I’ve been researching tutorial sites for advanced WordPress theme development lately and have discovered some excellent resources. The Wordpress community is passionate about the platform. This is reflected in the outstanding theme development I’ve seen in the past several months.

Here is my collection of resources for aspiring and advanced WordPress developers.

WordPress Codex:
The Wordpress Codex is the Vatican of the WordPress universe. All knowledge resides here. The community is constantly updated detailed information covering every aspect of coding in WordPress. The Encyclopedia nature of this site is best used as a reference tool rather than a tutorial.

How to Create a Wordpress Theme From Scratch by Kai Loon
Kai has put together a very readable yet detailed three part tutorial on WordPress Theme development. My favorite section is the tag definitions. This is an excellent learning tool to see all of the WordPress tags in a single location. He does this with each primary section of a theme. I’ve read and referred to this site many times, and can’t recommend it enough.

How to Create a WordPress Theme from scratch by Sam Parkinson
Sam created an excellent overview on WordPress Theme development. LIke Kai’s site he provides detailed explanations followed by detailed code examples.
Additionally there are other articles on this site covering WordPress plug-in development. Overall this resource is excellent, and one I refer to quite a bit.

Jquery.com
This resource is for advanced developers, or those who dare to take a dive in the deep end of WordPress Theme extension. If you’ve ever run across sliding panels, or ajax type interactive tabs, then it’s likely the developer used jquery.com as their resource. This is a huge library of free scripts and lesson on how to implement them. Any developer with basic PHP and java knowledge can make these work. It’s worth checking out and bookmarking this page, as I’m seeing a rapid growth in these components within the Wordpress theme community.

What Are Keywords?

Keywords are most common words people use when they search. The majority of people searching for credit cards, for example, are likely to use the keyword “Credit Cards” in their search. This makes the term “Credit Cards” highly valuable and very competitive. This is precisely why keywords are the such a huge factor in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Forget short keywords, go for Long-Tail Keywords.

Popularity of one keyword over another can differ dramatically and attract completely different types of users. The best keywords are ones that will convert highly qualified users by providing them with search results that meet their search request the closest.

This principal is the guiding law of Googles search results. The only service Google really provides is the ability for someone to quickly find exactly what they are looking for. Google will examine the content on your site and determine the best placement for your pages depending on how they perceive the value match between that content and the search keywords.

Googles method presents an excellent opportunity for the use of “Long-Tail” keywords. Long-Tail keywords are keyword phrases that define the search as closely as possible

Returning to the example of “Credit Cards”. If a student with poor credit is looking for a credit card, they are most likely will simply type “credit cards” into search box. It’s far more likely they’ll use a Long-Tail keyword phrase, such as “student credit cards” or even “poor credit student credit cards”, or some variation of that long-tail keyword phrase.

Because this is focused search the amount of traffic searching for “ poor credit student credit cards” will be much less than Credit Cards.

For example, the amount of sites listed in google for the term “credit cards” is 124 million.  “Poor credit student credit cards” are only 2.3 million. So the chances of getting your site on the first page of “Poor credit student credit cards” is far more doable than the first page of Credit Cards.

Long-Tails can be used to even dig deeper, such as “poor credit student credit cards in Los Angeles” has only 293,000 sites competing.
Not only do the long-tails enhance the changes of getting a site on the first search results page, they attract pre-qualified customers. So the conversions from a highly
keyword selection are much higher than tons of worthless traffic from too general of a keyword.

How to find Long-Tail Keyword phrases.

Even though it’s a manual approach, I’m all for sitting in front of an empty spreadsheet and trying different combinations of keywords and phrases. Nobody and no automated system knows your business better than you. You’re also a consumer, who uses the search engines every day. This makes you an expert, so don’t be afraid to put that expertise to use.

After an initial list as created, or you burn out on making your long-tail keyword list, it’s time to go to Google. Set up a google adwords account and use the Keyword search tool. The results of this will largely be they keyword terms you’ve already thought of, but there will be others that you have not thought of in the list as well. Some of those could be very valuable. The Google keyword search tool only generates keyword phrases that have been actually searched on. This can help you edit you master list.

I’ve used paid tools like WordTracker, and a few others. So far the results were less than impressive. I found WordTracker hard to use and clunky. I am planning to use Keyword Elite soon and am hoping it works as well as the video promos suggest.

Using Long-Tail Keywords in your content

The final keyword list should consist of both short-tail and long-tail keywords. The next step is to convert these keywords to content by creating focused articles for each keyword. The game-plan is to built high-quality article content on your site that will find its way into the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) for your keywords.

The longest of the long-tail keyword pages should find there way to the first page for their keywords and start to deliver trickles of traffic within the first few weeks of the page going live. Sometimes is takes less time depending on the popularity of the topic.

The idea is that those long-long-tails will start to traffic and help the more competitive terms rank as Google recognizes the overall authority of your site.

The article content is important in that is has to be human readable and provide interesting and accurate information for the person reading it. This approach will take the page much farther than poorly written keyword laden content that is obviously slapped together to game the search engine results. There are several auto-article writing applications available- stay away. I’ve tried a few and they are all horrible.

I’ve had the most success from hiring writers to produce unique keyword rich content for me. This takes the burden of developing quality content off my back, and enables a different voice to talk about my topic.

When an article is written, either by me or a writer, there are a few standards I put in place to ensure the articles are maximized for the SERPS.

Use the exact keyword phase as the title- If the article keyword is “Poor Credit Student Credit Cards” then I title it “Poor Credit Student Credit Cards.” Don’t get cute with titles. Keep it exact.

Don’t abuse the keywords it the articles- Work them into the content where appropriate, and don’t repeat them more than 3 times per 500-750 word article.

Keep articles between 500-750 words- This is enough to make them legit, and short enough so that a writer can quickly finish them.

Keyword Research tools:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordTool

AcceptCardsFast.com is a lead generation site for retail and E-Commerce merchant services. The site is build on Wordpress 2.7 and features machforms, an excellent PHP server side form building application that enabled me to  create custom forms and style them as I needed.

I’ll eventually build customized forms for a specialized application processing back-end, but MachForms will due fine until the preferred method of application processing is determined. I built the homepage header in flash to quickly promote the specific selling points the would appeal to new or experienced merchants that are considering getting a merchant account for their business.

Description: Flash based Geo-Targeting Micro-Site for Lead Generation Project.

Technology:  Flash, Javascript,  ASP.NET 2.0.

This was a team project I was deeply involved with. We built a sophisticated micro-site that localize the page to the user through geo-targeting. The site features a complex layering of HTML, Flash Actionscript, and an interactive form that functioned like an ajax form, but was really javascript.

We had coordinate with the development team to create the geo-targeting, then build that variable into the ActionScript to deliver the results. the form overlays the Flash, which called for so cool HTML trickery. It really turned out well and performed extremely successfully compared to static micro-site.

This mock is for a lead generation mock for a loan modification client.

I recently finished a new client site for 24hr Care, a local company providing in-home senior care. I employed my normal Word Press custom CMS design for this project. the client had specific needs such as the ability to post their own article content, list upcoming community events, and resource both care givers and families interested in have their loved ones cared for.

The primary challenge of this assignment was to incorporate multiple form questionnaires that the client could control with minimal effort and zero programming ability. Fortunately my quest for a suitable solution lead me to machforms.com. These guys have it pretty much figured out, as far as form development is concerned. For only $39 I was able to acquire a fully functional forms CMS, but one that is customizable enough to fit most any needs and cool looking enough to impress clients. I’ll likely use it on all of my future sites that need a robust solution for form development. The admin is easy to manage and showcases the amazing power of this software. It was a real fine.

For the custom site homepage, I used the menu code system that I used on Broadcastsolutions.com. It worked quite well and matched their already established branding initiatives.

Federal Law was built as an information site as well as a lead generation site for the Law Offices of Steven E. Brown. Mr. Browns firm specializes in a niche area of the law that generates quite a bit of web based research. We worked together to construct a site where his staff could add keyword based content for the purpose of informing prospective clients as well as getting ranked for their specific areas of authority in Google.

I used a pre-built theme called Structure by Justin Tadlock, which is an excellent theme and “structured” well enough to allow for major customizing, which I did.

Additionally I provided photography services for the staff bios.

Triumphcollectors.com is built on WordPress 2.7, and uses PHPBay Pro, an excellent Wordpress plugin that turns a basic blog into an Ebay reseller. In this case, the site provides targeted keyword content on the Icon British sports cars from Triumph Motor Corporation.

The theme for triumphcollectors.com is customized version of a basic two column theme. The objective was to customize the theme as much as possible to accomodate PHPBayPro, since this was my first experience with the software, and I did not want to go too crazy with a complicated theme.

I was able to easily add the customized features to the theme, such as a rotating header image, splitting the header to show the Union Jack, having separately designed sidebars appear within select categories. This was key because the site required different Amazon reseller ads for each topic. Now the articles in the Triumph Spitfire category are matched with relevant ads. I also rewrote most of the CSS, changed the formating some and customized the background images as well as the other framework images.

Installing PHPbay Pro was a breeze. This $50 plugin is worth every penny. The license is for a single user, but you can put it on as many sites as you own. There are many documents and videos explaining how to use the plugin. Actually I found it very intuitive and only had to refer the PDF manual a couple of times. In fact I hate Ebay and have not been to the site in a few years. So I can image how quickly someone could set this up if they were more acclimated to Ebay and how the categories are set up and such.

The site also features my normal roster of recommended WordPress plugins.

Definitions

One-Way Links: When a website links to you but you don’t link to them. One-way links are the most valuable as they carry more “link juice” weight in terms of Google Ranking.

Reciprocal Links: Links shared between sites. A logical link between two sites retains value. A link from sites that share not common interests carries the least weight.

How to Build High Quality Links:

Create Authoritative Content

Creating valuable, helpful content is the first step to getting other sites to link to your site.  If a webmaster or blogger finds information of value to their users then they might place a link to your site on theirs.

Ask for Links

Find web sites that have complimentary content to yours and email them with a link request. For example, a poker site might find your information of value to their users. This exchange will require a reciprocal link exchange.

Join Social Networks

Stumbleupon.com is a good resource for meeting like minded people that are interested in your product or service. As you make “friends” they will “stumble” your content which helps to build traffic. “Stumble” means that they post a recommendation on their Stumbleupon account and others see it and check it out.

Often people on Stumbleupon have sites they want to promote. I’ve gotten some good links to my travel site, Croatiatravelblog.com, using this method.

Article Marketing

There are Over 100 article publishing sites that accept articles from expert writers and post them either for readers or other publishers to post them on their websites. The terms are that the author retains links back to his site.

If you submit an article that gets picked up 50 times by different publishers, then that creates 50 highly valuable one-way links to your site. Over time this can pay off.

You can not use the same articles that you use on your site. This would create duplicate content, which Google hates. Doing this risks your main site. It’s much better to get a writer to produce content strictly for article marketing.

There are services that will submit your articles to all of the publishers for you. I have not tested these yet, so I can’t offer any confirmed successes from using them.

http://www.articlemarketer.com is a good example of these services.

Buying Links

There are webmaster that sell links and companies that will place links on sites for a fee.

http://www.textlinkads.com is one of the largest.

I’m not a big fan of this method because links have gotten very expensive. As much as $40 per month for one link. In my opinion there are other ways to spend money for more effective results.

Forums and Social Book Marking Sites

Find forums that have topics on your niche and post in them with a link back to your site. Most use “No-Follow” links which means they purposely eliminate the search bots from treating the link as a legitimate resource. However, forums can attract visitors who might link to you from their blogs.

Social bookmarking sites enable a blog owner to post updates to their blog for others to see. This requires having a blog configured site, and can be quite effective if done correctly.

Wow, that’s a lot of stuff!

Getting backlinks is the only goal a website owner should have. A successful linking campaign will get focused traffic that should translate into conversions and sales.

To there requires diligence in producing compelling content, technological knowhow in building the site in a framework that complies with what Google likes, and reaching out to other sites in order to build inbound links.

Nexugen.com is an ecommerce store that features natural anti-aging skin care products. The store is built with Zen-Cart, and is wrapped in Word Press, which I configured as a content management system. A central homepage mixes elements from Word Press and from Zen-Cart. The customer can easily navigate either to a blog to read articles about skin care products, or they can go to the store to shop.

This site encompasses several features for natural search optimization including dozens of relevant articles that are keyword centric, various modules to support meta-tagging and keyword featuring tools to attract search engine spiders.

This configuration has proven to be immensely more successful than the old site in terms of SEO and customer experience. Since I launched it in November 2007, sales has steadily increased, as well has natural search terms list ranking.

Technology: Wordpress (used as CMS). Zen-Cart. Various modules and extensions added as well.

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