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Today We are going to talk about adding a banner to your landing page/squeeze page in WordPress.  By now, you should have registered a domain name and attached a blog to it using WordPress.  If you aren’t caught up, please refer to the previous 2 posts.

By default, the latest version of WordPress comes with a standard header within the generic theme known as  – Twenty Ten 1.1 by the WordPress team

This might very well be all you want to bother with, and it looks much nicer than any other one that WordPress has used in the past.  Here is a picture of the default header graphic in the wordpress twenty ten theme.

If you want to be more adventuresome, you can add a header graphic to this page quite easily.  On your wordpress dashboard, go down the left sidebar til you see the word “appearance”.  Click the dropdown arrow and select header.

Once you have opened the custom theme page, you will see the default header graphic and some options below it.  You have the option to upload a .jpg image that will overwrite the existing one.  Just be sure that the dimensions are 940 x 198.  That is 940 pixels wide by 198 pixels tall.

The other options are to activate one of the other graphics by clicking the radio button next to it and click the save changes button at the bottom.

Once you have loaded the new banner, you will have the stationary and you are well on your way to publishing on the web.  Happy Blogging!

If you have been with me so far, you should be on your way to setting up a squeeze page or landing page to help you promote a specific part of your business. 

Landing pages, also known as squeeze pages, are unique in that they focus on just one aspect of what you have for sale. 

For instance, if I am selling healthy pet food, I may have a squeeze page that sells the benefits of pet food enhanced with probiotics. This page will be optimized for key words. 

That means that your page will be sprinkled with some of the most highly sought after key words and key phrases so when people search google for pet food with probiotics, your page has a higher likelihood of being found. 

Another reason you will be more easily found is because you will be using the blog as your platform to build this page. 

WordPress blogs from www.wordpress.org are the most common blog pages out there. 

I know there are many of you wondering why you would want to use a blog instead of a typical web page.  

Well, there are several good reasons but the best one in my mind has to do with ease of use. 

The wordpress platform is known as a content management system.  A typical blog has pages upon pages of content which can be organized like an e-magazine. 

Creating these pages can be as easy as writing a handful of emails.  These pages or blog posts can be formatted nicely into a theme provided by WordPress. 

What that means is that you don’t have to know anything about coding or web design.  You just merely choose a free theme from the multitude (in the millions) of themes.

The second good reason to have a blog instead of a web page is that a blog is dynamic and interactive and most webpages are static and one directional. 

Think of a typical webpage as a brochure.  These pages are expensive to set up and cost you money every time you want to update the content. 

Usually there is no place for a visitor to comment and this creates a barrier between the reader and the publisher. 

The dynamic, interactive nature of blogs allows for a conversation to occur and this can mean constant changes and updates to the content on the blog/website.  

Because the content is ever changing, the search engine must send its robots over to index the content after every change.  

So what does this have to do with making a squeeze page?  Well, most of the benefits to blogging mentioned above will apply to the single page with video that we will be making. 

There will be search terms within the page that will help you get found by the search engine. 

There will be links to an order form and thank-you page that will be indexed by Google as well. 

And thirdly, we will be putting video up at YouTube and linking to it.  Since Google owns YouTube, this will also work in your favor. 

So, go ahead, if you haven’t already…register a domain name and have it hosted. 

Once you do this, have the blog attached. (download latest software at www.wordpress.org )

Keep in mind that we want the blog to be your homepage so when you attach the blog, it should be part of your address.

For instance, make it look like this www.yourname.com  Not, www.yourname.com/blog  I hope this helps. 

Tune in next time when we will talk about how to put a custom banner on the WordPress theme and add video to the body of the page.