There are several reasons you might want to convert your website to WordPress:
- Update the look, feel and functionality of your site
- Manage your content yourself
- Add blogging/RSS capabilities to your site
- Gain SEO benefits and make implementing SEO easier
Before
Julia Simpson had all these reasons in mind when she contacted me to convert her static HTML site to WordPress. She had built it using a template system provided by her hosting company and had taken it about as far as it could go, given the tools available to her. It also lacked a blog, something she really wanted. Here is her static site:
After
The first thing Julia and I did was have a conversation about how her business had evolved since she’d built her site. Her focus had become more specific, so we did some keyword research to find the best keyword phrases to optimize her site right from the start. (Not only did we use the results of that research to build her site, she’s now armed with several dozen phrases to write blog posts around! Sweet!)
Then we discussed look and feel…how color, white space, images and fonts all work together to evoke a feeling when you look at a site. Next, we combined the keyword research information with the look and feel we were after and…voila! Here is her new WordPress site:
We used the Chameleon theme from Elegant Themes and made a few tweaks to it here and there to get it exactly right. Her home page highlights who she is, what she does and for whom, just like it should. Her About and Testimonials pages feature expandable text blocks which allowed us to put a LOT of content on the page, but still keep visitors from scrolling forever. We chose a set of keyword phrases and created categories from them to maximize her SEO on the blog and as I mentioned before, she’s got a list of related keyword phrases to use to create blog posts going forward.
ClearMessage.co.uk‘s message is now…very clear! Well done, Julia!
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