Recommended Website Resources

I recently converted SpearsMarketing.com (and several other client sites) over to HTTPS, and while the process wasn’t difficult, there are several involved steps, so I thought it a good idea to write up a tutorial on the process I used to secure these sites and convert them over. First of all, let’s talk what the HTTPS protocol and an SSL […]

Have you ever searched for a topic in Google, clicked on the result, read halfway through, then clicked a link in the article only have it give the dreaded 404 content not found error? Of course the answer is yes, as most everyone has experienced the annoyance of broken links from time to time. If […]

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you probably have a lot of content on your site: blog posts, pages, custom post types, comments, images, and more. It’s also probable that your most recent content is of a much higher quality than your older work, since your writing skills have likely improved substantially […]

If you’ve owned a blog or website built on WordPress for any length of time, you’ve probably wondered if it’s possible to speed it up, since Google has said that site speed plays an important role in their ranking factors, and since we’re all impatient and hate waiting for a website to load. While WordPress […]

If you run a website or blog that publishes regular content, you’re probably familiar with commenting functionality, where a reader can leave a note or reply to what you’ve written. I’m a big fan of comments, especially when you can convert those readers into email subscribers! Comments are great for blog posts. In fact, to […]

If there’s one question I’m consistently asked by new and potential clients over and over again, it’s this: What do I need to do to create a successful blog when I’m just starting out? I’m always slightly hesitant to answer this question, for one because it’s so broad, and two because the answer is very […]

Several years ago I wrote a post about the best WordPress plugins for small business websites. While it was a very helpful post for small business owners, if you’re a blogger and not a physical brick and mortar business, your plugin needs are different. In case you have no clue what I’m talking about, a […]

You may have noticed that Spears Marketing recently got a design overhaul. A VERY much needed redesign, I might add. Since our founding in 2010, the current iteration is only the 3rd version of the website we’ve built. The first site design and messaging focused on attracting local service oriented businesses, the original clients I […]

Using categories and tags in WordPress may seem like a no-brainer. Unfortunately, when we approach them with this mentality, things can get out of hand very quickly, as it’s easy to end up with dozens of categories and hundreds of tags, many of which overlap and cause both SEO and user navigation issues. This leaves […]