As time has moved forward, the way content marketeers have to work has completely changed. WordPress is one of the popular options for a lot of people, allowing anybody to have access to the tools that can create eye-catching and innovative websites.
The statistics speak for themself, with over 60 million webmasters choosing to use this tool. It’s easy to see why people are opting to use this programme over Blogger and Typepad. One of the best things about it is its ease of use. Even the most technophobic person will find it a breeze to upload and edit any content that is put on a WordPress website.
Like with any business, it’s essential to market yourself so that you stand out when compared to your competitors. One of the main ways to do this is by making sure your website is well-made. This is where WordPress asserts its dominance over the market.
WordPress is open source software. The result of this is that all of the coding that makes WordPress do what it does is readily available for people to take advantage of. They can manipulate, edit and add coding, making it a versatile tool to work with.
One of the knock-on effects of this is the amount of plugins that can be installed on any WordPress website. The majority of browsers allow easy installation of these add ons, and you can definitely see the impact they have on your website. Some have a physical presence on the website, whereas others run behind the scenes.
In this blog you’ll find some of the best plugins you can utilise, making sure that any website you put content on will be more noticeable by your ideal consumer.
Ensure your website is as optimised as possible with W3 Total Cache
One of the most important things to do as a content marketeer is ensure that the consumer stays on your website, as well as enticing them to revisit multiple times. Whilst you might invest a lot of time and effort into the design of the website, if it isn’t functional then you’re going to have a tough time ensuring that people stay on your site.
W3 Total Cache is one of the few WordPress plugins that has been specially designed to optimise your website. It will increase your page speed, improving the user experience for anyone that uses your website. This is all done by increasing server performance, helping to reduce any download times.
This plugin is a definite must-have. It helps to improve your conversion rates, as well as overall site performance. These two statistics have an affect of where your website ranks on Google. The higher-ranked the better, so you should make sure you utilise this plugin as best as you can.
Generate a detailed sitemap of your website with Google XML Sitemaps
As previously stated, making sure that a website is highly ranked is important for a business to achieve success. One of the ways you can do this, which a lot of people forget about, is by making a sitemap. A lot of people get turned off sitemaps because of how long it can take to create them.
Google XML Sitemaps is the plugin for you if you don’t have the time to create a sitemap. This plugin generates a special sitemap which works with all popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Ask and Bing. The way a search engine gets you into the ranking is through the use of crawlers.
Crawlers go from page to page, retrieving the information so that the correct details can be entered into search engines. If you have a detailed sitemap, it makes a crawler’s job a lot easier, allowing them to identify your website structure a lot easier and allowing them to collect any information efficiently.
One of the best things about this plugin is that it supports any kind of WordPress page, even if the URL is custom. Every time you create a post that is added to the website, all of the main search engines will be notified. It won’t add any negative effects to your website, such as slowing it down, breaking your entire site or even just being a nuisance.
Make sure that people can see related content with Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
With any website, the key thing to do is to make sure that as many people as possible view the various pages, increasing traffic. It can often be tough to do, as understanding the interests of your audience can take a lot of customer research. One of the easiest ways of getting a consumer’s attention is through the use of related pages.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, better known as YARPP, will display a list of related posts that are related to the page that a person is on. Having the ability to link any pages and posts that are relevant to the content a person is reading is invaluable.
The plugin is free, although the pro version does have multiple advantages that you can make the most out of. One of the most notable features of the pro version is being able to display sponsored content. Businesses can pay you to display content which is still relevant to your website, but will normally direct a consumer to their website.
Make sure you can restore your website at any time or date with Snapshot
One of the things that worries a lot of webmasters is what happens if they were to lose their website’s content. It isn’t just the on-site content you may need to worry about either. Comments, posts, whole pages and everything else in between can sometimes be lost, whether be it due to an accident or other means.
It may be a plugin you have to pay for, but Snapshot allows you to make a backup of every piece of your content both quickly and easily. There’s no need to mess around with any of your server settings, as you can literally restore your whole website with a touch of a button.
Snapshot utilises a great system that allows you to create as many timestamps of your website as you want. You are able to select any amount of database tables as you want, so if there are any non-essentials then you don’t need to save them.
If you’re the sort of person that will forget to make any backups then you are able to schedule them with Snapshot. Whether you want the schedule to be every hour, month or even a year, you are able to save what you want when you want.
Make sure that your website is suitable for mobile devices with WPtouch
As technology has progressed, a lot of people are using their mobile devices as a main way to browse the internet. The technology that is put inside of modern smartphones is that well-made that they can be used as a functional replacement to a laptop.
If your website isn’t mobile functional then you’ll find that you cut off a large portion of your potential audience. WPtouch allows you to utilise an effective mobile theme for anybody that visits your website on a mobile device.
Although it will automatically update your website for mobile compatibility, you are able to customise a lot of the appearance options; allowing you to create a mobile site that is not only eye-catching but also unique.
You don’t have to worry about it affecting your own website either. WPtouch doesn’t modify or affect any of your coding, allowing you to have a fully functional website and a smart – yet unique – mobile site.
Make sure your content can be shared as much as possible with Share Buttons
If you have any understanding of content at all then you’ll know that sharing is vital. The more a piece of content is shared, the more likely it is to take off. When you create a quality piece of content, you’ll find that people share it as much as possible, which can be incredibly satisfying to see.
One of the things you need to make sure of is that your content is as sharable as possible. Sure, the content you create may be amazing to read, but it doesn’t mean that a person is going to go out of their way to copy, paste and share the URL onto their social media account.
Share Buttons is one of the most effective ways of persuading people to share your content. As the name states, you have a selection of buttons that will allow a person to share your content to a number of different websites. There are over 100 buttons to choose from that link to different websites.
This is definitely the simplest yet most effective way of sharing content. As you’ve made it simple enough for someone to share the content, it’s more likely that they’ll spend five seconds clicking a button compared to copy and pasting your content’s URL into a social media website.
Make sure you can easily be contacted through Contact Form 7
It doesn’t matter what kind of website you have, it’s important that people are able to get in touch with you. Having good contact options is what ensures people can establish a connection with you, the site owner, as well as ask any questions they may be unsure about.
Of course, a lot of people simply choose to provide their phone number or email, but this can have its own problems. You don’t want people contacting you outside of work hours, or sending you spam which fills up your inbox.
Contact Form 7 allows you to utilise contact forms on your website, allowing people to make enquires without leaving your site. These forms are well-optimised, being able to recognise spam so you don’t end up with anything not relevant to your website.
Make sure people can sign up for email newsletters with Constant Contact WordPress Widget
Although they can often be forgotten about, email newsletters are one of the most effective ways of engaging with your intended audience. You’ll find that consumers are more than happy to receive regular emails that let them know what’s going on with your website, and any recent articles you’ve published.
Constant Contact WordPress Widget does what the name suggests. You’re able to add an email signup form to your site without any need to touch the coding. There are a variety of options, such as the title, tag wrapper, button text, introduction paragraph and much more.
Understand your consumers’ wants and needs with WP-Polls
Before you create any piece of content, it’s important to understand what it is your consumer wants. You can look at market research, but that information can quickly become outdated, and there’s nothing worse than reading a piece of content that isn’t relevant anymore.
WP-Polls allows you to create a number of polls that can be filled in by anybody that visits the site. It’s an effective way of learning more about your consumer, whether it be how much they visit the site, their age demographic or even the subjects they’re interested in.
There are so many options you can choose from, from how many answers a user can give, when the poll starts as well as when it finishes, as well as questions and answers. You’re able to manage multiple polls at once, as well as check out how many answers you have on any of them. It’s definitely a versatile tool to use.
Taking advantage of content marketing addons
When you are aiming to get your content shared as much as possible, there’s nothing wrong with utilising any of the tools that are available for WordPress. It’s all about making sure you audience can be satisfied with what you’re offering, which is why you should make the most out of any plugin you find which you believe will optimise your website.
What did you think of this blog? Do you have any plugins that you would add to the list? Join the conversation on Twitter- @theukseo.