I’m writing this post for a client I have just started working with in the hopes that it clears up some of the mystery around this topic and perhaps you will also learn a thing or two from my 2+ years of working with Wordpress.

If you spent any time at all with Wordpress, you eventually run into the dilemma of When to use Posts vs Pages for new content.  Sometimes the path is very clear when your theme design makes the choice self-evident (as with this blog theme for example where every content item is a Post).  Other times, it’s not as clear-cut (like with some of themes at Woothemes like The Station)  When it’s not as clear-cut, and your theme design doesn’t necessarily dictate which one you should use, you need a framework like the one I describe below.

Now, before we go any further, let’s learn about the differences between posts and pages for our less experienced users.

Difference between Post and Page from a Wordpress point of view

Well, let’s consider the possible areas that the Posts and Pages might differ:

• Editing and Embedding Content?  Definitely not.  Both are equal in their ability to render HTML.
• Commenting?  Nope, both can accept them and you can turn commenting and pinging off any any page/post you feel like (including adding aging rules with various plugins so that commenting eventually gets turned off on schedule)
• Publish Date?  Nope, both have this too
• Content Hierarchy?  Well, yes and no. You can’t say for certain really without considering your theme and how you implement the site.  For instance with pages, hierarchy is clear-cut with page and sub-page inheritance and that’s easy to put into a menu structure with just a few lines of code.  However, with posts, you can implement hierarchy as well via categories and sub-categories and creating a menu system to display this hierarchical structure.  I would caution that you face more constraints this way (especially if you implement page and post hierarchy on the same menu). Let’s just say for now, that content hierarchy is more suited to page content and if a deep menu structure is called for in your design, consider using pages for easier coding of your menu system, or (god forbid!), use a different content management system more suited to complex content hierarchy like Joomla or Drupal.
• Tags?  Only with posts (well unless you install a Technorati plugin for your pages but that’s another discussion). Tagging is something that accompanies all posts nicely and can be accessed in the Wordpress loop for each post entry.  It’s meant to be used with Posts alone and if you need tagging on your page content, consider some custom programming or re-thinking your content strategy
• Categories?  Again, only with posts.  If you want to implement categories with your page content, you are likely going to face an uphill battle and will eventually resort using posts anyways.

Tags and Categories are the difference

Yep, tags and categories.  So now that you know, we are done right?  Not so fast.  You see, what you also need to understand is that both tags and categories can be implemented freely during content writing.  They can both be created on the fly with each of your posts and if you don’t consider the implications on your theme, you might run into troubles. 

For example, let’s say you have a design from your client that requires the following:

• Spa Services (not added to often, but updated sometimes)
• Hair Services (not added to often, but updated sometimes)

Now there is nothing inherently wrong with the structure here.  The client needs the ability to update different areas of their site and they want the menu system to show content in each area respectively.  Nothing wrong with that.  However, as the designer it’s my job to implement their goals in an effective way, and that means understanding how the menus are meant to look and what kind of content belongs where. 

Thinking a little further ahead into the challenge presented to me, I already know that some of the menu items are going to be pages and some are going to posts. 

• Spa Services (Page)
• Hair Services (Page)

Update Frequency

In addition to Tags and Categories, Update Frequency plays an important role in the decisions I made above.  When there are areas of your site that need content updates on a regular basis, Posts are almost always the way to go, not Pages.  Posts are easier to constrain within the confines of a Wordpress theme in regards to menu and content hierarchy because you can shunt all Post content off into a specific area of your site quite easily.

Finally, a Decision Matrix

So in summary, I think your best bet when you don’t know is to follow some simple rules below:

If you don’t know when to use posts vs pages, do this:

1. If you haven’t picked a theme, think about the kinds of content you want to produce. Consider your update frequency, whether you would like freeform categories and tags, and what types of content will be where. Make those decisions first.  Any good designer or programmer that knows their stuff can bring your ideas into reality.
2. If, however, you already have a theme (and are limited to working within it), look at your theme design first to determine what type of content fits where.  Like this theme for example where all content is clearly a Post. Of course, themes can be changed (again, like I did here), and if necessary, you can always hire an engineer like me.
3. If you need freeform categories and tags, you can ONLY do that with Posts
4. If you have a section of the site that is added to frequently (like a News area), it’s better to use Posts
5. If you have a section where new content is only updated but not created (like for example a list of your clients on one page, or your about page like I have here), that may actually be done using a Page.
6. If your content has no requirement for tags and categories, it’s probably telling you that you need a Page, not a Post (again like my about page)

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Out of the blue, I was contacted today by a local business owner seeking Wordpress theme customization from a theme they purchased on Themeforest (by the way, read about how I was able to provide everything the client wanted in my other blog post)  At first, I thought someone referred them to me, but after asking I was told they found me by searching for the phrase Wordpress Theme Customization Vancouver on Google where I rank #6.  

As you might guess, I’m extremely pleased by the first page ranking considering I have had my new site, Full Motion Group, out for less than a year, and that I only recently installed a new theme from Themeforest.  I’m going to share with you what I believe are the key factors in getting the ranking, and why I believe it’s partly attributed to the single page design I decided to implement.

Before I list my reasons, let’s get clear on WHAT a single page web site is:

1. A theme or design where all of your primary keyword rich site content is loaded into the client browser when they hit your domain name root
2. No frames, iframes, or fancy post-backs to load content in-line. 
3. Flash is NOT your primary content vehicle (can be used for headers and non-keyword rich content).
4. Any sub-page content or blog posts can be linked to, but those pages are not your primary keyword-rich content

As mentioned, I recently implemented a single page theme on my business portfolio web site, Full Motion Group.  The theme was from Themeforest called Personal Landing Page. I made many modifications to the theme (which i discuss at length about in the comments to the theme) to suit my needs like adding testimonials and making it possible to link to individual posts in the portfolio section. 

If you visit the site, and then view the source code, you will see that the site’s primary content is loaded when you visit the home page.  The only content that doesn’t appear on-load are the in-depth profile case studies (like this profile).  In future, I might enhance the design further to load this content as well but for now I’m happy with the way it is.

After purchasing the theme, and playing around with source code, I knew that the theme had potential for good search engine ranking, but I never guessed it would produce results until today.

How I got to be #6 on Google for “Wordpress Theme Customization Vancouver” and why a single page web site is better for your search engine ranking

1. Reason #1: All site content is loaded when a search engine crawler visits the site.  No additional links need to be followed that contain keyword rich content. 
2. Reason #2: If keywords are repeated unnecessarily (like in site footers), they pollute crawler statistics.  For example, let’s say you have a page footer on every page that contains a short description of your business and some relevant keywords.  Keywords used in that description appear for each page of your site and that forces crawlers to make some guesses about what that page could be about
3. Reason #3: You only need to maintain meta-tag information for one page.  I used the All-in-one seo plugin whenever I launch a Wordpress site, and one of the first things I do is enter the home page title and description.  With a single page theme, I only need to do this once and I can carefully monitor my analytics results and tweak those keywords to match the results I’m looking for.
4. Reason #4: Content deeper within your site might not get crawled.  With traditional multi-page web sites, you need to hope that a crawler will index your entire site. Who knows how search engine crawlers behave, and it might not always be the case (as anyone that has tried to search the Microsoft site can attest to). Single page web sites on the other hand, are crawled and indexed completely, that you can be sure of.
5. Reason #5: Single page web sites load more quickly. Well, this isn’t always the case, but certainly a single page theme creates less total traffic than say 10 individual pages of the same content (barring content that is cached in browser).
6. Reason #6: Single page web sites that are updated are re-indexed completely. I’m sure that every time I updated my web site, a search engine eventually revisits and recrawls the site eventually.  Having all my content on a single page load also means that all my content is re-indexed which is even better because I can carefully tweak my entire site’s keywords without too much fuss.

I have yet to prove for sure that a single page theme is better for you from an SEO point of view, and certainly this doesn’t always apply for all sites (as you get larger, you will need to split content into multiple pages), but if you can get away with it, I suggest you give it a try.

Like this post?  Leave a comment or link to me!

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Being Creative is a Curse and a Blessing

As a designer, I’m looking at other designers for inspiration all the time.  That creative spirit, however, is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because I’m looking at new designs all the time and am curious about how other creatives look at branding.  I like design and I enjoy the creative process and that’s definitely a feather in my cap.  Being curious about design is also a curse, however, because I’m never satisfied with my own brand.   It always feel’s a bit incomplete, and as I learn more about design, branding, and standing out, I feel like I need to do something different.

My Brand History over the last 10 years

Take my own brand and how I market myself which I started doing in 2001 with bcbold.com:

• 1998 – Launched bcbold.com as my first exercise into online marketing.  View this version at archive.org.
• 2001 – After several revisions, I relaunched with a new design and also started using Active Server Pages to manage the content.  View this version at archive.org
• 2003 – I changed from bcbold.com to redprimary.com.  View this version at archive.org
• 2003 – 2008 – I changed the design of redprimary.com over that 5 year period many times and have at least 12 verifiable revisions of the site.  Every time I learned something new about design, I tweaked my own online presence.
• 2009 – I changed from using redprimary.com to fullmotiongroup.com which is my online portfolio because I felt redprimary.com didn’t really represent what I do.
• 2010 – I’m going to launch WebMarketingMasterPlan.com which is where all of my web marketing articles and expertise will eventually go.

At the moment, I’m leaning towards Minimalism and the idea that less can be more.  Take the latest version of fullmotiongroup.com.  It’s a dead simple design and all fits on one page.  No frills, no marketing, no lengthy blog posts, no sales pitches, no lengthy content, and no ebooks.  It’s a portfolio site that stands alone and if someone wants to read more about me, they can contact me or visit this blog.

The Rise of “Jack of All Trades”

I don’t know if it’s becoming more common globally, but certainly with IT Professionals such as myself, being multi-talented and a jack of all trades is commonplace.  Nearly everyone I know in IT has multiple skills and abilities.  I have decided that having multiple domains for each of my “personas” is a good thing too, and I’m going down that route now.

• fullmotiongroup.com – my simple portfolio site for my web design work
• webmarketingmasterplan.com – an educational resource I’m launching in 2010 with articles and best practices on web marketing and design or maybe as an ebook (I haven’t decided which will bring greater profits).  I might also do video with each blog post.
• mayurj.com – this blog and dumping ground for everything that doesn’t fit into the above two sites
• mayurj.org – A launching pad or lifestream page I have no plans on launching for now. I expect it to look something like Gina Trapani’s site and it might be the one domain I hand out to people looking to hire me.

My other domains, redprimary.com and bcbold.com I expect to keep for the forseeable future and won’t let them go (the Pagerank and domain history can’t be replaced).

5 reasons to have multiple domains

1. Reason 1: You have multiple skills and all together they don’t fit in one site
2. Reason 2: Thin-slice yourself and represent each skill/ability with it’s own brand
3. Reason 3: When customers visit one of your domains, they get what they want quickly and without fuss.  They don’t have to wade through hundreds of categories or a series of menus.
4. Reason 4: Experiment with a brand idea or marketing angle like MRPWebmedia did with 136words.com
5. Reason 5: Expand a series of blog posts or skills you develop into it’s own site.  If you have too much on one site, designers will tell you that your original brand becomes polluted.

10 places I get design inspiration

1. Wired Magazine – there are some great ad and article designs in this magazine and I get a copy every month.  I keep copies around and flip through them before I start a design project.
2. Television Ads – Sure shows are great, but ads during primetime or major sport events are great places get new “memes”, themes, and angles on marketing.
3. Vandelay Design Inspiration – Definitely one of the best resources for web design ideas, the author sends out an email each month which I always look forward to reading.  If you are a web designer, definitely subscribe to the author’s emails.
4. Twitter – Recently I’m getting a lot of people adding me to Twitter.  Sometimes, I look at their twitter accounts and visit their site to see what they do.
5. Local Mall – You would be surprised what you can see at the local mall (besides all the pretty eye candy) when you pay attention to the poster boards and in-store marketing
6. Books – I’m into personal development these days and have a big collection of about 3000 hours from guys like Rohn, Tracy, Robbins, Waitley, Covey and more.  Often, I get inspired to think differently about marketing and branding and that has definitely influenced my work.  In particular, Blink and Purple Cow from Seth Godin are outstanding examples of thinking outside the box.
7. MRPWebmedia – I just found this one recently.  It’s a great collection of articles about branding and marketing and the authors have gone down the path that marketing is about being like a Purple Cow (a reference to Seth Godin’s book on the subject) – ie that marketing is about doing something outstanding that people talk about.
8. Lifehacker, Engadget and ZdNet.com – These sites together offer links to vendors, articles, and tonnes of in-site content.  All of it together helps me to see design differently and sometimes in a fresh way. Often I will click the sidebar ads to see what other new ventures are coming out the woodworks.  I found some of my favorite services like MediaTemple (web hosting) and Basecamp (project management) this way.
9. Sitepoint.com – This is a large site focused on design and online marketing and they have several different email newsletters they send.  I subscribe to all of them which often feature ads from related businesses.  Flippa.com is one site I found this morning while looking at the Sitepoint email newsletter.
10. Supermarkets – Surprisingly, this is a great place for design ideas.  The food business is highly competitive and retailers have to make every square inch on product packaging count.  Web design can benefit from the same requirements – to make every square inch of a design count for something.  Next time you visit the supermarket, pay attention to product packaging that catches your eye and ask yourself what made it standout.

5 Reasons Why you MUST stand out

Having read most of the articles at MRPWebMedia.com, I’m convinced that doing something extraordinary is crucial in marketing. Actually, it’s an idea I always knew, but reading the articles helped refresh my memory. Online, it’s even more critical.  Here’s why:

1. Reason 1: With the rise of web sites, everyone skims pages and rarely reads a page in full.  You have about 10 seconds and you might as well make it count with something extra-ordinary.  Seth Godin talks about this in a book called Blink if you’re curious about how to stand out and why
2. Reason 2: With easy access to Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook, a great idea can go viral very quickly.  Do something different and people will talk about you.  This is good for your business, and it’s also good for your Pagerank
3. Reason 3: People don’t remember “Just like Everyone Else” .  They remember the guy with the red mohawk, or the girl with the long platinum blonde hair and grey eyes.  People’s emotions are triggered when they see something different, and hopefully, if you did a good job, they remember it for good reasons.  If people see something different, they are more likely to do business with you when their need arises.
4. Reason 4: People buy emotional states, not features and facts.  Nearly everything you buy you do so for the emotional state you hope to feel.  Good branders and marketers know this and don’t try to sell features and facts about a product or service.  They sell the emotional state and that alone is all you need.  If you don’t stand out, it’s probably cause you didn’t sell an emotional state in your branding and marketing.
5. Reason 5: Competition is fierce and the Internet levels the playing field.  In less than a minute on Google you can find a list of 20 potential businesses you might want to do business.  If 18 of them all look the same and have the same boring features and facts listed on their site, they all look the same in the customer’s eyes.  But if one or two of them stand out and have something unique or create an emotional response worth buying, they win.  Online, standing out is a must, and if you don’t, you lose.

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