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Weekly Links Roundup – Grammar, Anti-spam Plugins, CCPA

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Here’s our latest selection of curated WordPress and web marketing links to help your business thrive.

Not the best speller? Think doesn’t matter? Think again…Nothing hurts the credibility of your business like content full of spelling and grammar errors. It forces the reader to work harder to understand you. And put simply, it makes your business look slack. If your content is flawed, what does that say about the rest of your operations? Learn how to improve your content to build credibility. And if you’re not the best at spelling and grammar there are tools for that, like browser-based Grammarly which works in both Gutenberg and classic editors.

Here’s a roundup of some of the best anti-spam plugins for WordPress. I’m been a fan of Antispam Bee for awhile but lately am using the commercial plugin CleanTalk for our WP Minder Care Plan clients and it is fantastic. CleanTalk provides behind-the-scenes protection (no captcha!) and a dashboard that shows how it’s working – one of my client sites that was previously reporting a bad spam problem had almost 1,800 spam attacks blocked just this week.

By now you have likely heard about the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) which dropped on January 1. Like the GDPR, the CCPA is designed to protect private data of users including knowing what person info is collected; what info is being sold; opting out of data collection and data selling. Here’s post about how CCPA may affect your WordPress business.

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

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.

Need help with WordPress maintenance? Check out our peace-of-mind plans for small businesses.

Friday Link Wrapup – Copywriting Mistakes, CDN, Anti-spam Plugins

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Ready to improve your site’s content in 2017? It’s time to fix those common copywriting mistakes we all make when trying to sell a product or service – and fortunately for those of us strapped for time, it’s not that hard to do.

If you’re on shared hosting, you’ve probably noticed that your site tends to slow down at times. Maybe way down. There’s something you can do about it, even if you don’t switch hosts. Using a CDN (content delivery network) can help speed up your site using less of your host server’s resources. It’s a win-win, and you can find CDN’s starting at ‘free.’ Check out these 6 reasons to get a CDN for your WordPress site (and learn how easy it can be to get started).

And finally – got a spam problem? Spam is everywhere, but luckily WordPress has a lot of plugins that can keep it at bay. Here’s a review of 10 anti-spam plugins – I like Anti-spam Bee because it clears old spam from the database regularly. I used to be a big fan of WordPress Zero Spam, but when WordPress 4.7 came out it started conflicting with Gravity Forms (another must-use plugin). If you’re not using Gravity Forms, Zero Spam is also worth a try.