Growing Traffic To My Wordpress Website With Twitter

In December 2009, Twitter recorded nearly 20 million visitors, a growth in traffic of 900% on 2008.  That’s over 10% of all internet users following the website, with up to 10,000 people joining every day to take part in the constant stream of communication.  Imagine if you could tap into some of this regular traffic and bring them to your blog or website.  You could increase your traffic dramatically and more importantly develop a loyal following of subscribers interested in your niche, which in turn means greater profits for you.

This article shows you exactly how to tap into the Twitter phenomenon and use their high traffic to bring more visitors to your Wordpress website.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a social networking site that allows you to keep people updated about what you’re up to at any moment of the day.  Each Tweet has a limited number of words so it’s like sending an SMS text message to all your friends and followers.  Some people talk about what they’ve had for lunch, others tell their followers about new posts on their blogs or exciting news about their industry.  Some people are just Tweet followers, which means they don’t Tweet at all but simply follow that others are up to.

How to Use Twitter to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

  • Direct Publicity: Once you’ve set up your Wordpress site using the website builder, you’ll need to get a Twitter account.  Then do a Twitter search for relevant people who are interested in your niche and begin to follow them.  Then start to comment on their Tweets and hopefully they will start to follow you back.  The idea is to create a large group of followers, who will then encourage their own followers to follow you, and so it goes on.  As you write comments, you can then leave remarks such as, “on my blog at the moment (with the URL) everyone is talking about this.”  Also if you sell through your Wordpress site, you can tell everyone about your latest promotions.  It’s like a massive advertising campaign that’s completely free!
  • Twitter Feed: this is a really useful plug in which allows you to put your latest posts as RSS feeds on your Twitter account.  Also it updates your blog with any Tweets.  This is great for increasing your search engine ranking, because it increases the number of external links, as well as bringing new traffic directly to your blog.
  • Thread Twitter: another really useful plug in which fetches your Tweets and displays them in a thread style, which helps to get people involved in the conversation and create a loyal readership who want to keep coming back to join in.
  • Other Essential Twitter Plug ins: if you’re serious about boosting your traffic from social networking sites such as Twitter, there are a couple of essential plug ins.  ShareThis and Sociable are two really useful add ons to your website builder, which make linking to Twitter very easy for you and your users.  Sociable is particularly great because it automatically adds links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your post, pages and RSS feeds.
  • Make Tweeting easy: if you want Tweeters to spread the word about your website, you need to make it easy for them.  TweetThis adds a link to every post and page with the words, Tweet this Post, as well as the ability to automatically Tweet your new and scheduled blog posts.  Tweetly Updater is another easy to use plug in that updates your Twitter account every time you post, keeping your followers up to date on your site and saving you valuable time. All the Twitter plug ins mentioned are available completely free on our resources and plug ins page

Don’t forget that using Twitter is about a two-fold strategy.  It can really help to increase traffic and generate a loyal interest in your website, as well as increasing your search engine ranking by adding external links, which in turn also generate more traffic.  A win win situation for any Wordpress site!


How to Get a Job Using Wordpress

Blogging is becoming an essential tool for career development and success, highlighting you as a leading expert in your field and setting you aside from the competition.  Unemployment rates are rising, competition for jobs is getting tougher and you need to prove you’re at the top of your game.  Increasingly employers are searching online to find out more about candidates, so having an online presence that projects the right image for your industry is crucial.

If you are looking for a new job or want to advance your career it’s time to take your blogging efforts seriously and use Wordpress to launch yourself online.  Here’s everything you need to know about how to use Wordpress to get a job and blog your way to a highly successful career.

Promoting Yourself Online

Creating a Wordpress blog where you can demonstrate your expertise is like a public relations campaign.  It’s a way of letting potential employers know your views about your industry and hopefully show them you’re at the cutting edge of development.

It’s easy to create a website resume and blog using Wordpress.  First choose your domain name, which should probably be your name or name of your company, then download Wordpress and your free website builder program Next you’ll need to choose a theme to suit you, your resume and your blog.  There are hundreds to choose from but it’s best to go for simplicity and elegance.  Calligraphy Document and Work Mail Delivery are ideal, projecting a professional image that’s easy to navigate.  Both are available for free on our Wordpress themes page.

You can also buy various resume templates from $10 which you give a resume that can dramatically improve the impact of your skills, experience and information.  You can choose from a whole host of templates, depending on your line of work and image you need to project.

Top Plug Ins for Your Online Resume

  • Contact Form 7: make it easy for employers to contact you, ask questions and find out your rates.  This plug in is a really simple one to use.  Just create a new page, use the title “contact” and paste in the code.
  • WP Resume Park: you can embed your Resume Park hosted resume on your blog using this plug in.
  • NextGEN Gallery: your online resume would be pretty boring if you didn’t have any images.  Create a portfolio of your previous work, clients and anything that sells who you are and what you can do using this brilliant plug in.
  • Resume Extended: this plug in gives you the tools to create a resume to view on your blog.  You can save it as a separate page, with a template nicely divided into categories.  You can also import a pre existing resume into the template and export it to PDF and Microsoft Word.
  • LinkedIn Resume:  displays your resume on your blog from your LinkedIn public information page.

Projecting a Professional Image

If you want your blog to form part of your resume you need to come across as professional and make your posts engaging and focused.  Once you’ve installed your website builder and chosen your theme and resume template, you’re ready to start promoting yourself with blog content.  Here are 10 top tips for writing a professional blog to entice employers to headhunt directly:

  1. Write your blog with focus and a purpose.  Don’t just put together a collection of random thoughts.  Stay on topic.
  2. Highlight your expertise, outstanding achievements, training and experience through your blog.
  3. Tell everyone you’re available to hire.  Don’t be afraid to state the obvious.
  4. Quality writing is essential with impeccable grammar and spelling.
  5. Add your blog URL to all your business cards, resume and correspondence.
  6. Write about leading experts and companies you might like to work for to get their attention.
  7. Interview leading experts and put excerpts of their interview in your blogs.  This is a great way to network.
  8. Give your posts a purpose. Think of each as a story with a beginning, middle and end and don’t just shove your expertise into people’s faces.
  9. Include your contact details, a biography and your resume beautifully presented and easy to find.
  10. Use images to add weight to what you’re saying and make your blog more interesting.

10 Awesome Wordpress Sites

When you download your website builder and create your Wordpress website, don’t fool yourself into thinking that Wordpress is only a platform for small scale bloggers.  The sky is the limit with Wordpress and celebrities, politicians and huge corporations are using it to power their websites and blogs.  Everyone from Yahoo to CNN, Ford to Playstation, musician Thomas Dolby to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi… these are just a few of the giants using Wordpress to build their websites.

If you have a Wordpress site, there’s no better way to learn about the infinite possibilities and beautiful design features this software has to offer than to learn from the best sites already out there.  So we’ve trawled the internet to find you 10 absolutely awesome Wordpress sites to inspire you to get creative with your site.

  1. Yodel Anecdotal: this is Yahoo’s corporate blog where you can go behind the scenes at Yahoo and find out more about the company, market trends and information about their users.  Simple, eye catching and effortless to navigate.  A great model for any blog.
  2. CNN Political Ticker:  this is a Wordpress.com VIP Hosting Site that really shows you what Wordpress can do.  It takes the essence of blogging and makes keeping people up to the minute on what’s going on in the political scene both easy to follow and engaging and interesting.
  3. ChickSpeak: this site projects a friendly, professional image that is perfect for the target market of young women going through college.  More of a social networking website you’re bound to pick up plenty of ideas on how to format your own site and create engaging content for your readers.
  4. The Gavel: this is the website of Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives.  This site really proves how Wordpress can be used to project a professional image that can help to raise the power of your message.
  5. Delicious: Days: as professional and slick as any website you’ll find on the internet, this food site is beautifully presented, using an elegant theme alongside high quality images.  This site really proves how powerful Wordpress can be.
  6. Fernwood Coffee:  simple yet beautiful.  This is a really great site to look at if you’ve just downloaded your website builder and are worried you won’t be able to project a professional image with your website.  You don’t need to have a blog on your site and can just as easily use Wordpress to run your business website.
  7. Ecoki: this is an eco-friendly lifestyle community website that showcases its content brilliantly.  Really easy to navigate, with a nicely set out homepage and images to grab your attention.
  8. Adaptik:  a corporate website that’s clean, simple and portrays the brand in a professional and eye grabbing manner.  This site is a great inspiration for anyone deciding whether Wordpress is the right platform for their company website.
  9. University of Colorado at Boulder: this university website demonstrates how Wordpress is perfect for educational websites, both as a promotional tool and for linking students.  Great choice of theme alongside relevant and interesting content.
  10. Welovewp: this is a brilliant site to look at before you begin to use your website builder and create your Wordpress site.  It showcases some of the best Wordpress sites around and will fill you with inspiration and ideas for developing your own site.  Plus it’s also an awesome site in its own right and is also powered by Wordpress.

How to Write Posts that Everyone Wants to Read

Content is king!  Let’s face it, no amount of search engine optimization, advertising initiative or blog promotion will bring your website long term success if you don’t write good content that people will actually want to read.  Yet if you create a loyal following through interesting and engaging posts, more people will want to comment, come back for your next post, subscribe and promote you to their friends.

Here are five top tips on how to create brilliant blog posts that keep visitors coming back for more:

1. Choose a topic you’re passionate about

Bloggers who have any kind of success from their website pick a topic they’re passionate about.  As soon as you upload your website builder, it’s important to think truthfully about the topic you’ve chosen before you write your content.  Is it something you’re interested in and can write passionately about?  If it is your readers will naturally become engaged in what you’re saying because it’s something you know a lot about and can provide an interesting angle on.  If you don’t actually enjoy what you’re writing about this will come across in your words.

2. Add a Competition

When you first start up as a blogger you may have downloaded your website builder, uploaded a bit of content but feel demoralized because no one seems to be visiting your site.  It does take time to build up traffic but one way to quickly boost your numbers is to add an incentive to people to visit you and leave a comment.  A competition is a great way to do this, offering a prize for the best comment of the week.  Choose something that’s relevant to your website and that could spark interest in your site, such as your latest eBook or a product you’ve reviewed. 

3. Get personal!

One of the best ways to get people to engage with your blog is to share your own personal stories.  It makes what you’re writing more human and appeals to your visitors on a personal level.  For example, if your blog is about rare dog breeds, chances are you have your own rare breed of dog.  Add some photos and talk about your own dog and any funny experiences you’ve had looking after this breed.  Or you maybe writing a blog about generating an income as a stay at home Mom.  You could include success stories about you and your friends, give your own tips about how to juggle work and looking after a toddler or ideas you’ve used successfully to create some extra money.    It’s all about giving your readers something interesting that adds value to their lives and makes them feel they can’t live without your latest post. 

4. Ask your visitors direct questions

The key to making your visitors feel engaged is to motivate them to comment on your blog.  One of the easiest ways to do this is to ask a direct question at the end of your post.  For example, you may have been talking about the latest digital cameras available on the market.  Ask a question which is sure to fire a debate, such as, “What is the best digital camera?”  Or you could add a question that gives them the opportunity to share something about them, or have a little bit of publicity for their site.  For example, “Share Your Best Photo and Prove Your Digital Camera is the Best!”

5. MegaLists

This can be quite a bit of hard work but one of the easiest ways to get traffic to your blog is to create a couple of Megalist posts.  These are lists of “the best” of something.  For example, “50 of the funniest websites,” or “20 of the best stock photography websites.”  Whatever is relevant to your blog.  It will bring people in to see who’s on the list, as well as motivate people to comment with complaints on who’s in and who’s out.  Commentators may also suggest ideas for your next list!

Checking your comments levels is a really good measure of your post and website success.  When you first set up your site using your website builder, you may become disheartened at the low levels of traffic to begin with.  Try to look past these figures and assess the quality of traffic you are earning.  Comments analysis is sometimes a better measure of success because it shows you that people have actually bothered to read your post, taken the time and effort to post and comment and may be more likely to come back for more. 


WordPress: Engage Your Readers and Increase Sales with Embedded Video

If you’re looking to improve conversion on your WordPress blog, look no further than embedded video.  Adding video is very simple, and can often have incredible results.  For instance, in November of 2008, the brains behind Monty Python made their clips available for sharing and streaming online.  These videos linked back to their Amazon DVD sales page, and sales of their DVDs went up by 23,000 percent.

It’s pretty clear that no matter what your end goal is, be it sales, click-throughs, sign-ups, or referrals, embedding videos into your blog increases the chances of you reaching that goal.

Video Works:

 

From 2007 to 2008, the global viewing of retail videos online increased from nearly 25 million unique viewers to almost 35 million, an astounding jump of 40%. Video been proven to reduce abandoned shopping carts and generate higher sales; since actual visitors only increased by 4%, any site featuring video has a clear head start on the competition.

Embedded video will keep your visitor’s attention and keep them actively involved in a purchase.  It creates a central focus point with a set duration (the length of the video) that requires the full visual and auditory commitment of the visitor.  This keeps them on your site longer, building your brand recognition and increasing the odds they will look at other parts of your site.  And implementing video is pretty simple with an easy website builder like WordPress.

How to Embed Video:

 

The easiest way to pull video from a site such as Youtube or Google Video is copying and pasting the embed code.  You can traditionally find this code on the site just under or right next to the video you wish to embed (Youtube’s is right below the summary, for instance).   Some sites may have a “share” button instead; just click that button for the code.

The other option is using a plug-in.  For instance, the aptly named “Embedded Video” plug-in will allow you to embed videos from a variety of sources (including your own uploads) with very little headache.  This plug-in currently supports Youtube, Google Video, DailyMotion, MyVideo, ClipFish, Metacafe, Myspace Video, and quite a few more.  You can find this plug-in here: Embedded Video for Wordpress

If you’re serious about creating a lasting relationship with your customers and building a business, then you have to find ways to engage them on your site.  Embedded video is a powerful weapon in your arsenal and will help ensure your visitors stay on your site longer.  When used effectively, you should see not only an increase in the duration of visits, but an increase in sales, sign-ups, or whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish.  Use your WordPress website builder to add embedded video to your site and see the results for yourself.


Wordpress: Tweet Your Way to Massive Profits

One of the best ways to increase your sales and push traffic to your site is social media.  If you’re unfamiliar with the term, social media simply applies to all of those networking, reblogging, and linking sites that people use to share content and stay connected.  Consider this:  In October of 2009, Twitter alone had over 19 million visitors.  Facebook has added 52 million users in just the last 12 months.  If you’re not currently engaging that audience, you’re missing thousands of potential sales.  In a recent survey about last holiday season’s Black Friday sales, 28% of consumers claimed that social media influenced their purchases.

Add Social Media To Your WordPress:

 

So how do you take advantage of this audience and translate it into sales?  If you’ve ever visited a blog, and since you’re reading this we’re guessing that you have, you’ve probably noticed quite a few featuring a slew of icons or a “Share This!” button.  These buttons allow readers to recommend your posts to sites like Reddit and Digg, or share them directly to their Facebook and Twitter pages.

This is free advertising for you – if someone shares one of your posts on their Facebook, you are gaining visibility to their entire network of friends for absolutely no investment.  The best part?  These buttons are easy to implement.  Use a WordPress plug-in such as “Share This,” “Sociable,” or “Notable” to add these buttons with minimal effort and watch the traffic roll in.

Participate In The Community:

 

Sharing things to Digg, writing guest posts for other bloggers, and commenting on sites such as Technorati and Reddit are great opportunities to link back to your blog and generate additional traffic. Here’s a rundown on the big guns:

  • Digg – Readers recommend posts and vote on them to increase their popularity.
  • Facebook – Members share your content with a built-in network of friends.
  • Twitter – Users link your posts which can then be re-linked by their followers.
  • Technorati – Blog community with real-time searching and popularity index.
  • StumbleUpon – Site that uses personal interests to recommend unexplored topics.
  • Reddit – Similar to Digg with user-generated links and a popularity index.

It’s also a very good idea to create a company Facebook and Twitter.  As people visit your site and add themselves to your networking pages, your repeat-customer base (think of it as an opt-in mailing list) will grow, at zero cost.

Never underestimate the power of social media in building steady traffic and introducing your site to a broader audience.  If you make it easy for people to share your blog with their friends, you will notice an immediate improvement in your traffic.  The more customers see your company as a part of their lives, the more time and money they will be willing to put into it.


WordPress Payment Gateways: Use The Best to Increase Sales

 

The internet is a dangerous place for personal information, and when you look at ecommerce sales it shows.   A recent survey indicated that nearly 32% of purchases are abandoned due to customers being uncomfortable with the site, and an even higher amount (41%) are lost because the checkout process is too long.  However, if you use a website builder like WordPress to manage your content, you can utilize the convenience and good name of industry leaders to push your customers through the final process.

Payment gateways allow your customers to make purchases on your site.  Here are the three most recognizable gateways currently available to WordPress users:

PayPal

 

Paypal is internationally recognized as the industry leader in payment.  Most of your customers probably already have a PayPal account, so if you use it as a gateway you’re one step ahead.  Money through PayPal takes about 3-4 days to go from purchase to your bank.  Install the plug-in “Are Paypal” and your customers can use their accounts to buy anything you wish to sell, instantly.

Google Checkout

 

Though a relative newcomer to the scene, Google Checkout is a great payment option for your customers.  People appreciate the convenience of not having to re-register for every site they visit, and with Google Checkout they can make purchases just by staying logged in to their Google accounts.  The all-in-one “WordPress E-Commerce Plugin” is Google Checkout compatible, so it’s easy to implement for the novice website builder.

Authorize.net

 

The name might not be as familiar as Google or PayPal, but Authorize.net has been a powerhouse in e-commerce payment processing for some time.  Essentially, Authorize.net allows you to accept credit card or electronic check payments directly from your customers, without the need for a PayPal or Google account.  They also offer free customer support (for you), one of the fastest payouts in the business (1-2 days), and advanced fraud protection.  As with Google Checkout, the “WordPress E-Commerce Plugin” suite will allow you to use this payment gateway.

With convienience and name recognition on your side, you will be far ahead of the curve when it comes time for you customers to make a purchase.  Avoid some of the most common causes of abandoned shopping carts and lost sales by using these simple plug-ins and watch the positive impact it has on your sales.

Finally, integrating one of these payment gateways into your WordPress is a strong step towards monetizing your WordPress and impressing your customers, but we recommend you make a purchase through one of these gateways or any plug-in you use to ensure the customer-side experience is streamlined.

Remember that your customers aren’t concerned with how easy something is for you.  If they find your payment options to be unwieldy or inconvenient, they’re likely to take their business elsewhere, so make sure you’re choosing the best tool for your customers and your business alike.


Spam is Gross: Control Your Comments in WordPress

Having a popular blog can often be a mixed blessing.  On the one hand, you’re fortunate enough to have hundreds, maybe thousands of readers that hang on your every word.  On the other hand, you are a prime target for exploitive and damaging web techniques such as comment spam.  Luckily, there are plenty of ways for a website builder to deal with and prevent the spam that all WordPress blogs will eventually face.

What is Spam?

 

Put simply, spam is any comment on a blog post that has no value to the discussion.  While a final call on what exactly this constitutes is up to you, most bloggers would agree that link spamming (where a robot posts dozens of links in your comment section) is their main concern.  People set up these link spamming systems to improve their page rankings with the major search engines and don’t really care if they have a negative impact on your blog or your readers.

What Can I Do?

 

There are several ways to battle spam when using WordPress as your website builder.  First and foremost, WordPress has quite a robust set of tools built right in that can help you deal with spammers.  Changing the number of links allowed in a post, setting a filter for spam words, blacklisting certain words from your comments, and restricting your comments to just registered users are all a default part of every WordPress download and should allow you a great deal of control over spam.

Besides that, WordPress also comes with the Askimet Comment Spam Fighter software.  This particular tool uses complex algorithms and user-modified inputs to learn which comments on your blog are spam, and which are not.  What’s really amazing about Askimet is that it can adapt to new threats as spammers change their tactics, so as long as you pay attention to your comments section you should be able to keep a tight reign on spam.

When using Askimet it is very important that you periodically check in on your Askimet Panel to ensure that no false positives are being trapped in the net.  Marking non-spam comments off in the panel will help the software to do a better job of discerning between legitimate and illegitimate comments and will ensure your readers are able to participate in your blog without worry of having their comments spam-blocked.

Spam comments and bad links can ruin the appeal and personality of a good blog.  If you’re interested in building a successful WordPress blog with many regular readers, protect them from spam by applying all of the techniques listed in this article.  Additionally, provide your readers with a way to get in touch with you should they have their comments block or pick up on some spam that you might have missed.  As long as you stop spam early or completely, you shouldn’t have a major issue keeping it under control.


Hacked! Is Your WordPress Blog Vulnerable to Attack?

In September of 2009, many users of the website builder WordPress pulled up their blogs to find a horrible sight:  it wasn’t there.  Due to vulnerabilities in WordPress, their blogs had been hacked, dismantled, and in some cases permanently damaged.  Imagine losing all of your data.  Your layout and theme.  Your advertisements.  And, worst of all, your revenue for the period of time it takes you to get everything working again.

If you value your WordPress site, here are some ways to protect your blog, and thus, your money:

Protect Your Login

 

There are a couple of things you can do right off the bat that make your WordPress less vulnerable to attack.  Install the “Chap Secure Login” plug-in to encrypt your login and prevent the bad guys from sniffing it out of a public network.  Additionally, install a plug-in like “Login Lockdown” that will track your login attempts from different IPs; this will prevent third party users from brute-forcing your password.

All WordPress blogs have “admin” as the default username, which is a glaring security hole in every site that uses this as a website builder.  Create a new user account and assign that user the role of administrator.  Log in with that account, then delete the old “admin” account (make sure to click “attribute all posts and links to” first!).  This will close the backdoor on your blog.

Be sure to use a great password too!  We recommend one or two capital letters, at least one number, and a symbol such as an exclamation point or percent sign.  And stay away from common password subjects like pet names or birthdays – people can usually figure these out.

Protect Your Content

 

Even if you’re certain you have the most secure WordPress blog on the planet, there’s always a chance of unauthorized access.  Install the “WP Database Backup” plug-in and make sure it backs up all of your data often, just in case. Then protect your plug-ins from prying eyes by creating a regular text file named “index.html” and uploading it to your “/wp-content/plugins” folder.  This will prevent people from seeing the plug-ins your blog is currently running and attempting to exploit any security vulnerabilities they may have.

Also, it is imperative that you put the lockdown on your admin folder.  This folder contains tons of important information and can cause a great deal of trouble for your blog if compromised.  The “AskApache Password Protect” plug-in will allow you to password protect the folder and keep unwanted guests where they belong (out).

While nothing that exists on the internet is 100% safe, it is far easier to prevent someone from hacking your WordPress blog than it is to clean up the mess a hacker leaves behind.  Follow safe browsing practices, use great security plugins, and regularly scan your computer for viruses, trojans, and other malware to ensure you are not potentially giving up all of your personal information to a keylogger.  Your WordPress blog is a valuable asset, so be sure to treat it like one!


5 Plug Ins to Explode Search Rankings Using Interlinks

Interlinking your blog content is a highly effective SEO tactic that can boost search engine ranking through keyword-rich internal links between your webpages.  This allows search engine spiders to navigate your content more easily and go through all of your inner pages looking for relevant keywords.  It’s like providing a map of your website for the search engines and a chauffeur to take them where you want them to go.

The result is better optimization and search engine ranking success for every webpage, even the older posts which you may have uploaded months or even years ago. This can help to skyrocket your blog income, as more visitors arrive at your site and click-through rates are boosted dramatically.  

If you’re using WordPress as your free website builder program, there are some really great interlink plug ins, which make the job of creating internal links much quicker and easier.  Here are 5 of the most useful and effective plug ins to create interlinks, which are all available to download for free from our resources page:

1.   SEO Smart Links

This user-friendly plug in automatically links keywords and phrases in your posts by matching them with post titles, which it then uses to create links.  Although this is an automatic plug in, it gives you a fair amount of control over how to interlink your content.  For example, you can choose which type of content to interlink, including posts, categories, tags and webpages.   You can also select the maximum number of links to create on each page or for each keyword, as well as excluding specific pages. 

2.  Insights

When writing new blog posts some website builders also like to manually link to older content, to have greater control over interlinks.  This plug in is really useful because it allows you to quickly find related posts, saving you the effort of searching your entire website. You can then easily insert links to your related posts.  This plug in also allows you to add Flickr images, Youtube videos and Google maps. 

3.  RB Internal Links

Another great interlink plug in that makes it very easy to connect all your webpages and posts, without having to use the full URL.  It also gives you the option to search your old posts by category to find suitable posts to link to.  What’s also particularly great about this plug in is that it prevents the need to go back and change all your internal links if you change the linking structure of your site.

4.  InLinks

This is a really simple, yet effective plug in that allows website builders to link a specific keyword with a designated URL.  Then every time you use that keyword, wherever it is on your website, it will automatically create a link to the specified URL and webpage.  For example, if you use the keyword phrase “Contact Me Today” and set up a link to your Contact page, every time you type this keyword phrase into your new blog posts it will automatically create a hyperlink to your Contact Page.  This can save you loads of time and effort, leaving you the time to concentrate on creating great content. 

5.  Broken Link Checker

Finally if you’re interlinking a lot of your blog content (as well as creating plenty of external links, also great for SEO) it’s important to keep a check on broken links.  Sometimes as a website builder you need to change a post title or URL to improve SEO, which can end up in a broken link. 

The last thing you want is for people to click on a link and a 404 error message comes up, telling them the webpage is unavailable.  This can be disastrous for SEO and prevent visitors from wanting to come back to your site.  This plug in detects broken links and notifies you of any through the Broken Link Checker widget.  You can then edit any broken links, remove the link or manually check the link and set the status as “unbroken” if appropriate.  For more information on how to fix broken links, this article has all the answers.