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Last year’s WordCamp was my introduction to WordPress, and one year later I feel like I’ve come a long way but still have so much to learn.  Two days, two conference tracks, and 15 pages of  typed notes later -  here is a high level overview of key takeaways I learned at WordCamp Chicago, held June 5-6, 2010 at the Holiday Inn Merchandise Mart.

I’d classify myself as a WordPress “advanced beginner,” and I am a user, not a developer,  so I stuck to the User Track and attended sessions on: Using WordPress and Buddy Press for Education, Creating Custom Menus with WordPress 3.0, a WordPress User Experience, session, but for me the meat and potatoes came in the afternoon of Day One.

I was blown away by Amanda Blum’s session entitled “Sitemap to Success” and Scott Stawarz’s session on how to Maximize the All in One SEO Plugin.  So let’s start there.

Every website is selling something.  Is that clear on your site?

Many business cater to multiple audiences, and your website should have a clear call to action for each user group.  After you’ve done the initial leg work of defining what you do and who you serve; address each one specifically and determine what constitutes a success point on your website?  Make sure you create a path to buy!

Amanda suggests starting with the following  four questions:

1. Why do I want crap?
2. Why do I want *your* crap?
3. What is your process to give me crap?
4. Give me crap.

Everything should be a call to action!  On every page what are your options to buy and/or contact for more information. Remove the roadblocks, website design should be supporting content, not the other way around.

That said, Scott Stawarzs’ presented a great session on a popular WordPRess Plugin, called All In One SEO Pack (AIOSEO for short).  Since the bread and butter of a website is its content, ask yourself:  What key words do you want to rank for??

Creating great content is the best way to be Search Engine Optimized, so regardless of what tools you are using for SEO begin by identifying the keywords you audience will use to find your site.  Then write fantastic content and tell a story!  SEO is an important part of the process of improving the volume and quality of search results, and only after you’ve created compelling copy, will the All In One SEO Pack be your blog’s best friend!

Scott offered the following practical next actions steps, which I will use as a guide going forward:

1. Spend 80% of your time on creating new content
2. Spend 20% of your time on SEO
3. Spend 100% of your time helping others
4. Follow Google SEO Guidelines

So you’ve created a sitemap and a plan to get people to take action, you’ve optimized your site for the search engine, but have you backed your site up?

Data losses are very common, 66% of internet users have suffered from serious data loss. Are you prepared?

A perfect way to end this post is with another very important takeaway I had from WordCamp. Chris Jean offered a comprehensive session on Backing Up and Upgrading WordPress – and you guessed it… I can not stress enough how important it is for you to back up your site, both the files and the database.  Make sure you have a strategy to back up your site, before you need it!  After you’ve selected your back up tools, create a schedule, and stick to it, oh yeah…and test the back up too!

Chris suggests the following schedule of how how often you should back up your website:

1. do a full back up at least once a week
2. do a database backup if possible once a day
3. do a  full back up before a WordPress core or major plugin upgrade

Did you also attend WordCamp, what takeaways did you leave with?  Please share the learning!

Related posts:

1. What I Learned at WordCamp Chicago
2. Becoming an Internet Celebrity – Erin Blaskie at WordCamp Chicago
3. My blog has been blessed by Matt Mullenweg