Are you thinking about updating your WordPress website with new plug-ins before Christmas arrives? Well it would be a good job to get your work half done, before New Year arrives. Celebrate the new season by giving your website the new and shiny look. Everyone has a new year resolution to make. Let your new year resolution be to make your website smarter with advanced features.
There are innumerable WP plug-ins out there to give you quality assistance. Our customers often tend to get confused as to which plug-ins would meet up with all their demands. Stop thinking any further and have a look at the top ten suggested names, recommended only after thinking what would your ten wishes be before Santa Claus.
Your Top Ten Wishes For The Ultimate WP Site Optimization
Wish#1- How Do I Improve My Website’s SEO Status?
Answer to Your Wish- Use Yoast’s WP SEO
If you are wondering, how your content would turn up in the SERP, then Yoast is here to offer you solutions to this. This plugin has almost any feature you can ask for and this is good especially for writers as they can see in the Snippet preview how their title, meta description and URL is being shown. You can also get guidance when you insert too many numbers of characters in the Title as the SEO Title section will tell you the word limit you can have for your title content. So does the Meta Description section.
Another interesting feature, which you can utilize to stay focused on your keyword topic, is the Focus Keyword section. You can insert the specific keyword there, which you want the search engine to focus on, and WP Yoast plugin would show you how many such keywords you have within your content.
The other fancy features that you can get in it are the Bulk Title Editor, Bulk Description Editor and the Social space. With the bulk Title editor, you can view the existing Title on your posted page, the url and the SEO Title. There is also an additional bar provided, where you can include a new SEO title and update it. Same goes with the Bulk Description Editor. With Yoast Social, you can now add a summary along with an image to set up your Twitter cards.
Just as mentioned before, the plug-in also features an XML site map, which you can use to notify major search engines like Google and Bing. Besides, even humans can use the XSL style sheets for an easy perusal. Need to discuss more? In short, this plug-in comes with ten exciting features to make your site’s SEO optimization better.
Wish# 2- How Do I Improve My Site’s Loading Speed?
Answer To Your Wish- Use W3 Total Cache
Time is a major factor nowadays and it is an open secret for everyone that no one wants to wait for long. Not only does it degenerate your website’s reputation in the eyes of your users, but also in the eyes of the search engines. W3 Total Cache stands out as the ultimate cache that helps to reduce your website’s page load time by 50%.
Your client visits your website for a number of reasons. They may look for an image, CSS or a Javascript and may even request to view for a particular content. All these turn out as the site’s major contributing factors for which a site’s loading time increases. The thing about using a WordPress platform is that, every time you want to search for information, WordPress asks for a fresh content. This is only possible when a site admin modifies the contents of the page, which is unnecessary. Using a cache plug-in can turn your contents into a static version, thus reducing the time taken to load your web page.
Why W3 Total cache plug-in is recommended? This plug-in helps to walk you through the entire process. If there is still any proceeds that need to be completed, then you will find notifications displayed on top of your page. Once you have finished installing the plug-in, you will find overwhelmingly impressive features. You can easily enable or disable any major features by going to the General Settings Page option. If you want to configure any particular setting, then you can go find a dedicated Cache section for options like Minify, Object Cache, Database Cache, CDN, Referrer Groups, Monitoring and more. You can also avail miscellaneous options for debug, export and import.
With W3 Total Cache plugin, your site can be available in no time and won’t crash in case there is a major traffic rush. But wait! Before you can fully activate the plug-in, note whether some files are properly configured or not.
Wish# 3- How Do I Track Down All Spams Infecting My WP?
Answer To Your Wish- Akismet Is The Solution
Use Akismet to track down your blog’s comment spam. This is good as you do not need to spend time much time tracking down which of your comment is actually a spam. With Akismet, your content gets automatically submitted and scanned to check whether there is any kind of link to spams. If a comment appears to be a spam, then you can block the comment, pingback or trackback so that it does not reappear. You can save them and recheck them later on. However, Akismet will not apply if you are using a third party comment plug-in like Disqus.
Wish# 4 – How Do I Keep My WP Site Organized?
Answer To Your Wish- The WordPress Editorial Calendar
If your website has a blogging section, then this plug-in is very essential to manage your daily blogging schedule. Blogging is an important key to content marketing. According to recent reports, sixty-seven percent of the company’s customers rely upon a well-written content before they step forward to making a purchase. Therefore, if you have a WP WordPress that is into ecommerce, then content marketing is a good sector to invest on.
With a WordPress Editorial Plug-in, you can plan out your content schedule and start away. This plug-in is user friendly and you can quickly drag and drop posts around and it will update both the post and the calendar. You can easily go to the calendar section from your WP admin panel, situated on the left side under the Categories and Tags section. With the WordPress Editorial plug-in, you can view the entire schedule for a maximum of upto eight weeks. If you want to display the details related to the author, status and time of the post, then you can click on the Screen Options section to make the required changes. With the Quick Edit option, you can make a quick adjustment of the content, title, time and status. What is interesting about its ability to drag and drop, is that, you can make a change in the date by dragging your post to the exact day and dropping it there. It gets automatically updated while the time is retained just like before.
With this plug-in, you can have different calendar schedules for different post types. You can have a different calendar for your podcast and a different one for posts that are written in text.
Wish#5- How Do I Get The Perfect Hassle-Free Contact Form?
Answer To Your Wish- Use Contact Form 7
Having a contact form is one of the most essential communication medium between you and your client. If you do not understand what I mean by a perfect hassle-free contact form, then read more to find out. A good contact form must have the following features-
> Easy customization according to your needs
> Easy interface and quick tweaking options
> Useful documents for answering all kinds of query
> Easy perusal of incoming emails
You can find other contact form WP plug-ins but Contact Form 7 plug-in brings you options for an entire customized layout. You can also find tag replacements, which make it easy to add fields according to your needs. You can customize your form by improving the To, Subject and the Body Content of your form. Plus, there is also a feature to setup a separate mailer per form. You do not need to be an html master to use this plug-in. You can easy avail a short code from Contact Form 7, with which you can integrate your form to the website.
Wish# 6- How To Improve My Website Social Status?
Answer To Your Wish- There are innumerable WordPress plug-ins for this. One of them is the Pin It Button for Images
WordPress is coming up with new plug-ins that help your website to socialize with your customers and increase your social status. A WordPress Pin It Button for Images is a very attractive tool to use. You can have a blog with pictures and add a Pin it button on your pictures. You don’t need to go anywhere to manually add a Pin It button (not even the Goodies page of Pinterest), you just need to embed the plug-in. With the help of the settings page, you can decide where to add a button- whether on top of your image or at the bottom. As you already know the social power of a Pin It button, integrating a WP Pin It plug-in is worth a try.
Wish# 7- How Do I Track Down My Website’s Traffic?
Answer To Your Wish- Use Google Analytics For Dashboard WP
Having a WordPress website also means you would like to know how your visitor behaves when they enter your website. This is the reason why Google Analytics for Dashboard WP is a very powerful tool for your site. Use the plug-in to keep a track on every page of your site. With this tool, you can get information like the number of visitors, organic searches, bounce rates and number of traffic visits per page. All of these on your home page and your listing page. Just head over to the ‘Plugins’ area and ‘add new’. Then search for the plug-in and install it. Once the configuration is complete, your your WP website’s dashboard is ready with available page behaviour statistics.
Wish # 8 – How Do I Improve My Site’s Advertisements?
Answer To Your Wish- Use WP 125 Plug-in
‘Easy management of 125X125 ads’ – that is how the plug-in gives its description. It serves as an easy management tool and provides a smooth user interface for adding advertisements on a your WordPress website. You can upload unlimited number of ads and make your own custom display, by showing them in random or manual order. Among its other features, you can specify the total number of days for running an advertisement and get to display an ad holder according to your choice, whenever there is an empty ad slot. WP 125 is a great advertisement management plug-in and you can avail all the features absolutely for free.
Wish# 9- How Do I Make My Site A Smooth Shopping Station?
Answer To Your Question- Use WP Ultra Simple Shopping Cart V4
For running a successful e-commerce site, you need to arm your website with the right kind of plug-ins. The WP Ultra Simple Shopping Cart V4 can be your site’s ultimate e-commerce solution.
You may find other plug-ins for integration, but this WP plug-in is simpler and easier to use. It is available in English, Spanish and French and you can easily sell your products from your WP site using your PayPal API. All you have to do is activate the plug-in and configure it, and you are ready. There are a couple of fields, which you need to fill out after you add your products. Some of these fields require you to add information like the price, weight, SKU, etc. With this WordPress plug-in, you can add a shopping cart to the pages of your choice. Users can take a look to check what their carts contain and remove it accordingly. Your WordPress website must make your customer’s shopping experience quick and easy and this plug-in is easy and quick to integrate and use.
Wish# 10- How Do I Enhance My Website’s Content Quality?
Answer To Your Question- Use ‘Tiny MCE’ Plug-in
When it comes to speaking about your website’s page ranking and quality, you need to have your contents completely free of all kinds of error. Having errors can be a major setback upon your impression. Now you don’t want to fall in the eyes of your customers do you? It’s all about presentation and you cannot afford to miss that. That is why you can opt for ‘Tiny MCE’ plug-in. When activated, you need to configure it by visiting your Profile settings. Click on the Proofreading section.
With this plug-in, you can set according to your choice, the grammatical rules and styles. You will notice a new addition of the proofread button on your post editor panel. When you are done writing a content, simply click on it and the plug-in will follow the rules you have set, while proofreading the entire content.
New Year is set to leave e-commerce on the rocks. It will be a tough time to cope up with the market and making all your website adjustments will keep you a step ahead. So now that you know of how to look into all the factors and plan accordingly, it’s time for you to start improving your WordPress website. Hurry on and may you have a grand beginning in 2015.
This article has been contributed by John Atkins, who is the senior most plug-in developer of a reputed company that offer solutions for web design, maintenance and WordPress plugin development. He is an active blogger and utilizes the column to share knowledge based solutions to enhance a website’s utility online.
