Does your WordPress website need a tune-up and a road map?

Whether you use your site to market a micro-business, develop a side project or launch a second career, it could perform better with optimization and a digital strategy:

• Sell more of your services or products.
• Load faster so customers don’t click away.
• Connect with new clients using a social media plan that works.

Even with a beautiful design that perfectly expresses your brand, when you check under the hood, your site may be a mess of tangled plugins that slow it down.

Or a bloated blog full of daily posts that no one shares on social media.

Or a wasteland of wimpy keywords on pages that don’t show up in search results.

Even if you love the way your website looks,  you may wonder why you’re not getting results — especially when you’re using the same tools and tactics as everyone else.

But those wildly popular tools and tactics may be part of the problem: copy-cat SEO, tools designed for high-budget paid traffic that don’t work well for organic traffic, plugins and themes that are not supported…and the list goes on.

It’s a familiar story. You’re not alone if you heard from your web host or a marketing guru that creating a successful site is simple: set it up, install a few plugins, add content, optimize it, make sales.

Right?

Um…no. That barely scratches the surface.

That’s like saying driving 2,130 miles from Chicago to San Francisco is a simple matter of getting into a car and heading west on I-80.

(Never mind the four to six days of full-time driving, the altitude changes crossing the Rockies, the Wasatch and the Sierra Nevada mountains, the quest for clean restrooms, the wear and tear on the 15-year-old engine and the almost-bald tires, the test of your patience if you picked the wrong road trip companion….)

Or…switching to a more natural metaphor…it’s like saying the way to grow organic vegetables is a simple process of planting seeds, adding water, waiting a few weeks and reaping the harvest.

If you’ve ever attempted to start a garden, or watched someone who has, you know it takes a LOT of work — and a LOT of patience and skill — to grow those delicious veggies.

You have to pick the right spot and amend the soil. Plant the right kinds of seeds. Add the right amount of water and fertilizer. Monitor for bugs and critters and changing weather. There’s always something to improve, remove or adjust.

Like tending a vegetable garden, building and managing a website takes planning and regular care. Unexpected stuff happens. You make decisions that don’t pan out. Test new tools and techniques.

You learn along the way, and develop skills in the process. Surprises become part of the fun!

On the other hand, you may like home-grown veggies, but not digging in the soil to nurture a garden — just as you may like the leads and sales that websites can produce, but not the ongoing tasks involved in managing your own site.

If that’s the case, you have to find someone with the skills and experience to manage the projects for you. Maybe a willing spouse, a geeky best friend, a talented child or a generous grandkid will take on the tasks.

Maybe not.

If your spouse doesn’t have time, your best friend has no geek aptitude, you’re happily child-free, or your grandkids have four paws and fur — I may be able to help!

I’ve been building, optimizing, writing and managing websites and digital marketing projects for myself and startups since 2009. I know my way around web marketing tools, strategies and expert resources.

If your site isn’t producing the leads and sales you expect, and you’re not sure why — or which questions to ask — feel free to contact me.

{Include your website URL, plus a couple of sentences describing the problem and what you’d like your site to do differently, and I’ll take a look.)

I’ll email you back — usually within 36 hours — and we can set up a free phone meeting for 15-20 minutes to chat about your goals. (More leads? More sales? Local visitors?)

At the very least, you’ll get a fresh perspective and a few ideas to try. If that sounds good to you, go ahead and send me an email, and we’ll talk soon!