Monday, August 1, 2016

How to Make Your Blog Rack up More Shares with Widgets and Plugins

Blogging has become the marketing tool of choice for the content-friendly masses. Starting up a blog is a fairly easy and automated process, and as a resource is easily accessible to everyone. Plenty of tools and themes are available today which make building and maintaining a blog easy. By starting your own blog you can focus on showcasing your skills. One of the most advantageous aspects of blogging is the flexibility it offers in terms of content to showcase. All leading blogging platforms have a mechanism in place to provide healthy reviews on content that help writers understand their audiences better.

Free and open source content management systems offer an array of plugins. These plugins are extensions of other services or websites which will enhance the blogging experience. Users can choose from a multitude of plugins that are on offer including ones for sharing reviews and ratings. Opting for the review and ratings plugin will provide easy access to review alerts. This feature helps analyze the quality of published posts which in turn will ensure productivity. The CMS provides a user interface which is extremely easy to use. Keeping in mind the ease of use, it has been created with precision. As you can publish your work with minimum hassles, you can continue to focus on that which matters the most—the content.

Let's take a look at the five best plugins which can add to your blog's personality. Some plugins are generic which every blog should have whereas some are customized according to the requirement of the bloggers:

Broken Link Checkers: The 404 message can be very embarrassing for a blogger. Nobody likes a broken link as it is a bad experience for site visitors. Google recommends checking a site for broken links regularly.  It can impede the success of a new and upcoming blog. This needs to be fixed at the earliest and broken links that do not lead anywhere have to be fixed. The broken link checker plugin will monitor links in the pages, posts, comments and the custom fields and notify the owner via email in case it finds problematic links.

Google Libraries: This plugin helps save bandwidth as it substitutes JavaScript libraries on your local server with the Google Content Delivery Network. This offers multiple performance benefits. Chances are high that the user has already has these files cached. It takes load off the server and uses compressed versions of the libraries.

Widget Login: This plugin functions in tandem with the widgets users have on their blogs. The widget plugin gives them the choice to decide which part of the blog the widget will appear in. To sum up, it gives WP users full control over which pages a widget will display. Widgets can be dynamically hidden or displayed.  

Yoast SEO: This plugin helps in checking simple things which you are bound to forget. For instance, it checks off whether the post contains images, whether the alt tags contain a focus keyword for that post. Additionally it checks whether the post is long enough and whether the meta description has been written. It also checks whether the meta description contains the keyword. The plugin will also allow users to write meta titles and descriptions for all the categories helping you optimizing your page.

Author Posts Ratings Plugin: This plugin is ideal for those who want a control over how reviews are published on the site. It allows authors to rate posts and features on the website. Plenty of plugins were available which allowed visitors to rate posts but this plugin gives authors this functionality. It adds a metabox to the post edit screen allowing you to choose a 1-5 star rating for the post. Once the rating is added, the plugin will add it to the bottom or top of the post.

Additionally, feedback forms can be incorporated at strategic points within the post. It has been designed to let users easily moderate the built-in-comments feed. Depending on the feedback they want displayed on their blog, you can filter and block the spam comments. Further, it is easy to implement a regulation system which will help users to filter out fake reviews. In short, they have complete freedom over what comments they want showing up on the blog. If any feedback is not in line with commenting policies it can be removed.


Source: How to Make Your Blog Rack up More Shares with Widgets and Plugins

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