WordPress.com blog owners, rejoice! All of the hosting site’s 18 million blogs are available now in an iPad-friendly interface, complete with touch interactions and easy customization.

Automattic, parent company of WordPress.com, just flipped the switch on a new feature that transforms WordPress.com blogs into app-like destinations optimized for tablets. The company says it worked closely with NYC-based startup Onswipe to to create a whole new blog consumption experience for the iPad. Onswipe provides publishers with simple tools to create tablet-optimized websites.

“Our iPad-optimized view is app-like in its functionality, but pure HTML5 goodness on the backend,” said WordPress’s Nick Momrik in a blog post announcing the new feature. “It supports touch interactions, swiping, rotation and many other features of the iPad.”

The iPad-optimized blogs have a module interface, making it easy for publishers to switch up the look and feel of their websites. The WordPress.com Dashboard now includes options to change fonts, create personalized covers and change skins. The iPad optimization feature is also available as a WordPress plugin for anybody who runs a self-hosted WordPress.org blog.

“The iPad provides a ton of new opportunities for readers to experience the web and focus in on what matters: the content itself, while making use of what’s possible now with swipe gestures,” Onswipe CEO Jason Baptiste told Mashable. “Automattic powers over 18 million sites and believes in the open web, so it was a great place to start showing the benefit of the web over native apps.”

What do you think of the new iPad-optimized websites? Do you intend to create a tablet version of your WordPress blog? Let us know in the comments.

Posted via email from Jason Rose

To someone new to content creation, which is a key part to inbound marketing, creating a ton of content can seem daunting. Maybe you don’t like writing, or maybe you think that you have nothing interesting to say. Well, it’s ok. First of all, you’re probably already creating content and don’t realize it. In addition to that, there are a few things you can do to get more mileage out of a single piece of content.

How to Turn One Piece of Content into Five

Take for example, my recent presentation at the American Marketing Association in Tampa. They contacted me about speaking about putting together a successful lead nurturing campaign, actually a topic near and dear to my heart. Perhaps unfortunately (and inexplicably) we hadn’t yet done a presentation like this, so I was pretty much starting from scratch. The presentation turned out pretty well I think and now I’m extending the mileage of that one presentation by creating additional content from the same presentation. Here’s how.

Content Piece #1: Presentation

Start with the presentation. Deliver that content and, oh, also post it to SlideShare where folks from the event – or not at the event – can check it out.

Content Piece #2: Blog Article

Create a blog article from the presentation. Well, chances are if you turned a presentation into a blog article, it would be a novel of an article. So, take a piece of your presentation and turn that into an article. I did that with the first section of my presentation: 9 Benefits of Lead Nurturing.

Content Piece #3: Blog Article

Yup, another one. While waiting at the airport for my flight from the AMA event where I spoke, I wrote another article based on one small section of the presentation: 5 Tips to Set Yourself Up for Smarketing Success.

Content Piece #4: Blog Article

Yes! Another one! Again, at the airport, I cranked out another article based on another section of the presentation. It even linked to the previous two articles: 5 Steps to a Successful Email Lead Nurturing Campaign.

Content Piece #5: Webinar Download

I could easily re-present this presentation as a live webinar, or take the recording of the presentation (yup, I recorded it using the Voice Memo Recorder feature on my iPhone) and turn this into a webinar download offer.

More than anything, I was excited to geek out about lead nurturing with a room full of marketers. The gravy is that I got 4 more pieces of content to use as part of my marketing programs. How are you leveraging the content you’re already creating?

Flickr photo by robobobo

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Posted via email from Jason Rose

If you’re doing SEO in-house, a site redesign is like being on Trading Spaces (RIP Trading Spaces!).  On the one hand, you’re getting a fresh, brand-new space that could be everything you hoped for.  On the other hand, you have a bunch of people running around your house changing things, you have no idea if you’re going to like the results, and you’re not even sure they know what they’re doing.

With a site redesign, there are so many stakeholders that it’s easy for SEO to get pushed off the table to meet time/budget constraints.  I don’t think I need to say that you cannot let this happen.

There’s no way you can control every element of a site redesign.  Don’t even try.  Instead, I’ve put together this handy site redesign checklist of must-haves to ask for to make sure this redecoration project doesn’t burn your whole SEO house down.

Site Redesign Checklist

• 301 redirects. Any URL that is going away during the transition from old site to new site MUST be redirected to a new, still-existing page.  If the page has an equivalent on the new site, redirect there.  If not, redirect to the home page.  This is also a great time to make sure that http://www.yoursite.com redirects to http://yoursite.com or vice versa, if you haven’t already.
• Editable text, and the ability to add more content. Your new site’s CMS should allow you to edit your title and description tags, add and remove content, and link to your heart’s content.  Also, make sure that YOU will have the ability to do all these things – you don’t want to have to open a ticket with the IT team (bless ‘em) to update some page copy while they’re trying to keep the whole company network from crashing.
• The ability to add new pages.  And maybe some sort of blog. Yes, this will probably mean you have to write a blog now.  Sorry.  But at least you won’t be stonewalled from targeting new keywords because it takes 6 months to get a new page up.
• Text links for navigation. While your CEO and design team are going around and around about whether the links in the navigation “look clickable,” your job (and a very important job it is, too, you fancypants) is to make sure that navigation links are crawlable HTML text links.
• Proper use of Flash. Don’t say “no Flash” or you’ll sound like a hater and everyone will ignore you.  Instead, work with the design team to make sure any Flash elements are properly coded and snuggled up next to HTML to be pleasing to users and search engines alike.
• Analytics. Make sure that analytics stays top of mind with the IT team as they’re pushing changes live.  Double-checking that the analytics code is complete, up-to-date and on every page should be one of your top QA tasks.
• No Dynamic URLs/Proper pagination. This is a big ask so be prepared not to get it.  If you can keep dynamic URLs off the site, and (if your site is very large) make sure a plan is in place for proper pagination, you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches in the future.
• Not to Mention: There are a ton of other items that make an in-house SEO’s life a lot easier.  If you have the chance to go for broke, you might also try for:
  • Directory depth of ~4 or under (each page is <4 clicks away from the home page)
  • Conversion point on every page
  • Information architecture: can you find your way around the site, or has your Products page been relabeled “Innovate and Create”?
  • Revamped conversion process
  • And all the other projects you’ve been unable to complete with the existing site.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Posted via email from Jason Rose