What are plugins and why are they important with professional blogging?
Plugins are blogging tools and simplifies most of the more technical tasks with blogging. Like SEO (which is a nightmare to newbies), and https protocol issues which can make potential subscribers feel unsafe. But each plugin has a specific purpose, and the key is to use them in order to achieve a certain result. Or perform a specific task, like in post banner displays.
How do plugins influence Google?
Google is the largest search engine on the planet, followed by YouTube and Facebook in third position. Google alone handle 1.2 Trillion searches per year, which translates to around 3.5 Billion searches per day. And leveraging SEO with plugins, is an excellent way to get floods of targeted blog visitors.
SEO plugins help in both indexing your blog and also categorizing your content to reach an interested audience. It also provide search engines with a site map, without which your blog will be pretty invisible to search engines.
But where do you find the best plugins?
The site is called wordpress (dot) org where you can access hundreds of really great tools and plugins for WordPress. But you want to study a certain plugin properly and determine exactly what its purpose is. Don’t just blindly install plugins, be specific and focus on certain tasks.
But why display banners with plugins instead of a text widget with html code?
Because in some instances raw html can influence your blog SEO score, which is an entire topic on its own. And you want to keep your blog SEO score above 80% if you’re going to compete at all. There is a tool site called "Small SEO Tools”, easily accessible by simply searching your browser. Free access to over 120 SEO tools. Under “Website Management Tools” you find the “Website SEO Score Checker” to check your blog SEO score.
To display banner images and avoid the html interference, use the plugin called “WP-Insert”. Get to know your way around the plugin and paste your banner html codes inside the plugin, while selecting position. Beginning or end of post, and even after certain post paragraphs.
Why use plugins with SEO?
Because there is more to SEO than just strategic keyword placement. There is also readability, sub headers and presence of transition words. Sentences no longer than 20 words, and paragraphs not exceeding 300 words. There is furthermore also readability and target keyword density in accordance with the post word count.
A really outstanding plugin to use for SEO is the “Yoast SEO Premium Plugin” for WordPress. But it is important to have the Premium plugin, which will cost you money. If you’re going to compete with other bloggers, then you will have to sacrifice both time and money to do so. Another plugin I’m familiar with when it comes to SEO is the “All In One SEO Pack” plugin.
What is the https protocol and why is it important?
The https protocol means your site is secure, and in doing so you may see an exponential increase in subscribers. With the https protocol enabled the reader will be more likely to enter personal details like an email address or credit card details. No one wants to enter personal details on a site that is not secure (http protocol).
To enable https protocol you simply need to contact your hosting provider and request to register an SSL certificate to the domain. Most hosting providers will provide you with an SSL certificate at no extra cost.
But there are instances where the SSL may be registered, but not displaying the https protocol as active. Should that occur, simply install the “Simple SSL” plugin. Which is like a band aid to fix SSL issues. Providing your hosting provider did register the SSL certificate to your domain.
Why is affiliate link cloaking important?
Displaying raw affiliate links is unprofessional, and in many cases considered spam or unsafe links. Therefore you want to cloak affiliate links with a plugin called “Pretty Links Lite”, which makes your affiliate link display like this; (https : // yourdomain / affiliate offer).
