Your choice of blogging platform can help you get the most out of your writing. WordPress is popular with many writers as it’s so adaptable. If you want to customise the platform, these 15 tools and plugins will help you get the most out of it.

Yoast SEO:

This tool is designed to make it easy to track and monitor your SEO. It sits in your dashboard and helps you see how good your SEO is as you write. It will show you how strong your keywords are, how good your readability is, and more.

Floating Social Bar:

Social share bars are a must, but a lot can slow your site down. This plugin is designed to give you those tools without affecting your blog’s speed. Now your readers can share your blog on any social media site that they choose.

Easy Word Count:

Keeping your blogs short is one of the best ways to keep readers interested. This tool will help you keep them to the correct length.

Academized:

Plagiarism is a real problem online, and sites will be penalised by Google if they’re found to be using another writer’s work. This can happen if you don’t mean it to. Use this site to check your work before posting it.

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer:

A good headline is crucial to getting readers to click through to your blog. This tool will give you data on your headline, and give suggestions on how to improve it.

WPData Tables:

This plugin helps you create responsive tables for your blog. It’s easy to use and helps you create visual interest in your posts.

The Noun Project:

This plugin gives you icons for almost anything you can think of. You can use them as identifiers, or as images in their own right. They can bring a lot of interest to your blog without the effort.

Buy essay:

Proofreading is an essential part of blog writing. This tool helps you find an expert to check your blogs for you before publication.

Playbuzz:

This plugin is designed to help you create interactive elements, such as quizzes and polls. It’s a tool that you can use to increase engagement. You can also use it to gauge what your readers want from you.

Australian Help:

If you need an editor to polish up your blog ready for publication, you’ll find one here easily. They’ll edit it according to your notes, and send it back to you ready to be used.

Cool Timeline:

As the name implies, this tool enables you to create embeddable timelines in your blogs, good if you need more visual interest.

Link Patrol:

Links are important, as they will show readers that you’re a well-researched blog. This checks that all the blogs you’re using are legit.

Big Assignments:

This writing service is capable of putting out different types of writing, including blogs. Give your writer the topic and any info they need, and they’ll get it written. It can save you time when you’re looking to hit deadlines.

Followerwonk:

This tool helps you find new trending topics to include in your blog. This is helpful when you’re out of ideas, or want to use a trend to launch a blog.

YARPP:

This tool will help you retain readers after they finish, by sending them to a related post.
These tools will help you get the most out of your WordPress blog. Give them a try, and you’ll see just how much your readership and engagement can grow.

Brenda Berg is a professional with over 15 years of experience in business management, marketing and entrepreneurship. Consultant and tutor for college students and entrepreneurs at Resumention and UK top writers. She believes that constant learning is the only way to success. Besides, she regularly writes for her blog Letsgoandlearn.

Selecting WordPress Plugins – how to make the tough job easy

Plugins make WordPress even more powerful than what we perceive. Correctly speaking, one of the greatest strengths of WordPress is the plugins. The enormous versatility of the WordPress platform emanates from the plugins. WordPress plugins are not decorative items that you can use as showpieces. If you have some essential function to perform or want to solve some particular problem, then you must use plugins. Plugins empower users that in turn help to assert their faith in the powers of WordPress. The key to efficient use of plugins is selecting the right ones and using it only when it is vital. Moreover, procuring plugins from authentic sources is equally important to ensure proper functioning and service support required to maintain its effectiveness.

Should you use plugins?

The Calgary SEO expert will tell you why it makes perfect sense to use plugins. One way of strengthening your SEO initiatives is to use plugins so that you can perform much more things on the WordPress platform that would not be possible otherwise. From speeding up your blog to securing it and from managing 404 errors and redirects to optimizing blogs for search engines, you can find a plugin for almost everything. Building high converting landing pages, growing e-mail list, blocking spam comments and encouraging social sharing is all possible by using WordPress plugins.

Selecting plugins

With thousands of plugins floating all around and each offering some unique functionality, the task of choosing the right plugins is far from easy. There are high chances that you might find it quite difficult to distinguish between similar plugins and end up confused.

First, determine the area where you would require a plugin to perform some special function that the WordPress platform does not support by default. You might need to back up your content easily and require a plugin. Similarly, you can think of plugins for enhancing security, improving user experience or even improving conversions.

Secondly, there is no strict rule of using any particular plugin for specific functions because the plugin that works well for one might not help another person. Some other plugin might be working well for him. In this article, you will find plugins that are similar to one another but not the same. You can use these interchangeably for performing certain functions. This should help you make the right selection.

Faster page loading

People expect that blogs would load quickly and if the speed is sluggish, then you are losing on two counts – search ranking and conversion. For search rankings, Google factors page loading speed into its algorithm and slow pages can push down rankings in search results. The need for speedier pages has become even more important now that more and more people are using mobile devices and want pages to open instantly as they tap the screen on their phones. Secondly, slow pages mean lower conversions and according to studies carried out, delay of just one second translates into a 7% reduction in conversion.

The following plugins give good results in enhancing page speed.

• WP Super Cache – You can download the free plugin that has a broad range of features, but it will be wrong to construe it as a simple caching plugin. This easy to use plugin generates HTML files that are static and present it to viewers. This saves the time it would take to load dynamic pages.
• W3 Total Cache – This can be the go-to plugin for those seeking improvement in page loading time. It is compatible with many different hosting environments and is fully configured to provide the kind of functionality you expect from it.

You may have to try out both to figure out which one suit you best. Since both are free, trying out should not be a problem.

Managing redirects and 404 error monitoring

There will be occasions when you change the URL of content like posts and blogs. Viewers and search engines must get the cue from proper redirects that guide them to the new URL. If it is a permanent change, you can use a 301 redirect or a temporary redirect for changes that are temporary with the option of reverting to the original URL. By monitoring 404 errors, you can add redirects proactively for consistent user experience. The Redirection plugin can do it all for you.

Redirection –This is yet another free WordPress plugin. Managing 301 redirects and monitoring 404 errors for adding redirects, you can do it all very comprehensively by using this plugin. The plugin comes with an error logging feature, and if you feel like exporting your redirects, you can do it. Just ensure that you disable the log-tracking feature in settings to reduce the load on the server when using the plugin.

Optimizing blogs for SEO

How useful plugins can be is well realized when you use WordPress for optimization. Since the default setting of WordPress does not support all optimization measures, the use of plugins become essential. The plugins allow tweaking various technicalities so that you can add Meta data, set canonical links even mark ‘noindex’ pages that you want to keep out of the scope of Google’s indexation. There are many more things that you can do to augment the optimization process. Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack are the two most popular plugins for SEO.

Yoast SEO – This highly popular plugin comes with a spectacular range of features. It can generate a score on the pages or posts, and it can add XML sitemaps and Open Graph data. This plugin is free, and the premium version is also available.

All in One SEO – With one million active installs, the popularity of this plugin needs no more mention. Although free, the level of support service of this plugin is highly impressive. You can even buy the premium version.

The better you can ascertain your need and align it with what plugins can do for you, easier it will be for selecting the most appropriate plugin.

Launching an interactive and professional-looking WordPress blog is just the beginning of your web career. If you want to generate higher conversions and revenues, you will need to strive on planning and implementing robust online marketing strategies. Your digital marketing campaigns can help you drive more traffic towards your site/blog quickly and efficiently.

After setting up your WordPress blog, make sure you give more attention to social media websites in order to promote your brand across the web. In the current era, businesses and online marketers are adapting groundbreaking social media marketing strategies to expand their customer base and generate more revenues for their businesses.

To achieve the targeted goals, they promote their content on all social media platforms, without even understanding their specifications. Even they struggle in getting positive results due to the complexities they face while promoting their blog on social networking platforms.

To make your job easier, we bring you the list of 7 popular WordPress plugins that will take your social media marketing efforts to the next level, without any technical assistance.

1. Custom Twitter Feeds

Download: WordPress Plugin Repository

Active Installs: 7,000+

Every platform on social media has its own significance. The strategies, the tools and the marketing campaign you use should be idealized for the individual social media platform.

Since Twitter has become a robust platform for online business promotion, you should integrate a Customer Twitter Feeds plugin into your WordPress site or blog. The plugin lets you display tailor-made Twitter feeds of your user timeline, home timeline as well as a hashtag on your site.

It is a responsive and mobile optimized plugin that works smoothly on multiple devices and screen sizes.

Adding a twitter feed on your blog will give more exposure to your site across social media market. In fact, the content added to twitter feed is SEO friendly that can boost your visibility on search engine platforms.

2. Custom Facebook Feed

Download: WordPress Plugin Repository

Active Installs: 200,000+

Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms where you can promote your brand, products, and services to your targeted social web traffic effectively. It is a huge platform where you can convey your business message to grow your customer’s read quickly and easily.

With the use of Custom Facebook Feed plugin, you can post fresh and search engine optimized content on Facebook to drive more web visitors. It is also a free plugin that works seamlessly across different devices and screen sizes – a robust mobile-friendly plugin.

You can even customize it to showcase feeds from different pages or groups on the fly.

3. Social Login

Download: WordPress Plugin Repository

Active Installs: 30,000+

Social Login is one of the best social media plugins on the WordPress plugin repository. It lets your web visitors comment, log in, and register into your site with more than 30 social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, PayPal, Pinterest, OpenID, Amazon, YouTube, and a lot more.

You can add social login pages either on your login page, registration page, or the comment formular to grab more attention of your visitors. There is also a login widget that you can add to your sidebar, without any coding.

4. Monarch Social Sharing Button

Download: elegant themes

Monarch is developed by Elegant themes that come with a plethora of exciting features to let you grow your social networking reach quickly and easily.

It offers 20 social sharing icons that you can add on your site or arrange either at the top or end of the post. You can add multiple numbers of available networks to craft a customized collection of social sharing options for your real time web visitors.

You can also add floating social sharing icons and automatic pop-ups to give your visitors a rich and hassle-free experience on your website. Overall, Monarch is an incredible plugin for boosting social media marketing of a WordPress blog.

5. Social Media Share Buttons | MashShare

Download: WordPress Plugin Repository

Active Installs: 60,000+

Encourage your web visitors to share your content on multiple social media websites by adding customizable social sharing icons on it. MashShare is a fantastic WordPress plugin that lets you add beautiful and responsive social share buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YoutTube, Pinterest, etc on your site’s content without any coding.

The plugin is highly optimized for speed and stimulates users to share your content instantly – which boosts the user experience of a site.

Plus, it displays total social media share count to give you an idea about your growing popularity across the social networking sites.

6. Instagram Feed

Download: WordPress Plugin Repository

Active Installs: 300,000+

Instagram has gained a lot of popularity among all scales and types of businesses. It is the best place to share your creative work in the forms of images and videos with your targeted social media audience.

With the help of Instagram Feed plugin, you can showcase customized, beautiful, and mobile friendly feeds from different Instagram accounts on the fly. It is a simple and intuitive plugin that helps you display images from your Instagram profile on your WordPress blog to help you generate more quality leads.

You can even showcase images as well as videos from non-private Instagram accounts that include yours as well as those you are tagged in to let you share user-generated content with ease. This can boost the online visibility of your website or blog.

7. Ultimate Social

Download: envato market

Ultimate Social is a premium WordPress plugin that offers a plenty of features including more than 25 social sharing buttons, over 22 fan counters, 20+ display locations, simple and intuitive shortcodes, customization options, responsive designs, multilingual functionality and a lot more.

The plugin is also integrated with WooCommerce, BuddyPress, bbPress, Easy Digital Downloads, Google Analytics, and other third-party tools. Plus, it comes with a user-friendly interface to let you add social sharing icons within your content, without any technical assistance.

You can use this paid WordPress plugin to take your social media marketing campaign to the next level. It helps you achieve your goals quickly and efficiently.

Conclusion

All the seven plugins mentioned above in this blog post will help you promote your WordPress blog on multiple social networking sites, which in turn leads you more web traffic, more conversions, and more sales.

Author Bio

Lucy Barret is a Web Developer with over 5 years experience. She is currently employed at a PSD to WordPress conversion company and handles all major projects. She is also a passionate writer and loves to write technical articles. Follow her on Twitter.