Author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!, speaker, teacher, husband, father, and web marketer, Stoney deGeyter is the president and pit crew leader of Pole Position Marketing, a results-driven web presence optimization and marketing agency established in 1998. In addition to business training events, Stoney speaks at nationwide conferences, such as WordCamp, PubCon, Search Engine Strategies (SES), Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), and International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).
Stoney’s articles about how to navigate the web marketing landscape have been published on Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and Visibility Magazine, and he has been quoted in WSJ.com and Chief Content Officer Magazine.
He also shares how to accelerate your web marketing efforts in several e-books, including E-Marketing Performance: Effective Strategies For Building, Optimizing and Marketing Your Website Online; Keyword Research and Selection: The Definitive Guide to Gathering, Sorting and Organizing Your Keywords Into a High-Performance SEO Campaign; Destination Search Engine Marketing: SEO Without Compromise.
Why Do You Use WordPress?
As a web marketer I’ve found that WordPress is the single best out-of-the-box solution for building a search engine friendly website. That’s not to say it doesn’t take some customization, but those customizations are far easier done in WordPress than most CMS solutions. In fact, most can be easily accomplished using existing plugins.
Having a search engine friendly site is the foundation for solid web marketing efforts. If you don’t have that then all the marketing you do for your site will simply not perform as well as it otherwise should. WordPress is a great starting point.
When and How Did You Start Using WordPress?
I started using WP back when it was just a blogging platform. But as it grew into a more robust CMS we began encouraging many of our clients to make the switch whenever a re-design was imminent.
What Tips or Resources would you recommend to a new WordPress User?
I’d immediately look for lists of plugins that will help you accomplish your goals. There are a number of plugins for SEO, forms, navigation and just about anything else you might need. Plugins can save you hours of development time.
With that said, sometimes a plugin isn’t the right way to go and you may benefit from incorporating features into the build to ensure overall site stability.
What advice would you give someone who’s building a business around WordPress design or development?
Just because WordPress is free and easy to install doesn’t mean that the site you want will be cheap. It’s all about the whistles and bells. Any good developer can build you the site you want, just be ready and willing to pay for those features that need to be built. Or go without them.
Don’t think of WordPress as a free solution so much as a free foundation for the solution you want to build.
How do you stay informed about WordPress (news, tips, etc)?
The web marketing industry does a good job of promoting WP news and updates. I tend to keep up on that through the normal streams and social channels I follow for web marketing purposes.
What do you like most about WordCamps?
They are a blast. The presenters are all very knowledgeable and intelligent and overall, the attendees seem to be great people. It’s just lots of fun!
Where can we find you online?
Web: PolePositionMarketing .com
Twitter: @StoneyD
LinkedIn: StoneyGD
Google+: +StoneydeGeyter