Best Facebook Practices for Businesses
8 Effective Online Marketing Ideas Without Spending Money
Jennifer Martin is a coach, author, and marketing strategist who works primarily with influencers, real estate agents & brokers, doctors & medical providers, sports, & entertainment professionals, attorneys & law firms, and many other small and medium-sized businesses. Her expertise is strategizing with her clients to create a strategic approach to meet goals and objectives while dominating online.
Difference Between Custom Website & Templates
Going by the proverb, ‘the first impression is the last impression,’ we understand how important it is to have a solid virtual presence. Personal touch to something always has the edge over the normal existing thing. A custom-made one weighs over the existing templates, even for a website. Thus, it is essential to understand the difference between a custom website and templates. Let’s type down the essential point of difference between the two.
Design:
As we understand from the word itself, a custom website reflects your style and design. The template would have the already existing general style and design. The custom website has your logo, icon, product info, and other details relating to service and offerings. Templates could have the general structure for you, displaying the ordinary matter relating to your company and no logo and icon of your company.
SEO Friendly:
The custom website made for your company is always SEO friendly and helps you reach the targeted audience. Everything is specifically done, from the layout to content and background coding, considering your requirements. Thus, it helps you achieve the targeted rank and flourish through search engines. A template, on the other hand, cannot do so. Everything is done from coding to content, keeping in mind the general requirement. Thus, it cannot serve the purpose of making you reach the top. You need to install additional scripts and plugins to make it work for you.
Security:
We generally don’t know the coding of a template that we buy. So, it lacks mainly in terms of security. There are chances of having hidden codes to draw your data and information. On the other hand, a custom website is intrinsically more secure, as we know the source coding and other related details.
Adaptability:
Like other features, a custom website is again more adaptable than its template counterpart is. According to the budget, we can prioritize features for a custom website and later on can add more to it. Templates are exactly what we see. We have to adjust to what it is presently offering. To add features, it is essential to shedding off a good amount. Custom websites are user-friendly as navigations are structured, considering the customer’s point.
However, making a custom website largely depends on the budget, and it takes quite a good amount of money. Therefore, if you are in immediate need of a virtual presence, a template can serve your purpose for some time.
How To Use Plugins & Widgets In A Website?
Let’s start with WordPress! Well, WordPress is an open-source platform for building websites. It is a free and open-source blogging tool and content management system entirely based on PHP and MySQL. It is incredibly user-friendly, and you don’t need to be a computer wizard to use it.
Plugins
Plugins come to add additional functional features. These plugins help users customize and tailor the site according to their specific requirements.
Widgets
WordPress widget is a small block type thing that performs a particular task. These widgets were built to offer an effortless and user-friendly way of giving control of the design and the structure of the WordPress theme to users. These widgets are to be added to the sidebars of the website, known as the widget-ready areas. You can easily drag and drop these widgets into specific areas. You can even add content and some features in these widget areas of the theme.
How to use plugins & widgets on a website?
One of the best features of WordPress is the ability to customize your website with Plugins. Plugins are easily downloaded and installed within minutes. You can easily add customized functionality to your website.
- Login to your WordPress Dashboard. Once logged in, click “Add New” under “Plugins.”
- Search for a plugin using the search feature.
- We have searched for “Facebook” to find a plugin that will incorporate links to posts to your Facebook account. Once the search results, click “Details” to read more about the plugin.
- After reading about it, click on “Install Now.”
- After the plugin has been successfully installed, you will need to click “activate plugin” to begin using it. To change your plugin’s settings, click on the “Settings” menu option on the left-hand side to access the settings for your new plugin.
Why Use WordPress To Create a Website?
WordPress is nothing but a software script that we can use to create websites. It is an easy script and can start running in just 15 minutes or so; one does not have to be a computer expert for this.
Being one of the most preferred CMS (Content Management Systems), WordPress is pocket-friendly. However, apart from this pricing factor, there are other reasons behind using WordPress. Let’s see what the factors behind the unanimous preference for WordPress are.
Unlimited Usage
There are unlimited usage and applications in WordPress. You can use WordPress for anything and everything to create a personal or business website. Build the website to share blogs, pictures, and articles, or you can use them for marketing your products, services, and brand. You can even create your blog and meet liked and unlike-minded people. You can call it the Swiss Army Knife of knives.
Stand-alone Software
WordPress has stand-alone software. Therefore, it is proved that you don’t have to spend money on buying a copy of the FrontPage or the Dreamweaver. As you install it, you land on the ‘Admin’ page and set it any way you like. You also use the admin page to publish any of your new posts. Additionally, you don’t have to know HTML.
Open Source Software
WordPress, being open-source software, is free for use. You can use it for any purpose without paying anything. WordPress is built on the PHP programming language, and the database server is MySQL (an open-source). It is highly secured and reliable at the same time. So, you can rest assured with a website built on WordPress as the CMS.
User-friendly & Theme Support
As you get the support from most web hosting companies to install WordPress, it turns out to be user-friendly and straightforward. Admin is easy to navigate. There are countless themes or layouts for you; apply to anyone you like. You can download these themes for free and apply them to give your website a customized look.
Plugin Functionality
These plugins allow you to enhance your website and add additional functionalities. You can install them in just a few clicks, and they can do almost anything and everything for you.
Standard Compliant and SEO friendly
WordPress is compliant with the universal Web Standards and follows all the rules to define an appropriate website. Developers of WordPress work day-in and day-out to offer complete Web rule compatibility. Along with this, WordPress is search engine friendly. It uses various search engine techniques to let your website reach the top of the listing page.
So, after knowing about so many features of WordPress, we can understand the necessity of using it for building a website.
How To Integrate Social Media Into WordPress Website?
The regular marketing world depends heavily on the reach of social media. Apart from grabbing the personal life, social media has also taken the professional world primarily into its grasp. To retain in the competitive industry, intelligent use of social media networks is necessary. The following benefits prove the importance of social media in today’s marketing world.
Expand Business Reach:
Social media network helps reach the mass. A post on a social media platform helps you quickly and effectively send information to the more fantastic world. Also, it travels further from your reach to the greater reach of your followers. This way, not only do you directly reach your audience but partially reach further targeted customers and effectively promote your brand and products.
Enhance Credibility:
Social networking sites help you build credibility with your potential customers. A simple ‘like’ from a friend help others believe in that product and go for it. Trusted feedback from a follower helps you bring further leads to your company. This is only through credibility. A positive light to your service helps show the path to others.
Improve Sales:
If we go by surveys and look further at the effect of social networking sites, it is proved that these networking websites improve sales and bring in more and more leads to the company. Through increasing brand visibility, leads increase resulting in improved sales.
Top 5 Social Media Plugins By Using Which You can integrate this feature easily into any WordPress site
It has become essential for bloggers to integrate sharing buttons on social media. This helps readers quickly share blogs to their preferred social networking sites. This helps drive more traffic. Here are a few preferred WordPress plugins you could think of for your use. Mark that ‘less is the new more,’ so choose the plugins tactfully
Ultimate Social Deluxe:
This one is a premium Plugin sold at Code Canyon. It is a lightweight Plugin and uses light JavaScript and CSS. This plugin adds a responsive social sharing button.
Jetpack Sharing:
Jetpack is one of the most popular ones. It has a social media sharing button.
Digg Digg:
Through Digg Digg, you can easily integrate the social media sharing button. It has features like lazy loading and an option for a floating sharing bar. However, this does not gel well with Jetpack’s responsive theme.
Share Buttons by AddToAny
This one is another advanced piece to integrating the social media buttons. You will find numerous customization options through this, and you can add responsive sharing buttons too. This one can even track your sharing through Google analytics.
DC Simple Share Button Plugins
Almost all plugins have similar features, and often it takes time to load the page. However, page-loading time is one of the significant factors for determining rank. If showing a social share number is not essential to you, go for this plugin. This one does not load JavaScript or any other external scripts. However, apart from these 5, many more WordPress plugins are made for your blogs. Go ahead and get the best one for you.
What Is SEO & Its Importance?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of drawing traffic to your website. This method affects the website’s visibility in the search engine’s organic search results. Generally, it is considered that the earlier the site appears on the listing page, the more visitors it is to get. Now, SEO is the way of achieving that goal. SEO targets various searches like image search, academic search, local search, news search, etc.
SEO considers the workflow of the search engine and what people look to search for, that is, the Keyword preferred by the potential customers. Optimizing a website means editing the content, HTML, and related coding. This is done to remove the barriers to the indexing activities of the search engine. SEO also increases backlinks and inbound links.
SEO puts your business, product, and services in front of the targeted world. Internet marketing via SEO helps grow the visibility of your website in front of those who are seeking what you offer – your targeted customers and potential leads.
SEO’s inbound marketing strategy allows market your product as and when people exactly look for it. Therefore, there is no need to draw their extra time and give extra effort. You can reach out to them whenever they need you, as SEO offers the best ROI in an advertisement. Moreover, as your business reaches the top of the listing page of Google or any other search engine, people rely on it automatically. Now, SEO takes your business to the top of the listing page. So, directly and partially, it increases the credibility of your brand.
Most search engine users choose the top 5 website links. So to en-cash this nature, SEO is critical. It is not about drawing traffic, but SEO improves the user experience and usability of the website. Additionally, SEO also works well for social promotion. SEO makes your social image strong in front of your potential customer and enhances your business.
It is SEO that puts you over your competitor. If your websites are selling the same product or service, SEO makes one jump over the other by topping the listing page.
However, before getting started with SEO practice, keep in mind a few steps to avoid spamming. Always avoid the following things:
- Mechanically generated doorway pages
- False redirects
- Stuffing of keywords
- Hidden links and texts
- Loading the page with irrelevant words
- Duplicate content
- Typo of renowned websites
- Un-related link firms
Thus, we can summarize that SEO is one of the most important digital marketing tools that help your website flourish and reach the desired customer base and let you reap the much-awaited fruit of profit.
Keyword research and its Importance
One of the fundamental parts of digital marketing is keyword research. This is extremely important for writers, bloggers, online publishers, and even the business world. The search engine of the Web world almost prefers quality and compelling content, but it is essential to draft the content according to the words people use while searching for something on the internet. It would be almost impossible to draw traffic to your website without this. However, the real value of a keyword goes way beyond SEO writing. It is marketing your product or services. It is all about finding out people’s preferences so that you can hit the bull’s eye with it.
The moment you get the correct Keyword for your website, you win the half battle. The moment you target the right Keyword, your rank gradually reaches the top of the listing page, thus bringing organic traffic to your website. The entire content creation revolves around keyword research, and it can either make or break the website. So, analyze these below-mentioned things before starting your keyword research.
Analyze website & set goals
Understand the need for your website and spend some time looking for the right words for your website. Look for those niche words that fit your website’s search and find something relevant in search engines. Also, find some popular keywords relevant to your need.
Understand the type of Keyword
Include some long-tail keywords along with the main one. This way, you will face less competition, and it would be more promising. Also, it is advisable to focus on the main and specific keywords. This will ensure colossal traffic. And, do not target high searched keywords as that will make the competition stiff and harder for you.
Use keyword tools
It is equally important to get the right Keyword to get the correct result. It is always recommended to use keyword tools to get the right set of keywords for your website as we understand the importance of keywords in the online world. Tools like Google Keyword tool is one of the most preferred ones. You can also check out the Keyword Spy to get an idea about your competitor’s Keywords. However, this tool might not be entirely free for you.
Thus, summing down, keep in mind these few points:
- Look for keyword phrases and not single keywords
- Specify keywords in the inner pages of the website
- Follow three things – relevancy, traffic, and conversion. Choose a keyword that satisfies all these
- Use various keyword tools
- Spend time on keyword research and get the relevant topics and create the content accordingly
10 Best WordPress Plugins
Being the most sort-after CMS (Content Management System) for websites, WordPress has some fantastic plugins to enhance its utility. These plugins enhance the features of the website and improve it qualitatively.
Here are the 10 best WordPress plugins for you…
- Sharebar – Social Media Slider- ExpertPhotography is another name for Sharebar. This plugin allows the reader to choose social media and share the content. There are other versions, like Digg Digg, used on the site.
- Tweet Old Post- This plugin helps you set the content and brings up the old posts for the readers to read. This helps older content to promote products or services. There are options to change the settings and further enhance the links and texts.
- Facebook Social Plugin –This is one of the most preferred plugins for bloggers. Its look and feel attract a reader’s attention and have clicking options.
- PopUp Domination-This plugin helps draw maximum traffic to your website and is preferred by almost all.
- Show Top Commentators- This is one of the best ways to encourage people to comment. This plugin ranks people who frequently comment.
- Post to Twitter – This plugin takes any of your WordPress posts to Twitter. And it automatically notifies the followers. This, however, does not work with Facebook.
- Facebook comments for WordPress- This plugin works with both Facebook and WordPress. It makes it easier for people to comment on a Facebook post. Also, they can share it on their Facebook page. The moment you click on this function, you enable to reader to share it in their Facebook feed.
- All in One SEO Pack- All in One SEO Pack is one of the most preferred SEO plugins for WordPress. It automatically generates Meta tags, optimizes the required title for SEO purposes, and helps reach the top of the search engine. It is easy to use and works nicely with all WordPress plugins.
- WordPress SEO by Yoast – This is one of the most liked plugins by SEO experts. It helps you check how search engine friendly your content is. It helps you know it even before publishing it.
- upPrev Previous Post Animated Notification – This plugin keeps the viewer on your page. It is not about drawing traffic but retaining the viewer on the page for a long. As soon as the visitor reaches the bottom page, a preview comes for the next page option- keeping visitors on the website longer.
Apart from these, many other plugins help you increase the visibility and productivity of your website. However, these 10 plugins mentioned above are among the bests.