WordPress wouldn’t be such a resourceful and customizable CMS without such a diverse range of plugins. And there are quite a number of really good ones available these days, including very nifty SEO plugins.
Now you might be wondering: but which ones are the best?
Today I’m going to show you 5 killer yet not-so-popular WordPress SEO plugins. [Read more…]
Security firm Sucuri says they have already seen a large number of hacking attacks on the WordPress CMS platform. In its very first Website Hacked Report, compiled statistics of these hacking investigations. Most of these websites were running on the WordPress CMS platform for the past six years.
As a blogger, social media is probably the most effective channel for reaching a larger audience. Truth be told, optimising for search engine traffic is not the easiest and cheapest thing to do, especially for new blogs. Websites take weeks to be indexed for new search terms – let alone reach page one where all the traffic is. But through social media, you can dramatically increase your blog’s visibility and get significantly quicker results. [Read more…]
Usually, the first thing that comes to mind for bloggers is to write text-based posts, with relevant visual aids. It has been established, however, that video content can considerably increase your readership and exposure.
You can always provide a link to a video, say on YouTube, but a much better way is to embed videos in your posts. One reason is that you make it easier for your readers to access the information – they simply have to click play. Another reason is you increase the time on page.
You don’t need a lot of technical know-how to embed videos in your posts. There are a lot of plugins that will make your life easier. In this post, let’s look at some of the best FREE WordPress video plugins. [Read more…]
Your site is not that big that it would attract the attention of hackers, is it? That’s what some people think, and thus they don’t spend all that much time putting measures in place to ensure that their website is safe and secure.
But surely you’ve heard of that massive DDoS attack on almost 200,000 WordPress sites not so long ago? For all you know, you could have been one of the targets. These days, hackers don’t always target just the big sites. Every website is at risk.
Why is website security important?
IT expert Neeraj Tewari says it clearly: “Many people use their blog to communicate with friends or family, or for work purposes. If your blog is compromised, it puts those critical relationships at risk. Your blog or blog profile may contain important personal or identifying information. If your blog is vulnerable, so is this info.” [Read more…]
We all know SEO is important, especially for blogs because they get new content regularly. However, if you haven’t educated yourself enough on SEO, then simple mistakes may have a will long-lasting impact on your blog, even though you may have great content.
Even though you may consider yourself in the writing industry, if your content is being published online, then you also need to become an SEO expert. Otherwise, you risk undermining your content and not getting the exposure that you deserve.
Meta tags that are too long are one of the most common problems that I see during my website Internet marketing audits that are completed for clients. If your meta tags are too long, then they will get cut off in Google (and other search engines ), leading to incomplete information for both the search engines and your potential readers. Title meta tags must be under 65 characters (including spaces) and description meta tags must be under 160 characters. Most SEO experts (like Moz) agree that 155 characters is a good maximum to shoot for.
When redoing meta tags, be sure to include more top keywords and a good description of what that specific page is about. In addition, for WordPress blogs, you can use a SEO plugin that will automatically optimize these meta tags (as well as complete basic SEO) for you.
Do you know that for every single second delay in your website loading speed your website conversion rate goes down by at least 7%?
Do you also know that 40% of potential visitors to your website will abandon it if it takes more than 3 seconds to load?
These and more insightful data can be found in this Econsultancy study; however, I’m not here to talking about website speed data but to share some practical tips to help you significantly improve your website speed.
In other words, one of the top ways to kill your website is if it is slow.
Whether you’re a blogger, a small business or a corporation, a slight delay in how long it takes for your website to load could be costing you a lot in revenue while some little tweaks to make your website faster could double conversions on your website. Here are a few tips for you:
1. Limit the Number of Plugins or Addons that Power Your Website
This is especially important if you’re a WordPress user; it’s impossible to run a website that is powered by WordPress or other major CMS without using a few plugins but the reality is that the number of plugins you use every day grows and ends up slowing down your website.
With an open source platform like WordPress, each plugins are coded by different people and as a result the server configuration required for each plugin to run is different; in other words, when the function a certain plugin provides is requested, it’ll make a request to your server which will eventually influence your website speed.
One of the major advantages that WordPress has over its rivals (aside from its beautiful user interface) is the sheer number of plugins available for users to download.
With over 12,000 plugins at its disposal, WordPress vast arsenal dwarfs both Joomla and Drupal who are currently hovering around 6,000 extensions and 7,000 modules, respectively.
However when it comes to the number of premium plugins available, selection seems to be rather slim (at least as far as those that are compatible with the latest version of WordPress).
While WordPress’s current setup for free plugins already places them far ahead of rivals, it might be time to rethink the current approach when it comes to premium plugins for WordPress. [Read more…]
Mark Jaquith (a lead developer of WordPress.org) has developed a tool that will make installing WordPress plugins 10 times easier than the current method being employed by millions of WordPress fans.
Instead of searching for your plugin upon WordPress.org or Google, Jaquith’s new method will allow a user to install a plugin by simply typing its name and clicking upon the “install plugin” button.
But why are we offering plugins the same way we were in 2004? We have a built-in plugin installer. Let’s use that! So how would you do that? I guess you’d just tell people “Hey, go to your wp-admin and search for ‘My Awesome Plugin.’” That introduces a lot of chances for failure. They might even end up with the wrong plugin!
I made a better way, and will be working on integrating this into WordPress.org this summer. […]
The tool auto-detects the WordPress installation by looking at the X-Pingback header. You’ll be presented with the plugin installation form for your blog. Click “Install Now” and the plugin will be installed. Much easier, and you know they’re getting the correct plugin. (Mark on WordPress) [Read more…]
The boys and girls at WordPress have released a plugin for self hosted WP fans (aka WordPress.org) that allows them to broadcast to the world the exact location of where they are blogging from (via mobile).
We’re very happy to announce that the Geolocation plugin is now available for self-hosted WordPress sites, and can be downloaded at the WordPress.org plugin directory or through your WordPress dashboard[.] […]
The plugin adds a subtle but powerful addition to posts you’ve geotagged using WordPress for iPhone: a link appears inside your post with a short description of the location where the post was tagged. When your users hover over the link, an interactive map appears allowing them to view the location as a pin on the map. (WordPress For iPhone Blog)
The geolocation plugin (which can be downloaded over here) should please WordPress iPhone lovers (as well as iPad bloggers) who have been seeking a way to post their location on their self hosted WordPress blog without having to resort to a third party app like BlogPress.
WordPress fans who blog from their Blackberry or Android device can also use the geolocation plugin, although there is no word on whether this is also available to Nokia fans as well.
“Geoblogging” is slowly becoming a popular trend within the blogosphere (at least upon travel blogs and a few technology sites), although time will only tell whether it becomes a mainstream affair (like FourSquare and Gowalla).
