I’ve learned many lessons over the years building websites for clients. Many of the most important lessons become strikingly obvious when the time is taken to compare projects gone right with projects that went horribly wrong. This session will walk through exactly what factors were different in real life WordPress projects I have been involved in that resulted in either celebrations or lamentations.

How do you decide what your visitors actually want on your website? In this talk you’ll learn how to install Google Analytics, and read the reports to make good decisions about your website and your business. You’ll learn how to set and evaluate goals for your website that align with your business, and how to make sure your website brings you an ROI. This talk is great for business owners, bloggers and designers, and anyone who wants to get results from their WordPress site.

Third Coast Review arose from the ashes of a 12-year-old Chicago website, gapersblock.com. As GB arts editor, I worked with a group of GB writers to launch the new website, focused on curating Chicago arts & culture. My talk will tell the story of how I started out with a WordPress.com site and moved it to WordPress.org with the help of a great developer. Today 3CR is almost two months old and growing in readership every day. I’ll talk about content, design, social media and organizing an all-volunteer team.

How to present and maintain a secure E-Commerce site. We will go over some details on PCI compliance, as well as privacy policy, and general web security.

10 things that freelancers and budding WP entrepreneur’s need to kick ass, keep clients happy, and to consistently build high quality sites. We will discuss importance of contracts, vetting clients, specializing, learning to say no, importance of testing, importance of being a teacher, tips for handling ongoing support, etc

We will discuss various on and off page site audit strategies as well as a technical analysis from a site structure perspective.

Using the analysis to make data driven decisions, we will discuss crafting a successful SEO strategy and road map.

Link to Slides: SEO Audit Techniques