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Weekly Links Roundup – Analytics, WordPress Security, Domain Names, Travel Blogging

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Even if you use Google Analytics (and especially if you don’t) you might find adding one of these Google Analytics alternatives plugins to your WordPress site useful.

Are you protecting your website? Is it enough? Learn about the 5 most common WordPress security breaches and how to protect yourself and/or recover from them. Critical to remember: always have a fresh backup of your site stored somewhere other than your hosting account!

Got a new business? Looking for a good (and available) domain name and getting frustrated? Try one of these 5 blog name generators; the article provides a detailed review of each generator and why you’d want to use it (or not).

While on the subject of new business – here’s a beginner’s guide to starting a travel blog. This article includes setting up a domain, hosting and WordPress; finding a theme (assuming you’ll want to start with very little budget); and plugins for travel blogging.

Weekly Links Roundup – Disabling Comments, Stripe and WooCommerce, Blogging

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Should you disable comments on your blog? That can be a big question for some – consider whether comments provide value to your site and readers or not. Is it mostly spam? A plugin can fix that. There are measures you can take that don’t require you get rid of commenting completely. But sometimes, disabling may be the best course.

I’m a big fan of the payment processor Stripe. I use it with WooCommerce, Gravity Forms, and any other ecommerce-enabled plugin that supports it. If you’re not familiar with Stripe and are interested in trying it with your WooCommerce site, here’s a post that will interest you.

For those of you who regularly experience headaches when you think about the blogging you need to be doing for your business, here’s a short but valuable guide to crafting epic blog posts to engage your readers.

And finally, along those same lines, here’s a post that help you learn to snag readers’ eyes through better blog post formatting. Chunking content into bite-sized bits makes a difference!

 

Weekly Links Roundup – No Search Indexing, Email Newsletters, 2FA

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

How to keep Google from indexing your WordPress site for search… Wait! Why would you want to do that? Isn’t the whole point to get found in search? Normally, it is. But there are some situations when you might not want your pages indexed, including sites-in-development, private sites like intranets, or brand new sites that you’re still adding content to.

I’m a big fan of Darren Rowse of ProBlogger (and Digital Photography School too), and here’s another example of his so-useful take on blogging. Learn why your blog needs an email newsletter and I’ll add a recommendation for Mailchimp if you’re looking for an easy-to-use, well-supported mailing list platform to run your newsletter from.

Finally – a security suggestion. Consider adding 2FA (two-factor authentication) to your WordPress login, meaning you get a code sent to your mobile device or email that you must use to login. Yes, it can be a pain in the neck, but it’s easy to implement with a plugin and helps stop hackers because they will no longer be able to login even if they have or guess your username and password.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Blog Promotion, Affiliate Marketing, Shopping Cart Abandonment

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Grats – you just wrote a killer blog post. It took you hours, and it’s sure to be compelling reading for your customers – but how will you let them know about it? Check out these 13 ways to promote that blog post. For example: including a link to your new post in your next email newsletter, or referencing it in your other posts by linking to it.

Have you considered monetizing (making money from) your blog? If you’re looking for a way to get started, consider affiliate marketing, where you earn a commission when you promote other peoples’ products and services. A great primer on affiliate marketing comes from Smart Passive Income. By the way, the Smart Passive Income Podcast is one of the very best I’ve found for small business owners!

Here’s a more in-depth guide to making more money as an affiliate marketer.

Finally – if you run an ecommerce site and struggle with understanding why people abandon their carts before completing purchases, this post may be eye-opening. Do you require them to create an account? Are you up front about shipping costs. Check out the post to learn what to do about cart abandonment.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Hiding Email Addresses, SEO Techniques, Blogging, Instagram

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

This question still comes up occasionally… if you want to display an email address on your website, can you keep it from being ‘harvested’ by spam bots? Yes, you can. The venerable Email Address Encoder plugin is perfect for this – just install it. That’s it, nothing else to do. It turns email addresses into text that spambots can’t recognize. Here’s a short post on how it works.

I was sent this infographic on 11 SEO techniques and strategies you should be using today. It’s a good list, and very practical. You’re probably doing a lot of them already.

Did you notice that part in the infographic about building in-depth, high-quality content? If blogging isn’t your thing (you don’t know what to write about, think you’re no good at writing, or don’t have time to even try it) consider a new service offered by Red Kite Creative, WP Minder’s parent. Done-for-you blogging can help you get your business blog off the ground and the benefits for your business can be big!

Finally… if you’re an Instagrammer wanting to add your photo feed to your WordPress site, check out this post on how to use the free Instagram Feed plugin.

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Weekly Links Roundup – WooCommerce, Blogging, noopener

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Let’s start with something a bit unpleasant… Earlier this month it was reported that WooCommerce.com has dropped its customary 50% discount for renewals of its extensions. Instead, renewing customers will now be paying full price. This is likely to be especially irritating to customers who have set up auto-renew for their extensions, since the company didn’t announce the change.

WooCommerce is a great choice for so many online businesses, but this is an ill-considered move IMO. It’s suddenly become considerably more expensive for the long term especially for those sites using a lot of their extensions – and keep in mind there are alternatives to many of them. This will make some of my small business clients think twice before committing to this platform. To read the backlash (and there’s a lot of it) check out the comments here.

Now on to something happier… been blogging for awhile? That’s great! Blogging is one of the best ways to build content on your site and get it noticed by search engines, if you’re using organic SEO techniques. But are you doing it ‘right?’ Here’s a post that helps you evaluate your blogging habit to see where you can make improvements. It’s meant for the blog hitting its first birthday, but really this is valid for any blog that’s been around for awhile.

Finally, some technical stuff. One of my clients pointed out to me last week that “noopener noreferrer” was being added automatically to some external links in her posts. This happens with posts that you designate with target=”_blank” so they’ll open in a new window. If you see this in your own posts, don’t worry. WordPress started adding this automatically to protect bloggers from the Reverse Tabnabbing hack. Here’s an example of how it works.

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