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How about bringing an attractive, engaging website online? This would be a great way to get a business off to a great start in 2018. A website's ability to bring in traffic is not enough, however.

If it isn't responsive, those who rely on mobile devices can easily be turned off by what they see (or are unable to see).

Having a responsive website is, therefore, a "must". The good news is that ThemeForest offers thousands of responsive themes. Yet, who wants to sift through thousands of themes to find the best fit for a given project?

You really want to be able to narrow your choices down to a much smaller number of providers. That's what we've done for you.

These aren't just any WordPress theme providers. With these 10, you'll get the greatest value for your money.

Every new web-building project has its unique challenges, whether they arise from a set of unusual client requirements or the difficulty in finding a theme that's a good fit for a given business or business niche.

Be Theme has you covered with its selection of 300+ pre-built websites. Your business may be an accounting firm, a sports club, and auto dealership, or a bistro. A one-page website may make the most sense, or a website featuring an awesome portfolio for a creative individual or agency could be what's needed. It doesn't matter.

Each pre-built website is responsive and customizable, so if you find a template that's a close fit, you can easily make adjustments to create a perfect fit.

A pre-built website can be installed with a single click. From that point on, building a website is an easy task thanks to powerful tools like the Muffin Builder, the Options Panel, and a host of additional features to help you along the way, plus there's no need for coding.

Kalium is also well worth considering. This is especially true if you're looking for a multi-purpose Website theme. Kalium has all the layouts, shortcodes, and design elements you're ever likely to need. The demo sites make it easy to get a website-building project off to a quick start.

While Kalium's page-building features were created with the professional web designer in mind, this WordPress theme is delightfully easy to use. Even if you happen to be a first-time user, you can still create an engaging website or blog, an awesome portfolio, or a ready-to-go online store from one of the many shop layouts, in minutes.

In addition to home-page demos, you'll find a nice selection of demos for your landing pages as well.

If you choose Kalium, you'll be adding an award-winning ThemeForest best seller to your website-building toolkit.

If you can imagine it, you can build it. That's Pro's claim; and this game-changing WordPress theme definitely has what it takes to live up to that claim. Designed with creative professionals, and those who aspire to be, in mind, Pro utilizes an easy to work with the modular approach, coupled with an extensive array of design elements, free extensions, and more.

There's no need for coding, and if you prefer, you can do your design work with Pro directly from your browser. With the Header Builder, you can create anything from the most basic headers, to those that will blow your mind. The Content Builder's optimized workflow capabilities can make you a poster child for productivity, and you can use the Footer Builder's features to demonstrate that footers can be things of beauty.

To repeat. If you can imagine it, you can build it.

If you have a news-oriented website in mind, one featuring a magazine format, a blog or a publishing website, the Envato-authored Newspaper theme will be an excellent choice.

This theme's layouts are responsive and retina ready, and its 48+ demos cover everything from food, fitness, and lifestyle to art, law, and beauty; each of which can be highly customized. Moreover, it has a frontend page builder, an intelligent ad system, and premium widgets.

Uncode is a pixel-perfect theme you'll find ideal for building awe-inspiring portfolios. It will appeal to artists, creative web designers, and bloggers. Uncode is packed with everything you need, including a tailored version of Visual Composer, so you don't have to worry about writing code.

A key feature is the centered mobile menu that ensures your website will look great on mobile devices.

Starting with its selection of 70+ beautiful design concepts, TheGem doesn't stop there. This amazing one page/multipage-ready multipurpose theme features more than 200 creative page templates (demos), shortcodes, widgets, multiple header and footer options, unlimited layout possibilities, and much more.

Smart tools, such as the latest Visual Composer, plus the intuitive GUI, make website, blog, and portfolio building easy; with no coding required. TheGem could be called the "Swiss Army knife" of WordPress themes.

The Core's website demos address key business, corporate, non-profit, and creative niches, making you feel as if you own a host of different WordPress themes instead of one. This flexible theme provides you with a host of layouts and design options, it's responsive, and it requires no coding.

There are plenty of tutorials, and if you have a question or need help, The Core's user support is rock solid.

If you are a realtor, or your client is one, or represents a real estate agency, Houzez is a love affair in the making. Not only does this responsive WP theme's attractive layouts conform to industry standards, but its other features and functionalities, including advanced property search, payment options and membership options, combine to make Houzez a complete package.

All the design elements you'll need are there too.

If launching a successful online store is your goal, you might as well use a WordPress theme that's dedicated toward that goal. XStore is just such a theme.

With this minimalist, responsive theme, with its selection of 70+ customizable good-to-go shops, it's easy to create a fully-functioning, eye-popping online store that's guaranteed to get you off to a great start.

This is the only all-in-one solution for creating an online directory on the market. The Listing Pro Directory WordPress theme is the #1 best-selling ThemeForest theme of its type, having accounted for more than 3000 units sold in less than 6 months.

With Listing Pro, you don't have to worry about coding, or any need for paid plugins. Everything you'll need comes with the package.
Summing Up
Pick one of these 10 best responsive WordPress themes, and you can be assured of getting off to a good start in 2018.

They have the features and functionalities you need to get a project underway. Also, they have everything needed to help you maintain your momentum until you're ready to go online.

If you looking for a multipurpose website builder, you find the best ones here. The same goes for the case when you opt for one that addresses a specific niche.

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The 10 Best WP Themes That Will Make Your Website Look Amazing In 2018

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How about bringing an attractive, engaging website online? This would be a great way to get a business off to a great start in 2018. A website's ability to bring in traffic is not enough, however. If it isn't responsive, those who rely on mobile devices can easily be turned off by what they see (or are unable to see).

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Getting started on a web design project can be intimidating. There are a lot of moving parts, and clients tend to expect high quality. Goal identification, scope definition, sitemap and wireframe creation, content creation, UI design, testing the site, these are all the elements that the web design process most commonly includes.

In other words, there's a lot that could go wrong. And I'm not saying this to scare you, but to let you know how important it is to come prepared, and to always have your game plan ready.
"Don't bring a knife to a design fight."
So today, we're looking into 10 web design tips that you need to keep in mind when designing a website for your client. This goes for all types of websites where a business is selling to a customer (B2C). Think e-commerce stores, small business websites, product websites, and so on.
1. Set the Expectations Right A web design project cannot be successful until you have defined what "success" actually means.
Depending on how experienced your client is with the idea of owning a website, they may or may not be able to articulate what they truly need.

This can be catastrophic later down the road. There's nothing worse than a client realising mid-project that, "this is not what I wanted!"

That's why it's incredibly important to set the expectations during your initial communication with the client. Here are 5 questions to ask:

What's the value of this website for you and your business?

What do you want the website to achieve?

How do you want to measure the website's success?

Is the website an essential part of your business? Or is the website a place to provide information on the company, an extension of the brand (microsite), or a side project?

Who is the target audience? Who will visit the website?

Once you have the answers, prepare a document that will "sell" the client on your proposed solution. Include that document with the contract. At this point, you've limited the number of surprises that can pop up later on.
2. Define the Goal
This one is in direct correlation with the previous point. Quite simply, a website without a clear, single goal has no chance of being successful.

The goal is something that you and your client should define together. The goal needs to be clearly defined, measurable and achievable. Here's an example of a good goal for a website:

Option: A good goal for a website should be these three things:

Clearly defined. E.g. "it needs to bring in sales."

Measurable. E.g. "it needs to bring in at least X sales a month."

Achievable. Not "it needs to bring in gazillion sales a month."

And most importantly, a website should have only. One. Main. Goal.
3. Think Audience First, and Solve a Specific Problem
Goals are what your client wants to achieve with the website. Problem solving is something that the website does for its audience.
"Let the audience know what's in it for them."
For example, here's Dollar Shave Club:

The main purpose of this e-commerce website is to deliver new blades and shaving accessories to people every month. The Dollar Shave Club's subscription based service solves the problem of having to buy those items at multiple different locations. The website's message and goal (buy now) are clear. In order to convert visitors into customers, the designers created a user experience and navigation focused only on the things their audience wants to know when considering the subscription based purchase.
4. Put Content First
No amount of beauty can replace good content presentation. Content is king. You should always be thinking about content because content drives engagement, and engagement drives action.

As a web designer, the worst thing you can do is put beauty above function. Or, as John Maeda says it, "spray-on design."

Always start with the content that your client wants to showcase on the website, and only then think how design can help make that content more visible and resonate with the audience better.

For example, if you're building an e-commerce store, you should think about how you can make the products stand out rather than blend in with the rest of the design. Here's an example by Tessemae's:

Notice how the products are the most visible elements on the page. Not the header, or the menu, or anything else.
5. Respect Web Standards
Standards are great. Learn to love them. Don't rebel.

There's one main reason why standards are great: people - your audience - have gotten used to them. Don't make your user learn a new design language to navigate the website. Make it easy for your users by implementing web standards that they've already come to understand.

For example, every e-commerce store places the shopping cart module in the upper right corner. They don't do that because it's pretty. They do it because people expect to find the shopping cart there.

Here's an example by Wrightwood Furniture:

Embrace other web standards, too. Such as:

Logo in the top left (a Nielsen Norman study says that users are 89 percent more likely to remember logos shown in the top-left position).

Consistent branding and look across the whole website (individual pages shouldn't follow different design patterns - something often occurring with e-commerce stores).

Contact in the top right or center (for example, as visible in the screenshot above).

Main navigation across the top and avoiding confusing menus (which are annoying to the users, as another Nielsen Normal study shows).

Value proposition and call-to-action high up on the homepage (making your call-to-action highly visible guarantees better conversions).

Search feature in the header.

Sign-up box in the footer.

6. Make Navigation Simple
If people can't navigate from point A to point B easily then the website won't be able to achieve its goal.

Therefore, your navigation design should require only the minimum amount of information needed to get the user from A to B quickly.

Start by laying out the most important steps along the user's journey through the website. Make sure that your navigation helps them with that journey instead of making things more difficult. Think how you can help the user do what they already want to do rather than forcing them to see things your way. Utilise website navigation best practices and know basic patterns of mobile navigation for an optimised user experience.

Here's a nice example by Ugmonk.com. Notice how the navigation is very minimal, and only gives you a handful of main options. At the same time, it makes it very clear what page you are currently browsing:
7. Focus on Mobile
Mobile is where things are at right now - from surfing the web and watching media, to engaging on social media and shopping. Today, more people go online on mobile than on desktop.

For this reason, you absolutely have to make sure that your website design is mobile optimised, meaning that everything is completely operational on mobile. "Completely operational", means that all the features, including the shopping cart, need to work flawlessly for a great user experience.

Here are two examples of websites with very good mobile optimisation in terms of the layout and how easily accessible all the UI elements are:
8. Don't Disregard Typography
When you're in the trenches and working on the visual aspects of your project, it's easy to make typography an afterthought ... just adding some fonts to an otherwise "finished" design.

Please don't.

These days, many quality web design projects rely heavily on typography, basically making typography not just a design element but a design tool in and of itself. Another great thing about good typography - and this is something that relates to the previous point - is that it must work on all devices.

Here's an example by Bittermilk (viewed on desktop):

And on mobile:
9. Deliver in Batches
Please notice how the choice of fonts, colours, spacing, etc. plays a role in the overall look and feel of the whole page, and works well on both a desktop and mobile.

Designing in solitude is never a good idea. If you think that building something behind closed doors and then revealing it to your client after X amount of weeks will produce good results then, sorry, but you're wrong.
10. Embrace Social Media
Instead, divide the project in two or three main parts, based on the complexity of the project, and deliver those pieces according to the set schedule. Each time, get feedback from the client and adjust the rest of the process accordingly.

Just like mobile, social media is an ever-present element in the modern web landscape. Don't ignore it.

Whether we like it or not, or more accurately, whether your client likes it or not, social media is where people are, and they will certainly be spending way more time on Facebook than on your client's website. So, use that to your advantage.

It's been reported that around two billion people visit Facebook every month. For that reason, you absolutely have to build some social media integration into your client's website. By doing so, you're making it more likely for people to share the client's content or products and thus helping others find it by directing traffic to the website

Here's a good example by The Colossal Shop (notice the small social media buttons under the item's price):
What's Next?
As much as The Colossal Shop would want for people to stay on their pages indefinitely, they know that's not a real possibility, so they provide handy tools for sharing the word about their products.

While we've only scratched the surface of what it takes to design a successful website, follow these web design commandments to get you started on your next project. Remember to avoid common mistakes, and that graphic designers have skills that naturally translate to web design and user experience.

Get tips for being a freelance designer, increasing your income as a web designer and if you should offer additional services as a web designer. If you'd like to see what other advice we have for you, feel free to hop over to the Adobe XD blog.

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10 Tips for Getting Started on a Web Design Project | Creative blog by Adobe

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Getting started on a web design project can be intimidating. There are a lot of moving parts, and clients tend to expect high quality. Goal identification, scope definition, sitemap and wireframe creation, content creation, UI design, testing the site, these are all the elements that the web design process most commonly includes.

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You need a website for your business. But websites aren't simple things.

The design needs to look great. Customers need to be able to navigate it easily. You need to optimize it for search engines. And you need to protect it from spammers.

The list goes on.

So how do you manage to do all these things and more?

Use WordPress, of course.

WordPress is the world's most popular system for managing content.

It's so popular that users publish every secondon WordPress sites around the world.

And if you use WordPress for your website, you're in good company. These famous sites all use WordPress, too:

It's no wonder. WordPress is awesome.

First of all, it's "open source." That means the original source code is freely available and you can modify and redistribute it to your heart's content.

That makes WordPress a flexible and customizable website builder and content management system.

But here's the cool part.

Along with the thousands of pre-made you can use to help design your site, WordPress also allows you to install plugins.

Plugins are apps you can use with WordPress. They allow you to add new features to your site.

And you need them.

Plugins help you to optimize your site for search engines, protect it against spammers, and improve the user experience.

But there are over 52,000 plugins in the official directory. So which ones do you need?

Every business has different needs, but there are some plugins that every WordPress website should have, regardless of industry.

Here are nine vital (and free) WordPress plugins you need to start using today.

OK, so there are over 52,000 plugins available, but you don't want to download more than you need.

If you do, you risk making your website load slower, and users won't be happy.

So what if there was a plugin that provided several features in one place?

Thankfully, there is. It's called Jetpack.

Jetpack has over four-million active installs, but many WordPress users still don't understand what it does or how they can use it to improve their website.

Think of Jetpack as the ultimate toolkit for your WordPress website.

It has to help you design your site, track statistics, improve social sharing, and prevent attacks.

All these core features are free, too.

You also have the option of adding advanced features like spam protection, daily backups, and with one of their simple and affordable plans.

Another key benefit to Jetpack is that WordPress.com hosts all of its features.

Because WordPress takes some of the load from your server, it will help your site run smoothly despite the extra features.

Once you've installed it, it will show you the dashboard.

The dashboard provides an overview of the features you're using, like the analytics displayed here.

By clicking on "Settings," it will take you to a new window with tabs.

Each of the tabs has a group of featured settings.

Jetpack has a lot to offer, so install it now and see which of the features your business needs most.

Everyone wants their website to rank higher on search engines.

But SEO is horrendously complex, right?

Well, it can certainly feel that way sometimes. But with the Yoast SEO plugin, on-page SEO efforts become a breeze.

This powerful tool allows you to select a keyword and then optimize your page around it.

Below, you can see what the plugin looks like at the bottom of your page/post editor.

At the top are two tabs. Here, the second tab shows where you're able to optimize your title, meta description, and URL.

The meta description is what shows up on search engines underneath your title and URL.

By using a simple traffic-light system, it also breaks down the SEO and gives you tips on how to improve the page.

In this example, you can see that you need to add more keywords.

In the other tab, it breaks down the readability of your page, while also showing you how to improve it.

Excited yet?

It's no wonder Yoast SEO is one of the most popular WordPress plugins available.

There's also a premium version which provides extra functions and allows you to optimize your page for up to five keywords.

Plus you can configure all of these features in the settings tab.

Make sure you set up Yoast SEO today and start optimizing your pages and posts to improve your website's ranking.

Everyone hates spam, but unfortunately, it's a part of life.

As soon as your WordPress website goes live, you can expect spam comments to start showing up.

What's worse is that many of these spam comments will look genuine.

Still, comment spam clogs up your site and ruins the experience for your readers.

And if it's not dealt with properly, you risk losing readers and potentially damaging your brand.

Thankfully there's a reliable, effective plugin to take care of this for you.

Akismet is the official anti-spam plugin made by WordPress parent company Automattic.

It has over 35-million downloads, making it the most popular plugin of all time.

There's a reason why it's popular, and if you aren't using it already, you should be.

Once installed, you need to get an API key to start using the service.

Simply click "Get your API key" and follow the instructions.

Once you finish, make sure you paste your API key into the box and choose where you'd like spam comments to go.

Once again, you have the option of updating to a premium plan for higher security.

Still, the free version of Akismet is fantastic.

Install this essential plugin to prevent comment spam and improve your site's user experience.

You've been there.

You're painfully waiting for a web page to load with your cursor hovering over the back button for when your patience evaporates.

A slow site can frustrate visitors and, in turn, hurt conversions.

That's why you need the WP Super Cache plugin.

Online, a cache is a place that stores data temporarily.

It takes time to load an entire web page from scratch. So, your browser will store files in its cache from web pages you've visited before.

That means it doesn't have to receive as much "fresh" information from the site, which results in a faster load time.

WP Super Cache creates static pages of your site. These pages are then served instead of processing the full PHP scripts.

In turn, this will reduce the page-serving time.

Without caching your page, your load times will increase significantly.

WP Super Cache also provides caching for visitors using a mobile device.

Here you can see the plugin is quite straightforward to use.

Although there are many features and controls you can configure, simply turning caching on will speed up your site's load times.

Make sure you install this plugin to optimize your site and avoid frustrating your visitors.

You need search engines to index your site.

And to do this effectively, search engines need a sitemap.

A sitemap file helps search engines crawl and index your site properly.

Without one, your ranking will suffer, and the information search engines display might become outdated.

Thus, submitting a sitemap to search engines is essential to your SEO efforts.

But doing this manually sucks.

That's why you need to install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin.

This plugin creates a dynamic sitemap of your WordPress website, which is compatible with Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Google XML Sitemaps allows you to notify search engines about changes to your sitemap.

And when you update your website or publish new blog posts, the plugin will notify search engines automatically.

Pretty cool, right?

Seriously, this plugin is a huge time saver and a must-have feature for every WordPress website.

Make sure to install it to boost your site's ranking on search engines.

Images are vital.

Without them, content can become dry and unengaging.

About 37% of marketers said visual marketing was the most important form of content for their business, second only to blogging at 38%.

But high-quality images tend to be large files that are slow to load.

So now you have a dilemma. If you skimp on the images, you risk boring your visitors. But if you use too many, you risk frustrating viewers with slow-loading pages.

You can always manually compress each image before uploading it to your website, but who has time for that?

That's why you need the Smush plugin.

This plugin compresses and optimizes your images automatically.

With it, you can use plenty of images on your pages and posts, while keeping your load times quick.

It's a win-win.

Here you can see what the plugin looks like when running a "Bulk Smush."

After installing the plugin, follow the prompt to bulk smush all your images.

Next, make sure that "Automatic smushing is enabled" is showing in the top right-hand corner of the window.

Smush shows you how many megabytes you've saved on the right-hand side of the window, as well.

You also have the option of upgrading to the WP Smush Pro plugin.

The pro version delivers better compression and removes bulk-smushing limits.

Install the Smush plugin so you can continue to publish visual content while preserving your page-load times.

One of the easiest ways for people to contact you on your website is a contact form.

No one wants to copy and paste an email address so they can email you, especially on a mobile device.

Instead, install WPForms.

This plugin is incredibly user-friendly and yet powerful in features.

Here's what the WPForms drag and drop building looks like when you use it to create a contact form.

First, you can save time by choosing from templates of the most commonly created forms.

Then, you can customize the form by dragging and dropping the fields you need.

For example, you might want to add a phone number field or delete the message subject line field.

Once you've finished, you can click the embed button at the top of the window and paste the shortcode into the page where you'd like it to show up.

The forms come with simple styling that tailors itself to your theme. They're also responsive and mobile-friendly by default.

Here's an example of what it can look like.

You can also create as many forms as you need with WPForms.

It has built-in automatic spam prevention, and you can prevent bots by adding CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, or even Google's new Invisible reCAPTCHA so you don't frustrate your visitors.

You can also customize the confirmation messages visitors will see when they interact with your form.

Click on the "Settings" tab and then "Confirmation" to edit them.

You can use WPForms to make sure you have an efficient, user-friendly way for visitors to get in touch.

With the premium version, you can unlock more powerful features like smart conditional logic, customizable email notifications, file uploads, multi-page forms, post submissions, and much, more.

The WordPress page editor is pretty basic.

So unless you know how to code (and you're happy spending the extra time doing so), you'll need a page builder so you can quickly create the designs you want.

What's a page builder?

It's a plugin that allows you to build your pages with sections, modules, and widgets.

There are hundreds of them available, but most are either costly or they lack the features you need.

There are also two types of page builders: back-end and front-end.

You use a back-end editor within the WordPress editor. Every time you make a change, you have to click "Preview" and refresh the live page to see what your changes look like.

That's super annoying.

But front-end editors let you edit the actual page so you can see what you're doing when you're doing it.

Enter Elementor.

Elementor is a simple and intuitive front-end editor packed with features.

This plugin gives you detailed control over every element on your page. And the best part - it's free.

Building a page from scratch can waste valuable time, but Elementor comes with a bunch of templates ready to go.

Or, you can save your custom-built layouts to use again on other pages.

In the example below, I'm using the editor to start building a new page.

On your web page, you can click to add a new section or template.

Then, using the editor on the left-hand side, you can add and edit all kinds of widgets.

Elementor can take some getting used to, as they give you a lot of design control for each module.

Although Elementor has a Pro version with some extra features, they've said the free version will keep all its existing features.

It has some great options for responsive settings, and they recently released mobile editing, too.

Install the Elementor page builder plugin to create stunning, user-friendly designs on your WordPress website.

Data tracking is vital to the continued growth and improvement of your website.

Without the facts, you're left in the dark to guess.

A tool like Google Analytics can help you improve your website, , and user experience.

It lets you find out which online campaigns are bringing you the most traffic and conversions, and how each web page is performing.

With the MonsterInsights plugin, you can easily add, customize, and manage the Google Analytics website-tracking services. You can do all this from within your WordPress dashboard.

It makes tracking your website with Google Analytics much easier.

Formerly named Google Analytics for WordPress, MonsterInsights was originally developed by Yoast.

The plugin allows you to view all the basic statistics like sessions and bounce rate.

Additionally, you can use it to set up tracking for outbound links, internal links, and downloads.

If you opt to pay for the premium version, you'll get extra features, like e-commerce tracking through apps. That includes WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.

Once you've installed the app, you'll need to link it to your Google account to begin using the features.

Simply click on "Authenticate with your Google account" and follow the instructions.

Once linked, click on the "Tracking" tab to see a list of all the features you can configure.

Install MonsterInsights to start gathering vital data on how you can improve your website.

Conclusion

A lot goes into website design and maintenance.

And whether you need to optimize your site for search engines, or improve the user experience, WordPress plugins are vital.

Start with Jetpack to gain website-tracking features and more.

Then make sure your SEO is on point with Yoast. And don't forget Google XML Sitemaps to help you rank.

Next, block those spammers with Akismet. Because nobody likes a bot's opinion.

Use WP Super Cache and Smush Image Compression and Optimization to make sure your pages are loading quickly.

Then take things up a level and build beautiful pages with Elementor Page Builder.

Finally, track all your hard work with MonsterInsights directly in your WordPress dashboard.

If you had to do all the necessary tasks manually, it would take you an enormous amount of time. And if you hired a web developer to do them for you, it would cost you a hefty sum of money.

Plugins perform these complicated tasks, so you don't have to.

And by installing these core, foundational plugins, you'll be well on your way to a better performing website for your business.
What plugins do you use that are essential to your WordPress website?

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9 Vital (And Free) WordPress Plugins Every Website Needs

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You need a website for your business. But websites aren't simple things. The design needs to look great. Customers need to be able to navigate it easily. You need to optimize it for search engines. And you need to protect it from spammers. The list goes on.

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Do you want to create a pay-per-view site with WordPress? Building a pay-per-view site is a great way for content creators to make money online. In this article, we will show you how to create a pay-per-view site in WordPress and make money by selling content directly to your users.

How Pay-Per-View Websites Work?

Pay per view model allows content publishers to directly sell content to users. Instead of relying on advertising revenue, affiliate links, or other ways to make money, they can just allow users to pay for the content.

There are many different ways to create a pay per view website. Depending on how you want users to access the content, you can choose a pricing and delivery model that works best for you. For example:

You can sell each item as individual digital product

You can create daily, weekly, or yearly passes for users to gain unrestricted access

You can create subscription plans that drip content slowly instead of giving it all at once

You will need to decide which option is best for your business.

After you have chosen the model, you need to follow our step by step guide on how to make a WordPress website. If you already have the website, then you can skip this step.

Once you have a WordPress website, let's take a look at how you can turn it into a pay per view site where you can do all of the above and then some more.

Creating A Pay-Per-View Site in WordPress with MemberPress

For this tutorial, we will be using the MemberPress plugin. It is the best WordPress membership plugin in the market because it allows you to create robust membership websites with subscription plans and multiple ways to accept payments.

First, thing you need to do is install and activate the MemberPress plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the MemberPress " Options page to configure plugin settings.

The options page is divided into different tabs. For a pay-per-view site, the default options would work out of the box, but feel free to review and change them.

You will need to setup the payment gateway in order to accept payments on your site.

You can do this by clicking on the 'Payments' tab and selecting your payment gateway.

MemberPress supports PayPal (Standard, Express, and Pro), Stripe, and Authorize.net out of the box. You need to select the payment method you want to set up and provide the required credentials.

You can also setup multiple payment methods. To do that, click on the add button again and add another payment method.

Don't forget to click on the 'Update Options' button to save your settings.

Creating Membership Levels

The next step is to set up membership levels. This is where you will create different pricing plans that your users can purchase.

Head over to the MemberPress " Memberships page and then click on the 'Add New' button.

This will bring you to the edit membership page. First you need to provide a title for this particular membership plan and then provide the plan details in the post editor.

Next, you need to set the pricing and expiration for this plan under the membership terms section.

In this example, we are creating a membership plan that expires in 24 hours. We have also checked the 'Allow renewals' option, so users can renew their membership and buy the day pass again if they want to.

Now, scroll down to the membership options meta box below the post editor. This is where you can setup different options for this particular membership plan.

The default membership options will work for most sites. You need to click on the Price box tab and here you can provide the details you would want to show in the pricing box.

Once you are satisfied with the membership plan, click on the publish button to make it available.

Repeat the process to create other membership plans that you need such as weekly, monthly, or yearly plans.

Restricting Content to Membership Plans

MemberPress also makes it super easy to restrict content to paid members only by creating rules.

Visit MemberPress " Rules page and click on the 'Add New' button.

The rule edit page allows you to select conditions. If the content matches the condition, then you can select which membership plan gets access to it.

For example, you can select all content that matches a particular tag, category, a single post, a particular URL, and more.

You can create generic rules that apply to all content, or you can create very specific rules for individual items on your website.

Below the rules editor, you'll see the content drip and expiration options.

Drip content allows you to gradually release content to users instead of giving it all away at once. If you are unsure about it at the moment, then you can leave it unchecked.

The expiration option makes the content unavailable after a defined period of time. Again, if you are not sure what to do, then you should leave it unchecked as well.

Don't forget to click on the 'Save Rule' button to save your rule settings.

Repeat the process to create new rules as needed.

In the example above, we have made all content tagged 'paid' available to all membership plans. Now, we just need to add the paid tag to all the content that we want to put behind the paywall.

Creating a Pricing Page

MemberPress makes it super easy to display pricing and plans that users can purchase on your website. Let's create a pricing plan page that shows users different membership plans that they can buy.

Head over to MemberPress " Groups page and click on the Add New button.

First, you need to provide a title for the group plan page. This will also be the title for the plans page that your users will see.

After that, scroll down to 'Group options' meta box. Here you can add the memberships that you want to display on the page.

You can also select a theme for your pricing table. MemberPress comes with few ready-made designs to choose from.

Once you are finished, click on the 'Publish' button to make your plan public. If you click on the 'View Group' link after publishing it, then you will be able to see your pricing and plan page.

Redirecting Users to Pricing and Plans Page

Now we want unauthorized users to be redirected to the pricing page when they try to access our restricted content.

First, you need to visit the MemberPress " Groups page and copy the URL of the group you created in the previous step.

Next, head over to MemberPress " Options page and scroll down to the 'Unauthorized Access' section. You need to check the box next to 'Redirect unauthorized visitors to a specific URL' option and then paste the group URL you copied earlier.

Don't forget to click on the 'Update Options' button to save your changes.

Now all users who try to access restricted content will be redirected to the pricing and plan page you created as a group.

Taking Your Pay-Per-View Website to the Next Level

MemberPress is a powerful plugin with tons of amazing features and lots of addons to further extend your pay per view site.

You can integrate it with LearnDash to sell courses online. Connect it to your email marketing service like AWeber or Constant Contact. You can even integrate it into an existing eCommerce store using the WooCommerce addon.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create a pay-per-view site with WordPress. You may also want to see our step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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How to Create a Pay-Per-View Site with WordPress

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Do you want to create a pay-per-view site with WordPress? Building a pay-per-view site is a great way for content creators to make money online. In this article, we will show you how to create a pay-per-view site in WordPress and make money by selling content directly to your users.

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WordPress has ceased to become just another blogging platform. Today, it is considered as the most widely used content management system. It is the most popular choice among businesses because it is easy to use and manage, flexible and highly-customizable, SEO-friendly, and given a large number of users, there's also an existing active community for support. In addition, despite being an open-source, even big brands feel secure when using WordPress.

If you are a WordPress user, you're most probably already aware of the many advantages and benefits of using it to grow your business. However, what you need to remember is that not all WordPress sites are created equal. WordPress provides you with all the tools to make the best site, but it is up to you to make the most of them.

For starters, here are the most common mistakes that you need to avoid.

Not creating a WordPress backup

Security is a huge part of owning a website. Though WordPress is a secure platform, it is up to you to make sure anything you add to your site is safe. Because it is used by 28 percent of all websites on the internet today, it is a common target of malicious attacks. If your site gets infected by malware, cleaning up might compromise your data, and you may lose information forever.

If you haven't created a backup, an attack could be devastating. Instead of starting over from scratch, automate the backup process of your site with VaultPress, BackupBuddy, or BackWPup. This is also great if you're intending on making any changes to your site.

Not updating to the newest version

It is odd that there are still a lot of users who don't update. Perhaps you are afraid that the updates might not be compatible with your site's features or that you might lose data and content. But the truth is, updates are done to improve performance and speed, usability and management, and compatibility, and security.

Being conservative would put you in an even riskier position, so as soon as there's a newer available version of WordPress, go ahead and install it, or set up automatic updates. Don't open yourself up to potential attacks or vulnerabilities because you don't want to take the time to update.

Lazy customization

One of the advantages of using WordPress is that you can easily customize it. Nevertheless, some users still don't take advantage of this. Here are some areas that you should not miss out on customizing:

Favicon

The favicon is the tiny icon found on your tab beside your page title in the browser. Change the default favicon to strengthen your branding. Use your logo or an image that will make people immediately recognize your brand.

Permalinks

Permalinks are the URLs of your posts and pages on WordPress. With the default permalink setting on WordPress, the structure looks something like /?p=23. Customizing the permalinks can optimize your posts for SEO purposes. A restructured permalink is also better for sharing your posts to different channels like social media.

Admin User

During installation, your default username is admin. When interacting with readers of your site, you don't want to use the name admin to represent your brand, the same way that your audience doesn't want to communicate with someone named admin. Also, the username admin makes your site more vulnerable to hackers.

Tagline

The tagline is the one-line description of your website. If you don't customize your WordPress, the default tagline would be, "Just Another Blog." Well, sure, you don't want to be just another blog, so go ahead and change it. You may use a tagline that is already popular in your business, or if you create a new one, make it witty without being vague.

Choosing an inappropriate or unreliable theme

Choosing a theme for your site is crucial.

There is no one ideal theme for all. It depends on the purpose of your site, its features and applications, and the message you want to portray. For example, are you building a site for eCommerce, portfolio management, or content sharing? This will help narrow down your choices.

Next, make sure that you purchase your theme from a reputable company to avoid malicious attacks. Check out the Theme Repository. Once you're sure your site will be secure, you must also consider factors such as overall look and aesthetics, responsiveness, compatibility with browsers and mobile, SEO friendliness, and plugins support. Look at ratings of other users to get an idea of the performance and capability of a theme.

Having too many categories

Limit your categories to the major areas that your site will cover. Having too many categories can be overwhelming and messy.

Organize your topics and come up with sub-topics as sub-categories. This will also guide you or a hired writer from essays.scholaradvisor in a more effective content creation. If a topic doesn't fall under any category or sub-category, it means you can make do without it. Make sure that visitors can easily navigate your site and find their desired content.

WordPress can tremendously improve your online presence and it has allowed users, such as non-professionals, an easier way to create and manage websites. Nowadays, it is no longer a matter of whether WordPress is right for you. You have established the answer to that already. The better question to ask is, "Am I using WordPress to its full capacity and capability?" If you constantly commit the mistakes listed above, then you know you are not, but luckily there are easy ways to avoid these.

Laura Buckler is a freelance writer and a former business consultant at a tech startup company. Before being fully self-employed, she also worked as a social media marketer, and now she gives advice how to make the most of it to leverage the business.

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5 Popular WordPress Mistakes that You Need to Stop Making

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WordPress has ceased to become just another blogging platform. Today, it is considered as the most widely used content management system. It is the most popular choice among businesses because it is easy to use and manage, flexible and highly-customizable, SEO-friendly, and given a large number of users, there's also an existing active community for support.

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Keyword research is only a small part of SEO, but it's an important one. No SEO strategy is complete without this vital portion of research, and devil is in the detail.

This phase can often result in mammoth amounts of data that can leave SEOs feeling lost - unless, of course, you use my go-to methodology which keeps things simple, logical and, most importantly for your brand, highly relevant to your audience.
Building your first list
Keyword research is essentially market research, so it helps to listen to your audience first. Balance that with further knowledge of your own business and products, and you have a good place to start. There are also keyword combination tools such as Merge Words to quickly build out your initial list, and maybe a few variations such as your business name and city or country that can be added too. Get the basics down into a list then move on to the next step.
On-site search
If you don't already track internal search terms on your own site in Google Analytics then make a note to look into it later, as it's a resource necessary to accurately tell what users are looking for while browsing. Once you've got tracking sorted, you can find the internal search data in Google Analytics by navigating to 'Behaviour' and then 'Search Terms'. Don't forget to set the time period as wide as possible to add all the terms to your original list.
Competitor research
Browsing the sites of your competitors is a great way to get ideas for synonyms or phrases which you may want to target. The easiest way to do this is to visit your competitors' sites and pay attention to page titles, headlines and sub-headlines, jotting down your findings. Don't forget to take a look at the navigation and footer and even the sitemap for an overview. If you're looking to be thorough, crawling tools like Screaming Frog's SEO Spider Tool can help you amass them all in one go, in addition to meta tags such as titles and descriptions. The keyword meta tag doesn't hold any SEO value (except with some aggregators such as Google News), but if your competitors use it then it's worth researching what terms they're trying to target.
Keyword suggestion tools
Now that you have an idea of the themes you'd like to cover, third-party tools like Ubersuggest and Keyword Tool can help generate the bulk of your list. Don't forget to also consider long-tail keywords, which are those that probably have less monthly search volume, but are more specific and therefore less competitive. Select your location and language, run a search for your terms and repeat as necessary.
Google search console
Google Search Console is great for showing which keywords or phrases are already generating traffic for your site. There are also paid tools that provide this with varying success, but go here first for free data from the last 90 days. You can find this data in Google Search Console, and then looking under 'Search Traffic' in the 'Search Analytics' tab.
Google analytics
In the salad days before 2011, marketers could see how individual keywords performed via Google Analytics. While we don't see all this traffic data anymore, there's often a residual amount that still gets tracked. Navigate to Google Analytics, go to the 'Acquisition' tab, then click on 'Organic Keywords'. Widen the timeframe, ignore the 'not provided' and 'not set' entries, and save everything else.
Check your volumes and feed the funnel
Now that you have your big list of keywords and phrases, it's time to get the volumes. Log into your Google AdWords account and then navigate to the 'Keyword Planner' area under the 'Tools' tab in the top navigation. Select 'get search volume data and trends', input your keywords (you may need to do this in batches), select your target country, and click 'get search volume' to get your data. To add a second batch, click 'modify search' and replace the keywords. Download your keywords to file or export to Google Docs, and select 'segment statistics by month' to see seasonal data. Once saved, sort by search volume and start picking the entries of interest. Don't let superfluous entries overwhelm you; simply highlight what you need and move on. If this process sparks any new keyword ideas, add them to the list and research those terms.
Query-based keywords
Voice search is changing the keyword landscape. More search queries are becoming actual questions in the form of complete, interrogative sentences. Search volumes for these can be low and the terms often rely heavily on context, but query-based research can provide some interesting results, and likely more so in the future. A great place to start in order to find content ideas based on keywords is Answer The Public, which is a fantastic resource that no SEO should plan without. What you do with your keyword data depends on your requirements, but following this method is effectively the most reliable and logical way to develop sound keyword analysis. What's essential is that you don't forget to keep an eye on your lists, making sure to refresh them and update your keyword volumes every so often so they're as timely and relevant as possible.
Damian Burke is senior SEO consultant at digital agency Greenlight.

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Keyword research is only a small part of SEO, but it's an important one. No SEO strategy is complete without this vital portion of research, and devil is in the detail.

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By Matt Press published August 4, 2017

You've written an article. It's good, but it's not delivering any results.

Despite targeting a seemingly easy keyword, the content is nowhere near page one in Google search results.

I was in the same spot a little bit ago after writing a lengthy article on "trade marketing," a broad subject area with lots of searches. I created the content to fill a gap I observed in my research - nothing existed that was all encompassing on the topic.

Every content marketing box was clicked - research a topic, source a valuable keyword, write an informative article, optimize for search, and promote the piece.

My site - and the content - refused to budge in the search rankings.

Every #contentmarketing box was clicked, but the content refused to budge in search rankings. @SplashCopy #SEO Click To Tweet

Three months later, it was time to do some investigating. I followed a three-step process, and discovered that searchers didn't want an ultimate guide. The evidence indicated that they wanted something else - so that's what I gave them.

If you are having the same trouble - good content without great search results - take these three steps and see what happens.
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
Pre-step: Access Google Search Console and add your website domain to connect.

Step 1: Find your search analytics

When you open Search Console, go to Search Traffic, then select Search Analytics from the drop-down menu:

Now you can see the data around how often your site appears in Google search results. Make sure all the check boxes - clicks, impressions, CTR, and position - are ticked at the top of the page.

TIP: To learn what search words result in rankings (and visits) for your site, filter by search query.

Step 2: Look at the information under the graph

Next, analyze the relationship between the number of search impressions for your site and the corresponding click-through rate.

In other words, when your site shows up in search results, how many people are motivated to click and go to that page?

As you can deduce, if your site displays for a keyword but isn't getting clicks, the issue could be with the content - topic angles, headlines, descriptions.

If your site displays for a keyword but isn't getting clicks, the issue could be the content. @SplashCopy #SEO Click To Tweet

By contrast, if you're getting a lot of clicks, you know you've done a good job with your content.

To identify which landing pages receive the search traffic, click on the keyword query.

Here's what I saw for keywords around the subject of trade marketing:

You can see from a few of the underlined examples that the keyword "trade marketing" achieved a lot of impressions, but resulted in few clicks.

In exploring the landing pages for those keywords, I learned that my original content - the ultimate guide for trade marketing - wasn't relevant to searchers of "trade marketing." However, it was relevant to people searching for "trade marketing strategies," "trade marketing examples," and "trade marketing plan." Those terms had click-through rates above 25%.

These results told me that the search audience was more interested in the strategy and example sides of the topic. And though much of the original content was highly relevant to the search term "trade marketing," it was framed in a way that put an unnecessary barrier to engagement. In short, people weren't using my content in the way I had intended.

Step 3: Change your meta title, meta description and headline accordingly

Knowing that search audiences don't see your content as relevant - even though it is - indicates an opportunity for you to make a few changes.

Knowing search audiences don't see your #content as relevant indicates an opp to make changes. @SplashCopy #SEO Click To Tweet

In my trade marketing example, I changed my meta title and meta description to:

The original meta description read:
Need trade marketing help? Discover the history of trade marketing, why it's important and which techniques are working today.
The headline of the article was changed to:

The original title simply read:
The ultimate guide to trade marketing
As you can see, this piece of content is different from an ultimate guide - though it's almost the same content, now it refers to strategies and examples.

It's a much better fit for my intended audience because it hits their pain points more accurately and visibly - the copy calls out trade marketing strategies and examples.

Results

You can use Google Search Console to monitor the effect of your changes against search results.

In my example, the piece rose to the second position on page one for "trade marketing" and has garnered clicks in droves.

OK, so what have we learned?

I've always said a good content marketer must be a detective too. From understanding what your audience members want to how they consume their content, the more information you have, the greater your chance for success. Investigating your search audience is a critical component of that overall understanding.

Investigating your search audience is a critical component of overall understanding, says @SplashCopy. #SEO Click To Tweet

Achieving SEO and content marketing success is a logical process. Google doesn't care about which website has the longest articles, the most back-links, or the most social shares. It cares about what content provides the most value to searchers - and if Google focuses on what people use content for, shouldn't you?

With this three-step process, you not only can craft a more effective headline, meta title, and meta description with what searchers want, you can also better align your content with what your readers need.
If you want more daily tips, trends, and insight to improve your content marketing, subscribe to the free CMI newsletter. Prefer a weekly version? You also can subscribe to that version. Cover image by Wilfred Iven via StockSnap Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

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Why Google Won't Rank Your Content (And Steps to Fix It)

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By Matt Press published August 4, 2017 You've written an article. It's good, but it's not delivering any results. Despite targeting a seemingly easy keyword, the content is nowhere near page one in Google search results. I was in the same spot a little bit ago after writing a lengthy article on "trade marketing," a broad subject area with lots of searches.

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The classic 1982 Activision game, Pitfall!, was so challenging that most players believed you could only win by running out the 20-minute clock. The real point of this adventure, however, was to gather up all of the treasures before the clock ran out on you.

Isn't that just like business?

You've opened the doors of your local enterprise in hopes of gathering up enough revenue before it's time to retire, and you're determined to make enough of a success to secure some dignity in your golden years.

I'm not a professional economist, but I've read their statistics on how half of US businesses don't make it past their 5th year. I'm a local SEO, and what I've learned is that to be agile enough to beat the odds, local business owners have to swing over the obvious pitfalls that less savvy competitors are doomed to become mired in. A plumbing company fakes a string of locations by using their siblings' houses to build citations, a dentist hires a notorious marketing agency to pay global workers for fictitious reviews, an auto dealership takes a quick link building shortcut and ends up with a long-term search engine penalty. Missteps like these can force a local business to bog down, coping with cleaning up mess instead of making a beeline towards lasting success.

I'm a local business fan, and I don't want to see you fail. So hang on tight to that vine in your local jungle. This is your guide to riding high, right over those bottomless pits.

Business plan

This is all about starting out on the right foot, long before opening day. Avoid these common mistakes before they become deep-seated liabilities.

1. Indistinct name

Consumers need to be able find you via a branded search, looking your business up by name after they hear it mentioned. If you name your men's clothing shop "Yacht Club," don't be surprised if Google shows searchers local marinas instead of a branded result for your business. You can plan to build the kind of authority that lets Google know that people looking up "Banana Republic" are searching for clothing and not a political science lesson, but in your early days, a vague name could slow the growth of your brand recognition and rankings.

2. Limiting name

If your business plan includes growth into other service offerings or other geographic markets, don't tie yourself to a name that limits you. For example, a new lawn care business in Plano hopes to one day offer full landscaping services and open a second office in Dallas. They'll find this harder to do if they've named their business "Plano Lawn Care." Be sure your name can encompass future growth. While it's very smart to use core keywords in your business name, be sure they won't hold you back in the future.

3. Ineligible location

Don't make the mistake of believing you can fully market a local business with a PO box or unstaffed virtual office as your public address. Both of these will render your company ineligible to create local business listings, severely limiting your Internet visibility. If you don't yet have a real office, use your home address and list yourself on only those directories that allow you to hide your address if you have privacy concerns.

4. Undesirable location

5. Filter-sensitive location

6. Lack of policies

7. Unrealistic expectations

8. Lack of demand

9. Lack of clarity

Website

If you can get your website right the first time around, you'll avoid the hassle of having to undergo a complete overhaul of your most valuable online asset a year or two down the road.

10. Limiting URL

As with the business name, don't limit yourself with a domain name that only features one facet of your business if you have plans for future expansion of services or geography. For example, don't choose a URL like sugarlandmuffler.com if you hope one day to open full-service auto repair garages in Dallas and Houston as well. Choose your domain name with an eye to the future.

11. Strange URL

Know that .com extensions are still the most recognized type of domain name. If you want consumers to easily remember and easily find your website, get a .com whenever possible. When not possible, watch this Whiteboard Friday on choosing domain names for other options.

13. Limiting provider

14. Limiting technology

Any website development technology that prevents your website from being discovered, crawled or indexed by Google represents a waste of investment. For example, websites built entirely in Flash present technical problems to both search engines and users and should be avoided. Similarly, any website development approach that fails to serve users on all devices (laptop, tablet, mobile, ambient) guarantees a loss of marketing opportunity.

15. Multi-site approach

The practice of building multiple websites to represent different locations or different services of a business is particularly prevalent in local commerce. This approach often stems from a desire to rank more broadly on the basis of exact match domains, but there are many reasons why this strategy isn't commonly endorsed by experts, including:

1. Marketing efforts being spread too thin, divided up across multiple sites instead of concentrated into building a single brand.

2. Thin or duplicate content resulting from lack of resources needed to manage more than one site.

3. Possible NAP confusion leading to local ranking problems if the same name, address, or phone number appear on more than one website.

4. A fundamental dishonesty in which a single business attempts to fool consumers into thinking it's multiple companies

With rare exceptions, it's better to pour all your efforts into building a single, powerful local brand on a single, powerful website.

16. Poor content strategy

Local businesses don't benefit by publishing website content that is insufficient, cursory, unedited, duplicative, or developed solely for the purpose of feeding keywords to search engine bots. At a minimum, each local business should create the basic pages (home, about, contact, testimonials) + a page for each main service they offer and each of their physical locations. Service-area businesses (like plumbers) should develop a page for each of their main service cities. Each page that is built should feature original, thorough, intelligently optimized copy that serves a specific goal.

Beyond the basic pages, each local business should have a plan for ongoing content publication that's proportional to its level of local/industry competition and consumer demand. This could include on-site blogging, off-site social sharing, and other strategies.

For more on local content development, read:

17. Poor architecture

If the size, complexity, or navigational options of your website are preventing consumers from getting to the pages you've built for their use, you're actively losing opportunities. The larger your site, the more likely it is that you'll have to research solutions like siloing to maximize discovery of your content by the right users and resultant conversions.

18. Lack of contact info

At minimum, your name, address, and phone number (NAP) should be published on every page of your website, either in its masthead or footer, and you should have a "Contact Us" page highly featured in your main navigation menu. Be sure your complete NAP are the first things presented on the contact page. Phone numbers should be click-to-call enabled for mobile users. Don't forget thorough driving directions and a map. For larger enterprises, contact information should include options for live chat and after-hours support.

Finally, beware of inconsistencies and typos. Audit the entire text of your website and all of its design elements to catch NAP irregularities. Don't be "Green Tree Consulting" in your logo and "Green Tree Consultants" on your About page. Your website remains the most authoritative source of information about your business, both in the eyes of consumers and search engines.

19. Lack of CTAs

A page without a call-to-action is a page without a point. A website exists to support the desires of consumers, while simultaneously supporting the objectives of the business. Don't leave it up to chance that people will intuit which actions you're hoping they'll take; tell them in plain, bold language that you'd like them to click for further reading, to make a call, to fill out a form, to attend an event, or to take advantage of a special. Every page of your website, from homepage to landing page to contact page, should feature a totally obvious call to action.

20. Link building shortcuts

Every local business wants to earn links that boost their visibility and ranking strength, but because of the extreme value search engines continue to place on links as a measure of relevance, the temptation to take shortcuts is irresistible to some business owners. A local business might intentionally or accidentally get mixed up in a link farm or get caught buying links. Before you take a risky step that might result in a horrendously costly Google penalty, read our beginner's guide to good and bad linking practices.

21. Mishandling changes

When fundamental business changes occur, like a rebrand or a move to a new website, failure to adhere to specific best practices can result in a massive loss of rankings, traffic, and transactions. For example, a chiropractor hopes to maintain as much of their Internet visibility as possible while transitioning from their old domain, mychiro.net, to a new one, joneschiropractic.com, but they fail to set up permanent 301 redirects between the two sites and lose all of the former authority they'd built up. When a foundational aspect of your business changes, research proper technical procedures for managing the transition in a way that helps (instead of hurts) your SEO and marketing. Our Moz Q&A forum is an excellent place to search for current best practices, or to ask your own question if you're a Moz Pro member.

Local business listings

They're highly visible, highly interactive, and can drive major traffic to your website and your business, but if managed incorrectly, local business listings can end up undermining your entire operation. Take maximum control of your citations to avoid these prevalent problems.

22. Guideline non-compliance

Failure to adhere to a local business platform's guidelines can result in suspensions and/or public shaming. Guideline violations can be detected both algorithmically and manually, and can be reported to platforms by the public, competitors, and marketers. Google can read street-level signage and can tell if your businesses are located in a series of legitimate commercial offices or in a string of your friends' houses. Before you list yourself on any platform, know its policies and be sure you stick to them to avoid negative outcomes.

23. NAP inconsistency

Consistency of your listings on the primary data sources is considered the fifth most important local search ranking factor. This means that your name, address, phone number, and website must be accurate and consistent on the majors (Acxiom, Factual, Localeze, and Ingroup) as well as on powerful platforms like Google My Business, Facebook, Apple Maps, Foursquare, Yelp, and Bing. Inconsistencies not only weaken search engines' trust in the validity of your data, but also misdirect your potential customers. While Google doesn't look at suite numbers and doesn't care about differences of abbreviation (st. vs. street), conflicting versions of your NAP must be discovered and corrected ASAP. Try our free Check Listing tool for an instant consistency check.

24. Listing incompleteness

A complete local business listing can feature your name, address, phone number, website, email address, hours of operation, driving directions, images, social media links, videos or video links, additional phone numbers, fax number, attributes, reviews, owner responses, and links to other media like menus. Whether you manage your listings manually or use software like Moz Local to automate distribution of your location data at scale, make sure you fill out as many available fields as possible. This ensures that a customer is given every chance to connect with your business in a variety of ways. Missing data = missed opportunities.

25. Duplicate listings

26. Wrong focus

Local business listings are critical infrastructure for nearly every local enterprise, but it's possible to overdo it or to put focus on the wrong platforms. Rule of thumb: Get accurately listed on the major sites that serve all industries and then hand-select a few additional platforms that are authoritative for your industry and geography. Don't waste effort getting listed on dozens or hundreds of low-level directories that receive little human use or don't rank for your core terms.

Once you've built your core set of listings, have a plan for monitoring them on an ongoing basis, make edits to them as needed, post updates to them where appropriate, and respond to your reviews. Once that's done, attend to other tasks. If you and your direct competitors each have about 50 citations, you getting another 25 of them from low-quality directories isn't going to move the ranking, traffic, or conversion needle. Shift focus to something that will.

27. Poor photos

It's been reported that good photos on your GMB listing will earn you 35% more clicks-to-website and 42% more clicks-for-driving directions. Given that it's increasingly speculated that user actions influence local rankings, these statistics alone encourage you to select high-quality local business listing photos. Moreover, because many platforms take a crowd-sourcing approach to the imagery that represents your business, it's important to monitor your listing photos to catch anything that's inappropriate.

You might choose to hire a Google Trusted Photographer, or, you can use some pro tips like these to go solo in creating the best possible imagery for your business.

28. Map marker misplaced

Google has been known to place map markers in the middle of oceans. If something this peculiar happens to you, your best bet is to report it in their support forum as it could stem from a bug. However, strange map marker locations can also stem from an error on your part, or the placement of your marker in the center of a bunch of zip codes you've entered in the GMB dashboard. If the normal process of moving the pin inside your GMB dashboard doesn't result in a fix, definitely reach out to the forum for support, fully documenting your issue. A misplaced pin can equal totally lost customers.

29. Driving directions wrong

If your map marker is misplaced, your driving directions will be inaccurate, but bad driving directions can result from other scenarios, too. Bad or incomplete mapping on Google's part has lead to tragic accidents and litigation, but even where no physical peril is involved, incorrect directions should be reported to Google's forum or via this process to prevent customer inconvenience and loss.

30. Lack of monitoring

Because of the way local data flows across the ecosystem and the way in which many listings are subject to public editing, citations aren't a one-and-done task. Ongoing monitoring is essential to catch inaccurate data appearing, as well as the appearance of new duplicate listings and the ongoing influx of consumer sentiment in the form of reviews.

The need for ongoing monitoring has led to the development of automated programs like Moz Local which will alert you if core NAP on your Google My Business listing changes, if a new duplicate arises, or if you receive a new review. For larger enterprises and multi-location businesses, the ability to scale monitoring is a major time-saver.

31. Mishandling changes

Rebrands, mergers/acquisitions, moves, change of phone number or website, opening or closing branches, bringing new practitioners aboard... there are many changes the average local business may face, and for each one, there's a set of correct steps to follow to defend your local rankings. Mishandling changes can result in lost visibility, lost transactions, lost reviews, and more. When your business goes through a transition, big or small, be sure you've researched best practices for handling the technical side of it well. Here's a good place to get started when it comes to your Google My Business listing.

Reviews

Reviews aren't opt-in. Your customers are telling the story of your business whether you create a profile or not. Reviews impact rankings and can have an incredible effect on the success or failure of your local business... so choose success, with the right strategy.

A business without reviews is like a job applicant without references. 84% of people trust reviews as much as a personal recommendation, and if too few people are recommending your business, a critical piece of your marketing is missing. This looks particularly unappealing when your competitors have earned a good body of positive sentiment. At the same time, Google-based reviews are believed to impact local pack rankings, mainly by sheer numbers but also with a growing emphasis on sentiment. Again, a shortage of reviews = a missing piece of your ranking strategy.

You need a review acquisition plan, but avoid any tactic that results in a large number of reviews coming in all at once on a single platform - they may be filtered out due to suspicious velocity. Aim for a steady trickle of incoming sentiment instead of a flood.

34. Guideline non-compliance

Each review platform has its own guidelines, and knowing them can make the difference between a healthy online reputation and public shaming. It's important to know the unique guidelines of the various sites, as some are more stringent than others. Yelp, for example, forbids business owners from asking for reviews, while Google allows it. Across the board, review sites prohibit paying for reviews and conflicts of interest, but if you're about to launch a new campaign requesting reviews on specific platforms, be sure your strategy won't lead to review takedowns or being called out by the public or the platform.

35. Lack of acquisition plan

36. Lack of monitoring

No big brand would want to face a 33% decline in revenue or the closure of 13% of its stores, but outcomes like these can arise when a business ignores trending consumer sentiment citing problems that require urgent fixes. Reviews provide free quality control data to businesses large and small, and it's only by monitoring this sentiment on an ongoing basis you can quickly identify emerging problems and step in with solutions that could save the brand. For example, a restaurant chain could notice from reviews that a particular location is suddenly being cited for broken fixtures or long wait times, signaling a need for intervention at that branch.

At minimum, brands large and small must either manually monitor their profiles on a schedule proportional to the daily or weekly volume of reviews they typically receive, or automate the process with software like Moz Local that tracks incoming reviews on the majors.

37. Lack of owner responses

The owner response function offered by many review platforms signifies direct reputation management, free marketing, free advertising, damage control, and quality control all in one feature. And yet, countless local businesses forego the immense power of this capability, allowing the public to have a totally one-sided conversation about their brands with zero company input. It would be impossible to count the number of review profiles out there heaping praise and blame on brands that sit unanswered, without thanks, without apologies or rectification. If your local business prides itself on customer service, it's essential to integrate reviews and owner responses in your concept of what modern consumer relations look like.

You'd never advocate ignoring an in-store customer who congratulated you or voiced a complaint, but if your business is overlooking owner responses, this is precisely what you're doing.

38. Poor owner responses

Kudos to every business owner who actively engages with their customer base via owner responses... unless those responses make things worse. Hallmarks of a poor response include lack of apology, lack of accountability, rude language, blame shifting and dishonesty. Here's a real-world example of an unfortunate owner response that made a bad situation worse, with tips for how a better reply could have saved the day.

One of the most helpful things to remember in crafting owner responses is that as few as 4% of customers may take the time to complain about a problem they encountered with your business. Complaints give you the chance to act, but silence leaves you in the dark about your company's true satisfaction rating. Complaints, including negative reviews, are invaluable. Treat complainers very, very well.

39. Poor staff training

One revealing survey discovered that 57% of customer complaints relate to poor/absent service and poor employee behavior. The fault here is obvious and lies squarely on the shoulders of the any owner who hasn't done their due diligence in creating clear customer support documentation, detailed employee guidelines, and regular staff training sessions. Owners must hire people who can be taught to represent the brand well to the public. The viability of your business is in the hands of your staff - hire, train, and support them with this in mind.

40. Review kiosks

Whether it's okay to set up a device in your shop to ask customers for reviews at the time of service continues to be a local marketing forum FAQ. Google is partly to blame for this, because they've changed their position on this practice radically over time. Their current guidelines specifically prohibit review kiosks, and sentiment received in this manner is likely to be filtered out. In fact, there's anecdotal evidence to support reviews getting removed when left by customers using in-store Wi-Fi, even on their own devices. While you can't prevent that scenario, formal kiosks shouldn't be part of your marketing plan. Better to collect emails at the time of service and write to the customer within a few days.

Social media

Consumers expect to be able to contact you via social media with their requests for help, their complaints, and their suggestions. Modern customer service must include social media listening and responsiveness, but take notes from the mistakes other brands have made so that you can avoid them.

41. Poor social skills

Anyone tasked with representing your brand on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. should be familiar with infamous social media "fails" and have the skills to avoid them. Sadly, there have been numerous cases like that of a major auto brand whose marketing agency insulted the city of Detroit with a profane tweet suggesting that locals don't know how to drive. Your social media expert must constantly guard against typos, poor wording that can be misconstrued, poor timing, and anything that reveals any type of insensitivity to any audience.

42. Guideline non-compliance

Each social platform has its own rules which, if broken, can result in removal of specific content or suspension of your profile. For example, if your local business decides to run a promotion, Facebook forbids the use of personal timelines and friend connections for the event. Failure to familiarize your company and social staff with each platform's guidelines can result in wasted investments and public embarrassment.

43. Wrong platform

Different social media platforms tend to serve different demographics, and while it's good to experiment with a variety of communities, knowing usage statistics can be helpful in picking the best places to connect with the most relevant audience. For example, if your business want to publicize a senior discount day it hosts once a week, you'll likely reach more interested customers on Facebook (used by 36% of US citizens 65+) than on Instagram (used by only 5% of this age group). Similarly, certain industries tend to be natural matches for different platforms, like Twitter for tech-related companies, or Pinterest for businesses with a strong visual component. Be prepared to explore your options so that you're not wasting efforts on the wrong platform for your specific geo-industry.

45. Selling vs. sharing

If you're new to social media, the first lesson to learn is that while being helpful, generous, entertaining, and empathetic can win your brand a loyal following, the hard sell is better placed elsewhere. Yes, you can promote your products and specials as part of your social media campaigns, but a business that does nothing but "sell" isn't going to engage any social community.

Social media, managed properly, can be an immensely powerful environment for local businesses to connect with customers, to learn about their preferences, to become household words in local consumers' daily lives because of the way the business integrates itself as a go-to resource for a particular type of experience on Facebook, Snapchat, Google Posts, or Twitter. Experimentation and regular practice can point the way to a winning mix of sharing vs. selling over time.

Success ahead!

Marketers know that one of the most important things they teach clients is what not to do. Local search marketing, with its mirror connection to the real world and its real-time pace, is particularly riddled with potential pitfalls. Being human, business owners are entitled to make a few mistakes. It's okay! Particularly if you recover from them with some grace, good humor, and a determination not to repeat them. But it's my hope that this article is one you'll share with clients and team members so that no one gets tangled up in errors that are easy to avoid with a little quiet thought and a great deal of good planning.

By knowing what not to do, your adventure is more than half-won. Wishing you all the treasures and success ahead!

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45 Local SEO Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them

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The classic 1982 Activision game, Pitfall!, was so challenging that most players believed you could only win by running out the 20-minute clock. The real point of this adventure, however, was to gather up all of the treasures before the clock ran out on you. Isn't that just like business?

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Successful websites are built on popular, useful pages that attract and delight new visitors. These pages capture valuable traffic by serving a specific purpose or need.

However, these pages don't happen by accident. Building useful pages requires research and strategic planning. You should be thinking about links and search opportunities during the ideation phase, before you start writing and designing new pages.

Page-level research should include:

analyzing search volume for potential target terms.

identifying SERPs with bad or weak results.

examining ranking pages.

scrutinizing competitor content and strategies.

I'm going to walk through this process of page-level keyword research, using a real site as an example. Follow along and learn how you can leverage this process for your own SEO strategy.

Identify opportunities for improvement

The first step in page ideation should be identifying potential opportunities.

My wife and I recently welcomed our first child - a beautiful baby boy named Liam - to the world.

So in honor of this cute little guy, I'm going to explore the baby products niche with my example.

My example site for this process will be Lucie's List, and I'll work through the ideation process of creating a new hypothetical page for them.

Since I don't have directives or priorities from Lucie's List to work from, I'll start by looking for opportunities where Lucie's List could potentially rank better and capture more relevant traffic.

To do this, I'm going to examine the "Positions" tab in SEMrush and sort by volume to find high-volume terms where Lucie's List is lacking visibility.

Examining the data in SEMrush reveals some potential opportunities, including:

[diaper bag] - Position: 68; Volume: 33,100

[rock n play] - Position: 64; Volume: 27,100

[nursing tops] - Position: 75; Volume: 18,100

[toddler rain boots] - Position: 96; Volume: 14,800

[baby high chair] - Position: 86; Volume: 12,100

[best diaper bags] - Position: 62; Volume: 12,100

[baby onesies] - Position: 60; Volume: 12,100

[rock n play sleeper] - Position: 69; Volume: 12,100

Now I have a solid base of high-volume terms where Lucie's List has the opportunity for improvement.

Next, I'll look at the current search results.

Examine top results

I'm searching for specific factors that will indicate I can create a page for Lucie's List that will be competitive.

These indicators are:

SERPs with a dearth of strong, recognizable brand names.

bad exact-match domains ranking.

listings with low-quality aesthetics and poor on-page content.

pages with low-level link competition.

Analyzing the SERPs reveals that page 1 for many of these terms is dominated by large brands:

However, [best diaper bags] might be a possibility:

Although Amazon, Consumer Reports and Business Insider (???) are present, the majority of results here are smaller baby-centric sites.

There aren't any exact-match domains or blatantly poor results, but scrutinizing the content of these pages reveals opportunity. Most are simply lists of diaper bags with little more than images, prices and affiliate links. For example, this page:

Or this slide show:

The Consumer Reports page is more of a resource but lacks any images, design or readability. Useful information is presented via large blocks of text, with no visual elements to break up that text:

Even with such helpful information, this isn't a good result for someone quickly scanning for the best diaper bag options - it reads more like a novel than an online resource.

These aren't terrible results, but I believe it would be possible to create a resource that readers (and Google) would prefer.

Scrutinize backlinks and traffic value

Finally, I'll analyze the link competition for these pages.

The top result, from BabyList, has nine referring domains, according to Majestic:

Plugging the rest of the URLs into Majestic shows more promise for the potential to rank here:

Amazon: seven referring domains

Business Insider: five referring domains

BabyCenter: four referring domains

Momtastic: eight referring domains

MomTricks: four referring domains

Lauren Conrad: 10 referring domains

The Bump: three referring domains

POPSUGAR: six referring domains

Consumer Reports: three referring domains

Of course, these pages are hosted on authoritative domains, which also plays a factor. However, Lucie's List is also fairly authoritative, and the link numbers here aren't too large to compete.

Put all this together with the fact that SEMrush shows the first result on this page has a traffic value of $14,000, and it's worth it for Lucie's List to build a new page or update their existing page targeting this term.

In fact, the page on Lucie's List that's ranking in position 62 for [best diaper bags] is actually a broader page that offers basic ideas for baby registries.

This reinforces the fact that there is an opportunity here for Lucie's List, as they could likely rank much better if they built a dedicated page focusing only on diaper bags.

Now that I have a solid idea to work with, I'm going to investigate what Lucie's List's competitors have done with their pages.

Analyze competitor strategies

I have identified a potential opportunity for Lucie's List to capture more traffic. But before I start creating content, I'll want to check in on the competition.

According to SEMrush, Lucie's List's top competitors include:

I've already seen the strategies BabyList and MomTricks are using during my analysis of the SERP. Obviously, these pages shouldn't be ignored, since they're ranking on page 1, but I'm looking for more ways to improve on the model they use.

For example, BabyGearLab offers something slightly different on their page (ranking on page 2).

BabyGearLab built a scoring system, based on criteria such as storage space and comfort, and assigned scores to 10 different diaper bags. This is a great idea that could serve the needs of searchers well, but the execution could be improved.

For starters, Lucie's List could improve on this idea by simply reviewing more bags - only listing 10 diaper bags doesn't give consumers many options. Also, the tabs underneath the title all have unique URLs.

These tabs include relevant and important information. Rather than separate them into subfolders, it would be more optimal from a user and SEO standpoint to simply include this content on the page.

For Lucie's List, I could also create comparison charts such as this:

This chart idea could be taken a step further by making the charts interactive, so readers could manipulate what data is shown, making it easier to compare specific bags.

I already have a handful of solid directions I can take with my page for Lucie's List, and that's just from one competitor! Examining the other competitor strategies would provide even more insight into how to create something searchers want.

Page creation and execution

Through proper research, I have found an opportunity to build a new page that can drive site traffic - all that's left is execution.

To review, here is the information I learned during my research, which will empower me to create an important page for Lucie's List:

Identify opportunities for improvement. Lucie's List has multiple opportunities to create pages to rank higher for terms with large search volumes.

Examine top results. The search results for [best diaper bags] are mediocre and feature few big brands.

Scrutinize backlinks and traffic value. Link competition for [best diaper bags] is low, and traffic value is decent.

Analyze competitor strategies. A score-based review system and interactive comparison charts could be differentiators for Lucie's List's page.

Using this information, I can build a page for Lucie's List that is optimized for search to capitalize on the opportunity available to them.

Hopefully, you can leverage this process for your own content creation.

Additional resources

For more information on keyword research, I highly recommend checking out these resources:
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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How to do advanced page-level keyword research

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Successful websites are built on popular, useful pages that attract and delight new visitors. These pages capture valuable traffic by serving a specific purpose or need. However, these pages don't happen by accident. Building useful pages requires research and strategic planning.

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WordPress has become the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. One of the biggest reasons why is that it's flexible enough for expert developers, yet simple enough for the non-technical user. In other words, WordPress is whatever you want it to be.

Even if you aren't an ace developer, there are still some things you can and should do when creating your own WordPress-powered website. With that in mind, I'm going to introduce you to 5 types of WordPress plugins you should be using. They don't necessarily do anything fancy, but they are vital to the functionality and security of your site.

Back Up Your Data

Imagine having spent weeks, months or years of writing blog posts. Then imagine that your web host experiences a severe server crash. All of your hard work...gone. While hosts do tend to have backups, you absolutely do not want to rely on it. Think of it as your responsibility as a website owner to make sure your site is backed up - particularly the database. Here are some plugins that will help:

Backup Buddy - This plugin will cost you a minimum of $80 per year, to backup up to 2 sites. However, with the ability to schedule backups and even have them sent to the popular cloud storage service of your choice, the benefits may well exceed that cost. It also allows you to choose between backing up just your database (to keep your posts, pages, comments, settings, etc. in tact) or your entire site (including theme files and plugins).

Alternatives: VaultPress, Duplicator

Keep Your Site Secure

Security should be on every website owner's mind these days. Remember that while a specific group of hackers may not target your site, any number of automated "bots" are out there looking for ANY WordPress installs that they can infiltrate. You should have at least something in place to help thwart most normal attacks. Depending on your level of need, there are both security suites that perform several functions or more simple plugins that prevent multiple failed login attempts.

Wordfence Security - Available in both free and premium versions, Wordfence aims to be an all-in-one security toolbox. Either version will scan your site for malware, help block brute-force attacks and includes a firewall. The feature I've found most useful in the premium version is the ability to block user login attempts by country. This, of course, may not be so great if you have legitimate users logging in to your site from all over. But for sites with a small, centralized group of users, it can really help keep certain bots from trying to access your WordPress Dashboard. The free version, however, should be fine for most sites.

Alternatives: iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security), Login LockDown

Keep in Contact

One of the most basic needs of any website is the good old contact/lead generation form. It's certainly ubiquitous, but still as important as ever. While there are a ton of plugins out there that will do this, ideally you'd like one that is relatively easy to use and has a lot of available features.

Gravity Forms - This may be one of the most popular of all commercial WordPress Plugins. In its most basic sense, it provides a very easy way for anyone to create forms. But it is so much more than that. If you want to go deeper, you can use conditional logic to hide or make fields appear depending on how the user responds, take payments via PayPal, automatically subscribe users to your MailChimp list and so on. Gravity Forms starts at $39.00, but has a load of add-ons available as well. The support is also top-notch.

Alternatives: Contact Form 7, Fast Secure Contact Form

Get Social

Social sharing is an absolute must-have feature for any website - particularly a blog. Giving visitors to your site an easy way to share your content with a multitude of different services will help bring more traffic and (hopefully) lots of new loyal readers.

Share Buttons by AddToAny - For several years, this has been my social sharing plugin of choice. Why? Well, for starters it's highly customizable in terms of just how many services you can choose from. In fact, there are over 100 services you can let visitors share your content with. You can pick and choose just the ones you want to specifically want to show, and AddToAny's "+" button can be used to let users choose from the rest. It recently added the ever-popular "floating" share bar design as well.

Alternatives: Shareaholic, Share Buttons by AddThis

Get Found

While social media is important, SEO (search engine optimization) is still vital to drawing visitors to your site. Thankfully, having great content is a big step in the right direction. We're also fortunate that there are some SEO plugins out there that make the process easier than ever.

WordPress SEO - Is there really a better choice than Yoast's popular plugin? It has become pretty much the standard-bearer for optimizing your WordPress site for search engines. You get features like page-by-page (and post-by-post) optimization, support for custom post types and categories. There are also other standout features like adding breadcrumb navigation, auto-generated sitemaps, social media settings and really more than I can mention in this space. One of the coolest aspects of this plugin is that it will "rate" the SEO you've done for a particular page/post. While ratings should be taken with a grain of salt, it is a big help in guiding you on the right path.

Alternatives: All in One SEO Pack, SEO Ultimate

In Conclusion

All of the categories mentioned in this article have literally dozens of effective plugin options. While picking the right plugin for your site is a personal choice, making sure you take care of important items like backing up your site, promoting better security, etc. are essential no matter which plugin you choose.

I've also written a post that covers a bunch of WordPress plugins that will make your life much easier, a post covering some WordPress plugins that offer specialized functionalities, and also a post that will help you find the perfect WordPress plugin for your site.

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The 5 Types of Plugins Every WordPress Site Needs

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WordPress has become the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. One of the biggest reasons why is that it's flexible enough for expert developers, yet simple enough for the non-technical user. In other words, WordPress is whatever you want it to be.

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The WordPress administration area (aka the Dashboard) can be customized in a number of ways. Menu items can be added, hidden or rearranged. Access to settings can be set for specific user roles. Custom widgets can be added to help guide or pass important information on to users.

No matter what kind of tweaks you're looking to make, there is most likely a WordPress plugin available to make it a reality. Let's explore 10 WordPress plugins you can use to personalize the Dashboard to meet your needs.

When handing off a WordPress site to a client, it's a nice touch to add your company contact information to the dashboard. That's exactly what Custom Dashboard Widget & Dashboard Contact Form does.

Add content to a custom widget via a WYSIWYG editor and then enter a contact email address. From there, the widget (with a simple contact form) can be displayed on the dashboard home page.

Adminimize is one of those plugins I find myself recommending again and again. Why? This plugin helps clean up the mess that is the WordPress admin menu. Plus it's incredibly easy to use. You can hide items based on a user's role - so it's great for multi-author websites. It's good for both security and ease of use.

Admin Tweaks is meant for those looking for an easy way to customize various areas of the dashboard. You can hide/remove/change items listed in the admin bar, menu, user profile, login screen and general WordPress settings.

Customize the rows and columns shown in posts, pages and media. The ability to tweak just about anything you want is found here in one single plugin.

Admin Columns is a commercial plugin (with a free version) that enables to you add custom columns to page /post listings and more.

There are over 160 columns to choose from. For example, you can easily add a featured image column to the post listing. Not only can you display various columns, you can sort and filter posts by them as well. It works with all content types and can integrate with lots of plugins, including Advanced Custom Fields and WooCommerce.

Simple History doesn't add some major functionality to the WordPress dashboard. But it sure is helpful. A widget is added to the dashboard home page that shows you which users recently added or updated posts, when a widget has been added or removed or even uploaded an image to the Media Gallery.

It also tracks things like plugin activations, user profile updates, logins and more. Very useful for administrators who want to stay on top of whom is doing what.

While somewhat similar to Adminimize, Admin Menu Editor Pro does have some unique features worth checking out. For instance, not only can you hide dashboard menu items in general or by user role, you can create your own items as well.

Those custom menu items can point to any internal or external URL. The plugin also lets you move individual items to different submenus, change titles and even icons. A free version is also available.

The WordPress dashboard can get a little cluttered. Custom Dashboard Widgets helps alleviate some of that clutter by allowing you to replace all the standard home page widgets with simpler versions.

Consisting of a label and a FontAwesome icon, each widget can be displayed or hidden based on a user's role. You can also add your own custom links as well.

When you're working on a website with a highly-customized theme, it's good to know which template a particular page is using. While you can click into the page editor to find out, Page Template Dashboard is a much more convenient solution. It displays the template file used for each page as a column in the page listing. A real timesaver on large sites.

Ultimate Dashboard Pro lets you take control of the WordPress dashboard homepage. You can easily disable any and all default widgets, as well as those from third-parties. Create your own simplified widgets with either text-only or icon-based options. The plugin is compatible with WordPress Multisite. A free version is also available.

A seemingly ignored part of WordPress is the cumbersome approach to managing large amounts of pages or posts. Nested Pages is a plugin that aims to fix this by turning listings into interactive tree-style menus.

It also allows you to add pages in bulk, right from within the page listing. The slick drag-and-drop interface helps to make repositioning content less stressful. A native WordPress menu is also created and updated to match your nested structure.

Make it Your Dashboard

The main idea behind tweaking the WordPress administration area is to improve your workflow. By adding helpful information and streamlining what gets displayed (and to whom it's displayed), we're making site management that much easier. The plugins above feature creative and practical ideas for lessening the learning curve for new users and saving administrators loads of time.

If these plugins don't help, you could try these 20 Snippets & Hacks to Help Make WordPress Easier for Your Clients.

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10 Plugins for Customizing the WordPress Admin

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The WordPress administration area (aka the Dashboard) can be customized in a number of ways. Menu items can be added, hidden or rearranged. Access to settings can be set for specific user roles. Custom widgets can be added to help guide or pass important information on to users.

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Whether your organic search rankings are in free fall or you observe a minor position loss on a secondary keyword, no one likes to see a drop.

Though fluctuations are inevitable, especially in the face of Google's rolling real-time algorithm updates, it's never good news when your search rankings start trending in the wrong direction.

How can you keep a dip from becoming a nosedive into organic search obscurity?

Proactive, attentive troubleshooting can help rescue your rankings and get the needle moving in the right direction.

This 10-step process will help you identify the source of any issues so you can resolve them and get your SEO back on track.

Step 1: Check the ABCs of Your Site

In deploying and monitoring keyword performance, it can be all too easy to focus on advanced strategies while underestimating the importance of the ABCs of on-page SEO.

Why stress about anchor text ratio, link velocity, or citation optimization, when the answer to your rankings problem could be an easy fix directly on your site?
Does your site return a 200 status code?
200-series status codes indicate that your site can be communicated with successfully. The standard 200 OK status code indicates a successful HTTP request.

Use a free tool like HTTP Status Code Checker to confirm that your site is returning a successful request. If not, you can troubleshoot based on the failed status code, like 404 (page not found) or 410 (page permanently removed).
Can bots crawl your site?
Robots.txt is a text file located in the top-level directory of your web server that instructs bots on how to interact with your website. Within the file, you can set inclusions and exclusions to your heart's content, for instance disallowing bots from crawling a dev site or indexing duplicate pages.

Have you accidentally set the restrictions too tightly, preventing search bots from crawling any of your main pages? Double check the robots.txt file using Google's free Robots Testing Tool - if you spot anything amiss, upload a more permissive file to the server.

Step 2: Check SEO Basics

While basic SEO elements are declining in importance as a search engine ranking factor, they still have an influence. Check that basics like title tags, meta descriptions, and headings aren't holding back your rankings.
Do you have optimized home page title and meta tags, and do they display correctly in search results?
Your home page's title tag represents a massive yet simple opportunity to tell search bots what your page is about. If it's generic, or if it's failing to pull properly, it can affect your rankings.

While its companion meta description doesn't directly affect SEO, a relevant, persuasive meta can improve click-through rates.

You can customize title and meta tags within in the head section of your site's HTML. If your site runs on WordPress, install a free plugin like Yoast SEO or All in One SEO Pack to easily manage titles and tags across your site.
Does your homepage have an optimized H1 tag?
In addition to the info you provide in the title tag, the main heading lets users know the main purpose of the page. However unless it is contained an H1 tag, search bots won't be able to differentiate it from the rest of the content on the page.

Check your site's code to ensure a single, relevant H1 is being used on each page.

You would be surprised how often rankings drops are caused by one (or more) of these essential elements. Fix the problem, and search performance will improve in kind.

Step 3: Check for Google Algorithm Updates

Now that link algorithm Penguin and quality algorithm Panda are part of Google's core algorithm and updated in real time, you always have to be on your toes about how small tweaks can affect your rankings. Take a look at SEO news sites and follow influencers like Danny Goodwin, Barry Schwartz, and Google's Gary Illyes to stay on top of breaking developments.

If you can't find concrete information, do a search on Twitter. If you see other webmasters panicking, it's a sure sign something has been adjusted.

If you're doing things the right way - think in-depth content, clean and intuitive site layout, fast load times - don't stress about rankings fluctuations due to algorithm updates. You're doing it right and will be rewarded in the long run.

Step 4: Check Google Search Console

As opaque as algorithms can be, Google is clear about what they expect from a website. Follow their guidelines and action their feedback for improved search performance.

Google Search Console is a free service provided by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and optimize your site's visibility in search results.

Check GSC to see if there are any crawl errors interfering with the indexing or visibility of your site. Do you see DNS errors, server errors, or URL errors? Navigate to Crawl > Crawl Errors so you can address any offending issues one by one. Once complete, mark as fixed.

Through Google Search Console, you can submit an XML sitemap that charts the structure of your site. Once loaded, check to see if there is a discrepancy between the number of URLs submitted and the number of URLs indexed by Google.

If the numbers don't add up, it is possible important pages are being blocked from search bots. Crawl your site with a scanning software such as Screaming Frog, which will zero in on the issue.

In your Search Console Preferences, be sure to check "Enable email notifications" so you are quickly alerted to any big issues, but make it a habit to check in with Google Search Console on a regular basis before problems have a chance to snowball and affect your rankings.

Step 5: Check Google Analytics

Google Analytics shows if there is a drop in traffic or user metrics like time on page, pages per session, or bounce rate. Did you make any changes to the site content, design, or functionality that coincide? If so, reverting the changes or going in a different direction can help traffic bounce back.

Google Analytics is a treasure trove of information about how people find your site, how they behave while on your site, and what pain points cause them to leave before completing an action.

For even more insight, segment your audience by mobile and desktop browsers, because they have different intentions and interactions with your site.

For more, check out How to Understand User Behavior With Google Analytics.

Step 6: Check Content

Quality content has never been more important. Is your content unique, rich, and interesting? Or is it duplicate, thin, and low value? This can have a major effect on rankings.

Users don't connect with bad content. While the value of content is mostly subjective, there are a few metrics you can reference. For instance, if users aren't staying on a page for long or if they are exiting the site without clicking deeper, it indicates that the content isn't connecting.

If addition to manual analysis of your site's content, Copyscape and Siteliner are helpful tools to check that your site is original. If any issues with internal or external duplicate content are flagged, you can correct them by rewriting or expanding the content.

Ready to take your content to the next level? Check out 12 Ridiculously Simple Ways to Make Your Content Better.

Step 7: Check Site Speed

Does your site take more than three seconds to load? If yes, you're behind the curve already. Speed is essential.

Free tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights tell you how fast your page is, and give actionable recommendations to improve load times.

Even blazing fast sites can take it to the next level with optimizations like leveraging browser caching, minifying code, optimizing images, and enabling resource compression:

Find even more info on How to Conduct Quick & Thorough Page Speed Audits.

Step 8: Check Mobile

With Google's mobile-first index on the horizon, it's never been more important to ensure your website is clean, intuitive, and provides value to users. Not every element or function that works on desktop makes sense for mobile, and you don't want to turn away searchers with a clunky, slow, or complicated site.

To see if mobile compatibility could be affecting your rankings, run your site through Google's free Mobile-Friendly Test. If your site is not considered mobile friendly, this tool will provide recommendations, such as removing intrusive pop-ups or fixing or removing unplayable content, among others.

Here are 5 Important Tips to Make Your Mobile Design SEO Friendly.

Step 9: Check Backlink Profile

Backlinks are instances of another site linking to a page on your site. Backlinks matter because they prove to search engines that your site matters, says something of value, and is trusted by others.

If you have a small backlink profile, few links from authority sites, or tons of links from spammy sites, it can hurt your ability to rank.

When your rankings drop, it's always wise to audit your backlink profile to make sure nothing is wrong. Tools such as Ahrefs, Majestic, and Open Site Explorer can show you what sites are linking to you, which pages they've linked, and what anchor text is used. They also try to give a sense of how authoritative a linking domain is, based on its own link metrics.

If you see a thin backlink profile, work to build it with proven link building strategies - check out Link Building: 9 Dos and 5 Don'ts for best practices. Spammy backlink profile? Read How to Clean Up Your Bad Backlinks.

Step 10: Check Keyword List

If you're tracking the wrong keywords, does it matter if your rankings fall?

For instance, say you run a digital marketing agency but stopped providing graphic design services and removed that service page from your site. You're naturally going to fall for that keyword, and that's OK.

However, if you start to trend downward for primary keywords that drive traffic and leads, an intervention is needed.

The right keywords should check all of the following boxes:

Most highly searched by your target audience

Most realistic to rank on Page 1

Most likely to result in a conversion

The targeted keywords that make sense today may not be the ones that made the most sense when you started the campaign, so make sure to re-evaluate periodically.

If you aren't proactive with adding or removing the keywords you are tracking, it can become an echo chamber that distracts you from true rankings success.

If you have a high-value keyword that you're on page one for but it's not in your reporting software, you're missing an opportunity to optimize and hit top position for that term.

Ditch the keywords that are unrealistic or won't result in conversions. They aren't doing you any favors, and they only cloud the true picture of your search performance.

Instead, strategically monitor high-value keywords that you can dominate with small on-page optimizations like writing new targeted content or tweaking titles, metas, and H1s.

Conclusion

If your site experiences a drop in rankings, you can reverse the trend with small and simple optimizations.

Follow these 10 steps and you'll likely be alerted to issues you can correct on the spot.

Keep your eye on the rankings and watch them rebound in no time.
Image Credits Featured Image: Shutterstock with edits by Brock Murray, July 2017
All Screenshots taken by Brock Murray, July 2017

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Your Rankings Have Dropped - 10 Things to Do Now

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Whether your organic search rankings are in free fall or you observe a minor position loss on a secondary keyword, no one likes to see a drop. Though fluctuations are inevitable, especially in the face of Google's rolling real-time algorithm updates, it's never good news when your search rankings start trending in the wrong direction.

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Free Webinar | August 16th
Find out how to optimize your website to give your customers experiences that will have the biggest ROI for your business. Register Now "
You've probably heard of link building, but you might not know what it really is or how to do it effectively. Sure, you can go ahead and hire a digital marketing agency, but unless you know the ins and outs, you won't be successful.

What if they use PBNs?

What if they have a bad linking strategy?

What if they waste all your budget and don't deliver any results?

It's important to understand link building practices and how Google can change your website -- especially with Google's recent updates.

While working with clients through my agency, Taco, I come across a few common mistakes website owners make as they build links. And even though there are fantastic guides talking about link building, I see these mistakes over and over again.

Here are six link building strategies that hurt your SEO efforts and how to fix them.

1. Building links to home page links

It seems logical to send all of your SEO power to your homepage because that's where you want everyone to start. But, it's wrong. In fact, it's probably one of the biggest SEO myths. The homepage shouldn't be used for your top phrases.

I know you're asking right now, "But then how do I target the key phrases I want to rank for?"

You should build out content-rich subpages in your site to target those phrases, then build backlinks to those pages. By following this method, you will have links going to many pages on your site, not just your home page. This is a much more natural way to build links to your website.
Related: Why You Want 'Backlinks' to Your Website
2. Too much keyword anchor text

As I mentioned in the previous section, your homepage is not the place to target all of your important key phrases. Use it instead for building the brand and creating trust with the search engines.

So, when you are building links to your home page, the majority of the anchors should come from your brand or some form of your URL.

Most SEO strategies want to build links that have their important phrases as the anchor, but according to the research done by SEOJet, only 3 percent of your links should have an exact match as an anchor text.

This principle of building branded links also applies to subpages, if you want your link profile to look really natural, you need to have some anchor texts that have no key phrase at all, some links with the URL as the anchor, and some with your brand as the anchor.

This is how other website owners would link to you naturally. It is unreasonable to think that anyone who ever linked to you because they loved your site would use your main key phrase as the anchor. So, you can't do it either.

3. Not enough nofollow links

There is a misconception about nofollow links and whether or not you should get any as you build links for your site. If you look at it from a real-world perspective, the nofollow attribute was created so we as website owners could let Google know that certain links were advertisements and they shouldn't be counted in the SEO algorithm.

In other words, Google expects that real businesses will have nofollow links because real businesses advertise. So, how do you expect Google to recognize you as a real business if you aren't getting any nofollow links through advertising?
Related: How to Promote a Website Through Link Building in 10 Easy Ways
This is further supported by the fact that on average over 30 percent of links pointing to top-ranked websites are nofollow links. It is good to get nofollow links.

4. Not enough high-content pages

If you want people to link to your website naturally, then you should create amazing content ever written so people will link to it.

In fact, in order to build a lot of links to a page, you need good, in-depth content. If you're not doing that then getting a lot of links pointing to a page of yours will not look natural.

Google would never believe that a post with 500 words would naturally get 100 links pointing to it. But, the ultimate guide on a certain topic with 5000+ words could bring in hundreds of links naturally. That is where you need to focus your content marketing efforts.

5. Bad blogger outreach practices

One of the best ways to get links from high-authority websites is to write a guest blog post for them. There are a ton of blogs that will accept your guest post, but the reality is most guest posts never get approved.

This happens for two reasons.

Your pitch email is a template that could apply to any blog in the world or your writing isn't good enough. When you pitch a potential blog, don't think of it as a one-time thing but as if you are building a relationship with a colleague. Reach out to your new business colleague and talk to them about their site and their needs.
Related: 5 Strategies for Better 'Link Building' and Improving Your SEO
Then pitch your guest article that helps solve those needs. After that, make sure you write an amazing article. If writing isn't your greatest talent, then find someone who is a stellar writer and get them to help you.

If you are looking for a good outreach email to copy, check out this one in SEMRush.

6. No link building plan

This is the most common mistake almost all marketers make. They think that if they create amazing content, either people will naturally link to you (good luck with that to anyone who doesn't already have a following) or you just need to go build links to that page and it will rank.

That is a vague SEO strategy. You might as well say, "Just go do stuff and you will rank."

For some reason, people don't treat links as they should -- like money. Links are money. Links help you get on page one of Google search results. Page one equals money.

With your own personal money, you create a budget (read: plan) and then tell your money what to do. So, if you treat links like money, then you will have a plan in place and can tell your links what to do. You will plan out which anchor texts you need to get and how many so that you can keep a natural link profile. Using this SEO tactic, you will be able to get better SEO results with fewer links.

You would be surprised how much of an impact these things can have on your rankings, so give yourself a leg up on your competition by fixing these link building miscues.

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6 SEO Strategies That Are Hurting Your Online Business

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Free Webinar | August 16th Find out how to optimize your website to give your customers experiences that will have the biggest ROI for your business. Register Now " You've probably heard of link building, but you might not know what it really is or how to do it effectively.

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Ever wondered which WordPress maintenance tasks you should be performing regularly? After starting a blog, often users don't perform maintenance checks unless something breaks. By running regular maintenance tasks, you can make sure that your WordPress site is always performing at its best. In this article, we will share 13 crucial WordPress maintenance tasks to perform regularly, and how to do each one of them.

Why and When to Perform WordPress Maintenance Tasks

Your WordPress site is a powerful system made of several parts. This includes your WordPress hosting, WordPress software itself, plugins, and themes.

On top of that, you add your own content with text and images. Together, all of them make a website that is loved by your visitors and customers.

However, this system needs to be looked after to ensure optimal performance. There are few simple maintenance tasks that you can perform on a regular basis to ensure that your website is working at its best.
How often should you perform WordPress maintenance tasks?
If you run a busy website with a lot of traffic, then every three months. For smaller websites with low traffic and content, you need to do these maintenance tasks every six months.

Now that being said, let's take a look at the essential WordPress maintenance tasks you need to perform and how to do them.

1. Change All Your WordPress Passwords

Passwords are your first defense against unauthorized access to your website. You should always use strong unique passwords for all your online accounts including your WordPress website, FTP accounts, and database.

However, even if you are using strong passwords and they are compromised, then it is possible that you wouldn't even notice it.

That's why WordPress security experts recommend changing your WordPress passwords regularly. This includes passwords for your WordPress admin area, FTP or SSH accounts, and your WordPress database password.

For more details on this topic, see our beginners guide on how to manage passwords for WordPress users.

2. Create a Complete Backup of Your Website

Backups are one of the most important WordPress tool in your arsenal. There are plenty of great WordPress backup plugins that can help you completely automate the WordPress backup process.

However, sometimes your backup solution may suddenly stop working without you even noticing.

Once in a while, you need to manually run your backup plugin to create a complete backup of your website. After running the backup, you need to verify that your backup files are properly stored at the remote location of your choice (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc).

3. Check and Update All WordPress Files

WordPress comes with a built-in system to manage updates for WordPress core, plugins, and themes. You should always use the latest version of WordPress and keep all your plugins and themes updated.

However, there are some situations when you may miss an update. For example, when a premium plugin or theme's license expired, and it failed to check for an update.

Go to the WordPress Updates page to manually check for updates. Review all your installed plugins and themes to make sure that they are running the latest version.

4. Check and Delete Spam Comments

If you are using Akismet to combat comment spam in WordPress, then it automatically keeps spam away from your comment moderation queue.

However, sometimes Akismet may end up marking a legitimate comment as spam. Once in a while, you need to take a quick look at the spam comments to ensure that there are no real comments incorrectly marked as spam.

Once you are done, you can safely delete all spam comments from your website. If you have thousands of spam comments, then you should use this method to batch delete all spam comments in WordPress.

It wouldn't necessarily improve performance, but it will ensure that you don't miss out genuine comments.

5. Test All Your WordPress Forms

WordPress form builder plugins like WPForms make it super easy to create beautiful forms on your website.

However due to misconfiguration on your WordPress hosting server or your email service provider, sometimes these forms may suddenly stop sending emails.

You need to check all forms on your website to make sure that they are working properly. If a form is not working, then see our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.

6. Optimize Your WordPress Database

WordPress stores most data in your WordPress database. It contains all your content, comments, users, and settings.

However, overtime your database may gather a lot of unnecessary data. This increases your WordPress backup sizes which may affect uploading, downloading, and restoring backups.

Optimizing your WordPress database allows you to clean up clutter, defragment tables, and improves database performance.

For step by step instructions, see our guide on how to optimize your WordPress database with one click

7. Run Performance Tests

Many users optimize their WordPress performance when they first start and then forget about it. Meanwhile you keep adding new content, install new plugins, or may even change your theme. All of them may affect performance of your WordPress site.

Faster websites are not just good for user experience, they also improve your website's performance on search engines. This is why you need to regularly do a thorough performance review of your website.

When reviewing your site's performance, don't just limit it to improving your homepage. Also test your most popular content, and all your important pages.

For best results, follow our step by step guide to boost WordPress speed and performance.

8. Find and Fix 404 Errors

When a user requests a page that doesn't exist on your website, then WordPress will show them a 404 error page.

404 errors that occur because a user mistyped an address are normal and nothing to be worried about. However, 404 errors that occur because a page is no longer available can cause bad user experience.

If you are not already tracking 404 error pages, then see our guide on how to easily track 404 error pages in WordPress and redirect them.

9. Find and Fix Broken Links

As your website grows, you will realize that some external websites that you linked to in your older articles do not exist anymore. Some may have moved to new locations, while others may just disappear.

The broken links issue is not just limited to external links. You can accidentally add broken images, poorly formatted links, or misspell your own links. This causes bad user experience and affects your site's bounce rate and page views.

You need to check your website for broken links as part of your WordPress maintenance routine. For instructions, see our guide on how to find and fix broken links in WordPress.

10. Perform a Thorough Content and SEO Audit

Next thing you need to include in your regular maintenance tasks is a thorough in-depth review of your content. This is where the data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics comes in.

Google Analytics shows you where your visitors are coming from and what they are doing on your website. This data allows you to discover content on your website where users are coming but are not converting into customers or subscribers.

Google Search Console shows you Search Analytics which helps you find search keywords where your site appears in the results. You can sort it to show you keywords where your site can easily rank higher by updating those articles.

If you are using Yoast SEO, then you can set particular keywords as focus keyword, and it will analyze your content for that keyword.

Even with an excellent SEO score, you can still further improve content by adding new information, images, and linking to it from other pages on your website.

For more SEO tips, follow our ultimate step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners.

11. Optimize Images on Your WordPress Site

Images take longer to load hence they decrease your page load speed. Some of them you'll discover during the performance checkup of your site.

However you will definitely miss those in your less popular articles. If you run a multi-author WordPress site, then some of your authors may not be as careful about image sizes as you are.

Adding image and media library review to your WordPress maintenance checklist, allows you to stay on top of the issue. You can perform this check to find out images that can be reduced in size or images that are just too large.

For more information, see our guide on how to save images optimized for the Web.

12. Review WordPress Security Logs

Some WordPress users don't realize that their site is under attack until it slows down or their search rankings drop.

We have already mentioned some security precautions like changing passwords, and creating manual backups as proactive measures. You also need to review your site's access and error logs to see if you can find any unusual activity on your site.

We also recommend using Sucuri. It is a website security company that offers website firewall to protect your website against common threats.

For a complete security audit of your WordPress site, follow the instructions in our step by step ultimate WordPress security guide.

13. Troubleshooting Maintenance Tasks

Most WordPress maintenance tasks are quite harmless and wouldn't affect your website's normal functioning. However, some may slow down your site, like checking for broken links or running image optimizer plugin.

If you run a staging site, then you can perform your maintenance tasks on your staging site and then push them live.

However, most users don't run a staging site. In that case, you'll have to expect a temporary slow site and some unexpected errors.

One way to deal with this is by putting your WordPress site in maintenance mode. Alternatively, you can perform these tasks during your low traffic hours.

If you run across an issue, then see our guide on how to fix common WordPress errors. If the error you are seeing is not listed there, then follow the steps in our WordPress troubleshooting guide. It will help you locate the problem and find a solution.

That's all, we hope this article helped you learn crucial WordPress maintenance tasks you need to perform regularly on your website. You may also want to see our list of the most wanted WordPress tips, tricks, and hacks.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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13 Crucial WordPress Maintenance Tasks to Perform Regularly

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Ever wondered which WordPress maintenance tasks you should be performing regularly? After starting a blog, often users don't perform maintenance checks unless something breaks. By running regular maintenance tasks, you can make sure that your WordPress site is always performing at its best.

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One beautiful thing about a WordPress blog is the never-ending ability to add plugins that completely change the way your blog looks and functions. It's absolutely essential for successful blogging.

(Please hit that Pin button if you enjoy this post! We really appreciate it.)

A lot of these plugins would cost thousands (or even tens of thousands) if you wanted to pay someone to build those features in to your blog individually.

For example, before e-commerce plugins came about, you'd need a team of developers constantly working on your online store. These days you can do it with a few clicks.

Here are some of the best WordPress plugins that you can install to make your blog instantly more professional. It's not the biggest list in the world, but we've only selected the very best.

NOTE: There are two affiliate links in this post. I'll let you know which ones they are. I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you if you purchase through that link. Thank you for the support.

The best WordPress plugins for a professional blog

Let's dive in now and have a look at some of the plugins we've chosen that will help you to build a more professional blog in just a few clicks. As always, let us know what we've missed in the comments below.

1. Boxzilla
Slide out boxes and pop ups done very simply.

Boxzila is the successor to the very popular plugin, Scroll Triggered Boxes, and is an improved version that allows you to create a variety of scroll and pop up boxes for your blog. For example, you can see on in action on this post. You can set it to open when people exit the blog, after a certain amount of time, and you can build boxes that only appear on certain pages.
VIEW PLUGIN
WooCommerce recently celebrated its ninth birthday and has grown to be one of the best loved and most trusted plugins for building an online store with your WordPress installation. While it's not the most simple plugin to use, the list of features are absolutely phenomenal and the support and community makes it a great choice for anyone looking for a way to get started selling physical products online.
VIEW PLUGIN
Pretty Link is a plugin that allows you to change the way your URLs look. For example, if you're directing people to an affiliate product that has a horrible looking address that might put some people off, you can use Pretty Link to set up a URL that incorporates your own address (like www.blogtyrant.com/blue-host/) so that it looks a bit more friendly to users. Also gives stats on how many people click the link and so on.
VIEW PLUGIN
Social Warfare is the plugin that I use here on Blog Tyrant to add scrolling social media buttons in the sidebar, and to manage social buttons on the site as a whole. It has good options for setting your style and colors, and allows you to make a lot of optimizations. For example, you can have different settings for mobile vs desktop social buttons.
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If you have a podcast on your blog I highly recommend Smart Podcast Player as a plugin that allows you to quickly build a beautiful player that integrates perfectly with your podcast hosting. It's clean, simple to use and the player is mobile responsive. I've used this plugin on some other sites and can attest to the support staff being extremely patient and friendly with all the setup questions that I had.
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Shortcodes Ultimate is a very lightweight but valuable plugin that allows you to use little snippets of code to add some great features that would otherwise probably have required a designer and coder. For example, you can add little buttons with icons, or upgrade and get testimonial boxes, pricing tables, etc. All of these things can make your blog look more professional by adding formats that are slightly more involved than plain text.
VIEW PLUGIN
This is a very cool plugin that allows you to add a click to tweet quote box within your posts. It styles the box according to the format of your choice, and lets you set things like the tweet text itself, the display text, and the Twitter handle that gets mentioned.

This is a really simple yet beautiful plugin that can add some nice extra functionality to your blog without having to use an external site like the old days.
VIEW PLUGIN
This is a very simple plugin that allows you to add a little arrow on your blog so people can scroll back up to the top with one click. This is quite a useful feature if you have a lot of long form content or a list post (like this one) where people might need to go up and down frequently. You can style the look and feel to make it fit with your design.
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This is a very comprehensive plugin that allows you to lock content on your blog in order to create a membership site, school, or paid training course without needing to send visitors to a separate site or company.

It has over 80,000 active customers and has been used by some really popular bloggers to extend their content into a paid arena - a very good way to make some extra money from your blog if you have a unique offering. Allows you to drip content to students, password protect different areas, sneak peak content, and much more.
VIEW PLUGIN
This is a beautifully simple forum-building plugin in its setup and technology, while still having so many levels of comprehensive features that it impresses everyone who tries it.

If you've ever wanted to add a forum or bulletin board element to your blog then this is the place to start. It's had over 300,000 installs and is used by some of the biggest forums in the world. A great way to add extra community to your blog without needing to develop a whole forum from scratch somewhere else.
VIEW PLUGIN
This is a really clever idea that can save you a lot of time. SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle basically gives you a huge selection of widgets that you can customize for your own needs. It includes icons, colors, etc. so that you can create things like map widgets, buttons, call to action links, headlines, etc. It's a very simple way to update your blog and brand without needing to change your whole theme.
VIEW PLUGIN
This plugin really is a game changer when it comes to how the back end of WordPress works. I've been using it for a few months now on a few side projects, and it's safe to say it has totally transformed the way I use WordPress.

With a simple drag and drop editor, you can now change how WordPress looks and is structured without needing a new theme. You can build landing pages or buttons or full screen photo banners without any coding. Absolutely wonderful plugin and worth the fees simply in the amount you save by no longer needing a coder.
VIEW PLUGIN (aff)
If you've ever left a comment on Blog Tyrant you'll see that you get redirected to a little thank you page that encourages you to sign up. That is done with this plugin, which has now been expanded to include other features like emailing people who leave a comment, disallowing comments if they are too short or too long, etc.

If it's by the team at Yoast you know it is trustworthy. We've been using this for years and highly recommend it for some really cool and necessary comment features.
VIEW PLUGIN
Thrive Leads is a really comprehensive, paid plugin that allows you to build some incredibly powerful opt-in forms and screen takeovers. These are excellent ways to grow your mailing list, and the good thing about Thrive is that it allows you to test and track them all with in-built stats.

The best thing about this is that it has all your opt-in form options built in to one plugin so you can switch from a lightbox to a floating footer to a screen take over with ease. I've found the dashboard area a little bit slow, but that might be mainly due to my server. Well worth a look.
VIEW PLUGIN
How to install a WordPress plugin

If you're new to WordPress then you might not know about the absolutely wonderful world of plugins yet. Basically they are bits of code that developers have written that allow you to change the way your blog works.

They cover all sorts of features from photo galleries and security to social media buttons and design changes. Here's a beginner-level video on how to install a WordPress plugin quickly:

Before installing any plugin on your blog you should do a few basic checks. Make sure it is compatible with your version of WordPress, make sure it has good reviews from users, and make sure it has been recently updated.

What's your site's best WordPress plugin?

I'd really love to know whether you think there are any awesome plugins that absolutely must be included on this list. Do you use anything that really transforms your blog and makes it feel or look more professional?

Please leave a comment below and let us know.

SO, WHAT'S NEXT?

Hi, I'm Ramsay. If you enjoyed this post you might like to check out:

Finally, hit the button below to get a free report and email updates so you're never out of touch.
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14 of the Best WordPress Plugins to Make Your Blog More Professional

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One beautiful thing about a WordPress blog is the never-ending ability to add plugins that completely change the way your blog looks and functions. It's absolutely essential for successful blogging. (Please hit that Pin button if you enjoy this post! We really appreciate it.)

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WordPress is the ultimate tool for blogging. An autoblog plugin gives you even more power. You can automatically pull content from the web, and share what you are reading. This makes it easier to collect articles from your favorite news feeds in one place. There are also many ways to use an autoblog plugin to make money from your website.

Couldn't you build your own custom aggregation feed reader with WordPress? Sure you could. You could also paint your own car, weave your own baskets, or make your own ketchup. But there is no need to with a good plugin. An autoblog plugin takes all the pain out of the process. A blog owner can simply choose which feeds to add, and determine a posting schedule by configuring a few options. This is known in the biz as content aggregation.

What is an Autoblog Plugin Good for?

These days we are bombarded with information. It can be hard to find relevant content among the sea of stuff you don't need. At some point you may be tired of visiting other aggregation sites that are full of spammy links. It can be nearly impossible for most people to find the information they actually want. Well, setting up an autoblog is kind of like having your own online magazine rack that is restocked daily.

Having an autoblog can help you keep up with your favorite topics, get fresh news, and find products you desire. Most autoblog plugins are used to aggregate content for a website's visitors. I like to use them for my own personal use as well.

An autoblog plugin is a helpful tool to enhance your reading by pulling content from various sources. This gives your readers a place to find relevant content and discover new sources. It's also a great way to monetize a blog as well. You know those people that spend all day in the bookstore reading magazines so they don't have to pay for it? Well, if they heard about your amazing aggregation site, they may just end up spending lots of time browsing your content. And we all know that eyeballs can equal $$$.

How is an Autoblog Plugin Used?

Bloggers can use autoblog plugins to find recent headlines from information sources. Curate the content by choosing to add images, excerpts, and even full articles. You can be the go-to source for information, display awesome products, or keep your associates up to date on the latest developments in the industry.

One of the most popular examples for this alltop. If you visit the Alltop Section for WordPress, you will see a ton of links on all things WordPress. In this example, you can see links to a number of different online publications, including Elegant Themes. Each publisher has multiple links to their content in this case. Click on a link and it takes you right to the page. You can find a ton of relevant information, without having to scour search engines like Google. This makes it easy and fun to find the best news on any topic.

More Than Just Blogging

You can do much more than aggregating articles from around the web. The following is a list of the top autoblog plugins for WordPress. All of these plugins are capable of creating simple links on your site for personal use. Some of of these plugins use the freemium model, while some are paid. The free versions allow you to add links, titles, author names, etc.

The premium plugins include more advanced features that can help with monetization, so you can build sites like stuff you can afford - which is a site full of interesting novelty products from places like Amazon.com. This is just one way you can monetize your website with affiliate links. Autoblog plugins can also give you the power to make money through email marketing, directory sites, or online stores.

WP RSS Aggregator

WPP RSS Aggregator is one of the oldest autoblog plugins for WordPress. The core features give you the ability to add unlimited feeds to your WordPress website. The settings panel has to control the display. The settings give you some basic control over the display and how you source your feeds.

You can do things like add unique titles, display author name, and choose to display the date. If you want more features, you can purchase add-ons. You can bundle them or buy them individually. Extras like the categories tag add-on and the keyword filtering add-on can help make your content more accessible.

Price: Free | More Information

Feedzy RSS Feeds

Like the majority of RSS feed plugins, Feedzy uses the SimplePie php class included in WordPress. The free version of Feedzy allows you to display images with your RSS feeds, which is a nice feature. Many other feed plugins only include this feature in their premium versions.

The reviews for this plugin indicate that it's fast and easy to use. You can use shortcodes in the editor to display a feed. There are currently 10+ parameters, which include options to: add thumbnails, titles, multiple feeds from a source, change the summary length, and more.

Developers can make good use of the custom hooks that are included with Feedzy. The paid version makes things easier. It also comes with some advanced features for affiliate links, a number of display options, and tools to create unique content from feeds.

Price: Free | More Information

WP Content Crawler

WP Content Crawler is a premium plugin that gives you every feature you'd need from an RSS aggregator. It's a popular choice for sites that post listings for things like real estate sites or WooCommerce shops.

One of the perks of buying a plugin like WP Content Crawler for an autoblog is that you get dedicated support. The documentation for this plugin is well-written and easy to understand. There are also plenty of video tutorials to help you get started. Other noteable features include built-in content templates for professional looking displays, password protection, save images as gallery, and plenty of other goodies.

Price: $24 | More Information

WPeMatico

Here's another plugin that makes it easy to create a free WordPress autoblog. The basic version gives you everything you need to add RSS or Atom feeds. Automatically create multiple feeds, and group them by category, or tag. It's worth mentioning that this plugin is basically a fork of WP-o-Matic, which the developer makes sure to mention. It is certainly an improvement.

The paid version of WPeMatico offers a set of advanced features to help you parse and filter your feeds. Pull feeds from sites that don't offer an RSS or Atom feed, add featured images, automatically tag your feeds, and much more.

Price: Free | More Information

RSS Feedburner

RSS Feedburner is handy if you use a service like Feedburner, FeedPress, or FeedBlitz. You won't have to touch your .htaccess file to implement feeds from these third party sites. This plugin is a fork of the original FeedBurner Feedsmith plugin. This is not a freemium plugin. It's just free.

The advantage of using third party feed aggregators like these is that they give you more options to play with. You can share your blog easily, and get views on your website. Remember that this plugin is only useful if you have an account to a third party feed aggregator.

Price: Free | More Information

Video Blogster Pro

This premium plugin is cheap and it works well. Video Blogster Pro allows you to import content from video and music sites into WordPress. Get unlimited feeds from search engines or directly from your favorite sources.

Currently, the plugin supports feeds from YouTube, Dailymotion, Hulu, Soundcloud, Spotify, Mixcloud, and Vimeo. Each video is imported as a new post. Automatically populate fields for the title, description, author, category, views, ratings, tags, and more. It's an easy way to build a niche site full of fresh multimedia.

Price: $22 | More Information

Wrapping Up

A free autoblog plugin will work if all you want to do is pull links from RSS or Atom feeds on your site for reading. If you are planning to do more, you will most likely be looking for a paid plugin. Either way, these are some of the most fun plugins to play with. Enjoy, and feel free to share any experiences you have with autoblog plugins.

It's important that I make a quick mention on using autoblog plugins for legitimate purposes. Even if you have good intentions, you may accidentally infringe on copyright laws when you take content from other sources. If you plan to use an autoblog to promote other people's content, always use proper attribution.

Another important thing to remember is that the more feeds you have, the heavier the load will be on your server. So make sure you have enough memory, bandwidth, and all that other good stuff from your hosting provider to support your desire to aggregate.
What's your favorite way to get in on some of this autoblog action? Share your favorite plugins, tips, and tools below. Article thumbnail image by Faith Nyky / shutterstock.com

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Autoblog Plugins Make Content Aggregation Easy

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WordPress is the ultimate tool for blogging. An autoblog plugin gives you even more power. You can automatically pull content from the web, and share what you are reading. This makes it easier to collect articles from your favorite news feeds in one place. There are also many ways to use an autoblog plugin...

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When your site is live, one of the first things you're probably thinking is, "Is this thing actually working?"

Without an immediate barrage of sales or signups, it's hard to know what's happening. Does your site even have any visitors and, if so, where are they coming from? Do they always enter from the home page or have they found it through the latest blog post? When they're on the site for more than five minutes, what's keeping them from converting?

There are so many questions that can arise when you have no direct insight into what's going on with your site's activity. Luckily enough, there's one tool you can turn to that will help you make heads and tails of what's happening with your visitors: Google Analytics.

Previously, we've covered what Google Analytics is as well as how to add it to WordPress. Now, I'd like to review the Google Analytics plugin options because, unsurprisingly, there isn't just one perfect Goldilocks solution for everyone.

Best Google Analytics Plugins for WordPress

A Google Analytics plugin should accomplish at least two things for you:

It should establish the connection between your site and Google Analytics without you having to update any of your site's code.

It should add a comprehensive dashboard filled with statistics to your WordPress backend, keeping all the data for your site within WordPress.

Most of the following Google Analytics plugins will help you achieve those goals. (I did throw in a couple other more specialized plugins for good measure.) Your goal now should be to sift through this list and find one with the price point, ease of use, and intended purpose that jives best with what you need.

For those of you who like the free Analytify plugin, but are disappointed with the limitations of the free version, this is the premium one. The dashboard interface is the same, but this one comes filled to the brim with performance data, ecommerce tracking, social media referral information, page-level analyses, and more. You can also catch a glimpse at each page's analytics from the frontend of your site.

One more thing to note is the pricing. There are plans for different business purposes. So if you're a developer or serving multiple clients on behalf of your agency, you can secure enhanced WordPress analytics all at once with this plugin.

Although there is a free version of this plugin, I'm not recommending it here since it's nearly identical to #5. Instead, I think the premium version from Web Dorado is worth a glance if you want to maximize what you can do with Google Analytics from within WordPress. This is ideal if you want access to reports that provide information on goals management, ecommerce tracking, and ad integration.

It's also worth noting that this premium plugin has a number of reasonably priced plans, even for agencies and web developers.

Wrapping Up

If you want your site to be successful now and in the future, you can't afford to leave anything up to chance. Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful tool that will help you unlock those insights into what's happening on site. And with the help of a Google Analytics plugin, you can spend less time worrying about how to code it into the backend and more time reviewing your data so you can update your content and the user experience accordingly.

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9 Best Google Analytics Plugins for WordPress

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When your site is live, one of the first things you're probably thinking is, "Is this thing actually working?" Without an immediate barrage of sales or signups, it's hard to know what's happening. Does your site even have any visitors and, if so, where are they coming from?

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Even if your website focuses on your own original content, there's nothing wrong with adding external material to help spice things up. Including quotes on your site is a simple way to bring in an outside perspective and provide extra value to your readers. Plus, a random quotes section can be a fun, educational way to engage visitors and supplement your regular content.

Fortunately, you'll find that displaying random quotes on your WordPress website is incredibly easy. This article will show you how to do so using the Quotes Collection plugin. Before that, let's talk a little more about why quotes are a smart addition to your site!

Why You Might Want to Add a Random Quotes Section to Your WordPress Website

Adding quotes to your website is one of those little touches that can help it stand out from the crowd. Quotes from famous or influential people can be both fun and educational, plus they're also a great way to add extra content to your site that you don't have to generate.

There are plenty of other reasons to add a quotes section to your website:

You can display inspirational quotes about your field or topic, getting readers hyped about your website's regular content.

Quoting experts can improve your own credibility and perceived authority.

Humorous quotes add a fun element to your site, further engaging visitors.

If you want, you can spread your own ideas by including original quotes.

One of our favorite ways to incorporate quotes on a website is to create a random quotes section. This technique subtly reinforces that users should regularly visit your site, since a new quote will appear every time they do so. Plus, adding random quotes to your site is simple - all you need is a plugin.

Quotes Collection is a straightforward plugin that makes the process of displaying quotes on your website easy. You can create a library of quotes, then either add them to a sidebar or use shortcodes to include them on a post or page. The shortcodes enable a variety of display options, so you can focus on quotes listed under a specific author or tag. Alternately, you can simply set up your quotes section to show a random entry every time a user visits the page.
Key Features:

Includes an easy-to-use admin interface.

Enables you to build and manage a collection of quotes.

Provides a Random Quote sidebar widget, as well as four shortcode options.

Price: Free | More Information

How to Display Random Quotes on Your WordPress Website (In 4 Easy Steps)

In this guide, we're going to show you how to use the Quotes Collection plugin to add a random quotes section to your site. We chose this particular plugin for its ease of use and simplicity - it adds only the features you'll need. Plus, if you're an Elegant Themes member you'll be glad to know it plays well with Divi. Let's get started!

Step 1: Install and Configure the Plugin

As with any plugin, you'll first want to install and activate this on your WordPress website. This will add a new Quotes Collection tab to your admin menu, so click on it and navigate to the Options screen:

We mentioned earlier that this is an extremely simple plugin to use, which means there are only a few settings to configure. For example, the Refresh link text field will enable you to change the text that displays next to each quote, which users can click on to see a new random entry:

You can also change the Maximum number of iterations for auto-refresh here. If you set up your random quotes widget to refresh new quotes automatically, this number is the amount of repetitions it will cycle through before stopping. Finally, if your site is cached and the random quote feature isn't working properly, you can check off the box next to Dynamically fetch the first random quote in widget? option to fix the issue.

Step 2: Create a Library of Quotes

Now you have the plugin configured, it's time to start building your quote library. You'll need to enter each quote individually, although you can build up a library of quotes over time - so there's no rush to add hundreds of them right away. Where you find them is up to you, although there are plenty of useful resources online, such as BrainyQuote and Goodreads.

Still in the Quotes Collection section, click on the Add New tab. Here you can enter the text of the quote, and include its author and source if you like:

You can also assign each quote to one or more tags. This can be helpful for keeping your quote library organized, and for displaying particular categories on your site. For example, you could set up a quotes section to only show entries with the tag 'cooking'. In addition, you can uncheck the Public? box if you want to prevent a certain quote from showing up on your site for the time being.

Once you've added a few quotes, you can view, edit, and delete them in the All Quotes tab:

Before we move on, it's also worth checking out the Import and Export tabs. If you've built up a library of quotes and want to transfer it to another WordPress site, you can do so easily. Simply click on the Export button to download a file containing all of your quotes and their associated information. Then use the Import tab on the second site to upload the file and start using it.

Step 3: Display Your Random Quotes as a Sidebar Widget

It's finally time to start displaying your quotes on the front end of your website, and you have two options for doing so. Firstly, we'll talk about how to display them in a sidebar widget, then we'll dive into alternative display options using shortcodes.

If you navigate to Appearance > Widgets, you should find a new option - the Random Quote widget. Simply drag it into your sidebar, and you'll be presented with a number of choices for customizing its appearance:

To start with, you can enter a title, and choose whether or not to display each quote's author and source. You can also turn the refresh feature we discussed earlier on or off. If you do want the quotes to refresh periodically on the page, you'll find a few additional settings for customizing that feature under Advanced options. Plus, you can choose to only display quotes with certain tags, and set a character limit for the quotes' text.

That's it! Save your changes, and your random quotes section will now appear on the front end of your site:

If all you wanted was to display quotes in your sidebar, you're all set. However, read on if you're interested in adding a quotes section elsewhere on your site.

Step 4: Use Shortcodes to Add Quotes Anywhere on Your Website

You may prefer to add random quotes within a particular post or page - or you might want to add multiple quotes sections to your site. Fortunately, this is a simple process with the help of a few WordPress shortcodes.

You can create your own customized shortcodes if you'd like, but for now let's stick to the basics. Here are four options you can use right away:

1. [quotcoll]: This displays all of the quotes from your library.

2. [quotcoll author="Name"]: If you replace Name with a particular author, the shortcode will only display quotes attributed to that person.

3. [quotcoll tags="tag1,tag2,tag3″]: You can include any number of tags, and the quotes section will display entries from just those categories.

4. [quotcoll orderby="random" limit=1]: This is the shortcode you want if you're looking to display random quotes. You can change the limit to display more than one entry if you'd like.

As with any shortcode, just type or paste it into a post or page wherever you'd like it to appear:

Then, view it on the front end to make sure it displays correctly:

With this option, adding a random quotes section (or more than one) to your site is a piece of cake!

Conclusion

Quotes are a fun, simple way to add a little flair to your site and offer visitors some extra value. A random quotes section can help to supplement your own content, provide additional insights and bolster your own credibility. Plus, the right selection of quotes can inspire your readers and get them excited about your field or topic.

With WordPress, adding random quotes to your website's pages is easy. Simply follow these four steps:

1. Install and configure the Quotes Collection plugin.

2. Create a library of quotes.

3. Display your random quotes as a sidebar widget.

4. Use shortcodes to add quotes anywhere on your site.

Do you feel random quotes are a useful feature for your WordPress website? Let us know in the comments section below! Article thumbnail image by girafchik / shutterstock.com.

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How to Display Random Quotes on Your WordPress Website (In 4 Easy Steps)

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Even if your website focuses on your own original content, there's nothing wrong with adding external material to help spice things up. Including quotes on your site is a simple way to bring in an outside perspective and provide extra value to your readers. Plus, a random quotes section can be a fun,...

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This article is part of a series created in partnership with SiteGround. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.
Welcome to WordPress! Starting your first WordPress powered blog or website is an exciting, and sometimes confusing, time. You are likely worried about making mistakes and also wanting to get up and running as soon as possible. The intention of this article is to do just that. We aim to cut straight to the core of what you'll need to build a safe and secure site that is custom fit to your needs, and is easy to manage.

As with any website, you should spend very little time updating, tweaking, and troubleshooting, and more time creating content and interacting with customers. With that in mind, let's jump right into it.

1. Picking and Learning Your Theme

Picking a theme can be daunting, especially considering there are hundreds of thousands of themes to choose from. The good news for any WordPress beginner is there are a handful of tried and true WordPress themes that are extremely popular and customizable. Divi and Genesis are great options for beginners. They are user-friendly meaning they don't require in-depth developer skills, they are affordable, and they have a large community to draw support from.

Beyond choosing the right theme comes learning how it works, and how you can customize it to your individual needs. This is accomplished in two ways:
1. Crack open the setup guide.
It will give you in-depth instructions on how to download your theme, how to install it on your WordPress site, and how to tailor it to your needs. In it you will find resources to troubleshoot common issues and a section of FAQs that you can draw from when you are feeling a little lost. When all else fails, reach out to customer support by opening a support ticket.
2. Find the discussion board.
An active community is crucial when choosing a theme for your WordPress site. Customer support will help you fix your site and make minor customizations, but the user community will be the ones who give you feedback, show you major changes, and steer you to plugins and tools that will make your site look better and perform better.

2. Protect Your Hard Work By Backing Up Your WordPress Site

Being new to WordPress means you've likely never seen the white screen of death or have fallen victim to a malicious hacker who has locked you out of your site. Regularly backing up your WordPress site will ensure you can get back up and running when the day comes that you lose access, or your site breaks from some faulty plugin.

There are three ways you can backup your WordPress site:

1. Carefully choose a WordPress hosting provider that offers backup services. Our partner, SiteGround, for example, has an auto-backup system which makes a copy of your site daily. They provide you with the flexibility to restore your data with just a few clicks.

2. Back it up yourself using an FTP server and manually transfer the files between your server and your computer on a regular basis.

3. Download a backup plugin like UpdraftPlus or BackupBuddy.

3. Make Your Site Search Engine Friendly

With any WordPress site, your goal is likely to get more traffic, more readers, or more customers. One of the best ways to do that is through optimizing your site to rank higher on Google or other search engines. This tactic is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While WordPress does a good job out of the box with SEO, these two tips will put you far ahead of your competition with a minimal time investment:
Download an SEO plugin
While there are hundreds of SEO plugins, by far the most popular plugin is Yoast. Many other web-based tools like SEMrush and Moz will become familiar to you as your site grows, but for any WordPress beginner, Yoast is a great start because it is an all-in-one solution that has a clear and easy-to-use interface. To download a WordPress SEO plugin from the admin interface:
Plugins > Add New > Search for 'SEO' > Click Install Now
On the next screen simply activate your plugin and follow the instructions for setting it up properly. The instructions can be found on the WordPress download page or within the plugin itself under Settings.
Adjust your permalink settings
According to Yoast, a straightforward permalink structure is ideal for SEO. To take it up a notch add your main keyword somewhere in your post's name. Adjusting your permalink structure in WordPress is simple:
Go to Settings > Permalinks > Select 'Post Name'
For a more in-depth look at WordPress SEO check out Yoast's guide.

4. Beef Up Your Security

Strong security for your WordPress site doesn't need to be expensive or take a long time to set up. These three steps will get you there in no time:
Generate a strong password
Your new WordPress site likely gave you a username and password and should be updated as soon as possible to thwart any hackers from using brute force attacks to gain control of your website. Generating a secure password involves using a different password than any of your other logins and using a long string of multiple numbers, letters, and symbols. If you want a secure password quickly, you can always use a password generator to do the job for you.
Update your site regularly
Update WordPress, your plugins, and your themes regularly to close any backdoors and vulnerabilities left open to hackers. Looking at the graphic below you can see that WordPress notifies you when any updates are available and makes updating as simple as clicking 'Update'.

This process can even be done in bulk for your plugins. An aside tip would be to backup your site before making any updates. This way if your new update is faulty in any way or not compatible with your WordPress site you can simply restore the previous version and get things back to normal.

Some hosting providers have solutions for automated updates that save loads of time, and eliminate worries about upgrading manually. https://www.sitepoint.com/siteground-recommended-65-off has a custom opt-in tool that updates their clients' WordPress sites and all plugins automatically.
Install a security plugin
Much like your computer likely has some sort of antivirus or antimalware software built in, your website will need some similar defense systems. By far the most popular is Wordfence and All In One WP Security and Firewall. Both are free and robust security solutions. They have paid versions as well for more premium protection. To learn more about WordPress security check out WPBeginner's Step By Step Guide.

5. Be Mindful About Must-Have Plugins

When you're just getting started with WordPress, you are likely doing lots of research into best practices and troubleshooting some problems you may be having. Which is great, you should absolutely be doing that. Along the way, it is almost inevitable that you will come across some article about "Must Have WordPress Plugins". While these articles may have great intentions, you should know that more plugins aren't always better. In fact, the opposite is usually true. You should keep your plugins to a bare minimum to run your site and provide the user experience you desire. More plugins than necessary can slow down your site tremendously. Another issue with more plugins is they come with added vulnerabilities. Any plugin that isn't up to date has the potential to be hacked or even become faulty. Only download high-quality plugins from trusted sources who update frequently.

6. Gain Insights About Your WordPress Site With Analytics

WordPress is strong in a lot of areas but built in analytics and dashboards is not one of them. Luckily there are many plugins available that make it easy to track important things like where your traffic is coming from, how often people are first-time visitors or returning visitors, bounce rate, and much more.

The universal way of tracking your website metrics is to setup an account with Google Analytics. You can see everything you want to track on their dashboard, but a more convenient option is to download one of those plugins we spoke about before to see everything directly on your WordPress dashboard right when you log in.

7. Encourage Communication

With any online presence, you will eventually have readers, followers, and customers reach out for a multitude of reasons. They have questions about your product, they want to praise you for an article that impacted them, they want to work for you, and much more. With that, you'll need some easy ways for them to reach out.
Add a contact form plugin
WP Forms and Contact Form 7 are great options for your WordPress site and can be completely customized. You can also use their pre-built templates if you want to set something up quickly. They connect with any list building or newsletter solutions you may be using, like MailChimp or AWeber.
Give them multiple options
While it is great to give your customers and readers ways to contact you, it can also be difficult to weed out the spammers. If you're wary about signing up for costly services or giving out personal phone numbers and email in the beginning you can use services like Google Voice and Google Suite. Google Voice gives you a free phone number that routes to your cell phone and Google Suite provides you with a custom email address for only $5 per user a month.

Finally, a great option for online chat is the free Tawk.To plugin which lets your users chat with you and your team live from the website. The messages can even be sent to your mobile phone for added convenience.

Summary

Creating a new WordPress site is filled with ups and downs, but is a skill that will pay dividends in the future. While you might not do all the designing yourself it is especially useful and cost effective to understand how to make simple changes and keep the site operational on your own. To continue your learning, you can take courses and subscribe to WordPress specific blogs.

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7 Setup Tips for WordPress Beginners - SitePoint

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This article is part of a series created in partnership with SiteGround. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible. Welcome to WordPress! Starting your first WordPress powered blog or website is an exciting, and sometimes confusing, time. You are likely worried about making mistakes and also wanting to get up and running as soon as possible.