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Weekly Links Roundup – Old Blog Posts, PDF Viewers, Landing Pages, Paypal Alternatives

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This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.

If you’re a regular blogger and have been doing it for some time, you’ve likely built up a large collection of old blog posts. Some may be useful “evergreen” content, but many may not longer be accurate or that useful. Should you do something about that? The answer is yes – check out this article on what to do with old blog posts. Start with an objective inventory. This process may be rather painful, but in the end you’ll be left with a blog that’s much more useful to your customers. Think of it this way: if you chose to commit to blogging in the first place, also commit to keeping that content at its best. As an added benefit, this cleanup will likely improve organic traffic to your site.

If you offer PDF documents on your site, did you know that you’re not stuck using the browser (which you have no control over) to display them? There are a few PDF viewers for WordPress that give you lots more control over display and keep your viewers on your site when they click to open the document. Both of the plugins reviewed in this article are commercial, but I’ve used the free PDF Embedder plugin on a few sites to good effect.

Well-thought-out landing pages can make the difference in getting a conversion (like a sale or a signup) or not. They simplify things down to one key idea – what it is you’re selling or asking people to sign up for. Here are 10 examples of successful landing pages to inspire you. And… here are some WordPress landing page plugins to help you construct your ideal landing page for any given purpose.

Finally… do you use Paypal in your ecommerce site? It has over 60% market share, so it’s a good bet. Love it, or hate it? If you’re in the latter category, this post is for you! Learn about the top 18 Paypal alternatives for ecommerce sites. I’m not sure if all of these are WooCommerce-compatible, since it’s quite likely you’re using WooCommerce if on WordPress. Stripe is my go-to payment plugin for WooCommerce, Gravity Forms, and Harvest. Compared to Paypal, their support is fantastic, and I find Stripe’s great dashboard makes it much easier for me to do my accounting tasks.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Google Maps, FAQ Pages, Stripe vs Paypal, MemberPress

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

If you have a Google map in your site, or have tried to add one recently, and found that following the instructions for getting a Maps API Key (cryptic for many users at the best of times) are no longer working? This is because this summer Google made changes in its Maps API offerings. Now, an API key is definitely required (before it was not, not always anyway) and a credit card has to be on file in the Google account in order for the API key to validate.

This is not to say that you’ll be billed – everyone is given $200 in credit each month. Many sites will never come close to this limit (I calculated it as about 29,000 views on one client site, much more traffic than they currently receive) and you can also cap the visits so that it never goes over the usage limit. But still, requiring a credit card is an extra hassle for my clients who will have to set up their own billing in order to keep using Google Maps.

More information on this from WP Google Maps, my WordPress map plugin of choice.

Considering an FAQ (frequently asked questions) page for your business site? FAQ pages are a great way to address the common questions you get about your products or services, and serve as a way to both educate users and help move them deeper into your site. Here’s a guide to 25 FAQ pages and the reasons why they’re so effective at what they do.

If you run an ecommerce site or are planning to, here’s a nice post comparing Stripe and Paypal, two of the most popular payment processors. I love Stripe – one of the reasons is it’s a lot easier for me to deal with Stripe reporting for my accounting than Paypal. But both have their pros and cons – read the post to learn more and make your own decision.

Finally… I’ve mentioned MemberPress before; it’s one of the easiest membership plugins I’ve used. Here’s a new post about MemberPress and why it might be all you need in a membership plugin. The article discusses the plugin’s features and why it stands out from other popular membership plugins.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.