the changes each time.
• You can easily integrate dynamic blog information (like your latest post titles) onto static-looking pages.

It’s really about simplicity and flexibility. If you want those things, a hybrid WordPress site and blog might be a good option for you. Now, on to the next question: how do you set it up?

How to Set up a Static Site with a Blog Using WordPress (Self-Hosted)

Let’s use my business site (ProBusinessWriter.com) as an example. This is an ultra-minimal design I put together to keep the focus on the copy (I’m a writer after all — your focus might be very different depending on what you do). Here are some of the things I personally wanted in my own hybrid WordPress professional site and blog:

• A static-looking homepage that could be formatted differently than the blog and internal pages
• Static-looking internal pages to highlight my services, portfolio, client testimonials, etc., without having the blog sidebar present — full-width pages
• An attached blog I could update with the same login, which could be seamlessly featured alongside the rest of the site content

You can see screenshots below of the current homepage, an internal page, and the blog layout.

Customized Homepage of ProBusinessWriter.com

Internal WordPress Page of ProBusinessWriter.com

Blog Page Format for ProBusinessWriter.com

I went with the simplest options I could think of at the time to make the site and blog appear the way I wanted them to. Here is a step-by-step look at how you can do something similar (assuming that you already have your self-hosted WordPress installation setup — if you don’t, follow these 5-minute WordPress installation instructions).

Note: This tutorial assumes that you understand basic HTML and CSS, as you’ll be editing your stylesheet and template files for your WordPress theme. If you’re a complete newbie to coding, your best option is to hire a designer to create a completely custom site for you, or hire a coder to handle alterations on an existing theme.

1. Choose a theme (any theme) and install it. — You can create a combination static site / blog for your business using any theme you want. You can use free WordPress themes. You can use premium WordPress themes. You can use a custom design. Just choose one that you like and install it. If you aren’t sure how to install your WordPress theme, follow the instructions that came with your theme — often in a Readme.txt file — or follow the instructions from WordPress.org on adding themes to your WordPress installation.

2. Create a homepage template (optional). — If you want your homepage to look different from internal pages (like your About page), you’ll need to add a template file for it. You can model it on the code from your basic page template (generally called page.php), so you just make changes rather than having to code it from scratch. In my case I actually left the page.php file alone for the blog page format (you’ll see why below), and I created two new page templates — one for the homepage and one for my internal pages. For example, you might remove the call to display the sidebar content (or you might create a separate sidebar template file to be called on pages, while the default sidebar appears only on the blog). If you want your homepage formatting to be the same as other pages on your blog, you can skip this step completely. Remember that when you create a new page template, you have to include the following code at the very top of that template file (but insert your own template name):
   

   <?php
   /*
   Template Name: YourTemplateName
   */
   ?>

3. Create the actual homepage. — Once your homepage template is ready, it’s time to create the actual homepage. Do this in the same way you would create any WordPress page (not post). Just click the “add new” link under the “Pages” heading in your WordPress admin area’s sidebar. Here you’ll add the text and images that you want to appear on your homepage. If you created a new homepage template, look for a drop-down menu on the “new page” form while you’re writing that text. It will be under a heading called “Template.” This tells WordPress what page formatting to display this particular content on.

4. Set it as your front page. — Once you’ve created your homepage and added the content or marketing copy, it’s time to tell WordPress to use this page as the front page on your site (instead of displaying the blog automatically). Under the “Settings” menu in the sidebar of your WordPress admin area, click on “Reading.” You’ll see an option to use a static page for your homepage. Tick that option. Then choose the new homepage you setup from the drop-down list next to where it says “front page.” You’ll also notice a “posts page” option. That’s the new location where your blog will display since it’s no longer going to show up on the front page of the site. We’ll create a new page for that next, so just leave it alone for now.

   

5. Create a blog page. – Create another page. Call it “Blog” or something similar. You shouldn’t have to change the associated page template for this one. This is the template your blog’s main page will show on, so you’ll still want it to include the sidebar information more than likely.

6. Set the default blog page. — Go back into the “Reading” settings. Now you can choose your new “Blog” page from the dropdown list next to “posts page.” This will add a “Blog” link to your page navigation on the front-end of the website (where will depend on your theme; each theme is different).

That’s really all there is to it! You’re just creating two pages, changing two settings, and possibly adding a new homepage template file if you want the homepage to look different than everything else. Now you’ll have your customized homepage showing up when people visit the main page of your site. They’ll be able to browse your pages like they could on any static website, and they can access your blog posts simply by clicking a link in your navigation. Very easy.

If you’re well-versed in WordPress sites, PHP and CSS, you can pretty much make the entire site work in any way you please. Even if you’re a relative beginner though, you can still very easily have a static homepage on your business site while still featuring a blog.

Do you have a combination professional site / blog hosted on WordPress? Share a link in the comments and show us!

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Believe it or not, new people join the search marketing world every day.  Frankly, that scares me a little bit.  It’s not the competition or the potential loss of business that scares me, but the sources

people are relying on to give them the “right” information.  That said, here are the top 6 most classic SEO articles that I suggest anyone new to the industry read.  And then read again.  Some things in SEO/SEM world haven’t changed much…and a refresher is always a good idea.

“Successful Site In 12 Months With Google Alone“

Written by Brett Tabke at WebmasterWorld over 7 years ago, the fundamental steps for getting started down the road toward success in Google are covered in this archived post.  While I don’t agree 100% with everything included here – like the idea of dismissing the use of keywords in the domain and the necessity of submitting the site to search engines manually – I love the emphasis that Brett puts on creating quality content regularly.

Several times within the post Brett mentions content, creating logical directories for content, keeping new content flowing, etc.  That is one thing that certainly hasn’t changed.  Content is still king and the sites the provide the most relevant and useful content always seem to work their way to the top of the SERPs.

The search engines may now be looking for more kinds of content (i.e. video) than back in 2002, it’s important to recognize that serving up the content that will be most helpful to users is still the goal of search engines.  Convincing the search engines that your content will be most helpful to search users is yours.

“SEO Is Easy? Let’s Look At The Hard 5 Percent“

A more recent post this time, by Todd Friesen, published in the 100% Organic section of Search Engine Land which helps to draw the line in the sand between some aspects of SEO that many believe can be done by anyone and the vastly important last 5% that if done incorrectly can have far-reaching and long-term consequences that can spell catastrophe for a site.

Todd highlights the following aspects of SEO as “The 5 Percent”:

• URL Structure (the fixing thereof)
• Advanced Linking
• Appropriate Cloaking (err…IP Delivery)
• Dynamic Template Modification
• Client Management (agency life)
• Redirection (site moves or redesign)

Particular emphasis is placed on the importance of managing clients’ expectations and having clear lines of communication.  He notes the particular challenges faced by both parties when the client feels they’ve received lackluster results, while the agency suffers the frustration of their changes not being implemented.

“Filthy Linking Rich And Getting Richer!“

Written by Mike Grehan back in October 2004, this post still holds true today.  With statements like:

“…And I’m afraid some of it may be pretty bleak reading if you have newly created, lowly indexed web pages and you’re desperately waiting for someone to link to them so that they stand a chance of ranking in a search engine with a static link based algorithm…”

And:

“…In fact, it has been proposed that “the rich get richer” effect drives the evolution of real networks. If one node has twice as many links as another node, then it is precisely twice as likely to receive a new link…”

Mike Grehan finds some important correlations between science, psychology and the underlying reasons that some sites build links more easily than others.  This post takes a strikingly scientific turn with references to Hungarian mathematician and genius, Paul Erdos and a study by sociologists Fredrick Liljeros and Christopher Edling of Stockholm University, the post itself possesses a great deal of insight into why the idea of “the rich get richer” does not just apply to power and wealth in a traditional sense, but in the virtual world of online currency – links.

This may be one of the more challenging posts you read this week, but it’s well worth the effort.

“101 Ways to Build Link Popularity“

Aaron Wall and Andy Hagans joined forces for this gem of a post highlighting the importance of link building back in 2006.  As illustrated by this quote, not that much has changed in the world of link building since then:

“Link Building… Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it’s still the trump card for higher rankings…”

Obtaining high quality links from trusted sources is no easier today than back in 2006, and yet – no less important either.  While social networking and social voting sites like Digg and StumbleUpon have provided opportunities to expose content to a much larger audience, demands on the quality and type of content have increased significantly, as well.

“Spam Guide for Raters“

While I hesitate to recommend that anyone follow a SPAM guide, this article at Henk van Ess’s Search Bistro will help anyone identify SPAM techniques, regardless of intent to either abuse or report them.  The blog may not have been updated since late 2007, but this guide is as useful today for identifying spam-o-rific tactics – or, more constructively – understanding what is considered SPAM, than ever.

Topics covered include:

• Sneaky Redirects
• Hidden Text / Hidden Links
• Thin Affiliate Doorway Pages

“Hilltop in Plain English“

Jason Duke addressed the infamous “Hilltop” update carried out by Google in 2004 that seemed to throw a monkey wrench into the Link Olympics going on at that time.

The essence of “Hilltop” was a significant shift in attention from merely quantity of links to a site, to more quality links to a site from sites that are topically related or considered more authoritative.

Oh, How Little Has Changed…

What do all of these posts have in common?  They are all well beyond the time period in which they should be relevant and useful in the world of SEO.  Yet, they’re not.  They all include very important, basic and fundamental information that still applies as much today as it did when they were originally written.

There are several other posts that deserve a mention here, and probably hundreds of others I just don’t have room to mention.  Don’t discount a post’s relevance based solely on its age.

• “Tips for Attaining One Way Inbound Links“
• “SEO Friendly Affiliate Systems“
• “SEO 101 – The Timeless and Classic Hits“

Read them, test the theories when & where you can and determine for yourself what still applies and what doesn’t.  You’ll find that shockingly little has changed from an on-site SEO perspective and that links still rule the world.  What’s changed is where the links come from and understanding how to appeal to those that may link naturally to your site.

One of the problems large websites encounter is getting new pages or recently revised pages in the index. Since large websites also have a tendency to also be very deep, this adds to the complexity in getting these pages indexed and ranked, since links to these pages are often two, three or more levels deep.

If you have an existing large site, but aren’t adding or updating pages often the easiest way is to add links to these pages directly to your home page. Adding a “what’s new” and “recently updated” section with 5-10 links each with the proper anchor text is usually enough to jump start the indexing process. However if you are adding or revising a significant number of pages this strategy won’t work since you’ll be changing the links before they have had a chance to be properly indexed.

For sites with a higher volume or frequency of updates a more effective strategy is to use mini sitemaps. Create a mini sitemap for both “what’s new” and “recently updated”, and add links to the common navigation template. The sidebar or footer are generally the preferred locations, but the top or masthead navigation will work as well. Using a straight list of links will work however you can make it more esthetically pleasing and useful to users by adding a snippet of text from the page as well.

The final part of this strategy is to use dedicated XML sitemaps with a frequent ping schedule. Sign up for webmaster central accounts at Google, Yahoo , and MSN. After verifying your account create an XML sitemap for new page, and recently updated pages. Submit both of these to all of the services.

This is going to create a maintenance point, and depending how much and how often you update it could be large maintenance point. To make the process as easy as possible look into automated solutions. Have the mini sitemaps generate from the database. Most CMS system keep track of when data is created and edited use this information to build the pages. Use cron jobs to rebuild the XML sitemaps daily and issue pings to each of the services.

When you are building a website, a key element is deciding what type of content is best and how to build it into the site architecture. I like to think content comes in three different flavors evergreen, news/current events, and linkbait/viral content.

Evergreen Content

Evergreen content, like evergreen trees is “green” all year. It doesn’t have a limited shelf-life and should really be the cornerstone of the information on your website. Sometimes evergreen content falls into simple instructional style posts, like “How do I change a flat tire” or “What is the Best Way to Store DVDs“. In other cases evergreen content can become the cornerstone of your website, becoming a truly valuable industry resource. This is a subset of evergreen content sometimes known as flagship content. Flagship content is the hardest thing to create and should not be rushed. The advantage is it gives you something to link to internally for years to come. Examples of flagship content could be:

• A list with short bios for every driver who has ever won the Daytona 500 on a racing website.
• Recipe with step by step instruction and pictures of how to make fondant icing on a cooking website.
• A step by step walk-through of how to hang wall paper – with video how to.

Flagship content should be the same as a really great Wikipedia page without any of the inaccuracies or petty bickering

News & Current Events Content
News content is anything that is time related, time sensitive or deals with industry current events. That’s not to say it can’t be scheduled but generally speaking it has a very short lifespan of usefulness. As an example “How to bake cupcakes” would be evergreen, “How to bake Halloween cupcakes” would be more news/current events focused. If your website has a blog this is most likely where that type of content should go.

Linkbait and Viral Content
Linkbait or viral content is content that is a bit edgier, shocking, provocative, funnier, entertaining or in some way more compelling than standard content. It’s the kind of thing that’s popular on social bookmarking sites or that your really annoying friends forward to you in chain letters where they forgot to use BCC so everyone can see your email address. It’s content that’s written specifically for attention and links. Viral Content can fall into the evergreen category “50 Funniest Car Commercials” or the news category “5 most ridiculous things automotive CEO’s said at the bailout hearings“.

Pulling the Content Together
The key is working all three areas simultaneously to your advantage. Come up with your big list of evergreen and flagship content, and prioritize it. If you’re a new site decide what you need before launch and what you can add after launch. Decide what’s an acceptable and maintainable schedule for news and current events. Some industries may require more frequent short posts, some less frequent longer posts. The best is a hybrid strategy that mixes less frequent longer in depth news and current events with frequent daily coverage.

Every content strategy should integrate some form of viral content, again the key is finding the mixture that’s right for you. Some industries can get away with one viral post a week, for others once a month is the right time frame. Experiment and find a schedule that you have the time, money and resources for. Don’t focus on creating viral content that keeps targeting the same user base. Grow and expand into other areas “10 Fastest Production Cars” would work on Digg or Reddit, “10 Cars with the Smallest Carbon Footprint” for green sites, and “10 Most Beautiful Car Advertisements” (with pictures) for stumbleupon.

Content creation should be thought of as an ongoing process, not something that’s done at sight launch and then forgotten. It’s something that has to be nurtured over the life of a website.

.. put your right footer out, right footer in and you shake it all about.

Wrong context I’m afraid.  Nor are we talking about cement shoes.  The topic is something you see on 99.99% of web pages and which rarely gets respect.  We’re talking about the humble web page footer.  It’s a carry-over from the printed page in books, where every page might carry a similar block of text at the bottom, mostly to remind you where you are in the book.

When dealing with the Internet, it’s always unwise to just go with your preconceptions that you developed when dealing with printed pages.  Even with a large screen every part of a web page real estate is important.  How can one best use every part to the maximum effect?  How can the footer best use the space it is allocated?

In considering that, you must always consider the question from two points of view. The first and most important is how your website visitor will view the page.  The second is how a search engine robot will view the page and how that will translate into more visitors to your website.  Very often the two may be equivalent but not always.

Matthew Inman offered 19 gorgeous Website footers to help put your best foot forward.  They range from the most minimal:

to others that are fairly large and quite stunning.

These footers also have a limited number of links and so should not create any problems with search engines.

Tamar Weinberg earlier this year raised a question that is often discussed, Does Google Penalize Too Many Footer Links? That is a continuing discussion, because so many SEO consultants have the simple view that creating hundreds of links is the easy way to get prominent rankings in Google keyword search results.  Too many repetitions of the same keywords can certainly turn off human visitors, so the simple approach was to put this all in the footer, where it was less likely to be seen.  If you also put it in a very tiny font, then it might not even be noticed by the human visitor.

The search engines are of course trying to produce relevant pages for human readers.  One would hope that they might take the same view about pages that are stuffed with keywords as the human reader would.  Since footers appear on every webpage, then this would reduce the relevance for human visitors and again by the same logic for search engines.  The number of such links is likely to be less of a problem for the search engines than for the human visitors.

Ann Smarty had some useful advice along these lines, which probably represents the majority view:

• make your website footer relevant and useful;
• don’t add too many elements to the footer – it should be clean and concise;
• focus on people (SEO value of the footer is too insignificant anyway);
• follow the common fashion: people want to see common elements at these common places.

Boiling all this down, the best advice would seem to be to devise a footer that works well for the human visitors.  The footer is something that will not be seen by many visitors unless they are enthusiastic enough to scroll all the way down the page.  If they do so, it is probably because they want to be sure not to miss important information on the website.  My own recommendation therefore is to design the footer to work particularly for the more enthusiastic visitors to the webpage.

The best way to determine how to proceed is to test how well different footers work.  However the trend seems to be towards giving much more information rather than less.  Just look at the footer from one very successful blogger, Darren Rowse with his Problogger footer.

This footer is almost a partial site map to the Problogger website.  It clearly helps to create a sticky website where visitors will wander around rather than leaving.  Although the links may not themselves do much directly for search engine ranking, their effect in holding visitors on the site may well show the site to be one which is relevant when keyword searchers visit.

To summarize, these larger footers, which sometimes fill the full screen if working at 1024px x 768px, are intended to meet the needs of those enthusiastic visitors who want to do some more visiting on the website.  However if as some suspect, Google is now incorporating visitor behavior in their algorithms, this would be a further reason for creating these fact-filled footers.

The question of whether a blog should be on a sub-domain or sub-folder is one that causes much debate with the Internet marketing world. The simple answer is there’s no universal answer, it depends on a few other variables and what your end goals are. In this article we’ll take a look both sides and explore the pros and cons of both.

Sub-folder Approach

Using a sub-folder is one that is usually advocated by many Internet marketers, especially if they are pro-social media. A sub-folder implementation will look like this http://www.example.com/blog. Here are some of the pros of this approach:
Pros

• Links are built to sub-folder and link equity, domain trust and domain authority are shared over the entire domain.
• A single CMS and template can be used to manage the entire website.
• Blog has a more integrated feel to outside users.

Cons

• If sensitive data is stored in the database any security vulnerabilities can expose the entire database not just blog.
• For strict or rigid corporate cultures getting management and approval of the IT department can be problematic.
• Current web-server configuration and programming language may not be compatible blogging software.

Sub-domain Approach

Use of a sub-domain is generally advocated by any existing legacy IT departments, or conservative management parties. A sub-domain implementation will look like this http://blog.example.com. Here are some pros and cons of this approach:
Pros

• A blog can be located on a separate server providing more secure barriers between blogging databases, and sensitive customer records or other ecommerce information.
• Knowing that the blog is isolated will often give you more editorial leeway from IT departments and management.
• A well linked sub domain can help secure multiple listings allowing a wider penetration of keywords and search listings.
• Allows easier expansion into other vertical areas with additional sub-domains such as http://videos.example.com .

Cons

• Isolated sub-domains don’t transfer link equity, trust, and authority as well as sub-folders.
• Sub-domains have a greater tendency to look and feel separate from the main site. This can lead to a confusing message or perception from customers or users.
• Flagship content usually goes to main website, which doesn’t help grow the blog.

The real answer is that there is no one answer that fits all situations, everything is divided up on a case by case basis. I use wordpress as a primary blogging and CMS platform and from a security standpoint it leaves a lot to be desired. As an SEO I really like consolidating all of my link equity, but I have to weigh that decision against the sensitivity of potentially exposing any confidential customer or company data via hacking. Additionally any link injection hacking on will only affect a sub-domain, so for most of my clients a sub-domain is usually a better choice.