13 Must-Have WordPress Plugins for Business Websites in 2021

WordPress is one of the simplest ways of creating your business website. It is also popular with over 40 percent of the total websites on the internet powered by WordPress. Business websites in particular can benefit a lot from WordPress. The easy admin experience with a wide range of scalability and better ROI are some of the major appeals of WordPress Plugins.

wordpress plugins

As an open-source content management system (CMS), WordPress has numerous quirks. One such is the availability of numerous fantastic WordPress Plugins. Due to the platform being amplified by the global community each year there are some genius Plugins to make your work easier here. Being updated to these will help you to efficiently do your work as well as improve your website. We shout out some of the very best WordPress Plugins in this article.

What are WordPress Plugins?

A WordPress Plugin is a part of code that ‘plugs in’ to your WordPress site. In simpler terms, it is a bubble that adds to the functionality of your website. These might be new or even an extension of the existing functionality. WordPress Plugins can make anywhere from small tweaks to a lot of major changes to your website. For example, some plugins will help you in creating small updates while others can change it to a fully functional eCommerce site upon your choice.

There are over 60, 000 plugins for WordPress going towards 2020 and each has its own characteristics and functionality. Most of these are free while others might charge you for the premium versions.

Advantages of using web plugins

* It saves a lot of time. Plugin developers have spent their time and effort required. Web developers are greatly helped here.

* It provides some flexibility to customize site functionality and features.

* Plugins can be very reliable for getting things done fast.

* It can help you change different components of your website without advanced technical abilities.

* Web Plugins are easy to install as well as uninstall which prevents hassle in updating your website.

Although there are many advantages of installing different plugins there are certain risks if used the wrong plugins. Some of these include causing an error to your website, vulnerability to your website security, or introducing malicious codes. To prevent these always use well-known and trusted plugins. Keeping a backup is also wise. Using more plugins than you need can also hinder the website speed. Hence, choosing a correct and useful plugin to do the job is significant.

Must-Have WordPress Plugins for Business Websites in 2021

1. Yoast SEO

WordPress is an SEO friendly platform out of the box. Yoast is one of the most complete Plugins to help you and improve the on-page SEO here. It has different tools and features to analyze and improve your content to fulfill the technical requirements. By generating sitemaps, Yoast also helps you to connect with the Google Search Console. It also comes with a powerful feature which detects the change and broken links on your website. You have both free and premium versions here with the latter offering more scalability and in-depth analysis.

2. WPForms 

WPForms as the name suggests is a simple WordPress plugin to make a user-friendly contact form for your website. It is very important especially for business websites to get connected to their clients. WPForms makes it possible for your clients to get in touch with you more effectively. With drag and drop features you can easily create different types of forms. With over 3 million users, it is best for websites requiring contact, subscription, online ordering, payment, survey, and similar types of forms. 

3. Monster Insights

Monster Insights is easy to reach plugin integrating the Google Analytics components to your website. Taking the data and charts from Google Analytics, you can now analyze and work on the changes from your WordPress dashboard. Unlike Google Analytics, here you are given all the important stats that matter within the website. Monster Insights has both free and premium versions. Although the free version is enough for beginners, the Premium upgrade can give you an extra edge here.

4. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is a WordPress caching plugin helping your website to improve the speed almost instantly. The best part here is that WP rocket doesn’t require any technical skill. It automatically turns on all the recommended caching services by WordPress like compression, page cache, gzips, and pre-loading. As it is a smart plugin it works by automatically building your website cache even before someone’s request. Imagify is an optimization service available for image contents with WP Rocket too. It is a paid version of WordPress Plugin.

5. Updraft Plus

 Updraft Plus is a widely used WP backup Plugin on the market right now. Allowing users to set up automatic backups, it is easy to use and manage. Updraft Plus stores these backups in a remote location improving the security factor of the website. Similarly, the easy restoration option makes Updraft Plus a must-have WordPress Plugin for a professional website. It has both free and paid versions. The paid version gives you additional features and priority support.

6. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is one of the most popular and flexible plugins developed to give a complete open-source e-commerce solution. It powerfully blends commerce and content offering an enticing storefront to your website. From bookings, subscriptions, memberships, dynamic pricing, to categorization and display of goods, Woocommerce handles it all for you. Additionally, you can choose multiple payment and shipping options as well as automated calculations too. It is a free WordPress Plugin.

7. PushEngage

PushEngage is a web push notification plugin. This is one of the recent techniques to improve user interaction on a website. PushEngage allows you to send different targeted announcements and messages to your website visitors. It comes with several powerful features coming in handy for any website. Especially for an e-commerce website, PushEngage can automatically trigger price drop alerts, cart abandonment notifications, inventory alerts, and more. Also, managing updates and newsletters are made simple with PushEngage.

8. SeedProd

SeedProd is a simple drag and drop page builder allowing you to create custom page layouts. You can choose from over a hundred different templates or even build one from scratch with SeedProd. All these without a single line of code. SeedProd is the answer for unsteady web support with easy customization of landing, sales, registration, maintenance mode, 404 error, and several other pages. It also has free and paid versions serving different functions.

9. Member Press

Member Press is a useful WordPress plugin that allows you to build communities, courses, and membership sites easily. You can create subscription plans and provide different access levels to your content. It is also designed in a way to combine well with WooCommerce hence supporting several payment solutions. The main features of Member press include drip content, LMS, group memberships, and automation features. Member press is a premium WordPress Plugin with the only paid version.

10.  WP Mail SMTP

WordPress by default uses PHP mail functions to send your emails. But, several hosting companies don’t have a proper setup for this feature. It might result in your clients not receiving important email notifications. WP Mail SMTP is an SMTP mail server solving your problems. It has both free and paid versions of Plugins to use.

11. SEMRush

SEMRush is a powerful marketing toolkit beneficial for digital marketing professionals. It will help in your website growth as well as SEO. Similarly, it also aids in Paid traffic and PR strategies of your website. The best part here is that it is a tool to have for gathering useful information and getting the upper hand over your business competitors. Keyword research, track brand mentions, and backlink audits are some of the main features available here. SEMRush is only available in the trial and paid versions.

12. Pretty Links Pro

Pretty Links Pro is a link management WordPress plugin. It is one of the best tools available for affiliate marketers. Similarly, Pretty Links Pro also helps business owners, podcasters, and marketing strategists with the easy creation of short URLs in WordPress. Pretty Links Pro is a paid plugin but you can select from a range of plans that fits your website needs.

13. LiveChat

LiveChat is live chat support for business and e-commerce websites. With tons of customization options, it is gaining popularity lately. The best thing here is that it also comes with a mobile app. You can provide real-time-support to your clients with Live Chat. We suggest you use this with the ChatBot created by the same team for the fastest response and best AI-powered ChatBot features. The WordPress Plugin for LiveChat is free.

Here are some tips to choose WordPress plugins that work best for you.

* Research is the key. Read carefully about the information and functionality available with every WordPress Plugin.

* Spot different versions of your plugins. If there are paid and free versions, select one which is best for your plan. Also, check if it is a one-time purchase or an annual payment.

* Test your plugin before committing to it.

* Check if your plugin is blacklisted. There are a few WordPress plugins that are banned by some hosting services.

* See some reviews and evaluate the functionality and quality of the plugin.

* Choose a trusty plugin developer, some of the best ones here are made by reputable companies. 

These are some of the most impressive WordPress Plugins to have on your business website according to our expert study. WordPress is a diverse platform and it never hurts to know more and stay up to date with new ones. Stay connected with us for more tips and information regarding your business website.

9 Common SEO Mistakes to avoid in 2021

Apart from some fundamental principles, a lot of things are constantly changing in the SEO world. A decade ago targeting keywords was the only focus of improving your website ranks. Now choosing the right keyword is more significant than that. Similarly, with the release of new algorithms, there are a few software helping in your marketing strategy.

Google Searches results provide you with a number of SEO tips and tricks. But, most of these might hurt your website in the long run rather than benefits you. It is very important to know what you’re doing wrong with SEO. Avoiding these common mistakes will provide you a good platform to go further and try new strategies in 2021.

Every New Year is an opportunity to meet new and higher marketing goals. If you are new to the digital marketing world, it becomes almost impossible to choose or ignore the right strategy. With so many questions as well as guides out there it is no surprise that you can make some common mistakes. Here, we listed some of the mistakes and a few suggestions to overcome here that will be beneficial for you.

1. Not Knowing Your Audience

It is one of the fundamental pillars of successful SEO. Know your audience. Failing to identify your target audience is the last thing you want to do. It is no surprise that the company understanding its audience to the granular and minute level is always steps ahead of its competitors. Heading straight to the technical part without knowing more about your audience can make your work void.

Here are a few tips that will help you to understand your audience better.

– Spend some time doing a market study. Know your macro trends and keep up with them.

– Analyse some historical and real-time data to extract the general interests of your audience.

– Make your timings right with Google analytics tools

– Try to map out the consumer intents to your keyword selections.

2. Not being up to date

Quality content on your website always helps in SEO. But, making them more relevant and related to the time might be a good strategy too. Be up to date and it will help to minimize the unsatisfied search intent.

Especially if you have just started working on your website, quickness and fresh content will generate better organic visitors. Similarly, it is very important too if you are taking over a website doing well before.

These tips will be helpful for being up to date.

– Subscribe to different newsletters relevant to your business/website.

– Make a proper schedule if you post a different variety of content. 

– Join a community that is similar to your business. Also, join some marketing channels to be up to date with the technical part.

3. Just Wing it: Not having a roadmap or SEO plan

This might be your lack of experience but you can’t capitalize on other data and information without a plan. Random acts can give you results sometimes but it won’t do any good in the long run. Trying too hard can harm too. Make a roadmap and plan leading towards your marketing goals. Stats show that only one in three small businesses had SEO strategy and it will play a great role in your successes.  

Here are some tips to help you start a part of your SEO roadmap.

– First thing first, look for technologies (platforms and tools) that will help you manage your workflow.

– Set roles for content, digital alignment, and site updates.

– Break down different tasks and actions, work on the goals and key stakeholders next.

– Evaluate your competition and be open to learning and studying their strategies.

4. Publishing Non-Original Content

Publishing Non-original content is a huge ‘no-no’ for SEO. It is a beginner’s mistake as for a new website, preparing content instantly might be problematic. If you were looking at this some years ago duplicating content was a common practice. It doesn’t work and thin contents are discouraged more than ever. 

Here, are some tips to create original content and check plagiarism.

* Do not mislead your readers. Create strong Headlines.

* Always remember spinoffs can degrade your content quality. Invest some time in research and creation instead. 

* If needed quote trustworthy sources.

5. Ignoring Search features and Structured Data

Fact, structured data is very essential to make your website stand apart from the crowd. If you glance at the first SERP it is all structured data helping to get even small websites above the more obvious ones. Improving internal search functions is also important. People visiting your website must find it easy to look for the relevant information.

Here is a list of different structured data fitting different types of contents in your website: –

* How to: For ‘how-to’ Content

* Product Review: For Product Reviews

* FAQ: For FAQ content

* Books: For books 

* Address: For Company address  

* Events: For Events 

6. Not using enough headings and lists

Quality content must have a good and readable format. Using headings, sub-headings, and lists makes your content more presentable. The featured snippets have ruled the SERP through controversies. And the best way of making your content highlighted is by using infographics.  

 Here are some tips to utilize these in your content.

* Break your long paragraphs and assign subheadings if appropriate. 

* Use more bullets so it will make it easier to skim for the readers.

* Table of contents at the beginning is helpful.

7. Not Focusing on Branded Anchor Text

Anchor text is simply the keyword that is the exact match that mirrors the page it is linked to. As you link to the page, Anchor text includes a variation of the keyword to that page. It is significant for boosting your search engine rankings. Unl0ike earlier times you have to be smart about these rather than stuffing more Anchor texts. Finding the sweet spot between optimizing but not over-optimizing is a key here. 

* Filter the links from Toxic sites i.e., sites engaging in spammy practices.

* Use no-follow links in case you have to reference a bad website.

* For internal links avoid using keyword-rich Anchors.

8. Skipping Meta Descriptions and Title Tags 

This step is almost underrated once anyone has fixed their target keywords in their articles. Skipping Meta description and title tags will lead you to miss out on potential traffic to your website. Using schema is a very important tool for telling the search engine what your site is about. Great content might fail to make search engines understand the context of your content if you skip tags and descriptions.

* Provide unique tags for each page which if possible should be brief but descriptive enough.

* Be careful on the placement and intent of your keyword.

* Follow the best Google practices on good titles and snippets.

9. Not getting your website Mobile Optimization

Website quality is one of the most important factors in determining the success of SEO. Mobile devices are the top choices for users and it is crucial for your website to perform great here. Mobile-friendly websites are recognizable and help to lower the bounce rate a lot. Also, give extra emphasis on load speed as it encourages visitors to engage more on your website.

* Make sure your website has a responsive design.

* Create mobile-oriented content for a better mobile experience.

Some general tips for SEO starters

* If anything is slowing your website, remove them. Speed is your key.

* Choose relevant content while linking to other websites

* Create content for your audience, search engine comes next.

* Connect and encourage other sites to link to you.

* Have your web-analytics set from the beginning.

* Try writing unique and relevant Meta descriptions for every page.

* Try making your URLs short and meaningful

* Prepare to build some momentum with Social Signals. 

* Don’t forget to use the right keywords in your images.

* Post according to a schedule and timing generating more traffic

It doesn’t matter you are starting as a B2B or B2C marketer, mistakes are bound to happen. It is what you learn from these mistakes and your audacity to introduce some positive changes that will assure your success in this field.

The Ultimate Guide to Google Analytics: Measure Your online Success in 2021

In this era of SEO and Digital Marketing, Your business is always under threat of being unable to maintain that online presence. For starters, it might be intimidating with so many sub-tools and services given. Google Analytics might be that one important weapon on your SEO arsenal going towards 2021. Well, everything starts with a wander and you can easily learn the basics. To dive deeper into it there is some fantastic tutorial with a complete professional demonstration of GA.

Google analytics

Although there have been so many tools out there doing a similar job. Software like Matomo, Woopra, FoxMetrics, and Chartbeat do some pretty great stuff but if you are looking for a complete organizer for a proper SEO, Google Analytics is the one at the top. It is never too late to learn and improve your web performance. Here is an outline of a guide even if you have never used or heard of Google analytics before.

What Is Google Analytics (GA)?

Google Analytics, is an analytical tool providing users with an in-depth look at your website or web app performance. In simpler terms, it is a tracker keeping your progress and performance that your website in real-time and offers you a visualization that is easy for anyone to understand. It integrates with the major Google marketing and Ad platforms which helps for anyone using multiple Google plugins and tools in their websites.

GA is very data-driven. For anyone investing their time to learn and do SEO, it can be extremely helpful. Similarly, professionals with the ability to analyze and act on the data provided by Google analytics can do a lot using it. A certain drawback or problem for many beginners is that GA might take some time to set up, and a bit more to learn, maintain, implement, and use. However, the marketing analysis options and amount of data given here for you to work with is more than others right now.

The paid version of GA and its latest price

Google Analytics has both paid and free versions available in the market. Both with their benefits, one can choose among them for the best fit for your business. The paid version of GA is called Analytics 360. For beginners and small businesses, the free version will more likely be enough with the features it has. However, Analytics 360 is highly recommended for Enterprise business as even small things can have a big impact at this level.

Analytics 360 is an expensive service from Google as it includes so much more than analytics. The Plan starts from 150,000/per year. It becomes obvious the worth of Google Analytics 360 providing you the raw data rather than the sample ones. For a big organization, valuable insights here are proven to be worth years of studies and analytics.

Comparison between the free and paid version

Paid Version always provides much more than the free options. It couldn’t be clearer than with Google Analytics. Here are the major points of comparison between these two: –

* Standard GA has a data volume capacity of 10 million hits per month. That goes up to 20 billion in the paid analytics.

* Both have data Export and Tracking API.

* Maximum Data rows peaks at 50,000 rows for general and its 3 million rows for 360.

* Ten times more custom Dimension and Metrics available for the premium users of GA.

* Data Freshness can be over 24 hours while fresh data is fed every hour in the paid version.

* You have the opportunity to own your data which was very limited in the unpaid Google Analytics.

* The social media, mobile, and video sections are almost similar in both versions.

* More and accurate Analysis tools are available for Google Analytics 360 users.

Analytics 360 completely outs the general version with support and you are more likely to pay more for these. Some of them are:- 

* Dedicated Account Manager

* Discovery/Needs Analysis

* Implementation Audit

* Implementation Support

* Training from Google Experts

* 24×7 Emergency Support

* Friendly, Responsive Support

* Digital Measurement Strategy

* Analytics Maturity Assessment

* Data Integration Services

* Reporting Configuration

* Analyst Consulting Services

* Search Marketing Services

* Conversion Consulting Services

* Technology Recommendations

Set up Google Analytics with a stepwise guide to using it

 To set up GA follow our stepwise guide below: –

1. Set up a Google Account. It doesn’t have to be new. i.e., you must possess a registered Google account email and password. 

2. Now you have created your Google account, you have to register for Google analytics. Add the URL, company name, and industry of the website you want to track next.

3. In this step you have to add a view to your property. Name and select different types of views. After filling some other boxes you are good to go. Also, remember you can add a max of 25 views to a property in Google Analytics.

4. Step 3 will allow you access to a unique ID (for tracking) and global site tag marking the successful creation of your property. It is a necessary code you have to add to each page for measuring different visits. The data available to GA is due to this ID.

5. Now, paste this global site tag on the <head> tag of each page you plan in measuring. You can select the category of your site here for more precise data collection.

6. Return to your Google Analytics portal and check if the code is working. After verification, you are pretty good to use GA.

(Note* you are not required to add the GA code to every page of your website. As long as your other pages or even new page follows the same header module GA analyses that page. In case you have multiple page types, you have to copy the code and paste it to each header modules.)

Google Analytics Reports

The reports provided by Google Analytics is one of the most important outputs from all the hassle that you have been through. Take a look at the left-hand sidebar and you can find every type of report here. It could be overwhelming in the beginning but you can view and analyze one report at a time and focus on the results. Here are the generic reports provided by Google Analytics.

1. Real-time reports

It gives you real-time data i.e., what is going on your website at the moment. You can capitalize on a new post if it is doing great due to some reasons too.

2. Audience report

It gives you a very high-level overview of the type of Audience visiting your website. This is very important to know how you’re trending overall. Know the demographics of active users, lifetime value, and cohort analysis from this report as well. We suggest you check this report at least once a day.

3. Acquisition Report

The acquisition report simply breaks down the traffic received by your website. These are categorized by Organic, direct, social, email, referred, paid search, affiliate, and other sources. It provides you insights into which subset of traffic to work most on.

4. Behavior Report

It is the report that you are more likely to spend the most time on. It provides information on the Site Content, Speed, content Drilldown, landing-exit pages, site search, search terms, and much other stuff.

5. Conversions 

As the name suggests conversion report shows the rate of objectives completed by the visitors visiting the site. For example, buyers buying stuff on an e-commerce site. It shows how your website is doing goal-wise across the board.

Advantages of using Google Analytics

* The general version is free of cost. The valuable output comes without any charges and a little effort.

* On good hands, this can be a game-changer for your business.

* Data Visualization helps you to understand the performance of your website easily understandable.

* Reporting allows you to draw meaningful conclusions. The data here will make sense. 

* Real-time data to compare metrics and check performance on a different basis.

* You can pinpoint your target audience better.

* You can know the behavior and interests of the website visitors and make better changes in the upcoming days.

* It helps your website with better technology. SEO is helped a lot through Google analytics.

Now you’re ready to track

With all these done and dusted you are ready to track. An extra tip for you will be to join the digital marketing community in social media for updates and more queries arising from Google analytics. You can come back to this site again if the data analysis and SEO tend to get more sophisticated.

Top 10 Tips for SEO content creation, Go viral in 2021

The term ‘SEO Content’ has been frequently used in the past few years. Any content created with the aim of attracting Search Engine traffic through planning and formulation falls under SEO Content. It is thrown away in almost every marketing meeting. Its importance has been pointed and known by many. But, there are few who know the art of SEO content creation. It is a dynamic ever-changing skill so one mustn’t stop learning new techniques. Some you can find on the internet while others become obvious as you experience it in your work.

SEO content is all about the audience. However, you can see well-created content not ranking that well too. So, where did it all go wrong? Well, it is not bad but simply not good enough. No matter how good is your content some basic stuff might top the favor to your competitors. It can be disheartening to disappointing at times. This is where you can learn a few tips. Even the smallest of changes can prove to become the game-changer for you now. Here are the Top 10 Tips for SEO content creation for the year 2021.

1. Use a Number in Your Heading

Headlines have been the main area where content creators over-do or miss on the technical parts. A great headline can bring over two times the regular traffic. Use a number in your heading and you can see the improvements instantly. Studies even show that using an odd number might even result sometimes a 15% better CTR.

The trend of click-baiting might bring you larger visitors for a brief period of time. However, it is no surprise that click-baiting does no good in the long run. The answer is a clear heading that matches the search queries of the audience. Plan for the reach before the ain article shows up. This helps a lot in branding and the trust-building of the visitors to your website.

2. Use Images and Videos more

In the era of using visual content, using images and videos makes any content complete. Attractive and somewhat colorful images can help you to attract a more general population. Similarly, matching the color codes with the target audience is an old but very useful tip.

While crafting and editing SEO content people often forget the possibilities of traffic through image search. Adding a few important tags here will see your content in more result pages.

3. Use Short And Descriptive URL

On the first look, it might look like something that you’ll not change during posting. But, it is important especially when the smallest of things can improve your site visits. Few studies have been made on this topic. The results suggest that short and descriptive URLs can get more domains 25% more clicks. For example, if your site has cute cat pics. The URL www.******.com/cute-cats is more likely to bring the click.

As most SEO plugins/assistant take a part or complete heading for the URL, make sure to change them to the optimal length.

4. Summarize and go direct aiming the Featured Snippets

Featured Snippets are the new game-changers, and the primary focus of SEO. You have a lot better traffic and clicks if your content makes its way to the featured snippet. It is somewhat new too. However, you can optimize your content to increase the chances of making it. Here are 5 tips for you to create a featured Snippet: –

I. Create direct answer content. Stop beating around the bush give the readers what they need to know.

ii. Research and know more about the topic that your readers are asking.

iii. Add quality sub-content which might explain more about the answer.

iv. Provide the best answer with any studies/research results.

v. Use different contents for question/answer and general topics on your website.

5. Make it long but not boring (1500 words the sweet spot)

The length of the content has been in every content discussion. Is ‘more’ better, or summarizing is the new way to go. Here is an answer, give the options to the visitors. Give the generalized and quickest answer and provide more to those who want it.

In simpler terms, keep the best part of your content in the beginning. Start strong and then go to the details of the content. By our studies finishing around 1500 words will be best for SEO. For an average reader, it takes about 12 minutes to read the content. That will be perfect to sell your service and products during the period.

6. Provide the Sharing Options in likely places

It is a bit of design and content management tips. Use links in the optimal places so that it is there for the visitors easily. Most websites only put the sharing options towards the end of the content. As many readers might not make it to the end, it is best to provide the sharing options in the likely places. Using a slider with the sharing icons is a popular option here. You can also embed some links in between without disturbing the flow and get better share results.   

7. Hashtags are not outdated, Use wisely

Hashtags are simply keywords helping social media users to find your content. And any traffic to your website is an opportunity to grow your brand. It has been a very effective tactic in Instagram and other mediums as well. Use some direct and general tags in the content. Both related and primary hashtags still help your web traffic and reach. Depending on the improvements, you can use an extra software tool for managing the hashtags.

8. Mention Influencers and Personalities more

Your content will get viral if the shares by influencers are critical. As simple as that. You’ll notice the support and sponsor to them have been paramount for the growth of many new companies. Let them know and link to influential people. It is great to do it if the demographics of your possible visitors overlap that of the influencers and personalities as well.

9. Be practical and even be the Content viewers in some parts

It is not a new strategy but always be up to date with the new trends. Thinking from the perspective of your visitors, be practical while creating your SEO content. Keep examples that matter and add some personal preference if that is related to the topic. Practical articles are 30% more likely to be viral and ride on the trends as per research by Dr. Jonah Berger. 

10. Make the most of the Adwords Ads with SEO Tag Copy

Adwords of different types are designed in a way to maximize your clicks. It is better to base your description tags and SEO title on Adwords ads. This will help you to maximize traffic from Search Engines.

With all these and more tips coming be prepared for the marketing world in the years to come. We will be the first to let you know of any future SEO trends and developments.