What I Learned at WordCamp Sacramento

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend WordCamp Sacramento for the first time and I’m so excited to share with your some of what I had learned.  WordCamp is a community conference on all things WordPress. WordCamps can be found all over the US and the World, in fact, California hosts 3 of them, the one I attended in the Sacramento area and 2 in Southern California. There is also a much larger conference called WordCamp USA. This year’s WordCamp USA will be held in St. Louis, Nov 1 to 3. 

The theme for this years WordPress Sac was Star Wars, this was super exciting because Star Wars literally defined my childhood. The workshops I had to choose from covered so many different areas of Wordpress and were designed for designers, developers, and bloggers. There were so many to choose from it was hard to pick. 

Before conference selfie

What I Learned

I’m happy to say that I found each workshop valuable and I walked out of the meeting rooms with a head full of new information.

I will be sharing what I learned on my blog as various post topics as well as my monthly email newsletter. What I’d like to share today are some small nuggets of wisdom I took from the workshops.

While attending the workshop, eCommerce: What Do You Start With? Audience, Products, Store? I found this graphic helpful for advising a new shop owner what will be the best practice for them. Chris Lema from Liquid Web was the presenter.

More things I learned…

• Google Site Kit once fully launched will be an incredibly helpful tool for website owners to be able to analyze and manage their site content and traffic.  
• Never use the same password for everything – this is how hackers can wreak havoc with your personal information.
• When writing your blog posts use your own voice.
• Create In-Depth content – The average Google 1st page result contains 1,890 words.
• 26% of people living in the US live with a disability – Does your website accommodate them?
• When viewing your website analytics pay attention to your visitor engagement this will help you see what you are doing right. Then you can use your high performing pages to your advantage. 
• When adding your social links to your website only include the ones you are actually active on. Why lead someone to a platform you don’t update – they will never see any updates from you and you will lose them for sure.
• When searching for images for your site – you can check copyright usage by searching using the  “usage rights” tool in the Google search bar. Just click the tools link to the right of the search bar

This simple image is key to a successful SEO campaign. Lindsay Halsey from Pathfinder SEO put together an excellent presentation on SEO. I’m looking forward to working with them about building an SEO strategy package that I can begin offering my clients in 2020. Be on the lookout for that.

I had the opportunity to meet some of the presenters. Here I’m pictured with Natalie Bourn. She is a high school student who runs a successful blog and nailed her presentation on making your blog attractive to brands. I also took a photo with Amy Hall. We were Go Daddy Pro Partners (see our matching stickers). We each tweeted out our photo and tagged Go Daddy for a chance to win an Ikea gift card. Sadly neither one of us won. 

Will I attend WordCamp Sac next year?

Absolutely and because each conference has different speakers and theme I would like to attend the WordCamps in Long Beach and Riverside too and of course make a trip to WordCamp US. Once all the dates for 2020 are published I will begin planning my 2020 WordCamp adventures. Keep checking my blog for more wisdom from this WordCamp and if you want to truly take advantgage of what I learned let’s work together. 

Until next time,

Karri