Resources

I thought it would be helpful to create a resource page that outlines some of my favorite tools & recommendations for building a lead generating website.

Blogging: 

• WordPress.org – Hands down, this is the #1 blog publishing platform. It’s free, and highly customizeable. If I’m building a business website, it’s going on WordPress.
• StudioPress Themes for WordPress - I’ve said it before, having a solid website design matters. People are judging you based on what you’re website looks like. StudioPress has some of the best, professional looking, and SEO optimized website designs out there. And what’s great, is that they basically work right out of the box. Just upload your theme, then access the point-and-click design options to setup the look of your site.
• Premise for WordPress - Are you selling digital products? Ebooks? Video training? Or building a membership site? Premise 2.0 takes the ease out of doing all of that with custom copywriting tutorials, sales images, and even a full membership management tool. I use Premise to manage the membership content on Real Estate Blog Topics.

WordPress Tutorials: 

• WPBeginner - this website is full of great resources to help you get started with WordPress.
• Getting Started with WordPress - this one is straight from the WordPress codex and has tutorials for both beginners and intermediates.
• Introduction to Blogging - this is a great resource if you’re still having some trouble wrapping your head around how the WordPress CMS (content management system) works.
• The Genesis Guide for Absolute Beginners - this is an excellent, comprehensive resource if you’re using the Genesis Framework on your WordPress website.
• More Genesis Tutorials - if you want to learn more about the Genesis Framework and child themes, you’ll learn most of what you need to know here. This covers everything from the Genesis basics like understanding Child Themes to in-post SEO settings, lay-out settings,  and much more.
• Don’t Fear the Internet - this website has some excellent video tutorials on understanding basic HTML and CSS. This series of video tutorials are great whether you’re a beginner or intermediate. Watch, take notes, practice in your new sandbox environment and get wicked good at understanding HTML and CSS.

Hosting: 

• Bluehost - Easy to use, 1-click automatic WordPress installations and excellent 24/7 customer support. I highly recommend them for your first site.

SEO:

• Scribe SEO - No better way to increase your site traffic than to think about and incorporate keywords into your content. You need to think about what consumers are searching for before you hit publish. Scribe SEO helps take the guess-work out of this process and provides an analysis for you so that you can optimize your posts for better performance.
• The Beginner’s Guide to SEO from SEOmoz – This is a great in depth tutorial on how search engines work. It covers the fundamental strategies that make websites search engine friendly.
• WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast – My favorite SEO plugin for managing your title tags, meta-descriptions and more on your WordPress blog.

Email Marketing: 

•  Aweber – I use Aweber to manage all of my email marketing for my newsletter and blog subscribers (for RSS to email). They have a $1 30-day trial and then it’s $19/month after that. I love them because they’re very reliable, I can create custom web forms, and track & measure conversions and more.