This video shows you why you should install the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin instead of just embedding the Google Analytics tracking code straight into your blog. It shows you how it uses WordPress functionality to save all sorts of post meta data in custom variables and events, and where to find these custom variables and events in Google Analytics.
Tag Archives | Analytics
These Top 5 Powerful WordPress Plugins Help With SEO and Rankings
These Top 5 Powerful WordPress Plugins Help With SEO and Rankings
Website design does not need to be as difficult as it is made out to be. In the past, it was a requirement and a must to have to hire a web designer to setup your website. With the advancements in the website hosting platforms, and the amount of open source scripts, like WordPress, anyone can setup a professional website in a matter of minutes. If you go with WordPress, then there are going to be some specific WordPress plugins you will need to install to make the most of your site.
For starters, you will need a plugin to help with the search engine optimization. The one WordPress plugin I recommend for this is the All-In-One-SEO plugin. WordPress by itself does a bad job with SEO, so a plugin is required to help get your sites ranked well.
One of the SEO tips people fail to do is the interlinking of the internal pages of the site. There are a few plugins which do this, but the one I recommend is the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP). This plugin runs a calculation, and determines the most related posts on the site. It then lists these below the original post on the page. This helps with internal links and also with adding more topic related content on the page.
You will also need to analyze the website traffic. Most people use Google Analytics for the their traffic stats. And, while this is good, I like to use Statpress Reloaded. This is an awesome plugin that allows you to look at the traffic to your site while still in the admin area. I especially use it to see if I have any error pages, and then I can fix these immediately.
Here is one of my most favorite plugins: Wptouch iPhone Theme. It seems everyone has an iphone, or android, or the Blackberry. The problem with these is normal websites just do not look good on here. The Wptouch plugin determined the viewers Operating System (OS), and then displays your website based on this. This is a growing traffic area, so you should be making sure you have this optimized and monetized as well.
And, of course, you still need to let Yahoo, MSN, and Google know you have updated web pages. Installing the Google Sitemaps Plugin takes care of this for you. It only takes a minute to setup, and then it runs automatically for you.
Those are my top 5 WordPress plugins you must have in order to even begin to be a successful blogger. Since you can install all of the plugins directly from the admin dashboard, it makes it a piece of cake to get your WordPress blog/website optimized and ready to run. So, if you are using WordPress for your website, just make sure these additional powerful plugins are installed. Without them, you will have a much more difficult time being successful.
How to Use WordPress to Automate Your Business
How to Use WordPress to Automate Your Business
If you haven’t heard of WordPress, listen. WordPress is an amazing blogging platform — but it’s so much more than that. In fact, this article will teach you some things as to how to use WordPress to automate your website and therefore your business, leaving you time to do the things you enjoy without having to keep your finger on every little “”nook and cranny”” job that needs to be done. Here are just some of the things WordPress can do.
AdSense
If you use AdSense to earn extra income on your site, the AdSense Integrator can both dad and then manage the AdSense ads you put on your blog, effortlessly following the last AdSense rules and updates without your having to keep on top of them. This is one way when it comes to how to use WordPress that you can really earn passive income without having to do anything except for adding the initial plug-in.
Google Analytics
When it comes to how to use WordPress to track your customers, Google Analytics will help you keep track of who’s visiting your page, where they’re from, and a lot more information that’s valuable when it comes to knowing your customers. The Google “”Analyticater”” offered by WordPress makes it very easy to add this to your website.
XML Sitemaps
The XML Sitemaps plug-in will make you much more visible to your customers — in fact, if your customers can’t find you, it’s not likely you will have any business at all to speak of. However, Sitemaps easily makes you visible to search engines as they crawl your site, which gets you seen on the web — and therefore gets you more customers.
AWeber
AWeber is a service that, although not free, can really help you explode your business. Used with WordPress, it’s another way you can really automate your business. With this service, you can basically turn autoresponder functions into guaranteed customer draws. You can create website sign-up forms, which will help you attract customers; instead of simply having visitors anonymously visit your site and then go away, you can simply include a sign-up form on your blog using AWeber’s simple “”point-and-click”” interactive functionality.
That’s not all, though. While most auto responders will send canned messages to subscribers after sign-up and other functions, AWeber actually provides you the ability to give personalized e-mails to subscribers or customers in an automated sequence that’s really going to give you the ability to connect with your customers — and your potential customers, too. What’s more, you can also schedule autoresponder functions so that they’ll go up when you know your customers are likely to be thinking about reordering, as applicable. Again, this is all automatic, and he will only rarely have to lift a finger after initial setup.
All of this and more is available if you know how to use WordPress and associated plug-ins and services to fully automate your business. Of course, your business is still going to need you to run it, but automating it as much as possible for the simple day-to-day mundane tasks such as those described above will to free you up to focus on the really important part of your business, which is to provide quality products and/or services.
A Detailed Look at Some of the Most Popular WordPress Plugins
A Detailed Look at Some of the Most Popular WordPress Plugins
One of the most popular WordPress plugins being downloaded on a daily basis is WordPress.com Stats, in fact at the time of writing it has been downloaded more than 37,000 times. To be able to use this WordPress plugin you will need to be running WordPress version 2.1 or higher. It is also compatible up to 2.7 beta.
WordPress.com Stats offers you a really simple way of retrieving data. I sometimes find that the more complex stat systems such as Google analytics or mint provide far too much information which can be confusing especially if you are new to blogging.
Installation is extremely easy, and is done in 4 steps
1. First you will need to upload stats.php to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.2. Then activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.3. It will then ask you to enter your WordPress.com API key, you will need to do this to enable it to work.4. After a few minutes your stats will show.
Once installed you can view the stats in less than 20 minutes. It also has the added function of not including the hits of logged on users, which is especially handy if you are constantly updating and adding new posts.
This WordPress plugin will provide you with valuable information such as letting you know which pages and posts are the most popular, what people are clicking on and where your traffic is coming from. The way the information is viewed is very simple and easy to understand.
You can use the plugin on either a hosted or unhosted accounts and because all the data collection and processing is not done on your server it does not effect the load on your hosting account making it one of the fastest stats systems you can use.
Another of the most popular WordPress plugins is Google XML sitemaps. Over 1000 people per day are adding this plugin to their websites and blogs and the main advantage is because as you update or create a post the sitemap is automatically updated and the new information is passed to all major search engines such as Google, YAHOO, MSN and ASK.
You will need to be running WordPress 2.1 or higher to be able to install it and also have access to an ftp programme in order to create the files needed to install the software.
Adding WordPress plugins to your blog will not only give you access to a lot more information, these plugins are designed to make your website more pleasing to the eye and far more user friendly taking it to the next level.
How to Install WordPress Plugins
How to Install WordPress Plugins
When it comes to WordPress plugins, there are hundreds… if not thousands to choose from. Trying to decide what’s best for you and your site can be a bit tricky.
Before we get into a lot of the “”supplementary”” plugins there are a few “”core”” plugins that EVERY WordPress site should have. These plugins are critical to ensure the success of your site AND leveraging the power of WordPress with internet marketing.
I will briefly discuss each plugin and why they are so critical:
#1 –
All in One SEO Pack – WordPress itself isn’t very SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly. There are a LOT of improvements that could be made to each and every page and post that is created. All in One SEO Pack does a fantastic job of allowing you to update the title tags, meta description, and meta keyword to ensure your page/post is SEO friendly.
#2 –
Google Analytics for WordPress – It doesn’t matter how good you THINK your site is … without Google analytics you will never actually KNOW how visitors interact with your site AND how you can make it better. If you seriously want a site to succeed online and you do not have Google Analytics, or some kind of statistic tracking code installed on your site, you will NOT succeed. Simple as that.
#3 –
Google XML Sitemaps – This is a very powerful plugin for Search Engine Optimization. It ensures all your pages, even recent ones, can get indexed quickly and efficiently. Google themselves have stated that have a “”sitemap”” WILL help for indexing purposes.
#4 –
Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/eMail – This one may not be quite a critical as the above plugins but lends itself nicely to viral marketing. Giving your visitors the ability to “”share”” your website/page with others can tremendously help your SEO and traffic initiatives. This plugin will vary in importance depending on your site however I strongly recommend have this installed … just in case …
This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of plugins. There are other plugins that could arguably make this list however I wanted to keep it fairly short and sweet and focus on two of the most important elements of a site TRAFFIC and TESTING.
Improve Your Shopping Cart
Improve Your Shopping Cart
If you want visitors to your site to use your shopping cart you need to make improvements to the usability of the cart and to make the purchase process as simple and short as possible.
Did you know that the checkout process is where more sales are lost than any other time during the buying process? Check your analytics and see if you have a large number of individuals leaving your site before finishing the checkout process, if this is happening than you know that you definitely need to make improvements. In order to determine where you need to make shopping cart improvements you can ask someone who is not familiar with your website to go through the process and check out the usability of your shopping cart. Ask them to specifically comment on how accessible the shopping cart is, if it is easy to use, if they ran into problems were they able to find instructions on how to use the cart, and did they find the shipping and payments methods that they prefer to use?
Investigate how easy it is to navigate around finding products. Do you have a search feature and does it give accurate results?
If you belong to any business forums ask members to rate your site and their shopping experience.
Ask yourself how organized your site is, how secure do people feel making purchases and how user friendly is the shopping experience on your site?
Your shopping cart is one of the most important parts of your Website. Periodically evaluating the shopping cart from a user’s point of view can improve not only your shopping cart but improve your sales as well.
Look at your shopping cart objectively does it meet all of your needs as the administrator? Can you manage all of the product fulfillment, payment and shipping needs in a timely manner without mistakes? Evaluate the hosting, customer service and technical support of the company who’s shopping cart you are using. How happy are you with the features? When upgrades are available is there an additional fee or are upgrades free to existing customers?
Does your shopping cart blend in well with your Website? Do you receive the information you need about your customers and their sales? Does your shopping cart have the capability to have an affiliate program, produce a newsletter or evaluate the shopping experience of your customers?
Does your shopping cart grow with your business or have you outgrown the shopping cart?
What do reviewers say about the shopping cart you are using? Can you find customer reviews of the shopping cart and if so, are they favorable?
After evaluating your shopping cart is customer service responsive to your need to make improvements? Do they give you suggestions or upgrades?
Seeing how important your shopping cart is to the success of your online business spending time evaluating how well your present shopping cart is performing and finding out what your customers think about your shopping cart is important and should be done on a regular basis.
WordPress Plugins Tutorial – The MOST IMPORTANT 3
www.jacobspaulsen.com Short video about installing and utilizing the most important 3 wordpress plugins.