Author: Jacob Martella

Topic: SEO in an Hour for WordPress

Lindsay Halsey is a co-founder and partner of webShine, a search engine marketing agency in Basalt, Colorado. She is also co-founder and partner in WP SEO Hub with a scheduled launch in late October. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in Economics and spent several years as a mountain guide and ski patroller. In 2008 Lindsay made the leap into search engine marketing. Her primary interest is search engine optimization for WordPress websites.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I became involved with WordPress via search engine marketing. Specifically, I specialize in SEO for WordPress websites.

What do you do with WordPress?

I’ve been working as a search engine marketer for 8 years and along the way have worked in many content management systems. WordPress is by far my favorite for SEO and usability.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

I’m new to the WordPress community. My first WordCamp was in Denver in August and I’m looking forward to WordCamp DFW.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I wanted to speak at WordCamp DFW to share some SEO insights and be a part of the event. I’m also looking forward to attending sessions in the many areas of WordPress where I am a novice.

Why did you decide to speak on SEO?

WordPress is very SEO friendly, but there is an art and a science to configuring SEO plugins. I’ve found that if I apply an hour to a website in WordPress, I can accomplish a lot in terms of SEO. In the workshop, SEO in an Hour for WordPress I’ll outline this process.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I hope the audience comes away feeling confident that they optimize their website or their customer’s websites to meet SEO best practices via a simple, repeatable process that works on WordPress websites that range from just a few pages to thousands of pages.

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 11-12. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!

Topic: Centralizing News through WordPress REST API

S. Todd McKee, MEd is the Senior Web Developer for the Office of Communications & Marketing at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock, AR. Todd and his team are responsible for UAMS’s online visual identity, determining the vision and strategic goals of UAMS’s web presence, providing web and application development services, and supporting their content management systems. Todd has served on the Teaching with Technology committee and given numerous talks on technology in education. He spends most of his day looking at code and solving everyone’s problems. Todd lives in Little Rock, AR with his wife and two of his four daughters.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I started my first WordPress website for an education grant I was working on some time before 2011. I had been coding everything in DreamWeaver. I tried a few CMSs, but none ever stuck. A group at UAMS started migrating some websites to WP. I decided to give it a try and I have been working in WP ever since.

What do you do with WordPress?

I spend about 6-8 hours every day in WP or WP development. I work for an Academic Medical Center and University. We run almost all of our 200+ sites in WP. My days involve a little content and a lot of code.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

I love the WP community. I’m not really much of a pure coder, so I rely on the expertise of others all the time. The community is made up of a huge continuum of skills. We are all trying to make the web experience better. Lately, I’ve been working with the WPCampus community, too.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I’m a talker. 😉 I love giving presentations, but I haven’t done it much lately. I talked with several people at WordCamp Fayetteville. They suggested I present. It’s always fun to learn and share.

Why did you decide to speak on the REST API?

This is a project that I have been working on for a little while. I’ve seen snippets of information in several places, but nothing quite like our project. I hope it helps some others in the WP community.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I hope that the audience will learn a little more about centralizing services and using the REST API for distribution. This may not be something they need right now, but the concepts can be expanded to other areas.

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 11-12. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!

Topic: Using social media to grow personal brand and build your freelance business

A cheerleader for small business owners and buying local, Isaac “loves the heart and soul that local businesses put into their products and services.” He’s especially interested in helping people build their personal brand using stories on social media. When he’s not at work, you can usually find Isaac and his kids riding their bikes at the local skatepark or sampling local coffee offerings. Isaac is a native of Northern California who transplanted to Phoenix ten years ago to work for GoDaddy.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I was running my own personal blog back in the early days of blogging. This was before we had CMS-style options like WordPress. Every post was coded by hand and it took forever. I found WordPress and it changed everything – literally. I could post what I was thinking without fussing with the HTML. WordPress gave me the freedom to focus on content rather than layout, and I fell in love. It removed every barrier to blogging and I could focus on the content instead of the code on every single post.

What do you do with WordPress?

WordPress powers my personal site and any sites I need to build quickly. I’m one of those people that always likes trying out new themes and tricks that I’ve picked up from the WordCamps I attend so my site is never really “done”. I get really excited when I see people adding little tweaks that really make WordPress personal to them.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

I’ve been traveling to various Camps for the past year and I love the WP Community. I fell in love with what WordPress can do – I’m still hooked because of the amazing people in the WP Community. I’ve met some of the most genuine and amazing people visiting WordCamps across the US. I can’t stress this enough – Meet as many new people as you can at your local WP Meetups and Camps and you’ll stay motivated all year. When you start to struggle, you’ll have a network of peers to lean on and get inspiration from. It’s amazing!

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

Well I’m obsessed with Texas. This is where I’ll end up moving to when I retire. I want to talk about social media and personal branding because that’s what I’m passionate about. We have these tools and social networks available to us and we can use them to help our clients be the best they can be at every stage of their business journey. I’m excited to share the same tips and tricks I use with our employees here at GoDaddy to build up personal brands and help people get their message out there. Just like a credit score, you have a personal brand even if you don’t know it. I want to show you how to use social media to build your brand and find more clients, encourage your existing client base, and network with others in the WordPress community.

Why did you decide to speak on using social media to build your freelance business?

Back in March of this year I had a random video on Facebook go viral. The video had 14k views overnight and last time I checked it was up in the 80million view range. I was lucky because I already knew a few tips and tricks to help it get noticed by news outlets as it got more and more popular. I learned so much in a short period of time and I’m passionate about sharing that knowledge with other people. Just like the plugins we use on our sites, social networks are unique and I want to help people leverage those networks to get the most out of them.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

You’ll walk out of my presentation understanding the different social networks and how to leverage them for what you want to accomplish. You’ll know how to take advantage of Facebook video and how to find great articles to share that build you up as a WordPress subject matter expert. You’ll also walk out knowing how to find others just as passionate about WordPress as you are and how to join in on conversations taking place so you can add value to the greater WordPress community.

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 11-12. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!