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My WordPress Plugin List Revealed (Part 2)

WordPress Plugins are applications that enhance a WordPress websites capabilities and provide additional functionality. They are easy to install and configure so you don’t need to be a programmer or web designer to set them up. For instance, the social bookmark buttons at the bottom of each post and page on this site are a plugin.

Over the years, I have developed a list of WordPress plugins that I install on all my sites. In part1, I shared 20 of my favorite plugins that I use on my sites. In this post I share the other plugins I install on my sties..

Exclude Pages From Navigation – Allows you to exclude pages from the primary navigation.

Exec-PHP – Allows you to execute php code in your posts, pages, and text widgets.

LessThanWeb Testimonials – Display client testimonials in your website. Display them in a page and/or in a sidebar widget. Supports segmenting testimonials into groups.

RB Internal Links – Link to other blog posts and pages without specifying the full URL. Uses a UI to ease finding the post or page you want to link to.

SEO Smart Links – SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.

Facebook Fan Box – Displays a Facebook Fan Box

Facebook Like – Adds a Facebook Like button below posts and pages

Subscribe to Comments Now! – Subscribe to Comments plugin has “subscribe without commenting” form, but you must edit your template to insert it. This plugin displays this form without the need to edit anything.

AntiVirus – Security solution as a smart, effectively plugin to protect your blog against exploits and spam injections.

Facebook Comments for WordPress – Allows your visitors to comment on posts using their Facebook profile.

Google Analyticator – Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics.

Maintenance Mode – Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end.

What Would Seth Godin Do – Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and another to return visitors.

WordPress Firewall – Blocks suspicious-looking requests to WordPress.

WP Security Scan – Perform security scan of WordPress installation looking for suspicious code.

Facebook Like Button Plugin – The new Facebook like button.

There are thousands of other plugins out there but these are the ones I use day in and day out to provide an optimal visitor experience and make my sites shoot to the top of the search engines with minimal effort.

Karen

Filed Under: Blog Success, Featured

My WordPress Plugin List Revealed (Part 1)

By ksielski 1 Comment

Over the years, I have developed a list of WordPress plugins that I install on all my sites. In this post and a future one I’ll share my list with you.

Akismet – Filters your blog from spam comments and track back spam.

All in One SEO Pack – Out-of-the-box SEO for your website.

Audio Player – Highly configurable but simple mp3 player for playing audio in web pages.

WordPress Plugins

Broken Link Checker – checks your blog for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard and via email if broken links are found.

CommentLuv – Shows a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their site when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourages more comments.

Content Slide Plugin – Displays a simple slideshow.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator – Generates a fully customizable sitemap.

Fast Secure Contact Form – Display forms on web pages, and sends the information via email when submitted. Blocks spammers. Includes a CAPTCHA.

Google XML Sitemaps – Generates the special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to better index your blog.

Hana FLV Player – Easily embed flash videos in your website.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer – Prevent your blog from getting tagged as a ping spammer.

NoFollow Free – Remove the nofollow tag from your blog’s comments, encouraging visitors to leave more comments.

SexyBookmarks – Shows a list of the common social bookmarking icons to blog posts and pages. You can configure which icons are shown.

Simple CAPTCHA – a simple captcha system for your comment system to prevent spam.

TweetMeme Retweet Button – Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts and pages.

Viper’s Video Quicktags – Easily embed videos from various video websites such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Daily Motion in your posts and pages.

Widget Logic – Allows you to configure which widgets appear in the sidebar on specific pages.

WordPress.com Stats – Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks.

WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database.

Dean’s Permalinks Migration – Allows you to safely change your permalink structure without breaking the old links in the website, without hurting your google pagerank.

Stay tuned for part 2!

Karen

Filed Under: Blog Success, Featured

15 Blog Content Ideas

By ksielski 2 Comments

Use these 15 blog content ideas if you are just getting started blogging and don’t know what to write about, or you have hit the wall and need ideas for additional ideas for things to write about.

15 things you can blog about:

Tips
Strategies
Reviews of products, services, brands, or people
Industry news
Education
Information
Case Studies
Industry problems and issues
Opinions
Motivation and inspiration
Rants
News
Interviews
Lists
Instructions

If you share what you learn and you always keep learning, you will never run out of things to blog about!

Happy Blogging,

Karen

PS – I’m sure there are many more great things that can be added to this list. Leave me a comment with additional blog content ideas!

Filed Under: Blog Success, Featured

Why I Finally Dumped Aweber For Emailing My List

By ksielski 1 Comment

After contemplating it for the past year, I finally bit the bullet and changed my autoresponder. This is not something you do lightly. It required transferring, make that copy and pasting, all of the email messages I had setup in my system to automatically go out. Not a fun or income generating task.

It meant learning yet another new tool. No matter how easy it is to use it takes time to learn a new tool such as this one. It meant recreating the opt-in forms on my sites in the autoresponder and then putting the newly generated code in my sites.

Aweber had served me well for years. It has a great reputation, it is well established, and has one of the best if not the best email deliverability rate. It is easy to use and all my sites were humming along with it as my email engine.

So why did I finally dump Aweber in favor or iContact? Several reasons. I had noticed all the top, and I mean the elite, internet marketers were switching to iContact. Hmmmm, I would say every time I saw another one switch.

I always “eat my own dog food” as we would say when I was in software development. What does that mean? It means you use the same tools you expect your clients to buy from you and use. Well, it got to the point where I could no longer recommend Aweber to most of my clients, and in good conscience I couldn’t recommend another tool that I don’t personally use. Call me crazy but that’s just one of my business rules.

People are either starting out fresh with no existing list, in which case price is important and iContact is only half the cost of Aweber when you are getting started. That’s a significant difference when you’re just starting out. Even for large lists, iContact has better pricing except for a few corner cases and then it isn’t much of a difference. So iContact wins on price. But that alone was not enough to make me switch if everything else were equal.

The real bone of contention I had with Aweber was their rigid stance on importing existing contacts from other systems or from physical sign-up sheets at live events. Or should I say lack of import because Aweber doesn’t allow it unless the email recipient does a brand new opt-in via Aweber. Now this is just crazy. If they have opted-in or double opted-in and there is reasonable proof of such, there is no need to make them opt-in again just because you are moving from another autoresponder to aweber. This results in a large number of people dropping off the list because they don’t redo their opt-in.

So this was the final straw for me and finally made the big switch last week. I am happy as can be with the functionality, ease of use, support, and price of iContact. Don’t just take my word for it, give iContact a try for yourself.

Karen

PS – iContact has a 60 day free trial so there is absolutely no risk.

Filed Under: Featured, Online Lead Generation, Tools

Do You Need Free One Way Backlinks? 7 Super Easy Methods…

By ksielski 6 Comments

Backlinks, also called inbound links, are the lifeblood to high search engine rankings. In this article I’m going to give you 7 super easy methods for getting free one way backlinks.

A backlink is simply a link from one website that leads back to another website. Ideally, you want the website containing the link to be well established with high quality and relevant content. The higher the page rank of the page containing the backlink the better.

So let’s get started with a brief overview of 7 ways to get free one way backlinks.

1. Online Article Marketing – Simply write short articles on your topic and submit them to top article directories such as ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, etc. At the end of your article include a resource box containing a link back to your site.

2. Social Bookmarking – This is one of the easiest and fastest ways to get backlinks and drive traffic to your website. I use OnlyWire, a free service that rocks for social bookmarking. After installing Only Wire and setting up my accounts at social bookmarking sites, I simply click the Only Wire button and BOOM… It will bookmark my page to over 30 social bookmarkng and social networking sites.

3. Online Video – You should be doing online video marketing anyway because it is so effective. TO get a backlink, make sure to start the description with “http://www.yourdomain.com” and it will become a clickable link.

4. Commenting – Leaving content rich comments on relevant blogs, videos and forums that get high traffic will not only get you backlinks but lots of traffic as well. And you’ll build up your credibility and expert status in your niche.

5. Press Releases – Write and submit press releases, either free or paid.

6. Content Sharing Sites – Create Hubpages, Squidoo lenses, etc. These sites provide high quality backlinks and can also generate significant traffic as well.

7. Yahoo Answers – Search for questions on your niche and answer with valuable information. Again, you’ll not only get a free one way backlink, but more traffic too.

Getting backlinks has never been easier. Set a goal to get backlinks on a consistent basis and watch your search engine rankings soar.

Future articles will have more details on these methods as well as additional methods for getting your website to the top of the search engines and generating more income quickly.

Take Massive Action For Massive Results,

Filed Under: Featured, Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: free one way back links

Are Any Of These Excuses Stiffling Your Income?

By ksielski Leave a Comment

My two sons are on recreational basketball teams for the first time and I have always loved Nike’s slogan so this video struck a nerve with me.

Even though it is only 1 minute long, this video can have a profound impact on your online success. Having the right mindset is absolutely crucial for any type of success online. Watch this video, and write down the excuses that are limiting your business and your income.

Enjoy!