Tag Archives | Traffic

Best WordPress Plugins to Help With Website Design and Functionality

Best WordPress Plugins to Help With Website Design and Functionality

The great thing about WordPress is the ability to continually add new functions into your blog as they are developed. This functionality is added through plugins which can be easily added through an admin panel. As someone who uses them daily, these are the best WordPress plugins in my opinion.

Deans FCK Editor

This replaces the default WordPress editor that comes with WordPress 3.1. The main reason that I use this is for setting columns and rows inside the pages. This plugin makes it child’s play for setting pages as you can tell it to make the width 100%. The plugin then figures out the pixels for you. With different width themes this is a time saver.

All In One SEO

Setting a website without this plugin is tantamount to criminal neglect. The plugin adds fields underneath the blog post for title, description and keywords metatags. You don’t need to know code or visit metatag generator sites any more.

CBNET Ping Optimizer

During the initial set up of your website, you will probably make lots of changes to pages. This will save your WordPress blog from being tagged as spammer as it won’t post the edits only the new pages.

Contact Form 7

This allows you to set up a contact form on any page. You can create as many forms as you like for the various pages including radio buttons and drop down selections. It creates a piece of code that you can then place on the web page in the appropriate area.

Really Simple Captcha

This useful plugin allows you to have a simple captcha on your contact form above. It’s not the hardest captcha to break but it will stop a certain amount of automated rubbish traffic to your email which can be very annoying otherwise.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin automatically updates your sitemap and sends it to Google, AOL and Bing automatically. You need to get an API from Yahoo for it to send automatically to it. You can manually rebuild the sitemap or leave on automatic. It is a great set and forget plugin.

WP-Sticky

This allows you to make a post sticky at the top of the blog. For those who have never heard the term sticky it simply means that when you click the sticky option on a blog post it is never pushed to the bottom of the page when other posts are made.

Multi Level Navigation Plugin

This allows you to have drop downs from any top menu on your site. It allows unlimited drop down levels if you want. For SEO purposes placing too many sub levels will not be great but it’s there if you really want it.

Page Lists Plus

This allows you to create pages but not show them in the menu. This is perfect for creating privacy policy, terms of use and similar pages which you will probably want to manually add in the footer.

To add in a plugin for your blog, simply click on the plugin menu on the left in the admin section and then choose the “”add new”" option. It will then give you a search box. Type the plugin name and it will find it for you from the WordPress extension site.

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The Importance of choosing the right WordPress Theme

The Importance of choosing the right WordPress Theme

Once you have set-up your WordPress blog one of the first things everyone does is chooses the theme for their blog. You don’t need to keep the same theme and can change it anytime you would like. In the beginning when your blog is new I would just use a free wordpress theme that is related to your niche. There are hundreds of different free wordpress themes out there that you can use and many of them are very well done with great graphics.

As your blog starts to get older you’ll need to determine whether or not you want to keep using the free wordpress themes or if you want to adapt a custom wordpress theme to your blog. Normally what will determine this is whether or not your blog has any traffic or revenue. If you have traffic and are making some money off of your blog then I would recommend getting a custom wordpress made for your blog. Once you have a custom wordpress theme it’s like jumping up the ladder in blogging and makes you almost like royalty. Most readers will stay on custom theme blogs longer than other blogs as well because when you use a free wordpress theme people see those everywhere, but when you adapt a custom theme your readers will have never seen any blog like yours before.

WordPress themes have come down in price over the past couple years and you can get a great custom wordpress theme for under $200. This isn’t a small investment for a blog that isn’t making money and isn’t a very wise investment either. If you have traffic on your blog though, and making some money off your blog then spending $200 won’t seem nearly as bad. It should also help increase your traffic and revenue so it’s a wise investment in some situations. Make sure you have established traffic and revenue before spending money on any theme though, this is because a lot of blogs will never make any money. The last thing you want to do is spend a couple hundred on your blog and it never make any money.

If you look around the blogosphere you’ll notice that most of the established and authority blogs all have custom themes that look amazing and unique. It helps to retain traffic and also assists in increasing your return visitor traffic. If you’re a designer and coder then you can most likely make your own wordpress theme and if you can do this then you should definitely do it for all of your blogs. You don’t need to wait for traffic and revenue if you can do the work on your own time because it isn’t costing you any money.

When you decide to implement your own custom wordpress theme to your blog make sure that it stands out and is unique. You don’t want to spend money on a theme that looks similar to another theme because that defeats the purpose. The purpose of a custom theme is to stand out to your readers and to retain the traffic you build to your blog. Try to add some new features to your theme that you can’t find on other blogs or try changing the layout of the conventional style and making your own style. Always make sure that you use a custom logo or mascot for your theme as well because this will help brand your blog, especially a mascot.

As you can see the importance of your wordpress theme is very important and there are many reasons you should be considering when choosing a theme. If you’re choosing your theme for looks only then you aren’t doing enough. You need to think about how many people are doing that as well, because many do and end up with the same free wordpress themes. If your blog can afford to invest some money into it then I would first spend it on a custom wordpress theme.

A custom wordpress theme will also help you sell your blog if you ever decide to sell it in the future, and you’ll be able to fetch top dollar for your blog. So your themes is more of an investment then anything else, but if money is tight then wait until your blog is making money before spending money on a custom theme. If you’re using free wordpress themes then you should consider switching your theme every month or so, this is so that your readers don’t get bored of the same theme. You should try switching your theme with a newly released free theme each month as then your visitors will be less likely to have already seen the theme.

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1-Click-WP SEO 2.0 WordPress Plugin Demo Presentation

1clickwpseo.com Traffic-getting SEO WordPress plugin optimizes all your posts and pages for Google with just 1 click – 100% guaranteed…

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Top 10 Best WordPress Plugins That Make Your Blog Badass

Top 10 Best WordPress Plugins That Make Your Blog Badass

What is the best wordpress plugin? If you guys are brand new to the idea of blogging, a wordpress plugin is simply just an add-on that you can put into your blog. There are all sorts of various plugins at your disposal. But only a really handful of wordpress plugins are actually USEFUL to converting more of your readers into buyers, email opt-ins or loyal readers.

So what are they?

Let us get into the thick of it as they say… Now these are not just fluff stuff that will slow your blog down. These are actually the #1 things that can grow traffic to your blog and make your blog 200-500% better than where it currently sits if you’re flying-solo without any at all.

Time to dive in!

Top 10 Best WordPress Plugins

1.  Facebook Share

This was the original facebook share button. A lot of blogs have gone away with this blog in favor for the “”like”" button on the blog. I say BOTH are important. Here is why the old facebook share button makes our little best plugins list.

It allows social proof to be seen a lot quicker and more dramatically displayed. As we know, readers are more enticed if they see that a lot of people are sharing an article or a piece of content. So by having that at the top, allows us to display the number of how many times we have been shared on facebook. Also the “”like”" plugin ruins a lot of the head space in your blog. Which is why I include it at the bottom of my blog versus the top.

The FB share button is still super effective and highly recommended!

2. Tweetmeme

This plugin is pretty much exactly the same as facebook share. The only obvious difference is that it is for twitter not for facebook! I am not a HUGE fan of twitter as any of you who follow me already know. I rarely use it, though I should, but a lot our readers do use twitter and absolutely love it. So allow them to spread the love across their 140-character-long diaries.

3. Facebook Like Button

I love the Like button, I include it at the end  of every blog post. The cool thing is it will tell you everyone who liked it, and sometimes it’ll be someone the reader is friends with or respects if they are heavy in your niche. Which causes them to respect you and your content even more, and make it more likely to share your stuff with the world.

4. Commentluv

Let us be honest. Majority of people reading a blog, especially in the make money niches and network marketing niches, have something they want to sell too. To reward these people for commenting on our blogs, we become a “”Dofollow”" blog and allow their latest blog post to appear on our own blog. This allows them to do a little bit better advertising of their content when they comment to enrich our own.

I love commentluv, cause it builds really good backlink juice, which for you SEO nuts is awesome.

I actually have people hiring and outsourcing people to come and comment on this blog. No idea how many, but I am sure the fact I have commentluv is a big reason why! (Other than my AMAZING content!)

5. All In One SEO Pack

Even though it is constantly wanting to update itself which is semi-annoying, this is an awesome plugin for SEO junkies and any real-time blogger. Because it allows you to put in all the SEO info you need at one go. Put it in and you’re done.

This is a requirement if you want be successful with SEO on a blog as far as I am concerned, and really easy to use.

6. Google Analyticator

This plugin is a behind-the-scenes deal, but basically using this tool you can quick updates on traffic coming to your blog. What is even cooler is going into the back office they have and you can see exactly where everyone is coming from. Whether predominantly from facebook, or from the search engines. Of course, the biggest traffic source you want is called “”Direct”".

Meaning people actually just come on the internet and type in your blog into the address bar! Because those are the people who are loyal fans and like what you have to say.

Other useful information are things like understanding bounce rates, and the most frequented pages on your blog. Don’t get lost in the numbers, but do understand what they are saying about your blog so you can adjust and optimize everything.

7. Google XML Sitemaps

Also a powerful SEO plugin. This automatically creates a sitemap on your blog which helps with SEO. Basically the sitemap organizes everything more neatly and makes the Google spiders and gods go through your content and index it quicker and better. (Which means higher rankings on the search engines)

8. WP Ezinearticles

I really like this, no idea how helpful it TRULY is, but I believe it is worth to have on your blog even if you’re not big into article marketing. Basically what it does is creates a little box in your wordpress “”Add new post”" section. When you are done writing your post, you can click the “”submit”" button and it will automatically send your blog post to Ezinearticles as a submitted article all in the span of a few seconds.

Saves a lot of hassle if you enjoy submitting articles like me.

9. ThatMLMBeat Beat It Button

I just started using this myself, it is a plugin similar to tweetmeme only instead of twitter it shares your content on ThatMLMBeat. A website community focused on blogging specifically in the mlm/network marketing and internet marketing niches. Everytime someone clicks on it, your post will get bumped up into the top and front page of their community.

Which is pretty awesome targeted traffic for most of us in this niche! You do need a ThatMLMBeat account, but that’s for free unless you want the premium. Highly recommend it.

10. SSG Google WordPress Audio Player

I LOVE this thing. This is one of my favorite wordpress plugins, if not THE BEST wordpress plugn on this list in my opinion.

You see, I hate doing videos but I love doing audios. (You know got that hot Alaskan silky voice haha) and doing interviews. I actually have a small library of interviews with many six-figure income earners in our profession I have been waiting to whip out and never had a chance to till I found my hosting solution. See I was messing with Amazons3 and all this other crap I couldn’t figure out, till my friend Brandon Connell told me about this plugin.

It hosts all of your audio on your blog for free and it will also embed an actual audio player inside your blog post instead of your reader having to open up a new window for your audio (for free). Super useful.

Advice on the Best WordPress Plugins…

Please do not look at this as a definitive list. I love blogging, but it is a constantly changing and evolving world. There is new plugins coming out all the time. And some plugins I know of that I use that I didn’t mention here (but will soon in another post) used for different purposes. These are the basics, the stuff I believe every network marketing blog if not at least blog itself should have.

The greatest piece of advice I can give you on using and finding the best wordpress plugins is network with other active bloggers. Constantly be on the search for them. Developers are always coming out with new and cool things that you can use. So keep your eyes OPEN.

That way you will ALWAYS have the best wordpress plugins on your blog, and make your audience very happy and giddy to promote you all over the internet-worlds that-be. Goodluck and good wordpress plugin hunting/installing.

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