After starting a WordPress website the first thing that comes to mind is increasing the functionality of the website. And this thing can be done with the help of plugins. In this article, we will be learning how to install a WordPress plugin in the right way.

Before we start with this guide let’s first understand

What is a Plugin?

A plugin is an add-on software that is installed to boost or add new features to your website. The plugin makes it easier for WordPress users to add extended features without even worrying about coding.

There are tons of free plugins available in the WordPress Plugin Repository that can add any function to your website that you think of.

Be it securing your blog, adding animations, slideshows, videos, photo galleries or adding the features of an e-commerce website. You can just add any feature to your website by installing plugins.

There are 3 types of plugins

1. Free
2. Premium
3. Freemium

Free Plugin

A WordPress plugin that is available on the WordPress directory and can be used by everyone at free of cost. When you have recently done a fresh WordPress install and just starting out, it is good to know that without paying anything extra you can extend the features of your website.

You may like to read- 20 things to do after installing WordPress

Each of these plugins is tested before they are added to the free plugin list. You can also get free plugins from third party websites. But until the source is trusted, I will not recommend downloading and adding any such plugin to your website.

It can spread malware to visitors and compromise the compromise the security of your blog. And you don’t want that.

There 2 other important things to keep in mind before installing a free plugin

1. Checking when was the plugin last updated
2. Is it compatible with your version of WordPress?

Both these things are very easy to check and it can be done by either visiting the online WordPress repository or by using the plugin search in the WordPress dashboard.

Let’s take the example of the Jetpack Plugin by Automattic.

• Checking the compatibility and the last update using the WordPress dashboard plugin search.

In the above image, you can clearly see it was last updated 2 weeks ago and is compatible with the version of WordPress currently in use.

• Checking the last update status and compatibility through the WordPress repository.

In order to check this visit WordPress.org and search for the free plugin.

And when you select the plugin, on the right side you can see it tells you about the last update and compatibility.

What is the reason behind checking this?

There is a very simple reason if a plugin hasn’t been updated for a long time there is a chance the creator has abandoned the project and it may cause security issues as hackers can find loopholes.

And in case the plugin hasn’t been tested on your version of WordPress, then there are chances it can break your website and you don’t want that.

So it is very important to install add-ons from trusted sources, frequently updated and compatible.

Also, when you install free plugins they do not generally come with technical support. You may have to search the forums or read the installation instructions that come with the plugin.

Premium Plugins

Premium Plugins are the ones that require you to pay a certain cost or a subscription charge in order to use them. These plugins can be bought from their respective websites or various marketplaces that sell them.

Few of the most popular marketplaces to buy plugins are Themeforest, Creative Market and Mojo Marketplace.

You cannot find these plugins in the WordPress plugin directory.

And one of such plugin is Analytify. It helps you manage your analytics from the WordPress dashboard

One of the best thing about premium plugins is the quality of code and technical support. In case you face any problem, there is a customer to help you out and solve your problems.

Freemium Plugins

As the same suggests it is the mix of both free and premium plugin. The base plugin is free to download but some features are only available for premium users. When you pay for the additional features it turns into a premium plugin.

Just like the free plugin, you can download these plugins from the WordPress plugin listings, dashboard plugin search or from third party websites.

One of the very popular freemium plugins is Yoast SEO. It helps you optimize your website for search engines and it is recommended by us.

You can download the free Yoast SEO plugin using this link.

You may like to read-Quick Search engine optimization tips to increase your rankings

Now that we have discussed the difference between different types of plugins, it is important to understand if you are a WordPress.com user, you may not be able to access plugins on the dashboard.

The reason behind this is simple, you have to pay a subscription charge and you have limited control.

The 3 ways to install plugins in WordPress

1. Installing plugin using search in WordPress dashboard

This is the easiest and most common way to install a plugin in WordPress website. Only free or freemium plugins can be installed using this process and the plugin should be available in the WordPress listings.

To install plugins using this method, go to your WordPress dashboard and click plugins >> add new.

In the above image, you can see the search box. Enter your query or name of the plugin in the search and press enter. Also, you can see there are 4 other tabs on left of the search box.

• Featured– These are the plugins that are recommended by WordPress and on the bottom of the page you can see a tag cloud. It is the list of most popular tags in the plugin directory.
• Popular– These are the plugins that are the most used. The plugins on this list are sorted based on their popularity.
• Recommended– The plugins on this list are recommended based on your previous installations.
• Favorites– In case you have marked any plugin as a favorite on WordPress.org, it will show up on this list.

For demonstration purpose, I will be installing the UpdraftPlus plugin. It is a very useful plugin that helps you easily backup your WordPress website data.

To add the header and footer plugin, I searched for the query WordPress backup plugin. And it returns a list of plugins as you can see in the screenshot above.

Select the plugin that fits your specifications. You can read the description of the plugin before installing it so that you know it fulfills your requirements.

As we are looking for the plugin that eases the process of WordPress backup and the description matches our requirements. All we need to do now is install the plugin.

Click the install now button. The next step in the process is activating the plugin. Once the plugin has been downloaded and installed, you’ll see the Activate button. Click it.

And it will return a message “Plugin Activated” or “Thank you for installation”.

You can check for the plugin in the list of installed plugins.

And that’s it you are done adding the plugin using the WordPress dashboard plugin search.

But before we jump to the second way, it is important to know you can search for plugins based on authors and tags.

In case you want to search for the plugin based on author or tag, you can simply click the drop-down menu and select the relevant option.

2. Installing the plugin through Upload plugin option in WordPress Admin

Using this method you can install the paid plugins and the plugins you may have downloaded from the third party websites.

I would again like to let you know to download free plugins only from the trusted websites else at all costs avoid it as it can be a risk to the security of your website.

In order to upload the plugin using this technique, go to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plugins >> add new.

You will see a button named upload plugin. Click the button and it will take you to a new screen where it will ask you to upload the plugin you have downloaded which is in the zip format.

Once you have uploaded the file click the install now button.

When you click the install now button it will take you to a new screen where it will show you the progress of the installation. It will take a few seconds to complete this step and you will get a message just like the image below.

Once the installation is complete you can click the Activate plugin button on the bottom of the screen to activate the plugin.

It will return a message saying “Plugin Activated”.

Once you have received this message you can check for the plugin in the list of installed plugins.

And you have successfully installed the plugin using the upload plugin option.

3. Install a WordPress plugin using FTP

The last and final technique on the list is for advanced users. Although this method will be rarely used but it’s still important to know in case you are unable to install the plugin using the other 2 methods.

Before we start with this process you need to install an FTP client on your machine.

I prefer using Filezilla. It is available for free and you can download it from here.

After you have downloaded and installed the FTP client, you need to connect with your host using the FTP username and password.

In case you do not know your username or password contact your web hosting support.

Once you have all the necessary information to connect, open the FTP client and use the username and password to connect.

When you enter the required details, you will be able to access your web host remotely.

Navigate to /public_html/wp-content/plugins and upload the plugin zip file as you can see the screenshot below.

Now that you are done uploading the plugin, its time to check the list of installed plugins.

You can see the plugin has been installed. All you need to do is activate the plugin by clicking the Activate Plugin button below the plugin name.

Learn How to Install a plugin in #WordPress- The 3 right ways
Click To Tweet

Over to you

Now that you have learned the 3 ways to install a WordPress plugin, it is important to keep 3 things in mind.

1. Never download or install a plugin from an untrusted source.
2. Remove the plugins that you are not updating or using from a long time.
3. Update your plugins on a regular basis.

I prefer using the first method to install plugins as you can search, install, activate, deactivate and manage plugins using the WordPress dashboard.

I hope you find this article helpful and share it on social media. To stay connected and update with our content on a regular basis follow us on social media and join our newsletter.

You may like to read

• How to get Akismet anti-spam plugin for free
• Benefits of blogging
• How to Create Pinterest Business account and verify your website
• How to install free SSL certificate on Bluehost

The post How to Install a WordPress Plugin (The 3 Right Ways)- Beginner’s Guide appeared first on GeekyPlug.

After you start a blog on WordPress, the next important step is securing your blog or website against third party attacks and malware. You can protect your website and provide users with the privacy they deserve with the help of SSL certificate.

In this tutorial, we will discuss how to enable free SSL certificate on Bluehost.

Bluehost is one of the recommended hosting providers by WordPress.org and free SSL certificates are a part of the hosting plan.

Before we begin let’s first understand

What is an SSL certificate?

SSL is termed as secured socket layer. This is a certificate that adds an extra layer of protection on your website against any man-in-the-middle attacks. These certificates are also known as digital certificates.

When a user visits a website over a non-secure connection, the data is transferred in simple text form. This data can be easily stolen or compromised by hackers.

To secure the connection and transfer of data you need the SSL certificate. When the SSL has successfully installed on any website the protocol changes from HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) to HTTPS, the S stands for Secure.

This also activates a green padlock on the website showing the website is secured using SSL.

Adding SSL certificate not only protects your website but it also builds trusts with the users. Having a padlock on your address is a security signal. According to research

Using security seals on your website can increase conversions by more than 35% #WordPress #Security
Click To Tweet

While we are discussing the benefits of installing SSL certificates, it is important to know it acts as a ranking factor on the search engine. Google has made several announcements regarding securing the web by moving to https and it will be considered as a ranking signal.

With that said, it is important to know there are different types of SSL certificates. These certificates are classified based on 2 factors

Based on Trust Level there are 3 types of certificates

• Domain Validation– Domain Validation certificate is the most common and basic SSL certificate. These certificates are available for cheap and mostly used on blogging websites.
• Organizational Validation– These certificates are somewhat similar to domain validation certificate. The difference being you obtain this certificate you have to provide additional documentation to prove your companies identity.
• Extended Validation– This certificate is the most robust and displays the name of the company on the address bar letting the visitors know about the authenticity.

Paypal is a very famous website that uses Extended Validation certificate and you can see the name of the organization in the address bar.

Based on the domains and subdomains

• Single Name Certificate– You can only use this certificate to secure a single hostname or subdomain.
• Wildcard Certificate– If you have multiple subdomains on your website. Then you require Wildcard SSL certificate to secure them.
• Multi-Domain/ SAN Certificate– Using this certificate you can secure multiple domain and subdomain names or in other words, you can secure the main domain and other SAN (Subject Alternative Domain Names) domain names using one certificate.

These certificates are either available for free or at a very low cost. If you are a blogger you can use the free certificates that are included in the hosting plans.

With that said, let’s install the free SSL certificate on Bluehost.

In this article, we will be covering 3 things

1. Installing a free SSL certificate on Bluehost.
2. Migrating your website from HTTP to HTTPS
3. Activating SSL on Cloudflare CDN

Before we start this guide, you need to make sure you disable your domain privacy. Once the process is over you can activate it again.

Also, don’t forget to take backup of your website. I highly recommend using the UpdraftPlus plugin. You can download UpdraftPlus using this link.

You may like to Read- How to install a WordPress plugin

How to install a free SSL certificate on Bluehost for WordPress

1. Activating the SSL certificate

To begin the process, log in to your Bluehost dashboard and then go to My sites >> Manage site. To find the manage sites button hover over the hosted website and you will find it.

When you click Manage site it will take you to a new screen where you need to click on the Security Tab.

On clicking the security tab it will to a new screen where you will find Free SSL certificate toggle button. Move the button to yes.

After completing these steps you may receive a message saying it may take a few hours to setup SSL. And in the meantime, you’ll receive an email from Bluehost with the billing receipt of the SSL certificate.

It took nearly 15-20 minutes for the site to show the SSL certificate.

How can you check if SSL is active on your site

This can be done easily with the help of SSL checker tool. You can add the website link in the box and hit check SSL. The tool will then return you a report similar to the screenshot below.

When you enable the SSL, the website link is automatically changed to HTTPS. You can check this change from your hosting dashboard.

To check this you can click on the settings tab and see the address has automatically updated.

Once you have secured your website the next step is enforcing the HTTPS and making a smooth transition to HTTPS by fixing the mixed content issues.

Redirecting HTTP to HTTPS using .htaccess

After you install the SSL certificate, there are 2 versions of your website that exist.

1. http://example.com
2. https://example.com

Due to the difference in the protocol, search engines consider both of them as separate websites. In order to redirect your traffic to the secured version, this step is necessary.

To implement this redirection you need to edit the .htaccess file. This is a very important file on your server and can be accessed through the Cpanel, Yoast plugin, or FTP client such as FileZilla.

The .htaccess file is generally hidden by default so if you are using Bluehost Cpanel. Go to Advanced >> file manager.

When you click on file manager a new page will open in a separate tab which is the Cpanel file manager. On the right, you will see the settings button. Click on it. A popup will appear which will have the option to show the hidden files.

Select the relevant option and save the settings.

You will find this file in the root directory which is public_html or Public_html

Now if you are using FileZilla FTP client, you need to establish a connection to the server and then click on the server and select force show hidden files.

Once you have found the .htaccess file, you need to edit the file and add a few lines of code to it.

Rewrite Engine on
Rewrite Cond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

You can paste this code at the start of the .htaccess or at the end. After adding the code you are done redirecting the HTTP version to HTTPS version.

Redirecting using Really simple SSL plugin

Really Simple SSL plugin will also help to redirect all the URLs from HTTP to HTTPS. This plugin will automatically detect settings and will configure your website to run over HTTPS.

Download and install the plugin the plugin using this link. After the plugin is installed the first screen you see will be like the screenshot below.

Click the “Go ahead, activate SSL!” button. You will get a message that says “SSL activated, Don’t forget to change your settings in Google analytics and webmasters”

Now you have used a plugin and implemented code to redirect HTTP to HTTPS. This will ensure that neither the visitors nor the bots land on an insecure page.

Updating HTTP URLs to HTTPS

To update all the HTTP URLs to HTTPS we will be using the Better Search Replace plugin. It will make your life so much easier when updating links.

You can download and install the plugin using this link. After installing and activating the plugin, head over to Tools section in the WordPress dashboard. Hover your mouse over Tools and you will see a new menu item Better Search Replace

Click on Better Search Replace. The next screen you will see is the dashboard of the plugin. Enter the details as shown in the screenshot below.

Select the tables in the selection and click Run Search/ Replace button.

After the processing is complete you will get a message similar to this.

The process is almost over and its time to activate SSL on Cloudflare CDN.

Activating SSL on Cloudflare

Cloudflare is one of the best CDN providers in the market and they offer both free and paid plans. On GeekyPlug we are currently using the free plan.

To activate SSL on Cloudflare, login to your Cloudflare CDN dashboard and click on Crypto.

Now in the SSL section, you will have 4 options in the drop-down menu.

1. Off
2.  Flexible
3. Full
4. Full (Strict)

Select Full

After selecting Full, you need to scroll down a little and you will see Always Use HTTPS section and it has a toggle button. Move the toggle button towards On.

You are almost done here. Like we earlier fixed the mix content issue. You have to perform the same action here. You need to scroll down a bit more until you find the Automatic HTTPS Rewrites. This section also has a toggle button. Move the button to On.

And that’s it You have successfully activated SSL on your WordPress blog.

Final Words

1. Before you begin the process of installing SSL on your website make sure you take a backup of your website.
2. Once you the SSL is enabled, scan and rescan your website for any broken links.
3. Search engines consider HTTP and HTTPS as two different versions of the website. Make sure you submit the website in search console after it is secured. Also, update your Google Analytics profile.
4. Next thing you need to do is change all the links on social media and anywhere else you have registered.
5. Check robots.txt of your website to check if the secured version is not blocked.

And that is it

Step by Step tutorial on How to activate SSL certificate on Bluehost
Click To Tweet

You may like to read next

• SEO tips to boost your rankings on Search engines
• 20 important things to do after installing WordPress
• How to create Pinterest for business account and  verify your website
• How to get Akismet anti-spam API key for free
• Top 7 benefits of blogging

I hope you find this guide helpful and share it with others on social media. If you have any queries feel free to contact us. To stay up to date with our content subscribe to our newsletter.

The post How to install free SSL certificate on Bluehost appeared first on GeekyPlug.

Everyone hates spam. When you start a blog every now and then you will notice a few comments on your blog that have nothing to do with your content containing spammy links.

These links usually point to gambling sites or website containing explicit content. This unscrupulous activity of posting spam comments and pingbacks are done using spambots.

And as the spammers are getting smarter, it gets really difficult to distinguish between the real and fake comments.

The websites that receive a huge amount of traffic on a daily basis also gets lots of spam. This makes the manual comment moderation a difficult, as well as time, consuming task. That is the using an anti-spam plugin is recommended.

If you are a WordPress user you can stay safe from spam using the Akismet plugin.

In this article, we will learn how to install the Akismet plugin and get a free API key.

What is Akismet?

Launched on October 25, 2005, Akismet is a spam filtering service by Automattic. Akismet helps fight spam by catching it before it lands on list of comments to be approved. The comments caught are sent straight to the spam folder.

The name of the plugin is the combination of two words the letter ‘A’ from Automattic and ‘Kismet’ meaning destiny or fate.

Akismet uses a crowd-sourced algorithm to catch comments and pingbacks. This algorithm works using the information obtained from participating websites and then use those signals to prevent spam.

For example, if someone leaves a comment on your blog, first the comment is checked against all the information in the Akismet database. If it has signals of spam it lands in the spam folder else you can see these comments on the list of unapproved comments.

In case, any participating website marks some comment as spam, the information is then added to the pool of database and it is used to mark content of similar nature as spam.

Did you know?

Akismet has captured over 100 billion spam comments and pings as of October 2013 #Akismet #WordPress
Click To Tweet

Why use Akismet over other Anti-spam plugins?

Spam is one of the largest and most annoying problems and it never stops. Every morning when you log in to your dashboard to engage with the genuine readers, you also find spam in the mix.

If you do not take steps and use a spam filtering plugin, the problem will only increase and will become a nightmare. Like Akismet, there are other anti-spam plugins. But here are 4 reasons to choose Akismet over others.

1. Akismet is created by Automattic, the company behind WordPress. Here is an interesting fact WordPress powers 32% of the web which is remarkable.
2. This plugin uses a self-learning algorithm, where it learns from the information gathered from various participating sources and based on that database, it will look for signs to mark the comments accordingly. Every action taken using this plugin makes Akismet more efficient.
3. Akismet catches 7.5 million spam every hour. There is a very high possibility, it will prevent the spam almost every time. This plugin will also save your time by easing the process of comment moderation.
4. On quite a few occasions the free plugins are abandoned by the creators due to various reasons. But Akismet is a product by a highly reputed company and receives the regular updates and also you don’t have to fear about the product being abandoned.

Why choose Akismet over other Anti-Spam plugins
Click To Tweet

With that said, let’s jump to the pricing of the plugin.

Akismet Pricing Plans

Akismet is such an important and valuable plugin and offers 3 different pricing plans.

1. Personal
2. Plus
3. Enterprise

Personal plan is for free and you can use this plan on small websites and blogs.

Plus plan is for 5$ per month for a single site and it offers additional features such as support for commercial sites, advanced stats, and priority support.

Enterprise plan offers spam protection for large networks and multi-site installations. This plan is available for 50$ per month.

In this tutorial, we will be using the personal plan and I will share how can you get Akismet API key for free.

How to Install and Activate Akismet plugin

Akismet is one of the default plugins that come pre-installed in WordPress but it is not activated you have to activate the plugin.

In case you do not have the plugin installed or may have deleted it by mistake, you need to download it. To download the plugin log in to your WordPress dashboard and then click Plugin >> Add New. You will see a search box and you need to search for Akismet.

Click the Install now button to install the plugin. If you are a new WordPress user you can check our guide on How to install plugins in WordPress.

Once the plugin is installed, click Activate as shown in the image below.

In case you already have the plugin, just activate the plugin by navigating to the list of installed plugins.

How to get Akismet free API key

To generate the free Akismet API key, in your WordPress dashboard head over to Settings >> Akismet Anti-Spam.

Note:- If you are using Jetpack plugin then you will find the Akismet Anti-Spam plugin listed under the Jetpack menu.

Click Get your API key. It will take you to the Akismet website where you will find the button to activate Akismet. Click it.

When you click the activate button it will take you to a new screen where you need to sign up for a WordPress.com account.

If you are using other WordPress products like Jetpack you may already have an account associated with WordPress.com and you can use those credentials to log in.

After you sign up for WordPress.com account you will receive a confirmation email. When the setup is complete it will take you to the pricing plans where you need to select Personal in order to get the free API key.

Once you select the personal plan, it will take you to the payment screen. On the right, you will see a slider under the heading “What is Akismet worth to you”.

For a free plugin simply drag the price amount to 0$, fill in the rest of the information and click continue with the personal subscription.

In the next screen, you receive the Akismet API key.

Copy this key somewhere safe. Remember, this API key is similar to any passwords and should not be shared.

Adding the API key to the Akismet Plugin

Copy this key and head over to your WordPress dashboard. Navigate to Settings >> Akismet Anti-Spam.

Enter the API key in the box and click Connect with the API key.

In case you are using Jetpack plugin, then you will find the Akismet settings in the Jetpack settings as shown in the screenshot below.

Enter the API key in the box at the bottom of the screen and click Connect with the API key.

And that’s it you have successfully installed and configured Akismet.

How to get free Akismet API key- Step by Step tutorial
Click To Tweet

Now let the plugin do its job and stop the spam.

Over To You

Akismet is an amazing anti-spam plugin and is highly recommended by us as well. Before I conclude this post I would again like to remind you that there is a very small chance that 1-2 spam comments may pass through the filters or a real comment may land in the spam folder.

Check your spam folder once a week to approve if any genuine comments have landed in the spam section.

You may like to read next

• SEO tips to boost organic traffic on your website
• Checklist of 20 important things to do after installing WordPress
• How to set up Pinterest for business account and verify your website
• Top 7 benefits of blogging

I hope you find this article useful and use Akismet to stay away from the spammers. If you are an existing Akismet user do share your experience of using the plugin with us and also don’t forget to share this post on social media.

Follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates on a regular basis.

The post How To Install Akismet Anti-Spam and Get API Key For Free appeared first on GeekyPlug.

Are you thinking about starting a free blog? Blogger otherwise known as Blogspot by Google serves as one of the platforms where you can create your very own blog with no investment.

Free blogging platforms such as blogger are a great way for new bloggers to enter the blogosphere. After gaining experience on free blogs, you can then move to a self-hosted WordPress blog.

Apart from Blogspot, there are other blogging platforms as well where you can create a free blog. But let me tell you this Blogger.com and WordPress.com are the 2 most popular free blogging platforms.

To start a free blog on Blogger you need a very little technical knowledge. And with that said it is also important to keep in mind every blogging platform has its pros and cons. So does Blogspot.

Pros and Cons of Blogger

Merits of Blogger

1. Blogger is free of cost and you will get a .blogspot.com subdomain after registering.
2. Your blog is hosted by Google (Saves the hosting cost) and Google takes care of the speed and security.
3. It has a very simple and easy to understand user interface. Like I earlier said very basic technical knowledge is required for running Blogspot blog.
4. You just need your Gmail account to sign up for blogger.
5. You can generate a passive income through your blogger blog. Once you have posted a few articles and have traffic on your site. Get the AdSense approved and start earning through your free blog.

Demerits of Blogger

1. Blogger is not suitable for professional blogging as you have very limited control.
2. You can only customize Blogger themes to a certain extent. Freedom to make changes to a theme is limited.
3. To look professional online .blogspot.com subdomains do not make the cut. Although there is a feature available where you can buy a domain through Google or any other domain registrar and add your domain later on.
4. Most of the Google products have customer support but for Blogger Google has a forum.
5. As Blogger is a free platform, you have to abide by the terms and conditions. This limits the ability to self-express.

With a serious intent to start blogging, you have to know all the pros and cons of the platform. So you know what will you get and then you can plan for the future in advance.

Learn everything about Blogspot and how can you start a free blog on blogger. #Blogger #Blogspot #blogging #geekyplug
Click To Tweet

Taking all these merits and demerits into consideration, if you are a beginner or just starting out starting a blog and getting experience on blogger is not a bad idea. Here is a small disclosure, I started my blogging journey with Blogger.

How to Start a Free Blog on Blogspot

Step by Step Tutorial to Create a Free Blog on Blogger

1. Getting started

To start your free blog on Blogspot visit Blogger.com and click Create your blog or Sign in.

Like we discussed before, signing in will require a Google or Gmail account. In case you don’t have one you can create one for free.

You can click the Create account button to create a new google account. To sign in with an existing account enter your credentials and hit next.

Once you sign in it will you to a new screen where you have to enter the display name. This is the name that readers will see when they visit your post. It is something similar to the name of the author and this name will also be displayed on your blogger profile.

Also in the image above you can see the Switch to Google+ profile has been highlighted. I will not recommend doing this as Google has made an official announcement regarding the deprecation of Google+ API.

Once you have entered the display name, click Continue to Blogger.

2. Selecting the domain name and theme

After clicking Continue to blogger, you will be taken to a new screen where you need to hit to the Create new blog button.

When you click Create New Blog, a popup will appear where you have to enter the Title and address of the blog. Address of the blog is the URL of your blog. If you do not have a custom domain, Blogger will provide a free subdomain for your blog.

The subdomain looks like this “example.blogspot.com” where the example is the name of your choice.

Domain name is the fundamental part of any website or a blog online and has to be selected carefully. It is the name by which your brand will be recognized online.

While selecting a domain name, go for the generic names first that visitors can relate to and later one you can convert it to a brand using a custom domain. In case you are facing difficulty, you can always refer to Tips to select a domain name for a blog.

Enter the Title and address of the blog and select a theme of your choice. The theme you select can be changed later on. Once you have entered all the details and selected a theme Click Create blog button at the bottom.

And Congrats you have created a free Blogspot blog.

When you hit the Create blog button, it will direct you to a new screen where you will see the dashboard of your blog.

The first thing you see when you enter the Blogspot dashboard is a popup by Google Domains. The search box already has the domain name of your blog. When you click search, it will show you the availability of your domain and the price. There are other domain registrars such as Godaddy and Namecheap that offer domain names at a better price.

However, if you are not willing to make the initial investment, you can always skip this by clicking No Thanks.

Now that you have created your free blog, its time to increase the visibility.

3. Settings to improve visibility

Once you skip the Google Domain popup you see the dashboard or the backend of your blog.

In the above screenshot, you can see the display name and the Title of the blog. The title will also be displayed on your blog. The display name will be visible on your Blogger profile.

Also on the left, you can see various tabs which can be used to create pages, check the stats, change the layout and theme and much more.

You can click on Create a new post to create your first blog post. But before you do that you need to navigate to the settings tab and make a few changes to improve the blog’s visibility.

Click on Settings and it will by default take you to basic settings.

In the basic settings enter the description of the blog by clicking the edit button next to it. The length of the description is 500 characters. This description can be seen right below the blog title. Writing a description will make it easier for visitors to understand what the blog is about. Here is how the description looks like on your blog.

The next step is to edit the privacy setting which is right below the description. In the privacy setting, you will get 2 options

1. Add your blog to our listings
2. Let the search engine find your blog

I recommend picking yes in both and then Save changes. After selecting yes, you have now listed your blog in Blogspot listings and your blog is visible to search engines.

Once you are done making these changes head over to Search Preferences in the settings. Under the meta tags, you can again see a description. By default, this is set to disable.

Click on edit and select yes to enable the meta description. Meta description has a length of 150 characters. Enter the description and click on save changes.

Now you may be thinking why is this description required as you have already entered it once?

The answer is very simple and straight forward. This description is the one that you see under the blogs on search engine results pages. This is also known as search description and it helps users know what your blog is about on search engine results page or SERP.

With the help of this description, your blog will be visible to a wider audience.

4. Adding Pages

Like any other website or a blog, you can add pages to your Blogspot blog. Pages such as About and Contact are very important for any website or a blog.

Adding the About page will let the visitors know about you and the blog and with the help of a contact page, visitors can contact you. This establishes a personal touch or a connection which is very important.

To create pages on Blogger blog, navigate to Pages >> Create a new page or New page.

In the next screen, enter the page title and content. To make the page more appealing you can add images and also use the formatting option available on the toolbar.

You can change the font type, font size, insert videos and do much to make your page look attractive and engaging.

If you want to save your page as a draft, you can press the save button on the top right. It is very important to preview your page before publishing as it will let you know how the page will appear to your visitors. You can do this by Click the Preview button.

Once you are satisfied and ready to publish the page, hit the publish button and you have created your first page on blogger.

Step by Step guide to Start a Free Blogspot blog #Blogger #blogspot #geekyplug
Click To Tweet

5. Customizing the theme and layout

To be honest, default themes on Blogspot are a little boring. The design is a huge part of the identity of your blog. It is recommended to have a clean and elegant blog design.

You can find free and premium Blogspot themes online. After finding the theme that fits your requirements, head over to the Themes >> Edit HTML.

In the above screenshot, you can see how your blog looks on both mobile and desktop devices. You can do some customization to your blog such as change the background, the font size of the title and body of the blog post, configure gadgets and much more by clicking the Customize button.

Using this option you can upload a new theme and also edit the code as per your requirement. But this will require some HTML knowledge.

I recommend using this option only if you are comfortable with coding.

Once you have made the desired changes, you can preview the changes by clicking the Preview theme button. And if you are satisfied click on Save theme to save the changes made.

Once this is done, its time to customize the layout of the blog. To make these changes, Navigate to the Layout tab of the left. Here changes like adding, removing and rearranging of gadget can be done.

Google has made this process very simple and easy to execute for people with very little technical knowledge. With just one click you can add and remove gadgets and increase the functionality of your blog.

To add a Gadget, Click  Add a Gadget and a popup will appear where you can find the list of available gadgets. By clicking the + sign you can add it to the blog.

While we are updating the layout, it is important not to forget about adding the logo and the favicon. Logo and Favicon are 2 vital components of any online brand.

You may be thinking what is a favicon?

Favicon is generally the small icon that distinguishes your website from others when several tabs are open in a browser. This is what a Favicon looks like.

You can see the logo of GeekyPlug right next to Home, that is the Favicon.

To change the Favicon, in the layout click edit on the section where it says Favicon. A popup will appear where you can upload the Favicon from your computer. After uploading click Save.

After completing this step, its time to add the logo. To add a logo go to the header section in the layout and click the edit icon. Again a popup will appear and you will see the option where it says Image.

Upload the logo and select the placement of the logo from the 3 available options.

1. Behind the title and description
2. Instead of Title and description
3. Have the description placed after the image

Select the option that fits your requirement and save the settings.

After making all the layout changes don’t forget to Click the Save arrangement button.

Once this is done let’s discuss how can you monetize your free Blogger blog? 

But before we start with this part it is important to keep in mind you cannot monetize your blog using this method as soon as you have your blog up and running.

6. Monetizing your blog

After you have completed the blog set up and have published a few posts and are getting regular traffic to your blog. Then you are ready to monetize your blog and start making money online.

To monetize your blog using Google Adsense, click the Earnings tab and it will take you to a new screen. Here is a screenshot.

Now click on How to qualify for Adsense and it will redirect to a new page which is Google Adsense support. This page contains all the information you require to qualify for the Adsense program.

Once you have the Adsense approval, you will be able to place ads and earn online

Recommendation-  Do not apply for this program until you have decent traffic and some posts published. You may get rejected.

Once the blog is set up its time to use basic SEO tips for blogger platform and optimize your blog to generate traffic from search engines

Final Thoughts

Blogger is a platform for beginners which you can use to gain experience. If the blogger seems too basic for you and you want to take a more professional approach you can always use WordPress. Here’s the article How to Start a WordPress blog

I hope you find this guide helpful to start a free Blogspot blog. If you have any queries regarding this feel free to contact us via social media or the comment section.

To stay up to date with our content join our newsletter or follow us on various social media platforms.

You may like to read next- Benefits of Blogging

The post How to Create a Free Blog on Blogger or Blogspot Platform appeared first on GeekyPlug.

Have you created a free Blogspot blog and looking to learn SEO techniques to optimize your blog?

If the answer is yes, then you have come to the right place.

SEO is a very important component of Blogging. To get that flow of traffic from search engines you need to optimize your blog and without SEO it is very difficult to generate traffic from search engines.

When we talk about optimizing blogs, it is easy to optimize WordPress blog as compared to Blogger. In WordPress, you can use plugins to make the task much easier. But as Blogger is a free platform it has its own limitations and can be only optimized to a certain extent.

With that said, every free platform has its own set of pros and cons and if you are new to blogging, you can use Blogspot to gain the experience, learn the basic techniques and then move to WordPress blog.

Using these basic SEO tips, you can make your blog more search engine friendly and increase the visibility of your blog.

Search Engine Optimization Tips for Blogger Blog

1. Keyword Research

Researching keywords is the first step in the optimization process of any blog or website be it Blogger or WordPress. Before we dive into keyword research, first let’s discuss What are keywords?

Keywords are the words, phrases or queries that the users enter in the search engines when they are looking for something. Keywords are also known as search queries.

These words or phrases when entered in the search engines return results in the form of web pages on the search engine result page. Here’s an example of a search query

Now when you search for this query you will only get results that will show you hotels in Singapore. This phrase will only bring in users who are looking for Hotels in Singapore.

This is one of the most significant reasons you need to perform keyword research. Here are some other reasons

Why is keyword research important?

1. Keywords make it easy for search engines to identify content.
2. While you are doing the keyword research, you will know what the audience is searching for.
3. When you analyze the keywords properly. It will be easier to target the right audience.
4. Targeting specific keywords narrow down the searches to a specific niche or topic.
5. Keywords make it easier to write on a certain topic. Keeping this in mind you should perform a proper keyword analysis before writing any post.

There are many tools that you can use to research keyword. Here are 2 tools I personally like

1. Google Keyword Planner (Free tool)
2. SEMrush ( Use this link to get a free trial for 7 days)

Before we jump to the next point keep in mind

Consider user intent while analyzing. Think from the user point of view. #keyword #seo #geekyplug
Click To Tweet

2. Plan your content

Once you have selected the relevant keywords, its time to use them wisely in your blog. Plan your content according to the keywords.

Add them where they fit best. Now when I say this, don’t add them everywhere. It will make your post look spammy, less engaging and you can get penalized for keyword stuffing. Create content around your keywords.

Using these keyphrases create an engaging post. Use keywords and synonyms in heading tags. Google love synonyms. Put your creative hat on and create some catchy heading using these.

You can create heading and subheading using the heading tags. In Blogger, you can create or change headings on a page or a post using the option available on the tool.

How do headings work in Blogger?

First of all its important to understand there are 6 heading tags <h1> or heading 1 being the first and most important heading to <h6> or heading 6 being the last and important heading.

Now in Blogger

1. Heading 1- Page or post title
2. Heading 2- Heading
3. Heading 3- Subheading
4. Heading 4- Minor heading

There is no Heading 5 and Heading 6 and actually, you may not require them that much and these heading will send signals to the search engine about the content of your page or post.

3. Blog post title optimization

One of the most important parts of the blog post is the title. It is one of the first things searchers see on search engine results page and is also displayed on the browser tab. The title describes the content of the post to both users and search engines.

An optimized title adds great value. It has to be to the point but needs to grab the attention of searchers as well.

Another thing you will notice, when you or any visitor will share your post on social media, many social networks will display the Title on the shared post.

Here are a few pointers to remember while optimizing titles

1. Add keywords to your title but don’t overdo it. It should make sense and look attention grabbing and not spammy.
2. Keep the length of the title around 60 characters. The extra part is replaced by … on the result page and you don’t want that.
3. Add your brand name to the title towards the end.

To better understand this let’s say for instance you have created an article on homemade vegetarian recipes and you are looking for a catchy title. The important keyword here is “vegetarian recipes”, using this phrase you can create a Title such as

1. Easy to cook at home vegetarian recipes
2. 5 easy to cook vegetarian recipes for beginners
3. Quick and easy Chinese vegetarian recipes.

In the above example, you can see the length of the title is about 60 characters, you can add your brand name in the end and by looking at the title user will surely know what to expect.

When you use these tips keep the user experience and point of view first, it the most important factor.

4. Organizing Posts

Like in WordPress, we have categories and tags to organize similarly in the Blogger you have Labels. These labels help manage your content on both the macro and micro level.

When you use labels, it makes your blog user-friendly. Visitors can use these labels to search for more related posts.

For example, if you are reviewing an android mobile phone, you can categorize this under 3 categories

1. Mobile phones
2. Android
3. Reviews

In case any user is looking to read more articles on android and related technology and products can visit the Android label.

This makes your site easy to navigate, user-friendly and visitors can find the information in an easy way. But before you add the labels, here are a few things to keep in mind

1. Avoid using too many labels as they can cause confusion and at a later stage will be very difficult to manage.
2. Until you publish a post, the label will not be created.
3. Labels are case sensitive, this means Android and android are 2 separate labels.
4. Adding too many Labels can negatively impact the SEO of your blog.

How to add labels in Blogger?

You can add labels to only posts in Blogspot. To add Labels, visit a published post and under post settings, you can see the option to add labels. Use the comma to separate the labels and click done to save the changes.

You now know how to organize your blog post and make your blog more user-friendly.

Use labels to organize and not otherwise. #SEO #Blogger #Blogging #geekyplug
Click To Tweet

5. Adding Meta Description

The meta description is a snippet of your blog that is displayed on the search engine result page. It summarizes the contents of your blog and briefly tells the user what your blog is about.

Here is an example

The length of the meta description is 150 characters in Blogspot.

How to add the meta description?

To add meta description to your blog, navigate to settings >> search preferences >>meta tags. By default, it is set to disable. First, you have to enable the search description, add a description and click save changes

A meta description is very useful in increasing the CTR (click through rate). Add relevant keywords, don’t stuff them and write a meaningful description that will encourage the searchers to click on your blog.

6. Optimizing Images

Image optimization is overlooked by many bloggers. First things first search engine crawlers or bots can’t read images.

In order for the bots to crawl and understand the content of the images, you need to optimize images. Images not only make a blog appealing and increase the engagement but if optimized bring additional traffic from image searches.

You can optimize the images by adding the alt text and title to the image. Adding this will provide a description to the image.

Adding alt text and title on an image is simple. All you need to do is select the image you have uploaded and on the bottom of the image, you will see an option named Properties.

When you select Properties, a popup will appear which will allow you to add image alt text and title.

Point to remember- A lot of time Alt text is also referred to as Alt tag which is wrong.

Enter the title text and alt text and press ok to save. Here are a few more things to keep in mind while doing Image optimization

1. Add the correct and brief description of the actual content of the image and not spam it with keywords.
2. Use the appropriate file name. For example, an image with the file name img1020.jpg does not mean anything. The name of the image has to be relevant to the content of the image.
3. Do not write very long descriptions. Keep it short and sweet.

Alt text is often misspelled as Alt tag. Alt is an attribute not a tag #SEO #geekyplug #blogging #blogger
Click To Tweet

7. URL Optimization

Another way to improve the SEO of your blog is by editing the permalink structure or links and make them more SEO friendly.

When you optimize your URL not only does it improves the SEO of your blog but also the visitors can easily get the idea about the content of the blog.

In the above image you can see I have created an optimized URL and just by looking at the link, the users will know it has content related to URL optimization.

In case you are thinking if you can remove the date from the URL structure. The answer is no. You can only customize it to a certain extent.

This feature is not site wide in Blogger. You can only optimize the URL of the Posts and not the pages.

Before we move further there are a few things you have to keep in mind while optimizing links

1. Add keyword in the URL but don’t overdo it as the link will look spammy and you can be penalized.
2. Avoid using numbers and stop words. But if the URL does not make sense feel free to add them.
3. Keep the URL short and simple.
4. It is not a good practice to use underscores (_) in URL structures. Use hyphens instead (-).
5. Once you have published a post in Blogger, you cannot optimize the URL later. Do this before publishing.

To optimize URL’s in Blogger, after writing a post head over to post settings and click permalink.

When you select permalink, it is by default set to Automatic Permalink. Switch to Custom Permalink and change the URL as per your requirements.

Learn How to optimize URLs in Blogger #blogger #SEO #geekyplug
Click To Tweet

8. Fighting against spammy comments

Spam is the most annoying and inevitable problem on the internet. It does not matter if you are a blogger user or a WordPress user, you will sooner or later receive spam in your comment section.

If you are a WordPress user, you can use Akismet plugin to help you ward off spam. But in Blogger, you have to moderate the comment section strictly.

Once the blog grows, there are more chances people will be spamming the comment section. And if you do not moderate the comment section from the beginning there are chances, it can be a difficult thing to manage later.

How to prevent spam in Blogger?

The solution is simple. The first step is turning the comment moderation on. To enable comment moderation, head over to Settings >> posts, comments, and sharing 

Under the comment section, you will see the option to turn on comment moderation. Select the Always.

Now whenever any visitor will comment, it will land in the comment moderation queue. You can easily delete the comments that have no relation to the content or contain spammy links.

The next step in the process is restricting the people to comment on your blog. When I was using Blogger, it was set to anyone as it will allow users to comment using any valid email address, name, and website. If you have already enabled the comment moderation, I don’t think so you will require this.

Note-This is already set to User with Google accounts not Anyone by default.

I would only recommend this if your blog gets tons of spam because when you change settings in this option, visitors can only use Google account to comment.

Use this only if it is required.

You can find this option right above the comment moderation settings. As you can see in the screenshot above.

The last thing you can do to stay away from spammy comments is turning on the Word Verification. The option to enable Word Verification can be seen just below the Comment Moderation.

You just have to toggle the option to yes.

Once you are done changing the settings don’t forget to save the settings.

How to prevent spam comments on Blogspot blog #blogger #geekyplug #blogging #antispam
Click To Tweet

In SEO its all about getting the basics right and then building on it with time.

Here is a Bonus tip- Don’t forget to turn on the HTTPS redirection. When you enable this option visitors accessing your blog using the non-secure link will also be served the HTTPS or secure link. And HTTPS is a ranking factor.

With that said, every blogger should use SEO techniques as search engines are the main source of traffic.

I hope you find these tips useful and it helps improve your rankings on search engines. Also, don’t forget to share this post on social media.

In case you have passed that experience and want to move to WordPress. Here is a Tutorial to start a WordPress blog.

In case you have any queries feel free to contact us. To stay up to date with our latest post follow us on Social media and subscribe to our newsletter.

Next on the menu– Top 7 benefits of blogging

The post Basic SEO Tips To Take Your Blogspot Blog to Next Level appeared first on GeekyPlug.

One thing that every website owner wants is traffic from search engines. And it is not just traffic, its targetted traffic.

For example, a restaurant taking food delivery orders online delivers only in the local area. But the website is receiving most of the visits from other areas.

Is this traffic useful for the business?

The answer is simple, No. Although the site is getting visits, these visits bring minimum value to the online business.

To make an online business successful you need a target audience. And SEO is the only technique that you can use to rank higher on search engines and target the right audience for your online business.

Now,

What is SEO?

SEO is also known as Search engine optimization is a set of techniques webmasters can use to optimize their websites in order to rank higher on search engines and drive organic traffic to the website.

Search engine optimization is the only way to generate organic traffic.

According to research

3.5 billion searches are made daily on Google
Click To Tweet

And this number is huge. That is why online marketers pay so much attention to it.

Moving forward, as technology is changing so has the search engine optimization process, but the basics are still the same.

Earlier content was written for the search engines to rank higher but now the focus has shifted to the users. The content produced these days is focused more on providing more and more value to the searchers.

SEO may seem like a complex process if you are a beginner but it is the complete opposite. It is totally logic based. If you understand the user intent and follow basic rules you will be able to rank your website higher.

In this article, I have compiled a list of SEO techniques that will help you improve positions on search engines.

11 SEO Techniques to Rank Higher On Search Engines

1. Use of longtail keywords

Longtail keywords are long phrases, questions or sentences that searchers use to find information on the search engines. These keywords are more specific and target the right audience.

This means there will be less competition and less traffic. But you will find the exact audience you are looking for. Using these keywords you can rank easily on search engines and your conversion rates will go up.

For example, there is a Women’s clothing store dealing only Women’s clothing. If the website is optimized for the keyword Clothing store.

First of all, there will be high competition and the site will receive visitors looking for male, female and kids clothing.

And you don’t want this. Your target audience is just Women.

Now, if you target Women’s clothing store as the keyword will generate more specific visitors.

To make you understand this concept, let’s say this women’s clothing store is based in New York. In this case, you can add location to the keyword which will make it even more specific as you are targeting the location as well.

The keyword you will be optimizing for will be Women’s clothing store in New York. The traffic on this keyword will be even lesser but it will be local to the New York area.

Less but specific traffic equals better conversions
Click To Tweet

Also, another benefit of using longtail keywords is the growing voice search feature. Voice search brings a whole new experience and concept to the search.

The users can ask direct questions and the search engine will provide relevant results. The user here is asking direct questions generally, long queries or phrases which is longtail keyword.

2. Prefer HTTPS over HTTP

While browsing the internet these days you may have come across a green padlock on the address bar of the browser. That is because the website is running is using an SSL certificate (Secure Socket Layer) and running over HTTPS.

Websites using HTTPS are dominating the search engine results page. You can see this for yourself. I searched for easy to cook vegan recipes and here are the results.

As you can see above every website is using HTTPS.

With that said, let’s first understand

What are HTTP and HTTPS?

HTTP is also known as the hypertext transfer protocol. These are a set of instructions that govern the transfer of data between the user and the website.

And HTTPS is the hypertext transfer protocol secure. This protocol uses an SSL certificate to encrypt the connection between the user and the website. The transfer of data is safe and secure.

To make the internet a better and safer place for users, Google declared HTTPS as a ranking signal and followed it up with an announcement stating with the release of Chrome 68 at the beginning of July, Chrome will mark all websites running on HTTP as not secure.

In the above image, you cannot see a padlock instead it says Not secure.

Over 68% of Chrome traffic on both Android and Windows is now protected
Click To Tweet

Considering the user point of view, no one wants to visit a not secure website. The padlock on the address bar is also a trust symbol.

And building trust with your users is the most important and helpful thing in the growth of your website.

3. Increasing the page speed

No one wants to visit a website that takes too much time to load. Gone are those days when it took forever for websites to load.

What happens when a website takes time to load?

When a website is slow loading it frustrates the user. It negatively impacts the user experience and will increase the bounce rate.

The visitor will take no time in moving to another website and you will be on the losing side. In today’s world where everything is available on your fingertips, time is of utmost importance and value.

According to an announcement by Google, page speed will be a ranking factor in mobile searches. Keep this in mind mobile searches are on an increase. And you cannot ignore this.

Here is an infographic by Google on Page Speed.

With that said,

How can you improve the loading speed?

1. Compress the images- When you use images in a blog post or a webpage make sure you compress them. This will reduce the size. Large images take too much time to load and have a negative impact on load times. You can image compression plugins or online tools to help you with this.
2. Use a cache plugin- In order to reduce the page speed, you can use a good cache plugin. When you use a cache plugin, if a visitor revisits your website, the browser will serve the cached page and does not have to reload the page again.
3. CDN- CDN is also known as content delivery networks. CDN stores your website on its servers on various geographical location. When a request is made it is automatically routed to the nearest server which reduces the load times.
4. Pruning the plugins- In case you are not using some plugins, it is advised to remove them as these can also contribute to slow loading times.
5. Reliable and fast host- If you are facing the problem of slow loading site it can also be due to the hosting service you are using. Use a reliable and fast hosting provider.

These are some points that you can use to optimize your page speed. To test the loading you can use tools such as PageSpeed insights, GT Metrix or Pingdom.

According to Yahoo, 80% of the time is spent downloading the front-end such images, HTML and scripts
Click To Tweet

4. Responsive and Mobile Device Compatibility

Before we discuss how responsive or mobile compatibility impacts SEO. Let’s first understand

What does responsive mean?

A responsive website is the one that can resize, shrink and enlarge according to different screen sizes. The website will adapt to any screen size you are using.

In the above image, you can see I just performed the Mobile compatibility test and the website was compatible with mobile devices.

This is a very important factor as mobile searches are on an increase. Although most website these days are mobile friendly in case it is not, make sure it works seamlessly on devices such as smartphones and tablets.

According to a study by Google,

Nearly 40% of people use smartphones to search for anything immediately.
Click To Tweet

And here is an infographic of how people use various devices on a day

I can easily say we love our mobile device. And keeping that in mind you just can’t ignore the mobile version of your website.

Moving forward, mobile compatibility does have a huge impact on the rankings of the website. On 26th March 2018, Google rolled out mobile first indexing. Before this change, Google’s crawling, ranking, and indexing algorithms were using the desktop version of your website.

The change was made in order to prioritize mobile search as they are on a continuous increase.

Here are some reasons why mobile compatibility is important.

1. It will be difficult to rank if your website does not adapt to different screen sizes.
2. Increase in traffic as your website will be compatible with all devices.
3. Having a responsive website will save you from duplicate content issues as there will not a second version of your website.
4. As you know user experience plays a big role in SEO, this will surely boost it.
5. This will also ensure users can share your content easily on various social media platforms.

Make sure your website is Responsive and Mobile compatibility as these are industry standards.

5. Create unique and engaging content

The one thing that will make you stand out from the others in the content. Good content is something which is

1. Easy to understand
2. Detailed
3. Contains images, videos or other relevant rich media
4. Solves a problem
5. Includes personal experience
6. Practical
7. Produced for the users

Include these qualities in your content. You may be thinking this is asking for too much, but trust me producing a good piece of content takes time and effort.

Remember

It's quality over quantity and not the other way around
Click To Tweet

You have to give your visitors something of value so that they keep coming back for more. This is what will build a good brand name and trust.

To move in the right direction, here are a few things that will help you create unique and engaging content.

1. Define the objective– This is the first step when you are looking to create content. Ask yourself a very simple question, what is the purpose of this content. Are you trying to sell a product or educate the readers? In case you are trying to sell a product, define the product in detail and if you have used the product, share your personal experience. Create a proper call to action so that if someone is looking to get in touch or buy the product can do it easily.
2. Keyword Research- To write a good article the very first thing you need to do is perform thorough keyword research. Find the keywords that you want to rank for and create your content around them. When you doing the research keep the user point of view in mind. This will help you understand what a user can type and what they are looking for. Based on this you can provide them with the information they are looking for.
3. Maintain consistency- Share content on a regular basis. Maintain a consistent schedule. With this, you can maintain a regular connection with your audience. To help you with this you can create an editorial calendar that will help you plan content and schedule updates for future, give you time to think about new ideas and provide a proper structure.
4. Updates- Google loves fresh content and this shows that you care about your website and the audience. You will be sharing a new perspective with the existing as well as the new audience. Also, Google displays the last updated date on the SERPs and searchers want recent and updated content. There are also chances some old posts may not have too much information or may contain grammatical errors. This will give you a good opportunity to change all that.
5. Adding rich media- Rich media makes content easy to read, unique and attractive. If you are writing an article or blog posts it acts the same way as a bulleted list. It breaks the content into smaller parts. When you use rich media users can easily share them on social media increasing the engagement.

Using these tips you can create content that your audience will love.

6. Optimizing the title and description

Whenever we search for some query, the first thing we see on the search engine results page is the title and description of the page. For searchers, it is the first impression of your website.

You can see how the title and description are displayed on a search engine results page. Now, there are some other places as well where the title of your page can appear in

1. The tab of the browser.
2. Shared post on social media.

You can see the title on the post I have shared on Twitter and also it displays the description. Although, Title is a ranking signal, having a good title and description also increases the CTR (Click through rate).

Both of these play a vital role in making users click and visit your webpage.

Things to keep in mind while optimizing titles and description

1. Add your focus keyword in both title and description. Don’t stuff keywords else it will look spammy and meaningless.
2. Keep the length of Title up to 65 characters and meta description up to 155 characters. If you exceed this limit, the extra part will be replaced by ‘…’ on the search engine results page.
3. The title and description should accurately describe the contents of your page.
4. You can add your brand name to the title tag. It’s good for branding purpose.

First impressions are last impressions make them count
Click To Tweet

7. Image optimization

Images are a very important visual component of your webpage. Like I said before, it makes a block of text easy to understand and appealing.

This is one of the techniques that is often missed while optimizing pages.

If you are not optimizing your images you are missing out on the traffic from image searches. Also, you may be facing higher load times due to large image sizes.

You can find image searches in all major search engines be it Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other search engine.

In the above image, you can see image searches in various search engines. Images are very valuable assets that need to be optimized in order to produce results.

Moving forward, here are a few steps to optimize images

1. Name of the image– The first thing you have to do is name the image correctly. In case you are using a default image name such as DSC001.jpg, it makes no sense. Name the image appropriately.
2. Compress the image– Images are generally large in size and if you don’t compress them it will make your site slow.
3. Adding alt text– Image alt text tells the search engine about the contents of the image. Describe the contents briefly. You can add keywords but don’t stuff them.
4. Using relevant images– Use images that visitors can relate to while reading the article. Think about a scenario where you have written an article on pet dogs and used the image of a cat. Makes no sense.
5. Copyright– At any cost stay away from using copyrighted images like these can get you in trouble.

These are a few tips that will help you optimize your images. Remember search engines cannot read images you have to optimize them in order to get results

In SEO, an image can only say 1000 words if it is optimized.
Click To Tweet

8. SEO friendly URL

Uniform resource location or URL is also known as the web address. It specifies where the resource is located on the World Wide Web in simple human-readable form.

Protocol, domain name and path together make a URL.

Here is an example.

In the above screenshot,

1. Protocol- HTTPS
2. Domain name- GeekyPlug
3. Extension- com
4. File Path- how-to-start-wordpress-blog

There are various other things that can be a part of a URL, this is just for simplifying the concept. In some cases, you may have seen these URLs can also contain folders and subfolders similar to the example below

 https://example .com/folder/subfolder/file.html 

Looking at the above example you can see a URL contains very valuable information about the webpage.

Not only will it tell the search engines about the contents of the page but also provide a hint to the users. This improves the user experience.

In the above results, just by looking at the URLs you can know the webpages contain information about best dog food. This also acts as a ranking factor.

You can also see the efficient use of the focus keywords. The URL is short but descriptive. While optimizing the URL use the focus keyword wisely, do not add too many keywords or it will look spammy.

When you are optimizing URL’s keep these point in mind

1. Avoid the use of underscore ( _ )
2. Try to stay away from using numbers.
3. Keep the length short
4. No keyword stuffing
5. Do not add keywords that are not relevant to the content.

Quality of an optimized URL- Short, simple yet descriptive
Click To Tweet

9. Removing broken links

Have you anytime encountered a situation in which when you click on a URL and it returns a 404 error?

This is an error message you receive when you visit a broken link.

You can encounter broken links in 2 scenarios

1. Mistyping of the URL
2. The page was removed or relocated without proper redirection.

Think about a scenario, when you are searching for some information and click a broken link thinking it contains information you need. I m sure it will totally spoil the experience and you will most probably visit other websites for the information.

At times its also possible that you may have linked to a source or a reference URL that was working at some point of time but now is not available. It will give the same error 404 error to the user.

Like we have discussed above that user experience is a crucial part of SEO. When visitors encounter a broken, they will spend less time on your website and it creates a negative impression and can impact the rankings.

Also, keep in mind the main purpose of optimizing your site is driving engagement and conversions. If the users encounter broken links, it will lower the conversion and engagement rate.

You will be losing on customers and revenue.

In order to take care of broken links, perform regular website audits. By doing regular audits, you will know where the broken link exists.

Based on this report, you can either replace the broken links by the new links or completely remove them.

It is always adviced if you are creating an updated version of the content, try to update the existing rather than removing. Also, if you have moved the content to a place make sure you properly redirect. So that visitors don’t land on a broken link.

Broken links can negatively impact user experience hence driving low conversion rate
Click To Tweet

You can use SEMrush to find broken links on your website. Click Here to get the 7-day free trial.

10. Backlinks

While we are on the topic of linking, let’s discuss a very vital topic which is creating backlinks in SEO.

Backlinks are the links that point to your website from other websites. These link help improve the credibility of the website.

For example, recently near your workplace or home, you notice a new cafe. After a few days, while reading your favorite magazine you find a well-known food blogger has written a positive review.

Now, this review will create a positive impression in your mind and I think you may be little inclined towards visiting the place.

In SEO, backlinks work in a similar way. When an authority website links to your site, it tells the search engine crawlers or bots that your website is the real deal.

And this can boost your rankings on the results page.

The more the number of relevant and quality backlinks, the better will be the authority of your website. With that said, while building backlinks, give top priority to quality and relevance.

To understand this let’s consider the above example of the cafe, think if that review might have appeared in a tech magazine. It makes no sense right as both these categories are not relevant to each other.

Similarly, if you are a tech blogger, to build your credibility and authority and to rank better on search engines you need backlink from sites in the same or related categories.

While building backlinks, always go for quality over quantity
Click To Tweet

11. Promote actively on social media

When you think about promoting anything online, the first thing that may come to your mind is using social media platforms.

Social media is a very powerful tool for online promotions. It is used by people of different demographics making it a very useful medium to increase the reach.

If you are wondering, why I am discussing social media in this article?

The answer is simple, at times while searching for something online you may have seen the results page containing links from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms alongside other websites.

I was able to find this link from Facebook on the third page of Google. But the first page was dominated by YouTube videos and there were some videos on the second page as well.

With that said, videos are a very prominent in search results these days and personally speaking I have seen videos from Dailymotion and other video sharing platform in these results as well.

As social media is growing at a rapid pace, by using these platforms you can create an audience for your brand. If you have content that people like or find useful, it will definitely generate social shares and people will link to it.

With that said, platforms like Pinterest are growing rapidly. More and more marketers are using this platform for increasing their audience.

According to eMarketer, Pinterest has seen an increase in its user base by 5 million which more than Facebook and Twitter combined.

80% of new sign-ups on Pinterest come from people outside the U.S
Click To Tweet

Now if you are thinking about starting to use Pinterest, I have written an article on Getting started with Pinterest for Business.

This does not mean you should focus only on one platform. Facebook and Twitter both have a huge and very active user base.

Looking at these figures it is safe to say social media is a great asset for any online marketing campaign.

A good online strategy should focus on both Social Media and SEO using search engine optimization as the long term approach and social media for getting your name out there quickly and building a connection with your audience.

Also, it is important to keep in mind social media is not a ranking factor, but it is an amazing way to promote, grow and build your brand online.

Bonus Tip- Creating a well-defined site structure

By now we have established how important are links for performing well on search engines. And for this reason, people focus on getting more links from other websites and forget to work on building internal links and proper site structure.

Although these links do not work or as powerful as backlinks pages that do not have internal links pointing to them tend to underperform on search engines.

Below are some more benefits of internal linking

1. Defined hierarchy amongst pages and posts
2. Clear cut site structure
3. Establishing a relationship between content
4. Distributes link juice
5. Offers better overall user experience

By using an internal linking strategy, you can point links to your cornerstone content from related or similar pages.

For example, the first article on our blog was How to start a WordPress blog. The internal links pointing to this article are from articles such as Benefits of blogging, tips for choosing a domain name for your blog.

These are related pieces of content one will lead to the other. Keep in mind, the links are from relevant pages only and most importantly users should find them useful.

Once you implement a good internal linking strategy it simplifies navigation. The information is much more easily accessible and it offers a lot of value to the users.

 Conclusion

These are some basic Search Engine Optimization techniques to improve your rankings on search engines.

A good SEO Strategy is a series of small steps executed perfectly
Click To Tweet

Make sure you execute these steps. Also, let us know in the comment section which of these steps you were already implementing and if possible do share your results and experiences.

I hope you find these quick SEO tips helpful. Don’t forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on social media and Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated with our content.

The post 11 Quick SEO Tips To Rank Your Website Higher On Search Engines appeared first on GeekyPlug.

Let’s begin this blog by saying “when it comes to your online presence, appearance matters”. Your website design is the first thing a visitor see’s when they visit.

And first impressions matter. To create that captivating first impression you need a WordPress theme that aligns with

1. your brand
2. is user-friendly
3. has an engaging design.

This may seem like asking for too much in case of a web site’s design and features. But you don’t have to worry, WordPress has tons for free themes that you can use and add any functionality using plugins.

And with WordPress, you can change the themes whenever you want.

This is a common occurrence and has happened with me as well and it is pretty relatable. While browsing the web, if you see a good theme and later on you find out it has all the functions you need. All of a sudden, you are thinking of either updating or switching your theme.

This mostly happens when you have recently launched a website or stepped in the field of blogging. In case you are looking to start one check our guide on How to start a blog

Before starting GeekyPlug, I tried a few themes and after putting a lot of thought finalized this one. It is important when you begin your journey, you pick the right theme for your blog.

This is a vital decision as you will be using this theme for a long time and you don’t want to change it in every few months. If you are an existing WordPress user you already know how important this decision is.

With that said, in this article, I will be sharing a list of things you need to do before changing the WordPress theme.

This list will ensure the transition process is smooth and all the small details are taken care of.

Important Things To Do Before Changing WordPress Themes

1. Creating a requirement list and taking notes

Before you make that all-important change, make sure you make a list of what you need on your website. Here is what you can include in your list.

1. Colors
2. Features and functionality
3. User engagement

While you are making this long list the change of theme has an impact on the overall brand. Think from the user point of view.

With that said you can find many free and premium themes online and every theme comes with a demo and documentation. This theme document holds all the information about the features of theme and other technical specifications.

Before you download or purchase any theme make sure you go through the document and check the theme demo.

If you are an existing WordPress user, at some point in time you may have solved a theme related problem using a code snippet you found online. Scan through your theme files and make a note of such changes.

Also, record the website loading times as you may need this data to compare with the new theme.

You can use Google page speed insight, GTmetrix or Pingdom to check the load time.

2. Look for a Widget ready theme

“Widget ready theme” a phrase you may have seen frequently while searching for themes online.

Widget areas are generally the sidebars, footers, and headers on the theme. These are the most dynamic areas on any website.

While browsing the internet, you may have come across several websites with widget areas containing one or several of these.

1. Instagram Gallery
2. Social media follow buttons
3. Advertisements
4. Popular or related posts
5. Email subscription box
6. Categories
7. Tag clouds
8. Facebook like box
9. Flickr image gallery
10. About section
11. Youtube subscription box and much more

These are basically known as widgets. And you can see we have also used them on the sidebar and footer of this website.

Widgets are small programs on your website that perform a specific function when placed in the dynamic areas.

You can add and remove any function/ widget using the drag and drop feature. And this makes it very easy to use and most websites use it.

In case you are switching from a widget enabled theme to one that is not, then you will lose all the widgets and customizations you have done to the sidebar area.

Also, you will have to add the sidebars manually.

3. Don’t lose the tracking

Not adding the analytics or Adsense tracking to the new theme is overlooked by many and happened to me as well. Most themes these days already have the predefined place to add the tracking code.

Also, some website owners use plugins to add the codes while others do it manually.

Make sure before you deactivate the current theme, you copy the tracking codes, save them and later add them to the new theme.

Anyone can forget this easily.

4. Regular theme updates 

If you are an existing WordPress user, you already know the plugins you are currently using receive updates every now and then.

Also, WordPress recently received a major core update. With all these updates coming on a regular basis, it is important to make sure the theme is compatible.

If the theme is not receiving updates and bug fixes on a regular basis, it can be a potential threat to security or it may cause issues. And these updates are very necessary for the smooth running of your website.

In case you face issues, you will require the help of a developer to fix the problem and this can be expensive.

And you don’t want that. Go with a theme that you can use for the long term and is updated on a regular basis.

Generally, information regarding this is mentioned on the themes website and documentation. In the below screenshot you can see the changelogs by GeneratePress. This update history is available on the GeneratePress website.

You can see the dates are mentioned on the updates. The free version received an update on Jan 30 and the premium version received an update recently on March 18. To learn more about the changes made you can simply click on a particular update and it will show you the list of all the changes and bug fixes.

GeneratePress is available in both Free and Premium versions and you can click the button below to download

In case you are unable to find the update history, you can contact the theme developers.

5. Checking the compatibility across different browsers

Multi-browser compatibility or cross-browser compatibility is the ability of a website to retain its usability and design when viewed across different browsers.

The above image is from StatCounter showing the recent market share of various browsers. You can see the wide variety of browser being used by the users to browse the internet.

And as a regular internet user, I m sure you are already aware of all these browsers.

Now, each browser renders the website in a different manner. Consider an example where the theme you have selected works perfectly on most browsers except Safari and Internet Explorer.

The visitors using those browsers will not be able to see the correct rendition and functionality of your website and will have an unpleasant experience.

This can make you lose traffic.

This is why it is necessary to test your new WordPress theme on various browsers to make sure the design and features are rendered correctly. In case you want to check which browsers are used by visitors to access your website, it can be done via Google analytics.

6. Responsive

While we are discussing how important is cross-browser compatibility, we must not forget we use different devices to surf the internet.

These devices range from desktops and laptops to portable devices such as mobile phones and tablets. All these devices have different screen sizes and your website should be able to scale accordingly.

Although, it is very easy to claim that all themes are responsive these days. But I don’t think so.

According to Google on an average day

80% use a smartphone, 16% use a tablet and 67% use a computer
Click To Tweet

This means we are living in a mobile-first world and we literally want answers on our fingertips. And this is the reason responsive is an industry standard.

Before changing the WordPress theme make sure you test it on various devices and then go forward with the switch.

To check which devices are used by visitors to access your website you can use Google analytics.

If you are looking to access analytics from your WordPress dashboard, you can use Analytify. It has both free and premium versions with over 2,00,000 + downloads and recommended by GeekyPlug.

You can download the free version by searching Analytify in the WordPress dashboard plugin search.

Also, let me tell you this both cross-browser compatibility and Responsive are very important factors contributing towards user experience and beneficial for SEO as well.

If you are looking to boost your rankings on search engines we have compiled this article on SEO tips.

7. Page Speed

Site performance or page speed is a vital part of the user experience. In the era where we expect answers on our fingertips, it is important for a website to load quickly.

Site speed can be one of the reasons why people switch themes.

The theme accounts for the major portion of your website’s code. In case you have a large theme or are moving to a heavy theme, can have a negative impact on the website loading time.

It is important to check the page speed of the new theme and compare it with the existing theme and take the right decision.

40% of consumers will leave a page if it loads in more than 3 secs
Click To Tweet

In order to check the page speed of the new theme either see the documentation of the theme or copy the URL of the theme demo and test it on Pingdom, GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed Insights

8. Testing the theme functionality

Let me begin this step by saying, you have found the right theme for your website and it has almost every feature that you have included in your list in the first step.

And the remaining features can be integrated with the help of plugins.

Its time to check how the theme functions and the most important thing is it compatible with the plugins. There are chances that at times plugins do not work as er our expectations or provide the desired output as they should.

To avoid such problems, test the plugins one by one and see how they work.

The next step in the process is testing the theme functionality. If you are using a free theme, you need to test every feature of the theme and make sure all the widgets are working perfectly.

In case you are looking to purchase a premium theme, check the theme’s demo for functionality and as far as plugin compatibility is concerned, check the theme documentation or contact the theme developers regarding the same.

Also, keep in mind most WordPress themes these days come preloaded with a lot of features and this can replace the plugins keeping its use to a minimum.

This helps improve the overall performance of the website by keeping it simple.

If you don't need it, Why keep it
Click To Tweet

9. Customer Reviews and Ratings

We are very familiar and use e-commerce website such as Amazon to buy products. And before buying any product we generally check the customer review and ratings.

These reviews and ratings are honest feedbacks by the people using these products. Similarly, when you are finding a new theme for your website, make sure you read the reviews even if it is a free theme.

A theme with high review and ratings show, it is excellent in quality and offers strong support.

These reviews will also tell you more about the positives and negatives of the themes. If you are going for a premium theme, here are a few more things to keep in mind

1. Go for a theme with a large number of reviews and ratings.
2. Check for the number of sales.
3. Frequency of updates
4. From how long this theme has been on the marketplace.
5. What is covered in theme and for how long?

10. Downloading or purchasing themes from a reliable source

There are tons of free and premium themes available online and chances are in no time you will find a theme that will fit into every criterion you have set.

But, let me tell you this that’s not enough. Even if you are satisfied with the design, features, and functionality, it should come from a trusted source.

There are 3 reasons to get the theme from a reliable source

1. To avoid any potential security issues.
2. Quality of the theme
3. Themes from trusted websites will have strong support.
4. Timely updates and bug fixes.

Here are a few places you can buy quality themes from

1. GeneratePress
2. ThemeForest
3. Elegant Themes

11. Backup your website

Having a backup plugin is a must for every site and you should install this from the beginning.

Now the question is why I m suggesting taking a backup before the change. The reason is to be safe while making the change. In case anything goes wrong you will not lose anything.

If the change does not work out as expected you can always go back to the previous theme by simply restoring the backup.

Take a backup before changing the WordPress theme. Better safe than sorry.
Click To Tweet

Backup everything that includes

1. All the theme files
2. Database
3. Plugins

And for the purpose of taking a backup, you can use the Updraftplus plugin. It is a freemium plugin that means both free and premium versions are available.

I personally use and strongly recommend using this plugin.

12. Use the Maintenance Mode

Imagine landing on a site that is under maintenance or construction. You will get the impression that the website is not working properly.

It can be frustrating for users to land on such pages and it is also possible that they may look for alternative sites.

It is highly recommended to hide your website under the maintenance mode while you are making the switch. This will let the users know the website is undergoing maintenance and the service will resume shortly.

Make sure to enable the maintenance mode before making any changes. And also don’t forget to deactivate after completion.

13. Updating the ads

For many webmasters, the website is a source of income. They use networks such as Google Adsense to place ads on their website.

Once you switch the theme make sure you add the advertisement code so that your website remains monetized.

Also, make sure you update the ads so that it works perfectly with the new theme. You can change the colors to make it look more professional.

If you do not update the ads, these will look the same as they used to earlier.

14. Slow and steady wins the race

All the changes that you want cannot happen quickly. These things take times. Before you start making any changes create a plan and a priority list.

Complete the steps that need your attention first. The main objective is your site should be visible to users on most times.

While you are making these changes make sure it renders correctly. The key here is to check everything twice. Make sure to change the smaller things on the priority list first.

Once you are comfortable and understand the structure then proceed to make the bigger changes.

15. Announce the change

Changing the theme of the website is as important as any other event.

Think about doing a major renovation to your place and inviting your friends and family over for lunch or dinner to see the change and getting to know how they feel?

In a very similar way, after completing the change, make sure you let the audience know about the change.

You can write a blog post and later send a push notification or a newsletter, and also announce the change on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

You can use this opportunity to interact and ask people what they think about the change. This is a good opportunity to connect with the audience.

16. Collect user feedback and work on it

Use feedback plays a vital role in running an online world. You have made this change for a reason and its important for you to know what they think.

After all

Its the user experience that matters
Click To Tweet

To collect user feedback you can

1. Create a popup survey/ feedback forms on your website.
2. Add a feedback button
3. Create polls on various social media platforms

You can use this valuable feedback to further improve your site and give the visitors an amazing user experience.

Final Words

Before you go, there is one more thing you need to check in a WordPress theme and that is the proper use of heading tags.

Why I am suggesting this?

Most themes out there claim to be SEO friendly but do not offer proper use of heading tags which is an important element of SEO.

And that’s it for now, these are the 16 things you must do before changing the WordPress theme. 

If you are new to WordPress check out our article on 20 important things you need to do after installing WordPress.

Do let us know what you think about our theme in the comments section. Your feedback is very important to us.

You may like to read next- How to install the Akismet anti-spam plugin and stay away from spam.

I hope you find these tips helpful and use them when you make the change. Also, don’t forget to share these tips with your friends.

To receive updates from us on a regular basis follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter.

The post Changing WordPress Theme- 16 Things You Need To Know Before Making The Change appeared first on GeekyPlug.

If you own an online business or have a website or a blog, you may have frequently come across the term “Custom domain name“. Most of us when starting out prefer using free platforms such as WordPress, Blogspot, Medium and other similar platforms to publish content.

These platforms are

1. Very easy to use and understand
2. It takes very little to no technical knowledge to set up a blog and in no time your site is up and running.
3. These platforms are free to use. If you are just starting out, these are generally the first choice.

And I have no doubt if you are a beginner free publishing platforms are a great way to start your journey and gain experience.

When you create an account on such platforms you get a subdomain as the URL of your website. These URLs end with .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com.

If anyone wants to visit your website can do it using the subdomain URL.

Now, once you have created your website or blog, it becomes a part of the world wide web. The www or world wide web is a collection of websites that offer

1. Useful information
2. Provide various services
3. Can be used for buying and selling products online.
4. Just simply to interact with other users.

And it is important to know that you are a part of this huge network.

But here’s the tricky part, with the number of websites growing on a daily basis. Having a website doesn’t solve the purpose alone. Your online presence has to look professional so that visitors can connect with the brand, take desired actions and the most important thing doesn’t leave your website to look for alternates.

According to Netcraft

As of January 2019, there are 1,518,207,412 active websites
Click To Tweet

To fulfill all the above-listed criteria, you need a custom domain name. Like I always say domain name is the foundation of your website. And you want to lay a strong foundation and then build on that.

With that said let’s dive into the topic

What is a domain name?

To understand this we have to go back to the basics.

A domain name is the name of your website. For example, Amazon has a domain name “amazon.com”, the domain name for GeekyPlug is “geekyplug.com”

You can also call the domain name as the address of your website online. Users can access your website by entering the domain name in the address bar of the browser.

In the above example, you can see I have only used domain names using the .com extension. It is just for making the understanding process easy as it is the most commonly used extension.

With that said, times have changed and there are other extensions available such as

1. .org
2. .net
3. .co
4. .blog
5. .ny
6. .biz
7. .tv
8. .info
9. .eu

and many more that you can use.

Now, to understand the concept of domain names better here is a more technical explanation.

Till now we have established domain names are used to identify your website on the world wide web or the internet. The world wide web is a huge network of computers connected to each other.

To recognize each machine on the network, a special string of numbers is issued. And this special string is known as the IP address.

192.168.0.1

And you can see in the above example it is pretty difficult to remember an IP address. Due to this reason domain names came into existence.

Now you don’t have to enter the long and confusing strings of numbers to visit any website. Instead, you can just enter the domain name and it will take you to your favorite website.

Domain names are textual addresses that point to the IP address of a website
Click To Tweet

Moving forward, like we have discussed before with free website you get a subdomain such as example.blogspot.com or example.wordpress.com

And you can see it has 2 parts

1. The domain name of the publishing platform which is wordpress.com or blogspot.com
2. The subdomain which in this case is “example”.

This means the URL of your website contains a different brand name in the middle of it.

But if you register a custom domain name you can get rid of that part and can have a simple domain name such as example.com, exampl.org, or example + any other extension.

What is a Custom Domain Name and Why do you need one?

A custom domain name is the very own and personal URL of your brand. Many bloggers or website owners when starting out do not know the advantages of a custom domain name over a subdomain.

Unknowingly they take the opportunity available and invest time and effort into building a website on a subdomain. They do not realize what they are missing out on.

Here are a few reasons why you need a custom domain name

1. You are the owner

If you have a website on a subdomain, you know you are not the owner of the subdomain. In case the publishing platform decides to close the subdomain, the associated website will also be removed. A waste of hard work and time invested.

In this situation, if you are using a custom domain name, the website will be deleted. But the best part is the URL of your website will not change. Your visitors can visit you using the same URL once the website is working again.

2. An instant credibility boost

If you have a custom domain name it instantly boosts your credibility. Many of the businesses may not prefer working with companies or brand that do not have a personalized URL.

On the contrary, when you are using a custom domain name it increases the visibility in your field, you can showcase your portfolio to potential clients or future employers and land some freelance gigs or get the job that you applied for.

And it also gives you the opportunity to promote yourself effectively as a brand.

3. Massive positive impact on branding

We have already discussed this before when you are using a subdomain, another brand name is included in your URL or link. It may appear to visitors that you are not associated with those brands rather than having your own brand or identity.

4. Power of the custom email

When you have a custom domain name, you have the freedom to create custom email addresses such as info@example.com, 911@example.com, yourname@example.com, firstname@example.com and many more.

Think about receiving an email from a custom email address and xyz@gmail.com.

Which one would you reply to?

Of course, most people will reply to the custom email address. The reason behind this is simple spam. It is one of the biggest problems of the internet and everyone hates it. And Spammers use these free email services to send out spam.

If you use a branded email address to send an email, the person at receiving end knows you are authentic and not a spammer.

5. Freedom to host anywhere

This is one of the reasons why the custom domain name is worth buying. Domain name is the connection between you and the users. Once you have the personalized domain name, you are dependent on host anymore.

You can change the hosting provider and stay connected with your audience.

These are some reasons why I suggest going for a custom domain name from the beginning even if you are using a free blogging platform.

If you are still not convinced let me give you one more reason.

I am sure you are aware of how important is organic traffic for any website. Think about a scenario where you have worked hard, used various SEO tips and built the authority of the free subdomain and now you are thinking of moving to a custom domain.

And now, you have to work on all those things and build them up from scratch. That means all the previous efforts will go in vain.

If you are a Blogspot user and looking to boost your ranking on search engines, we have written an article on basic SEO techniques for blogger blog.

Also, you have to submit your website again in the search console and update the new domain everywhere including various social media platforms you are using.

Basically, this is like doing everything you have done all over again. And you don’t want this.

I think I have given you pretty strong reasons to go for a personalized domain.

With that said, the next thing on the menu is

How to find the perfect domain name

This is one of the most important things after you decide to go for a custom domain name as this name will stay with you for a very long time.

You cannot change the domain name frequently, this is the reason you want to pick the right one.

Here are a few things to keep in mind

• Try to go for the .com extension first. It is the most widely recognized extension and people generally relate your brand to their respective .com. If you are unable to find the .com version, then go for any other extension as long as it fits the purpose of your business.
• Think about a name that is relevant to your business. For example, if you are a blogger in the food and recipe niche and you just put out recipes that are vegan. You can go for a name such as vegankitchen.com. The visitors can know about the content of your website just by looking at the domain and the name is relevant as well.
• The domain name has to be short, simple and easy to understand. One of the reasons we ask people to move to a custom domain name is the length. The longer the name, the more difficult it is to remember.
• Avoid including numbers and using smart spellings as they are prone to confusion. Let’s consider the example we have used above.

Correct domain name- VeganKitchen

With a number- V3ganKitch3n

Smart spelling- VegnKitchn

According to you which one is easy to remember. I’m pretty sure its the first one. Go for something that does not cause confusion and is easy to remember.

• Another important thing to remember, if you are making the change from a subdomain. You may have already created social media pages and accounts with the existing brand name. Try to go for that first.

Also, we have written a detailed post on this- How to select a domain name

The next step in the process is

How can you buy a domain name

To buy a domain name you have to go to a domain name registrar such as

1. GoDaddy
2. Namecheap

All you have to do is visit the domain registrars website, search for your domain name and pay the registration fees. This gives you rights to the domain name for a year.

After this period, to continuously use the domain name you have to pay a renewal fee. If the domain name you are looking for is available, I would suggest buying it or else it may become home to some other site.

Many web hosting companies also provide domain registration service. In case you are looking for a hosting provider as well, we highly recommend going for

1. Bluehost
2. Siteground

The Decision- Do you really need a domain name

A domain name is the representation of your brand online. That’s how people establish a connection with your brand.

If you ask me, yes absolutely domain name is worth buying. There are plenty of benefits of a custom domain name. It doesn’t matter if you have a free blog, you can still enjoy all the perks of a custom domain name.

With that said, according to me if you have a blog on a free platform such as Blogger or WordPress, stick to it until you have enough experience in running a blog.

But do invest in a domain name.

Once you have enough experience and are willing to move to a better and more professional platform, you can check out our tutorial on how to start a WordPress blog.

The next step in the process is getting started with Pinterest for business and verifying your website on it.

With that said, do let us know in the comment section what are your thoughts on a personalized domain name.

I hope you find this article helpful and don’t forget to share it with your friends on social media. To stay up to date with our content subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media.

The post What is a Custom Domain Name? Do you really need one appeared first on GeekyPlug.

“HTTPS Everywhere”, you may have heard this phrase a few times on the internet. This campaign was launched by Google to make the internet a safer place.

Securing your website is a web standard. It gives the user a safe and private environment to browse the website. If you have created a Blogspot blog and thinking about how to enable https on your blogger blog.

You have come to the right place. But before we begin this guide, lets first understand some of the basics.

What is HTTPS?

HTTPS is the secured HTTP protocol. In other words also known as the hypertext transfer protocol secure. This protocol is used to transmit data securely over the world wide web. 443 is the default port used by https for transmitting data

When you visit the website you may have seen a green padlock or even just a simple grey padlock on the browser address bar. This padlock signifies the website is running or HTTPS or is secured using an SSL certificate. Most of the website these days run on HTTPS.

When you browse any website that supports https, the connection between the server and the user is completely secure and private.

For example- If you are registering yourself as a user on a website and the site is not secured. In this case, the data is transferred as plain and simple text.

Hackers can use tools to sniff the information and can tamper with the data.

But if the website is using an SSL certificate, all the data transmitted is encrypted and secured.

According to Google

Over 78% of Chrome traffic on both Chrome OS and Mac is protected
Click To Tweet

What is an SSL certificate?

SSL certificate (secured socket layer) are files which are installed on the web servers to ensure a secured connection between the website and the user.

These certificates activate the green padlock on the address bar of the browser.

Did you know

28% of people when visiting a website look for security signals.
Click To Tweet

And one of those is the green padlock on the address bar.

A few years back, Google released an official announcement stating security of the users is the top priority and HTTPS will be a ranking signal.

This was followed up by another announcement saying, starting Jan 2017 if your website is processing critical data such as credit card information or passwords and does not support HTTPS will be marked as not secure and the long term plan is to mark all websites as not secure that doesn’t support HTTPS.

And later stating, starting July 2018, with the release of Chrome 68, Chrome will mark all websites not supporting HTTPS as not secure.

If you visit any website that is not using an SSL certificate, it will have “Not secure” in place of a padlock on the browser address bar.

This means Google wants the webmasters to secure their websites and make the internet a secure place for users.

Upsides of securing your Blogger blog with HTTPS

1. A safe and private connection between the user and the website.
2. Builds trust with the visitors which is invaluable.
3. Makes the blog look more legit and professional.
4. HTTPS is a ranking signal, you will get a slight boost in rankings.

81 of the top 100 sites on the web use HTTPS by default
Click To Tweet

With that said, let’s start the tutorial

Step by Step guide to enable HTTPS on your Blogspot Blog with Custom Domain

Blogger has a very easy to understand and operate dashboard with a few clicks, you can turn on HTTPS for your blogger blog.

Keep in mind if you are currently using a Blogger subdomain, the HTTPS is automatically turned on for your blog and the only thing you need to do is enable the HTTPS redirect.

We highly recommend using a custom domain name with your Blogspot blog as it is a very small investment with high returns.

The reason behind turning on the redirect is simple, before enabling the HTTPS redirect users can access both HTTP and HTTPS version of your website. And when you redirect the HTTP to HTTPS, the users will always visit the secure version of your site.

To enable HTTPS redirect, navigate to settings >> basic and under HTTPS you will find the settings to turn on the redirect. Select yes and the page will automatically refresh and the settings will be saved.

Enabling HTTPS on Blogger blog having a Custom domain

Before we move further, don’t forget to take a backup of the blog. In case anything goes wrong you can always revert back to the previous working version of the blog.

Step 1– Go to blogger.com and login to your account

Step 2– Once you enter the dashboard, on the left sidebar navigate to settings >> basic

Step 3– In the basic settings search for the HTTPS section and the first thing you need to do is turn on the HTTPS availability.

Step 4– Now, below HTTPS availability is the option to turn on the HTTPS Redirect. You will find a toggle button select yes. Enabling this will make sure all the visitors will be served over an encrypted connection which is the HTTPS.

The page will auto refresh and the settings will be saved. Now every visitor will land on the secure version of your website.

After completing these steps there are chances that you may face mixed content issues. The root cause of mixed content is when you have a secured website and some of the resources of the website load over non-secure or HTTP connection.

These errors will downgrade the security of your blog.

Mixed content issues can be caused by

1. Theme
2. Post and Page source
3. Third party gadgets

How to fix the mixed content issue on Blogspot blog

After you have enabled HTTPS on your Blogger blog, the next step in the process is finding if the site is facing any mixed content issues.

The first step in the process is identifying if the problem is on

1. Single page or post
2. Sitewide problem
3. Certain small functions are not working properly

Visit each and every page of your blog or website using the HTTPS version and perform the following steps

• When you find the page or post with the mixed content error, inspect the page by right-clicking on the page  >> inspect >> console or if you are comfortable with keyboard shortcuts, press Ctrl + shift + J. It will take you to the Javascript console.

• You will notice the common source of the problem are URLs starting with HTTP instead of HTTPS. For example, a non-secure script may look something similar to http://example.com/js/abc.js and an image causing mixed content issue will have a source similar to https://example.com/image.jpg

You can see in the image above an image source is causing the mixed content problem and the source URL has HTTP as the protocol.

• Make a list of all such posts and pages facing the errors with the problem source. Identify if this is a site-wide problem due to the theme you are using, a non-Google widget or it is just a problem on a single page or post.

Fixing theme based mixed content on Blogger

If this is a theme related problem or site-wide issue, navigate to the Theme option on the left sidebar of your Blogger dashboard. It will take you to a page where you can edit the code of your theme.

Click edit HTML to edit the code of your theme, press Ctrl + F and search for HTTP. Now carefully replace the HTTP with HTTPS and save the settings.

Remember in case you make any errors, you will not be able to save the changes trying to make.

It is important to manually verify the results before moving forward. There are chances that both HTTP and HTTPS URLs may not return the same result. This means a link that is working on HTTP may not work on HTTPS. In this scenario, you may have to look for an alternate source.

Fix mixed content problem related to third-party Gadgets in Blogspot

In case you notice a malfunctioning gadget or a problem arising due to a third party gadget you have used, head over to the Layout and find the HTML and Javascript type gadget. Click edit and again replace the HTTP links with HTTPS and save the changes.

Fixing mixed content error on a single page or post in Blogger

To remove the errors from individual pages, select and page or post and hit the edit button. When you click edit, you will enter the blogger editor and now you have to select the HTML tab and once more search and replace all the HTTP links with HTTPS.

Once you are done making the changes, click preview to see if you are satisfied with the changes and then update the post or page to save the changes.

Using these steps you can fix the mixed content errors on your blog. But don’t forget to check and recheck to make sure all the resources on your blog are working as they should be.

How to avoid mixed content errors in the Blogger editor

Once you turn on HTTPS for the Blogger blog and create a new page or a post. If accidentally you have linked to a resource that loads on HTTP while saving the content it will return you an error similar to the screenshot below.

In the above image, while I was trying to save the page with a resource loading over the non-secure connection, the Blogspot editor detected an error.

It is also displaying the URL that is creating the mixed content error. Now you can either go the HTML version of your page and correct the URL or you can simply click Fix and the error will be automatically resolved by the editor.

I have highlighted the original source and the link updated by the editor itself. Using this process you can resolve the errors with a single click.

Also, there is a second way to resolve such errors. You can simply go to HTML and search for HTTP and replace it with HTTPS. And once the changes are made don’t forget to preview the changes before saving to make sure everything is working as expected.

If you select dismiss and save the page, refreshing the page will show the error again.

For more information related to enabling HTTPS on your Blogspot blog, you can check this guide by Google

With that said, I hope you find this article useful and it helps you enable HTTPS and remove the mixed content errors. The next step in the process is optimizing your blog for SEO. We have compiled an article on SEO tips for Blogger platform.

And also, don’t forget to comment and share this article with your friends on Social media. To stay up to date and receive regular updates in your inbox subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media platforms.

The post How to enable HTTPS on Blogspot blog and Fix Mixed Content Errors appeared first on GeekyPlug.

Raise your hands if you are trying to figure out the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. With almost the same names, this can be really confusing for anyone who is just starting out.

Well, let me tell you I was on the same boat once. Although both these platforms have similar names but these are actually very different from each other.

Very frequently on social media platforms, I see people ask these questions frequently

1. What is the difference- WordPress.com vs WordPress.org
2. Which one is better.
3. Out of the two which is good for starting a blog or website.

When you are looking to start your blog or website, it is important to understand the differences and the pros and cons of both platforms or you may end up choosing the wrong platform.

To help you make the correct choice and clear the confusion, in this article we will be comparing both the platforms based on

1. Pricing
2. Setup and maintenance
3. Customization, control, and flexibility
4. Branding
5. Security
6. Marketing and SEO
7. Monetization
8. Ownership and Copyrights

So without further ado let’s dive into the article.

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org- The Comparison

What is WordPress

As we all know there is a visible common factor between both WordPress.org and WordPress.com and that is the word “WordPress”. So let’s first discuss the common denominator.

Released in the year 2003, WordPress is the most popular open source content management system that you can use to create your website or blog. WordPress started as a tool for creating blogs and not regular websites. But today it is the first choice for many people across the world as a tool to create websites.

As WordPress is an open source software, it is licensed under GPLV2 which means anyone can use it for free and it is maintained by volunteers around the globe.

Using this software you can manage and create any type of website be it.

1. Portfolio
2. Business
3. Blog
4. Forum
5. E-commerce store

And pretty much anything you can think of including apps. This versatile nature is what makes it the most widely used CMS.

#WordPress powers 33% of the internet
Click To Tweet

A lot of notable entities like Microsoft, Rolling stones, Usain Bolt, Sylvester Stallone, The Walt Disney company, Bloomberg to name a few use WordPress.

With that said, WordPress is based on PHP and MYSQL and is packed with powerful features such as

1. Multi-device compatibility
2. SEO friendly
3. Highly scalable
4. Top-notch performance
5. Beginner friendly

WordPress is the easiest and most power-packed website creation tool out there today.

What is WordPress.com?

WordPress.com is a platform that you can use to create your website or blog. In other words, WordPress.com is a hosting service which uses the WordPress software to power all the blogs or website running on the platform.

The parent company behind WordPress.com is Automattic which is spearheaded by Matt Mullenweg. Now the interesting thing is he is also the co-founder of the open source WordPress software.

This is one of the major reasons why WordPress.com is confused with WordPress.org.

WordPress.com domain name consists of 2 parts one is the brand name “WordPress” and the other is the domain extension “.com” which stands for commercial.

WordPress.com operates on the Website as a Service model where you need an email address to start your website and the rest of the details are taken care of by the website.

Once you have registered you don’t have to worry about the technical aspects of running a site such as hosting, domain name, security, updates, maintenance, spam, and backup.

And this makes it quite similar to other free platforms such as Medium, Blogspot and Tumblr. Although WordPress.com has a free plan which is great however there are some drawbacks as well.

What is WordPress.org?

WordPress.org is also known as self-hosted WordPress. It is actually a software that anyone can download for free and use as they want. As we mentioned before the software is distributed under the GPLV2 license.

WordPress.org has the extension “.org” which stands for organization. It is an open source software that is managed by the WordPress foundation which is a non-profit. The founder of WordPress foundation is Matt Mullenweg.

Often you may have heard people saying they have used or are using WordPress for their website. In most cases it the software or WordPress.org they are talking about.

To create a website using this version of WordPress, you need a domain name and a reliable hosting provider. Unlike the WordPress.com, you are responsible for every technical aspect of running a website ranging from domain name to hosting, performance to backup, maintenance, and updates.

And that is why it is known as the self-hosted WordPress.

Which is cheaper- WordPress hosted vs WordPress self-hosted

Every time you search the internet about creating a website with WordPress, you will come across the magical word “Free” quite frequently.

Well, you can, of course, create a free website using the hosted version of WordPress. But often the self-hosted side is also associated with the word “Free”.

To be honest, be it hosted or self-hosted if anything is available for free either it will have an undisclosed or silent catch attached or else it will have its own set of limitations.

And let me tell you running a website does require a small investment. Now, you may be thinking why not opt for the free WordPress.com plan and create a site.

The answer is pretty simple, yes you can go for the free plan and you don’t have to spend a dime. But when you go for such plans you only get basic features and as you grow, you will require the more advanced functionality for which you will have to upgrade.

There are 4 plans available in WordPress.com and you can select which one fits your requirement best.

1. Free- No cost
2. Personal-4$/month or 48$/year
3. Premium- 8.25$/month or 99$/ year
4. Business- 24.92$/ month or 299$/ year

Other than these plans WordPress.com has 2 more plans E-commerce and VIP. As the name suggests with the e-commerce plan you can create an online store on WordPress.com and WordPress VIP is a managed hosting service for high-end websites with a lot of traffic.

Now, in the above image, you can see the free plan has very basic features and the other plans require an investment. The features in the free plan may seem good enough today. But in reality, you will soon hit the point where you will feel restricted.

Once you start the setup process and then you will notice that you do not have access to every tool you need and that is the biggest limitation.

We will be discussing all the features one by one later in the blog.

Moving forward, when we talk about starting a self-hosted website, there are 3 basic requirements

1. WordPress free software
2. Domain name
3. Web hosting

The first thing on the list is WordPress software. This is the core software or the content management system that we were discussing earlier and you can download it for no cost from WordPress.org website.

A domain name is the name of your website and this is your brand name. People will recognize you and your brand online through this name. You can buy the domain name from any domain name registrars such as

1. Godaddy
2. Namecheap

Many web hosting companies also provide the facility of buying a domain name for your website. Hosting companies like Bluehost offer a free domain name for a year with the hosting plans which is a plus point for beginners.

Speaking of the costs, the price of a domain name can range from 2$ to 15$/ year depending on the specials and the discounts.

The next essential thing on the list is web hosting. It is the service that allows you to publish your website on the world wide web.

There are quite a lot of hosting provider in the market and the pricing starts from 40$/ year. To be fair the WordPress.com free plan still looks lucrative.

But let me tell you there are endless possibilities of things you can do when your website is self-hosted. This means when your site is up and running and is monetized, slowly and steadily the website will pay for the cost of running itself.

And time will come when you don’t have to think about these expenses.

If you are thinking which companies are reliable when it comes to web hosting. We highly recommend going for

1. Bluehost
2. Siteground

Both these hosting provider offer plans that are affordable and are backed up by amazing technical support in case you face difficulties. Also, these companies are on the WordPress.org recommended list of hosting providers.

The next thing on the menu is

What is included in the package- WordPress.com and WordPress.org

Till now we have only compared the WordPress hosted with self-hosted on just the price. Let’s dive a little deeper and find out what the plans actually offer.

When we buy a product the first thing we generally see is the pricing and the next thing we want to know is what exactly are we paying for.

Let’s say for instance if you are buying any food-related products, you generally check for the ingredients to see if it is good for your health and the next thing is quantity against the price.

Similarly, when you are comparing 2 platforms, it is important to know what is included in the plans regardless of it being free or paid. Also, this will give you an idea of what you are getting into.

When to opt for the free plan in WordPress.com, you get

1. WordPress.com subdomain as URL
2. Storage space of 3GB
3. Some free themes
4. Forum support
5. Jetpack essential features
6. Free hosting

For the purpose of demonstration, I have created an account using the free plan. In the image below you can see the address or URL of the website is “geekyplug.wordpress.com” and it is a WordPress.com subdomain.

One of the first things we recommend anyone starting a new website is getting a custom domain name. Even if you are using a free platform go for a personalized domain name and not a free subdomain.

There are major drawbacks of using a subdomain. It negatively impacts your branding and that is the reason some of the users may not take your website seriously and buy services or products you are offering.

And we want you to avoid this misstep and start your online journey in the right way. Keeping this in mind we have compiled an article on Benefits of a custom domain name

You may be wondering when the platform gives you the option to add a custom address then why not go for it.

Yes, the platform does give you the option to add the custom domain name but for that, you have to pay an annual subscription fee of 48$/ year.

The next thing that comes to mind after the name of the website is the design. There are quite a few themes available with the free plan.

In case you want to go for any other theme instead of the free ones, then again you will have to upgrade your account to the premium plan which is roughly 100$ a year and it is pretty expensive if you are just starting out.

Although creating a website on WordPress.com is pretty straightforward. But in case you face technical difficulties and are using the free plan, the only option you have is the WordPress.com forum.

The email and chat support are only available for paid plans.

Moving forward, by now we have established the fact that you need to invest a small amount of money in order to start a self-hosted website and there are no free plans

What do you get when you buy hosting and domain name

Let’s begin this part with an example

If Bluehost is your choice of hosting provider, the basic plan starts at 3.95$/ month which is 47$ a year. This plan includes

1. 50 GB SSD storage
2. A free domain name for one year
3. Unmetered bandwidth
4. Free SSL certificate
5. 1 click WordPress install
6. Access to customer support chat

If you notice, I have not mentioned anything related to themes in this list. And the reason behind this is, WordPress.org is not only an open source software but also a community of developers, content creators, and site owners that manage and contribute generously towards this platform.

And because of this, there are plenty of free themes available that you can use. As far as technical support is concerned, you can find relevant information on

1. WordPress.org support forum
2. WordPress Codex
3. Handbook

Also, there are blogs that provide useful information when it comes to WordPress.

However, if you are facing problems related to web hosting, then you have to contact the technical support of your hosting provider. In the above scenario, it will be the Bluehost live chat and in no time your queries will be resolved.

With that said, web hosting and domain name charges are recurring. This means you have to take care of these charges every year. And once your site starts growing and it is monetized. The website will take care of the charges itself.

The next factor on the comparison list is the ease of set up and maintenance.

Setup and Maintenance- WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

“Is creating and maintaining a website on this platform easy?”, this is one of the very first questions that come to mind before setting up the website on any platform.

When you create a website, one thing is for sure you have to face difficulties and over challenges to make it a success. In this process, you acquire quite a lot of skills by constantly working on your website.

For some of us, these challenges can be related to technology. And for this reason, people prefer a platform that is easy to use and maintain.

Although both the hosted and self-hosted WordPress have the same core software. But the setup process is completely different.

Setting up a website on WordPress.com is very simple. All you need is a

1. Valid email address
2. Username
3. Password

Once you have signed up, you need to select a URL for your website, a theme and create important pages such as “About” and “Contact”.

And that’s it. You are ready to publish your blog. It doesn’t get easier than this. You don’t have to worry about the technical details at all. WordPress.com takes care of it for you.

After setting up the next important thing is maintenance which includes factors such as speed, backup, and other optimizations.

If you have a website on WordPress.com, all of these things are taken care of by the technical team behind the platform. The only thing you need to do is focus on creating amazing content.

Now, let’s talk about creating sites with WordPress.org. This process is very different from what we have discussed above. It may require a little technical knowledge. But the process is fairly simple.

Most of the web hosting companies these days let you install the WordPress software using the 1 click install which makes the task quick and easy.

However, just for the purpose of knowledge, there is another way of installing WordPress on your webs hosting. This is the manual installation of WordPress also known as the 5-minute install.

In this process, you have to

1. Download the WordPress software
2. Access the Cpanel
3. Create a database
4. Upload the WordPress to Cpanel using an FTP client
5. Run the installation script

This one is a bit more technical as compared to the 1 click install.

Once your website is up and running the next thing you have to do is take care of the maintenance part. Unlike WordPress.com, in this case, you are responsible for everything that includes.

1. Improving the speed
2. Taking backups
3. Cleaning database
4. Preventing spam
5. Regular updates

And pretty much everything technical that is required to run a website. Although this may sound scary if you are not technical. However, most of these tasks can be executed easily.

It only takes a short time to get accustomed to the environment.

Flexibility, Customization, and Control- Hosted vs Self-hosted

Let me begin this by saying ” Everyone has a creative side to them”.

Before you start any website, there is always a design that you like and a concept that you want. I m sure most of you will agree with on this.

Often while browsing the internet and going through various websites, you find certain elements that you like and want to include them in your design.

Now, what if you found a theme that you like, but there are certain parts of it that you want to change or modify or maybe want to extend the functionality of your site.

When you think of making changes to the design, the first thing that comes to mind is editing the theme or changing the theme. As we have discussed before, you get access to only free themes in the Free and Premium WordPress.com plan and if you want to use the premium themes that you will have to upgrade to the premium plan.

In WordPress.com there are approximately 100 free themes and nearly 184 premium themes But, if you want to use a custom WordPress theme or a third party premium theme, you cannot do that even if you are using the Premium plan.

This feature is only available in the Business plan.

Now, the next question is

Does WordPress.com give you the option to customize your website

If you are using the free plan, no. When it comes to customization, control and adding new features, you only get the basic functionality. You do not get the advanced customization features in the lower tier plans. You have to opt for the premium plan and that costs nearly 100$ per year.

In advanced customization, you can customize the theme with extended color schemes, background designs and you have the full control on the CSS.

The next thing is what happens if some of the features you want are missing on the theme.

Can you add additional functions to WordPress.com website

Whenever we think about adding new features or functions to any WordPress website, the first thing you think of is plugins. If you are not familiar with plugins, let me tell you the basic definition.

Plugins are small independent programs that you can install in your WordPress site to further extend the functionality of the site.

These plugins do make your life easy. You don’t have to worry about the coding part. All you need to do is download, install and activate.

If you are thinking about installing plugins in your WordPress.com website, you have to go for the Business plan or the E-commerce plan if you are looking to create an e-commerce website.

Earlier WordPress.com did not offer built-in support for the third party plugins and themes. This feature was introduced in August 2017

On the other hand, when you are using WordPress.org you are responsible for everything. This also means you can customize the website the way you want.

Trust me there are no limitations.

When it comes to picking themes for your blog, there quite a lot of free and premium themes available. You can find the free themes in the built-in free themes directory in the WordPress dashboard. To use any of these free themes, you need to find a theme that matches your requirements and then install and activate it.

If you are looking for a Premium theme for your website, there are quite a few marketplaces you can check. Here are a few places we recommend

1. Elegant Themes
2. ThemeForest
3. GeneratePress
4. Template Monster

The general pricing of themes on these websites ranges from roughly 30$ to 200$. If you are thinking what is the difference between a paid theme and a free.

The main difference between the two is you get technical support with the premium one whereas you have to rely on theme documentation, forums, and other blogs if you are using a theme. Also, on quite a few occasions I have seen free themes not receiving updates on a regular basis and then get abandoned by the developer and that can be a threat to the security of your website.

Now, this does not mean I m against the use of free themes. Use themes that receive updates regularly and has positive feedback from the users.

As far as customization is concerned, you can do anything with your theme regardless of it being free or premium. You can change the style, colors, make changes to the CSS or do anything you want including changing WordPress themes as much as you want.

There are no restrictions.

The next big question is

What happens if you want to extend the features of your WordPress.org website

To add new features to your website, you can use plugins.

There are thousands of free plugins available that can help you add any functionality to your site you can think of. There are 3 types of plugins

1. Free- Free to use plugins
2. Freemium- Free to use but certain features are available only in paid plans.
3. Premium- You have to pay in order to use

With that said, just like the free themes directory you also have free plugins directory in the WordPress.org dashboard.

To use these free plugins all you have to do is go to the directory, search for the plugin, install and activate.

As you are in charge of everything on your website, it is important to keep in mind that every plugin may not work the same way as you expected. In case this happens you have to search for alternatives. We always recommend first trying out things on the test environment and then gradually updating the main website.

You may like to read- How to install WordPress plugins

The last thing I would like to add here is WordPress.org is an open source software that you can use to create custom theme designs. If you have something in mind, it can be created. You can hire an experienced developer to help you with this.

Note- When it comes to downloading free themes and plugins use only the trusted sources and check the last update and compatibility before using.

Which is more secure- WordPress.com or WordPress.org

Security is important for you as well as for the visitors. It plays a huge role in creating a positive user experience.

When it comes to security, there are a few main  elements that we will be discussing

1. Spam protection
2. Updates
3. SSL certificates
4. Backups
5. Website scans

Above are some basic factors that contribute to the security of the blog. As previously mentioned, in WordPress.com you don’t have to worry about the technical aspects much and that is the same in this case as well.

WordPress.com has built-in plugins for

1. Security scanning
2. Anti-spam
3. 24 x 7 backups
4. Regular updates
5. Free SSL with every plan

All these features are included in the free plan as well. So it is safe to say WordPress.com is a very secure platform for both publishers and visitors.

Now, speaking of WordPress.org with you being responsible for everything. You have to take care of the site security.

How can you protect your WordPress.org site from spam

We all know spam is a growing problem on the internet and to take care of this problem you have to use an anti-spam plugin called Akismet.

Akismet is a product of Automattic, the company behind WordPress. This is the same plugin that is used for filtering spam in WordPress.com. This plugin is very easy to use and configure and comes pre-installed in WordPress.org.

In case you want to check, we have written a detailed article on How to set up Akismet

From where can you get the SSL certificate

While browsing the internet you may have seen websites that have a green padlock on the address bar. That is because the site is using the SSL certificate.

The green padlock is a trust signal for your visitors as it shows the website is secure and it is also a ranking factor.

These certificates are provided by the certificate authorities such as Let’s encrypt. But you don’t have to think about getting one as most web hosting companies these days provide free SSL certificates with the hosting plans and these are very easy to configure.

In case you face any difficulty regarding this you can always contact the customer support of the hosting provider for help.

How to scan your website for vulnerabilities

You can perform the task of scanning and protecting your website from any potential threats using security plugins such as Wordfence.

All you have to do is install, activate and configure the plugin.

You can set a scanning schedule as per your requirements and whenever there is a security-related problem the plugin will scan and protect your site and will also notify you immediately. With Wordfence, you get features such as

1. Web application firewall that identifies and blocks the malicious traffic.
2. It has a scanner that blocks requests that include malicious code or content
3. Limiting login attempts to protect from brute force attacks
4. Malware scanner to scan all the core files, plugins, and themes for malware.
5. Repairing files that have been changed and overwriting them with the original.
6. Two-factor authentication
7. Login Captcha
8. Block logins for compromised passwords
9. Blocking attackers by IP or IP ranges
10. It can also check if your IP has been blocked or blacklisted for malicious activity, generating spam or other security-related issues.

Also, this plugin has both the free and premium version available. To download the free Wordfence plugin click here

What about regular updates

When we talk about regular updates, it includes

1. Core update
2. Theme updates
3. Plugin updates

And you have to manage these updates on a regular basis. To check if an update is available, you can navigate to the update tab in your WordPress dashboard and update accordingly.

Now here are a few things to keep in mind

1. Backup your data before performing an update.
2. Always keep your core, themes, and plugins up to date.
3. Never use a plugin or a theme that is not compatible with your version of WordPress or hasn’t been updated in a long time.

How can you backup data in WorPress.org

Whenever you start a WordPress site, the first thing on the list of recommendations is a backup plugin.

Some hosting providers also provide the feature of regular backups. In case this facility is not provided by your hosting provider you can use a plugin.

It is very necessary to use one because while you are making changes or updating your site if things do not go as per plan, you always have a working back to go back to.

To back up your data in WordPress you can use the UpdraftPlus plugin. This plugin has both the free and premium versions. The plugin is very easy to use and is recommended by us.

Here are some features of the plugin.

1. It has an easy to use interface. You can use and configure the plugin easily even if you are starting out and have little to no technical experience.
2.  With a single click of a button, you can perform the backup and restore functions.
3. UpdraftPlus is proven to back up any site regardless of its size.
4. It gives you the option to schedule complete backups manually or on an hourly, daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis.
5. You can store your backups on remote locations as well.
6. It also allows you to encrypt the database backups for security.
7. It is compatible with multisite installs. This means you can back up several sites from a single dashboard.

To download the UpdraftPlus Plugin from the link below

Having said that, it may seem these steps involve too much work. But actually executing these steps is very straightforward. Once configured you don’t have to think about these much.

Which is better for branding- WordPress.org or WordPress.com

Branding is a process that a business has to undergo to create a unique place for itself and it’s products in the market. This is how the users will distinguish your business from your competitors.

Similarly, when it comes to online branding you want your website/ brand to stand out.

When you create a website on WordPress.com using the free plan, you get a free subdomain as the URL of your site which looks something similar to

https://www.brandname.wordpress.com

The problem here is your name is associated with WordPress and it can give the impression to your visitors that your business is somewhat related to WordPress.

And when in reality it is not. This can negatively impact your brand.

Also, in the free plan, you will find WordPress.com ads being placed on your site and you are not paid for these ads. Think about a scenario where you land on a site and ads have no relation to the content. Again puts you under the negative light.

To remove these ads you have to opt for the Personal plan.

Here is another thing, in WordPress.com sites, the footer credit is by default set to blog at WordPress.com and this can only be changed or removed if you upgrade to a business plan.

On the contrary, there is no such ad placement in WordPress.org websites. You can also easily change or remove the footer credit.

As far as the URL of your site is concerned, it is personalized to your brand as you are using a custom domain name from the start.

WordPress.org is better for you if you want to establish your name in the market. It gives you the liberty to brand yourself the way you want.

Marketing and SEO- WordPress.org vs WordPress.com

One of the most important and go to technique for generating traffic is SEO.

SEO is also known as search engine optimization and it helps in generating traffic from the search engines. It is a fact that everyone wants traffic from the search engines and it is one of the best sources of traffic.

Both the platforms WordPress.com and WordPress.org are very SEO friendly. However, when it comes to the process, they are very different.

When we talk about WordPress.com, most of the SEO related elements are taken care of by the platform. Also, all the themes are optimized for search engines which makes it easier for search engine bots to crawl and find the content on the website.

WordPress.com has built-in Jetpack functionality due to which the sitemap is automatically generated in every website. This also helps search engines know whenever the site is updated.

WordPress.com also allows you to add features such as

1. Adding an email signup form
2. Incorporating WordPress.com follow button
3. Embedding feeds from various social media platforms
4. Adding like and social share buttons so that users can like and share the content.
5. Show related content after posts

All these features are available on the free plan which is great.

WordPress.com also gives you the features where you can verify your website on

1. Googles Search engine console
2. Bing Webmaster
3. Pinterest
4. Yandex Webmaster

Performing this step is very essential as this will give you access to in-depth information related to traffic using the built-in stats.

If you want to dive deeper into the analytics then you need tools such as Google analytics. To install Google analytics in WordPress.com you need the Business plan.

Now, here is one of my biggest concerns with WordPress.com when it comes to SEO. If you are using the free plan, you already know you get a free subdomain. The problem with subdomain is that it doesn’t rank that well on the search engines.

Also, if in future you want to use a custom domain name, you will lose all the progress that you have made on the subdomain. It is like doing everything from scratch again.

It is important to keep in mind the core software is the same in both WordPress hosted and WordPress self-hosted and it is SEO friendly. However, there are certain SEO elements that you have no control over in WordPress.com.

Moving forward, with WordPress.org you get more control and options when it comes to SEO. You can install plugins such as Yoast or Rankmath to help you improve the SEO of your site. Also, you can use tools such as Google analytics to keep an eye on the detailed insights related to traffic.

Recommended read – Quick SEO tips to rank higher on search engines

In case you want to see the analytics in the dashboard, you can easily do it with the help of a plugin called Analytify.

Another benefit of WordPress.org is that you are using a custom domain name from the beginning. It gives you an edge over the website using subdomains.

Like in WordPress.com, regular visitors can follow or subscribe to your blog. Similarly, in WordPress.org you can set up

1. Email Opt-ins
2. Push notifications
3. Messenger campaigns

and using these visitors can follow your blog and stay updated.

As far as social media sharing is concerned, there are quite a lot of plugins available that you can install so that users can share your content.

Nowadays, there are ample of premium themes available that come integrated with social media sharing buttons. With WordPress.org, you get access to very detailed insights that will help you increase the visibility and reach of your site.

Can you monetize a WordPress.com website

When it comes to monetizing a website, there are a few different ways to do it. Some of them are

1. E-commerce
2. Sponsored posts
3. Affiliate marketing
4. Using networks such as Adsense, Media.net

As you already know if you are using WordPress.com free plan, there are ads displayed on your website which you can’t remove until you upgrade.

Think about creating a basic site for selling your services and seeing ads from other brands being displayed on it. This puts your brand under negative light and on top of that, you are not being paid for those ads.

With that said, if you are looking to monetize your website using sponsored posts and affiliate links. You can do that on WordPress.com. But keep in mind it is stated clearly stated in the terms and conditions “the primary purpose of the website is to create original content and not just to drive traffic to affiliate links.”

Same goes for the sponsored posts as WordPress.com does not allow websites where the majority of the content is sponsored.

If you want to monetize your website using WordPress Wordads, you have to at least opt for the Premium plan or have moderate to high traffic and appropriate content if you are using the Free or Personal plan.

In case you want to go for third-party ad networks such as Google Adsense, Open X, Buy Sell ads or any other network, then you have to upgrade to the Business plan.

Note- Site with the Premium plan or below can run Wordads but cannot self manage the network

As mentioned above you can also create an e-commerce store on WordPress.com by selecting the E-commerce plan. In this plan, you get access to features such as

1. Built-in payment processing
2. Access to shipping carriers like UPS
3. Selling unlimited products
4. Access to marketing tools
5. Premium store themes

All of these features come with a hefty price tag which is nearly double the price of the Business plan.

The gist of the story is WordPress.com is pretty expensive. If you are just starting out it doesn’t make sense investing that amount of money.

Also, there is an unknown limit on how many sponsored posts or affiliate links that can be included. And when you don’t know how many can be too many, it can adversely impact the income.

It takes an effort to generate traffic to your website and sell products and services. It is always recommended to look for solutions that are affordable and worth the investment.

Having said that, if you want to monetize your WordPress.org website, you have the full freedom. There are no restrictions on the number of affiliate links and sponsored posts.

You can also create an online store if you want to sell products. Also, you can join any third party ad networks such as Adsense, Media.net or any other network.

However, before placing the ads on your website, keep in mind the user experience and never overwhelm the users with too many ads.

Who owns the website and the content- WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

As silly as it may sound, but this is a very realistic query and you much know what happens to your website and content if your site is closed someday under unforeseen circumstances.

Creating content and building an online presence takes time and hard work.

As mentioned before, WordPress.com is a for-profit company. When you create a website on this platform you agree to the terms and conditions which clearly state ” By submitting Content to Automattic for inclusion on your website, you grant Automattic a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt, and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing, and promoting your website.”

It also states “We may terminate your access to all or any part of our Services at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately.”

Now, this sounds scary.

Think about a situation where you have put in countless hours of work and one day you wake up in the morning and all your hard work is gone. And the worst part is you don’t know the exact reason.

With a WordPress.org site, things are completely different, you own everything including the site and the content. It gives you all the control you want. You can post what you want, make changes, place ads, write sponsored content or essentially do anything you want.

With WordPress.org, you control and own everything.

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org- Which is better

Both WordPress.com and WordPress.org have their own set of pros and cons. It completely depends on your requirement which platform is good for you.

If you want to have a blog or a website for personal use and there is no commercial interest then you should go for WordPress.com. It gives you all the basic features you need for a personal website at no cost.

On the other hand, if the purpose of the website is making money, then the better option for you is WordPress.org. In this scenario, we will not recommend picking WordPress.com because if you go for the free plan you end up with a subdomain that looks completely unprofessional and if you opt for the paid plans, you do not get enough features and functions when compared to WordPress.org.

However, if you are not comfortable with the technical aspects of running a website, then opt for a plan that fits your requirement and later make the change to WordPress.org when comfortable.

If you ask us which one is better- WordPress.com or WordPress.org, WordPress.com is definitely good for personal blogging and websites where there is no commercial intent. But if you want to turn your website into business definitely go for WordPress.org. It is the go-to platform for professionals.

Can you move your website from WordPress.com to WordPress.org

Often many users, in the beginning, think WordPress.com and WordPress.org are the same platforms as the names are same and WordPress.com has a free plan and WordPress.org is free software.

They do not know the difference between the two platforms and the limitations.

Due to these reasons, they end up creating a website on WordPress.com and later on want to switch. Now making the move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org is possible and it involves a few steps.

1. To make the move first thing you need to do is buy a domain name and hosting. We recommend buying hosting from Bluehost/ Siteground.
2. The next step in the process is installing WordPress on your web hosting. Installing WordPress is a simple process as most hosting providers have the 1 click install feature.
3. Now, you have to export your content from WordPress.com. All you have to do is go to your WordPress.com dashboard head over to settings >> Export. You will get an XML file, keep it safe.
4. Once you have the file, go to WordPress.org dashboard and import the file via the importer plugin. In this step, you have to install the plugin and upload the XML file that you have downloaded and click upload and import.
5. The last step is to change the visibility setting of the WordPress.com blog to private and redirect the visitors to the new WordPress.org site.

How can you start a WordPress blog

Now that you have figured out the difference between the two and have made the decision to start a website or a blog using WordPress.org.

The first requirement is a domain name and web hosting. We recommend using Bluehost or Siteground. Both these hosting companies provide top-notch service when it comes to hosting and are also on the WordPress.org’s list of recommended hosting providers.

For further step by step process, you can check this detailed tutorial- How to start a WordPress blog with Bluehost

Using this guide you will be able to set up your blog in 15-20 mins.

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org- The Difference (Infographic)

I hope you find this article helps you select the right platform for your website. If you have any queries feel free to contact us via the comment section. Also, don’t forget to share this article with your friends on social media and subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates delivered straight to your inbox.

The post WordPress.com vs WordPress.org- The Difference and Which is better [Detailed comparison] appeared first on GeekyPlug.

Have you seen pins on Pinterest that show more information than the regular pins you are sharing?

If yes, have you wondered when the platform is the same then why are these pins different. Is it because Pinterest like them more (joking) or are you missing out on some vital details?

The answer to this is simple, you are missing out on a special feature known as Rich Pins.

Pinterest rich pins are very different from the regular pins. These pins contain way more information and drive higher engagement and click-through rates when compared to there counterparts.

In case you haven’t heard of these need not worry. We will be sharing every detail about the Rich Pins and how can you easily apply this feature on your blog.

Now there is a requirement to set up Pinterest rich and that is you need a Pinterest Business account. If you are new to the platform, let me tell you business profile can be created for free and you get access to access to a lot of features that help build your brand and increase your reach on Pinterest.

The rich pins feature is not available for personal accounts. If you don’t have a business profile, we will highly recommend creating one or converting a personal profile to business before applying for rich pins. Here is the link to the article to Get started with Pinterest for business

This process will hardly take 10 mins of your time but it is worth the investment. Just follow the steps in the guide and you will be easily able to either create or convert to business.

With that said, let’s move forward with the guide

Comprehensive Guide to Pinterest Rich Pins

What are rich pins?

According to Pinterest “Rich pins provide more context about an idea because they show extra information directly on a Pin”.

The rich pin is a feature that has been around for a while now. As we all know user experience is an important part of running an online business. This is where these rich pins come into play.

When you implement this feature, it drastically improves the user experience by providing relevant insights to the users on the pin itself.

To understand this let’s take an example of a recipe pin.

Above is a screenshot of a recipe rich pin and you can see, it contains all the important information about the pin or the original post.

If a user lands on this pin, just by looking at the information available on the pin the user can get the idea about the recipe. With all these details available, the user can take a decision whether or not to visit the website and read the complete recipe.

Now, some of you may think why to provide so much information when there are chances that the user may not take action after reading it.

This is absolutely correct that some may not visit the website after reading the insights. But this also true that the users that will click through are the exact audience you are looking for. They are actually searching for what you are offering.

When you provide users with all the information they need, the possibility of taking action increases. This means more traffic, engagement, and sales which is what everyone desires.

Now, if you see the above image carefully, you will notice rich pins are very similar to the rich snippets. In case you are not familiar with rich snippets

When you add schema markup to your post, it allows search engines to show additional details in between the URL and the description. This is called a rich snippet.

Now you can clearly spot the similarity between the two.

Did you know?

Pinterest is known as a visual search engine and by using the Pinterest rich pins you are improving the SEO side of Pinterest. Using this will improve your visibility on Pinterest and it only takes a few minutes to implement this.

Types of Pinterest rich pins

Pinterest supports 4 types of rich pins

1. Article
2. Recipe
3. Product
4. App

Article rich pins

Article rich pins display the title, description (this is the meta description of the particular article or blog post from your website), publishing date and at times the name of the author as well.

How can you distinguish an article pin from a regular pin?

These pins can easily be spotted on your feed as the title is prominently displayed and when you click the pins you find all the additional information.

Here is what an article pin looks like in the Pinterest feed

I have highlighted the title and you can see the Title is in bold which makes it stand out from the other pins and this will definitely grab the attention of the users.

The next image is a screenshot of an expanded article rich pin and insights displayed on the pin.

In the above screenshot, you can see in addition to the description you have manually entered while posting this pin to the platform, it also displays the meta description from the article, the publishing date and the name of the author.

You can check our Article rich pins here

Recipe rich pins

These pins show the users cooking time, serving size, ingredients, reviews and also the meta description and title. Now this information may vary depending on the markup or the plugin you are using.

For example, if your plugin does not support the user ratings or cooking time then it won’t be displayed. In case it does and you have not provided enabled the particular setting or may not have provided information then also it will not display those specific insights.

How can you identify a Recipe rich pin?

Below is the screenshot of various types of Pinterest recipe rich pins you can find in your feed.

You can see the first pin is missing the cooking time but has the rating. The second pin is showing both the rating and the cooking time. And the third pin has only the title.

The question here is why is there such a difference between the three.

Like I have mentioned before it is due the plugin the site is using, it probably does not support this feature or the information hasn’t been provided by the website owner.

But when you see the last pin it is totally different from the recipe pins and looks very close to an article pin. And that is the case here, the markup implemented is not correct.

Why I m telling you these things now is because these are very small mistakes that will differentiate a good pin from an excellent pin.

And these small mistakes can be corrected easily and thus lead to a rich experience for the users and in turn driving more visits to your website.

How does a Pinterest recipe rich pin looks when you expand it?

In the image above you can see the pin displays all the information related to the recipe. It shows the description, ingredients, serving size, reviews and cooking time.

And did you notice it also says on the pin that the recipe is Gluten free

With all these details available, I am pretty sure the users will definitely like to visit the website and check the recipe.

You can check some amazing recipe rich pins here.

Product rich pins

Using these pins you can showcase your products to the Pinterest users. These pins include real-time pricing, availability, a link to the URL from where you can buy the product, a prominent title, and a description.

Pinterest product rich pins are meant to drive sales as all the information and pricing is available on the pin itself. If the user likes the product or wants to buy, one can simply click the link on the pin and purchase the product.

How can you spot Product rich pins on Pinterest?

These pins are very easy to find on the platform. All you need to do is while you are searching for a product, look for the price tag icon on the pin right between the actual pin and the title.

It also displays the name of the brand/ store.

How does a Product rich pin look when you click it?

In the above screenshot, you can see the pricing and availability of the product on top of the pin even above the title. In this case, the product is out of stock and it is mentioned on the pin.

If the product is available or in stock, the pin will only show the price and not availability. The best thing about this feature is you don’t have to make the changes manually. Once the changes are made on the website, they are automatically reflected on the pin.

The description in these pins is also generated from the meta description on the website.

App rich pins

App pins show an install button so that users can directly download your app without having to leave Pinterest.

With Pinterest receiving most of its traffic from mobile devices, this feature was introduced to help people find apps for all types of interests easier.

Currently, this feature is only available for U.S based users and specifically for iOS apps.

Why use Pinterest Rich Pins

Over 250 million people use Pinterest each month. Wow, isn’t that amazing? This platform has a lot of potential to drive traffic to your website if used correctly.

The above image is from Pinterest and you can see how helpful this platform can be in building your brand and getting your name out there.

When so many people are using the platform, it is important to stand out from your competition.

This is where the Rich pins will help you as these are the enhanced version of the regular pins. When you are using this feature, your pins provide all the necessary information to the user that the normal pins don’t.

These insights can help users decide if they want to take action or not. Essentially you can also call this feature Pinterest call to action.

Also, in the Pinterest feed, you will see some of these pins including your brand name and logo. This helps in spreading brand awareness.

The next good thing about using rich pins is automatic updates. Consider a scenario where you are selling a product on the website and you have pinned it on Pinterest.

What this feature does is, it takes all the metadata from your website and attaches it on the pin. In the above case, it is a product pin, so it will include the title or name of the product, price, availability, and description.

After a few days, this product is now out of stock and you have changed the availability on your site. What happens next is you don’t have to think about changing it manually. Pinterest will take care of it if you are using rich pins and when the product is restocked the changes will be reflected automatically.

Also, if someone has pinned your product, the user will be notified via an email when the price of the product drops. This means if the user hasn’t signed up or visited your website but has pinned your product will be notified and this is an amazing feature.

As mentioned earlier Pinterest is a visual search engine and optimizing your pins is an important part. When you implement the rich pin functionality, the extra information n the pin helps you appear for more related keywords hence increasing the reach and making your content more searchable.

Another merit of Pinterest rich pins is it retains all the information even if it is repinned by other users. This means if anyone expands the repinned pin, your branding, title description, and all the other properties are prominently visible. This also helps boost branding.

With that said it is time to implement rich pins

How to set up Pinterest Rich Pins

With all the amazing benefits and features that rich pins provide, you may think the process is a little complicated. But let me tell you this even if you are not on the comfortable with the technicalities still you can set up in 5 minutes.

As I have mentioned before to use this feature you need a Pinterest business account. To create a new business profile or to convert a personal profile to the business you can follow our tutorial by clicking here.

How to set up rich pins for WordPress (self-hosted)

Once you have created a business profile or converted one to business. The next step is to download a WordPress SEO plugin. We recommend using Yoast or Rank Math. You can download and use these plugins for free.

In this tutorial, I will be showing how to implement rich pins using both these plugins. In the first part I will be using Yoast and after that Rankmath. You can use whichever plugin you like better.

To install the plugin all you need to do is visit Plugins >> Add new >> Search for Yoast or Rankmath >> Install >> Activate.

If you are not familiar or comfortable with downloading plugins. You can read our guide on How to install WordPress plugins

Installing the plugin is the first step. In the next step, we will be checking for the Open graph settings.

Using Yoast

In Yoast to check the open graph setting, head over to Yoast >> Social, then go to the Facebook tab and enable the open graph metadata.

This saves you a lot of time and you don’t have to think about the code at all.

Once the open graph settings are enabled, the next thing you need to do is write unique and engaging descriptions. As we have discussed before rich pins fetch the description from your article or post, it is important to write an appealing one and take advantage of the prime website real estate space on Pinterest.

To add a description to your articles, go to any article and click edit. Once you enter the editor scroll down a little and below the editor you can see Yoast provides you with the functionality where you can easily add the meta description.

Enter the description in the box >> close the snippet editor >> update the post

And that’s it. You have now successfully included the meta description.

The last step in the process is Validating Rich Pins. To validate rich pins, the first thing you need to do is visit the Rich Pins Validator

Enter the URL of one of your Blog post in the space provided and click Validate. The page will refresh and you will get a message similar to this.

Also, it will show you additional information such as

1. If the rich pins are enabled
2. Site name
3. Favicon
4. Retina logo

And much more here is a screenshot

If you scroll down a little it also shows you which type of schema or markup you have applied and what type of rich pin will this be. In our case, it is the Article pin. Now if you apply the recipe markup, it will change to Recipe pin and the insights will change accordingly.

Pinterest Rich Pin Validator also tells you about the

1. Article Name
2. Description
3. Date Published
4. Name of the Author

I will highly recommend you to check this before moving any further as this will let you know if the markup applied is correct or relevant to your article or post.

These are small things that affect the CTR and the conversion rate.

The last step is clicking the apply now button. When you click the apply now button you will again receive a message

After you get this message, you will receive an email from Pinterest when your Rich Pin Application is approved. It will take a few days for your pins to show up as rich pins. Be patient, if the changes don’t reflect contact the Pinterest help center.

Additional settings for Pinterest Recipe rich pins

Earlier in this article, we discussed how the 3 recipe pins were different from each other and one of them was using the markup for an article instead of a recipe.

If you are looking to set up recipe rich pins, you need to perform the first two steps exactly the same way as mentioned above which are

1. Verifying the open graph setting in Yoast
2. Adding an engaging description

After completing these steps you need to install a plugin which will help you add recipe card to your article. Also, it will automatically add the recipe schema or markup.

The plugins we recommend for this purpose are

1. Tasty Recipes
2. WP recipe maker

These plugins will allow you to include additional information to your article such as

1. Recipe type
2. Name
3. Author name
4. Ingredients
5. Serving size
6. Estimated cost
7. Prep time
8. Cooking time
9. Name of course
10. Cuisine
11. Equipment required
12. Instructions

and much more

After you add the recipe card the next step is validating the URL in the Rich Pin Validator, then checking if the markup is correctly applied and the last thing is applying the changes.

Using Rank Math

Rank Math is a new SEO plugin and has quite a lot of additional features as compared to Yoast.

While I was writing this article and was trying out various scenarios. I actually found Rank Math beneficial for food or recipe niche websites as once you have installed and set up Rank Math you do not need additional plugins for recipe markup. It is already included in this plugin.

In Rank Math, open graph settings are automatically applied to your website when you install and set up the plugin. To add schema markup to your website for rich snippets you need to enable the support for rich snippets in the Rank Math dashboard.

Once you have enabled the rich snippets, go to WordPress post editor and below the editor, you will find the option where you can select the type of rich snippet

For the recipe rich pins, select recipe and for the article rich pins select article.

This plugin also gives you the functionality to include additional information to your recipes such as

1. Ingredients
2. Cook time
3. Prep time
4. Rating
5. Instructions

and much more.

For the purpose of demonstration, I went ahead and created a dummy recipe card using Rank Math and here is how it looks

After this, you need to add the description to your post and it is very similar to the way you do it using Yoast. All you need to do is go to general settings >> click edit snippet >> add the description.

The last thing you need to do is go to Rich Pin Validator, check if the applied schema markup is correct and apply the changes.

As we all know design plays a vital role in Recipe and food blogs, so go for the plugin the works best with your theme.

Setting up rich pins for WordPress.com

Implementing rich pins is very easy in WordPress.com as open graph settings are enabled by default. That means you do not have to worry about checking them.

The only thing you need to do is write compelling descriptions for your blog posts. To add meta descriptions to your blog post, you need to first log in to your WordPress.com dashboard and then just click on the blog post.

It will take you to the editor where on the right you will find a tab named excerpt. Click it and enter the description. The last thing you need to do is update the article.

Now the only drawback here is only the article markup is implemented on WordPress.com lower tier plans. This means if you want to implement recipe rich pins, it is not possible as the markup cannot be changed.

Like in WordPress.org or self-hosted website you can make these changes using plugins or by editing the code. But in WordPress.com this is not possible as you do not get much control.

If you want to know the difference between the 2 platforms in detail. Here is the link to the article WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

Now coming back to the point, if you writing only articles and not recipes then you can easily implement rich pins. But if you want recipe rich pins then I m afraid either you have to settle with article rich pins or you have to upgrade your account so that you can use plugins or edit the code to add recipe markup.

With that said, once you have included the meta description, you need to go to the Rich pin Validator,  enter your link in the box and apply changes.

After doing this you need to wait for the changes to reflect on Pinterest.

Pinterest Rich Pins- FAQ

1. How can I set up Product Rich Pins on WordPress?

If you are using Woocommerce plugin with Yoast SEO, all you need to do is check if the open graph settings are enabled. Navigate to Yoast SEO settings in your WordPress dashboard >> Social >> Facebook >> Enable it if not

The next thing you need to do is copy the product URL and paste it in the Pinterest validator and finally click apply.

2. Can I use more than one type of rich pins on my website?

Yes, you can. Different pages can have different rich pins but the same page/ post / URL cannot have different rich pins.

If it is an article it will show up as article rich pin or if it is recipe it will be a recipe rich pin. This all depends on what markup has been applied on that particular page or post.

3. How much time does it take for the rich pins to show on Pinterest?

In our case, we received the confirmation email within 30 minutes of applying. It can take a few days to a few weeks for Rich pins to show up.

At times the updating system is delayed. So you have to be patient and if everything is still the same after 7 days of applying the contact the Pinterest help center.

4. Can I set up rich pins on other platforms?

Yes, of course, you can. Soon we will be releasing a guide on how to set up rich pins on Blogger or Blogspot by Google.

If you are a Squarespace user, all the products and posts on Squarespace have Rich pins enabled by default.

Read more about setting up rich pins on Squarespace.

5. How can I remove Pinterest rich pins from my website?

To remove rich pins from your website, you need to add the following code to the <head> section

<meta name="pinterest-rich-pin" content="false" />

Final Words

While we were implementing Rich Pins on GeekyPlug, there were some technical issues on Pinterest’s end. That is why you still may not be able to see rich pins on our Pinterest.

With that said,

Just like SEO, Pinterest is another tool every marketer should use. Pinterest rich pins are rich snippets of the Pinterest platform.

It acts very similar to a call to action, where it lets the user decide whether they want to take an action or not based on the information provided on the pin.

This helps bring in the right audience to your website which is a big plus. Also, this feature makes your content stand out and it is pretty easy to set up.

I hope you find this article helpful while setting up Pinterest rich pins.  If you have any queries feel free to contact us. Having said that, don’t forget to share this post and also let us know about your experience with Rich Pins.

To receive updates from us on a regular basis follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter.

The post Pinterest Rich Pins- Everything you need to know [Set up in 5 mins] appeared first on GeekyPlug.

When you think about starting a blog or a website, one of the very first and important tasks is finding the perfect domain name.

Finding a domain name can be a tedious process. This is a known fact that the number of online businesses is on an increase which makes it pretty difficult to find a name that is short, meaningful and easy to remember.

I faced this similar problem when I started this blog, there were tons of suggestions and names but on several occasions, the names that I liked were already taken or were available at a much higher cost (Premium domains) and getting a premium name was not possible as I was just starting out and had a fixed budget.

And to the rescue came the domain name generators. These tools made the task so much easier for me by providing countless name suggestions out of which I was able to mix and match and create this domain name.

Now before we go ahead pick a domain name there are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Try to get the .com extension first and if it is not available then go for other relevant extensions.
2. Find a domain name that is easy to remember.
3. Avoid the use of hyphens and numbers.
4. Stay away from copyright infringement.
5. Check if the name is available on top social media platforms

We have written a detailed guide on this – How to come up with great domain names

Best Domain Name Suggestion Tools

1. Name Mesh

Name Mesh is one of the most popular websites for domain name generation. Suggestions are provided under various categories such as

1. Common
2. New
3. Short
4. Extra
5. Fun
6. Mix
7. Similar
8. SEO

The best part about this tool is you can define the character length of your domain name and also you can find domain names with new extensions.

All you need to do is enter your keywords and filter the results based on your requirements. The website will provide you with ample of names to choose from.

2. Shopify Domain Name Generator

The name says it all. It is a free domain name generation tool by Shopify.

To find names using this tool all you need to do is enter the keywords in the search box and it will return a list of suggestions. Pick the one that fits well with your brand.

Here’s a thing, Shopify has 2 tools one is a business name generator and the other is a domain name generator.

1. Domain name generator- This tool will provide you with all the suggestions for the available domain names.
2. Business name generator- Business name generator works similar to the domain name generator but it asks you to create a Shopify store.

3. Lean Domain Search

Lean domain search is a very powerful domain name suggestion tool by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.

By the first impressions, this tool looks very basic but it provides very relevant suggestions. To use this tool you have to just enter the keyword that you want to include in your domain name and hit the search button and then sort the results based on your requirements.

This tool gives you the ability to sort results based on

1. Popularity
2. Length
3. Alphabetically

You can also filter the results based on

1. Starts with the search term
2. Ends with the search term

This tool also tells you if the name you have selected is available on Twitter or not.

4. Panabee

To find names using this tool start by entering one or two keywords in the search box. It will show a list of all the available names.

You can also find the names with other extensions. This tool will allow you to check for the availability of the name on social media platforms such as

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Instagram
4. Tumblr

The suggestions provided are based on appending the name, adding a vowel, original and adding related words. This tool also shows the terms related to your keywords and translation in various languages.

5. Bust A Name

Bust A Name has 2 options

1. Domain Search
2. Domain Maker

In domain search, you need to start by entering a few words and this tool will combine the words and will show suggestions.

Sorting of the names can be done according to

1. Insertion order
2. Alphabetically
3. Quality
4. Syllables
5. Length

You can search for names with extensions other than .com such as .net, .org, .info, .biz. Names can also be prefixed or suffixed. The option to pluralize nouns, drop the last vowel and 2 or 3-word combine is also available. This tool has an amazing feature where you can shortlist the names you like

Domain maker in Bust A Name offers the option to create names that start with or end with the word of your choice. The character length of the domain name can be altered and you can also see name suggestions with extensions like .com, .net, .org, .info and .biz.

6. Wordoid

Wordoid is another amazing that you can use to find the perfect domain name for your website. This tool gives you the option to select from languages such as

1. English
2. Spanish
3. French
4. Italian
5. German

By searching the desired words, it will show you all the suggestions. Also, you can select if you want the keyword in the start, end or in the middle. You can set the quality and alter the character length.

It also has the option to view recent searches and save your favorite names.

Wordoid shows domain names available with .com and .net extensions.

7. Domain Puzzler

Domain puzzler is very easy to use domain name suggestion tool. It has 4 modes

1. Easy
2. Advanced
3. Magic
4. Pagerank

In easy mode, you need to add a few words either separated by comma or space and the next thing you need to do is select the extension from the list of extensions and press search. And the tool will return all the results.

Advanced mode lets you add a few more words than the easy mode. This works similar to easy mode, the only difference is it gives you the flexibility to add more words and in return, you get more combinations.

In Magic mode, the keywords that you have provided will be combined with popular words to provide you with suggestions.

PageRank mode allows you to compare page ranks of different domains.

This tool also allows you to add domain names to your favorite list.

8. NameStall

Another very easy to use tool that gives you the option to select your domain with a wide variety of domain name extensions.

This tool has various different applications that you can use for finding the right name for your website

1. Domain name generator- This tool can generate 1000’s of names based on the keyword you provide and word group and extension you select.
2. Domain name suggestion- This tool automatically generates names based on the keywords you provide and the extension you pick.
3. Instant domain search- As the name suggests, this application provides you with the name suggestions while you are typing.
4. Dictionary word domain search- Very interesting tool for someone looking for a single word domain name. This tool provides you with all the available and unregistered dictionary words domain names.
5. 3 and 4 letters domain search- Again the name says it all, this application provides you with the list of all the available domain names with 3 and 4 characters and in multiple extensions. This is possible that some suggestions may include numbers.
6. Domain name hack- If you like domain names such as deli.cio.us or blo.gs, this is the tool for you. This tool checks more than 1200 cctlds to provide you with all the possible names.
7. Brandable Domains- This application provides you with a list of domain names with extensions that can be branded.
8. High Paying keywords- This tool searches for all the domain names available with high paying Google Adsense keywords. The built-in database has more than 500000 keywords.
9. Brand name generator- This tool creates short, simple and keyword-rich domain names. Supports more than 8 languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Romanian.

9. Impossibility

Impossibility is another interesting domain name generator that lets you add

1. adjectives,
2. verbs or
3. nouns

at the beginning or end of your keyword.

All you have to do is add your keyword in the search box and select if you want to add the adjective, verb or noun at the beginning or at the end of your word and press the Search button.

You can also select from 4,5 or 6 letters adjectives, verbs or nouns or even just go with mixed. It will show some really cool ideas for the domain name.

This tool will only show you domain names with .com extension. If you do not like the initial suggestions, you can click on the Get more button in the bottom and it will show you more domain names.

Like I said before when I was searching for a custom domain name, these tools were a massive help and saved a lot of time. All we did was entered the desired keyword in a few of these tools and then I used the mix n match technique and found the perfect name.

Once you have found the perfect domain name and are looking to buy it. Here are a few websites we recommend

1. GoDaddy
2. Namecheap
3. Bluehost ( Free domain name for 1 year with every hosting plan)

Here’s a suggestion before you make the purchase. Go with a branded domain name if you are looking towards a long term goal. If you want to create a niche website then go for a domain name with your keywords it.

I hope this list of domain name suggestion tools will help you find the perfect domain name for your business. Do let us know in the comment section which tools did you find helpful. Also, don’t forget to share this article with your friends and subscribe to our newsletter to receive regular updates delivered straight to your inbox.

The post Domain Name Generators – 9 Best Tools for Naming your Blog appeared first on GeekyPlug.

Raise your hands if you think on-page SEO is all about adding keywords to certain places on your website and that’s it.

Yes, optimizing your site for keywords is important. But what if I tell you there is more to on-page optimization than just optimizing keywords.

In this on-page SEO cheat sheet, I will be sharing easy and actionable tips that you can use to get more traffic from search engines.

Search engine optimization is a continuously evolving process. After every few months, Google releases algorithm updates to make sure the searchers have a positive searching experience by returning the best possible results for their queries.

These updates define

• How a website needs to be structured so that the visitors can benefit from the website
• Other external factors that impact the rankings on search engines.

With all these updates being rolled out, the on-page SEO techniques are pretty much still the same. But at times these techniques are not implemented correctly.

Actionable On-Page SEO Cheat Sheet

The recent updates released by Google has put more emphasis on user experience which means putting the user first and then thinking about the search engine bots.

Now, let’s start with the on-page optimization cheat sheet

1. Improving site speed

Nobody wants to visit a slow loading website. When it comes to user experience website page speed plays an important role.

But now things have changed page speed has become a ranking factor and when the information is easily available on your fingertips every second count.

If you don’t believe me, here is a case study by one of the fastest-growing social media site Pinterest.

According to Pinterest, when they reduced the wait times by 40%, the traffic from search engines and sign-ups increased by  15%.

Also, approximately half of the internet users expect your website to load under 2 seconds and a 1-second delay decreased customer satisfaction by 16%.

These researches clearly show how important is website loading times for ranking on search engines, improving the conversion rate and user experience. If it is not up to the mark, the users will go for other available options.

And you don’t want that.

How can you check site speed?

The site speed can be checked using the tool PageSpeed Insight. It is a free tool by Google that provides a score for the website loading times for both mobile and desktop.

Also, it provides you with information on which parts of your website need improvement and how can you improve them.

To check page speed using this tool, visit this link and enter your URL in the search box and click Analyze.

After you hit Analyze, you have to wait for a few seconds for the results to show up. The speed of your website will be measured on a scale of 1 to 100 for both mobile and desktop versions.

Also, if you scroll a little it will show you other valuable insights and suggestions to improve your website under the section opportunities and diagnostics.

Working on these suggestions will surely improve the loading time of your site.

But before you start working on this, keep in mind it is not necessary to achieve the perfect 100/100 score. What if your website looks and works better at 90/100.

Do not get caught up in this as over-optimization can also hamper the user experience. Also, working on some of these suggestions can impact the functionality or design of your website.

Make sure you take a back up before you start making any changes and keep a close eye on how these changes affect your website.

For backup, I highly recommend using the UpdraftPlus plugin. I personally use it.

You may like to read- How to install WordPress plugins

Quick tips to Improve Page Speed

• One of the major factors that influence page speed is web hosting. Choose a service provider that has a proven track record and offers strong technical support. We highly recommend NOT going for free hosting packages.

In case you are looking to switch your hosting provider, we highly recommend going for  Siteground or Bluehost for shared hosting and WPX hosting or WP engine for managed.

• Using cache plugins such as WP-Rocket or W3 total cache. These plugins help store pages and posts from your website as static files that are served to the users when requested reducing the processing time and hence boosting the page speed.
• Removing unused themes and plugins. Why keep them if you don’t need them. These themes and plugins ake up space and also at times you may forget to update them regular basis which can compromise the security of your website.
• Using a content delivery network or CDN  such as Cloudflare. If you are unfamiliar with CDN’s. CDN is a network of servers that are geographically distributed worldwide. The CDN takes a copy of your website and distributes it over its network and when the users make a request, the server nearest to their location completes the request and delivers the cached content.
• The next thing you can do is compress your images and we will be discussing this in detail later on in this article.

These are some of the easiest ways to improve loading times.

2. Mobile friendly or Responsive

Let’s start this topic with an interesting metric

65% of all searches are mobile #geekyplug
Click To Tweet

Let me take you back in time when mobile-friendly/ responsive was not a web standard. The desktop version was the only version available. If we talk about device compatibility, it was a special feature that was rarely implemented on any website. And because of this certain features did not work correctly on mobile devices.

Unlike today the text was too small, to read anything you had to zoom in and if you want to navigate you had to zoom out. Navigation was a big problem. Also, images didn’t scale as per screen size.

And the result was unhappy and frustrated users.

Here is an image to show you the difference between a mobile-friendly and non-mobile friendly website.

You can easily point out the difference and can imagine how difficult it was for the users back in the day.

But now everything has changed, to improve the quality of mobile searches and provide priority to device-friendly websites in the mobile search results, Google released a mobile-friendly algorithm update popularly known as Mobilegeddon.

After this update, websites that were mobile-friendly or responsive received a ranking boost while others saw a dip in the rankings.

Later on, a survey of over 20,000 URLs was conducted that showed the share of non-mobile friendly URL’s dropped by 21% on SERPS

In the current scenario, it is next to impossible to find or rank a non-mobile compatible website as it is a web standard. With the number of smartphone users increasing,  mobile searches on an all-time high and Google constantly releasing updates for mobile to optimize searches, it is important not to overlook this.

How can you check if your website is mobile-friendly

Just like the PageSpeed insight tool, Google has a tool to check if your website is mobile-friendly or not. You can use this link to take the test.

To perform this test visit the link above and enter your URL in the search box and press Run Test. In a few seconds, it will let you know if your website is mobile compatible or not.

On the left, you can see it says the page is mobile friendly and on the right, it shows how it renders on the device.

Also, you can find information related to mobile usability via the Google Search console. This report lets you know which property on your page has problems when viewed on mobile devices.

You can see in the image above current the website has it has no mobile usability errors. In case, there are errors you can see the reports by clicking on Open reports. It will show you all the errors.

You can read more about these reports and how to fix the error here.

3. Nailing the Title and Description

When you are searching for something on the web. What is the first thing you see on the search engine results page?

1. Title
2. Description

Out of both of these tags, the title tells the user as well as the search engines what the page is about whereas description is the summary of the page.

As we have previously discussed the importance of user experience when it comes to SEO. This is where the description helps.

The description is the snippet of your page on the results page that tells the users or searchers what your page is about.

On quite a few occasions, Google can also automatically fetch a snippet from your page directly depending on the query searched by the user.

But it is still recommended to add the description as it can influence the CTR of the page which can impact rankings.

Optimizing Title tag for SEO

First things first, the title of your page is the first impression of your webpage to the people. It can be found in 3 places.

• On the search engine results page, it is the bold clickable heading. The title also plays a huge role in increasing CTR. It should contain your main keyword, needs to be short yet descriptive and also it should be intriguing enough so that people click.

• The next place you can find the title is on the browser tab. This title helps differentiate your website from others if multiple tabs are opened

• The last place you can find the title of your webpage is on the social media platforms when your post or page is shared.

The above image is a screenshot from twitter and you can see the title is displayed right below the featured image.

Now the next question is

How to create SEO optimized Title

• The first thing you need to take care of when creating an SEO optimized title is the length of the title. Try to keep the title to a max length of 65 characters else the extra part will be replaced by “….”
• At all costs avoid keyword stuffing. There is a fine line between optimization and over-optimization. For example, the title of this page is ” The Ultimate On-Page SEO Cheat Sheet- Best Optimization Practices “. What if I add the phrase “on-page” a few more times.

Would you read an article with such a heading? I don’t think so. Now if you ask me why. The answer is simple the title is meaningless and looks spammy. Remember in the beginning we discussed the title is your first impression and you don’t want it to look spammed.

• Stay away from using the same titles again and again. For instance, you have created a page with the title “Buy cheap laptops” and after some time you accidentally use this title again. What this does is it creates confusion and the users will not be able to distinguish between the pages.

Even if the content is unique search engine bots may think it is duplicate content. The solution to this problem is simple. If you have multiple pages with similar pages such as laptops as we have discussed above.

You can add the name of the product followed by the category and your brand name and it will create the unique title you need.

• Make sure you add your brand name in the Title. It is a prime branding spot to get your name out there. We add the brand name at the end of the title. When you add your brand name on several pages or posts it may look repetitive. To avoid this you can separate the title from the brand name using a delimiter such as a hyphen, colon or pipe.
• Craft crystal clear headlines. Just by looking at your title people should get an idea about the contents of the webpage. You can do this is by adding your keyword to the beginning of the title. At times, this may not be possible. In that case, what you can do try to place your keyword as close as possible to the beginning.

These tips will help you craft perfect Title tags for your pages. Now, to get an idea of how engaging your headline can be you can use a Headline analyzer tool such as Sharethrough Headline Analyzer. It is a free tool and I use it.

Optimizing the Meta description

Moving forward, as we have previously discussed the description is a summary of your webpage and it gives a context to your page. You can find the meta description is displayed in 2 places.

• On the search engine results page below the title of the webpage. But sometimes Google can also fetch a description from the body of the page as well as they think it can answer the query better.

Above is a screenshot from the guidelines released by Google. Also, it is important to know in September 2009 Google released an update that stated the Meta description is not a ranking factor but it is used in snippets on SERPs.

However, the meta description acts as an advertisement for your page on the results page and needs to be taken seriously. If written correctly keeping the user intent in mind, it can help boost the CTR which impacts the rankings. Here is what Google had to say on this.

The next question is What does a meta description look like on the results page.

• Also, you can find the descriptions on some social media platforms such as Twitter and Pinterest. You can only find the description on Pinterest, if you have implemented Pinterest Rich Pins and the open graph description is the same as the meta description. But remember both of these descriptions are different and you have to customize your OG description to be the same as meta.

Here is how it looks on Twitter

How to optimize the Meta Description

• Just like the title, the first thing you need to do is optimize the length of the description. Keep the length up to 165 characters or the extra part will be replaced by “….”
• Add your main keyword in the description and stay away from stuffing or else it will look spammed.
• Keep the user intent in mind while crafting the description. Briefly and accurately describe the contents of the page so that people get an idea of what to expect. A user-centric approach will help drive more clicks.
• Do not use the same description for multiple pages as it is not very helpful. Consider the example of a food blog that has a few pages about chicken recipes and baking. What if the description on most of these pages will be the same. Not very helpful right. Also, if descriptions are not high quality more accurate descriptions will be taken from the page itself as we have mentioned before. A waste of time and effort.

Word of advice– I agree meta descriptions do not impact the rankings directly. But that part of the organic listing is a prime real estate for the advertisement for your page and you cannot rely on bots to fill it for you.

4. Adding Structured Data

Often while searching for something you come across organic snippets that have much more information on them that the normal ones.

To understand this we searched Google for the phrase “Spinach Dip Recipe” and found 2 different types of snippets.

• The normal snippet that contains the Title, URL, description, and date.

• A rich snippet that contains all the elements of the regular snippet and some additional information about the recipe such as the image, ratings, reviews, cooking time and calories.

The difference between these two results is the implementation of structured data. The first result is using Article markup whereas the second result is using the Recipe markup.

Now, let me ask you a question. Which one of these results will you click if you are looking for this recipe?

I think most people will go with the second option because

1. It offers more information about the recipe
2. Attention-grabbing
3. Stand out from the rest of the results

Before we dive deeper into this topic, let’s first understand

What is structured data?

Structured data is made up of 2 words “Structured” + “Data”. As the name suggests structured data helps search engine classify content by providing relevant data.

It is a standardized code format that tells the search engine what the page is about by providing explicit clues.

Let’s take the above example again we searched for a spinach dip recipe and found 2 types of snippets. One was a regular listing while the other was a rich snippet

You can see the rich snippet has all the information related or relevant to the recipe or let me rephrase it and say, it has details that describe a recipe.

When the search engine bots crawl this code, it instantly tells them that this particular page is about a recipe. What this means is your website is easy to crawl or can be categorized and understood by the search engines.

Also as we have previously discussed how these factors are meant to boost the user experience. So when you compare the 2 snippets, the second snippet is more detailed and provides much more information to the people. This creates a positive user experience and will help improve the CTR as well.

And in turn, boosting the rankings.

However, implementing structured data will not give you a direct ranking boost. But like we have discussed above there are a lot of positives that come out of implementing it which does impact the rankings and give you the edge over your competition.

With that said, Recipe and Article are not the only types of markup. There are other types of structured data and some of the commonly used ones other than Article and Recipe are Book, reviews, movies, and products.

You can find the complete list here.

How to add structured data to your website

Now that you know how adding structured data or schema markup helps your webpage. And the number of elements and data it adds to your page on SERPS, you may think to implement this you need to be a technical person.

Yes, it involves a bit of coding but you don’t have to do it. If you are a WordPress user there are plugins available that can help you implement the type of schema you need.

All you have to do is download and install WordPress plugin. Configure it as per your requirements and the plugin will take care of the rest. This makes the process so much easier.

Here are the plugins we recommend

1. RankMath– Complete SEO plugin and is free to use
2. WP Review– Supports 14 types of Rich snippets
3. Tasty Recipes– Helps create amazing recipe cards and best for food bloggers

After implementing structured data, the next is

How to check if the structured data is applied correctly

To check if you have correctly applied the structured data, you can use the free structured data testing tool. All you need to do is visit the link above and enter your website and click Run Test

When you click Run Test, it will show you the code on the left and structure data properties that you have implemented on the right.

As you can see in the screenshot above there is an error and a warning. Now what you need to do is click the property with the error or warning and it will show you what are the details that you are missing. In this case, it was missing the featured image.

To fix this we need to just add the image and run the test again to see if everything is applied correctly. You can read more about the Structured data guidelines here.

5. Content

Write for the users and not the search engines
Click To Tweet

You may have heard this quote frequently and it pretty much summarizes everything we will be discussing here.

Officially confirmed by Google, content is one of the top 3 ranking factors.

In the mid-2000s organic results were dominated by the sites using the same keyword in every third line. In other words, most of the time the websites that were ranking had spammy content that offered little to no value to users and was written solely to please the search engine bots. There were almost no rules and regulations when it came to SEO.

But the times have changed now, today the content is written to provide value to the people by keeping the user intent in mind.

With the release of algorithm updates such as Google Panda and Hummingbird, Google has put a lot of emphasis on the quality of content and user experience.

What is Google Panda

Google Panda is a major algorithmic update launched in February 2011. The purpose of this update was to provide people with the best possible answers to their queries as quickly as possible.

This update was designed to give a boost to high-quality websites that offer unique and informative content and penalize the low-quality ones.

This update affected almost 12% of the search results which is huge.

Which type of websites are considered low quality

1. Websites with little to no content that offers no real value the users and running too many ads.
2. Pages that have similar content with little to no variation and also repetitive keyword usage or stuffing.
3. Websites that scrape content from other websites.
4. Sites designed solely for the purpose of providing backlinks to other websites.
5. Websites that produce high amounts of content that lack in-depth information and are full of language errors.
6. Websites with misleading information. For instance, you are looking for information on various luxury cars and you come across a website that has an amazing title. But when you click on the link you find no related information.

What is Google Hummingbird

Google Hummingbird is the update after which the core search engine model shifted from being reliant on a few keywords to understanding the user intent.

Unlike the Panda and Penguin, Hummingbird was based on rewarding the websites rather than penalizing them. This was a major change that focused on the conversational system of search or semantic search.

Today one of the ways to perform a search on your mobile devices is by using the voice search functionality. The foundation of this feature was Hummingbird.

To understand the concept of Hummingbird, let’s say you want to find a Japanese restaurant near you. Now what happened earlier was the search engine would go on and find matches using certain keywords. And return results that may or may not be what you are looking for as the keywords used were not specific.

There are chances that the search may have shown top restaurants from the country “Japan” itself or a restaurant that is popular for serving Japanese food but is not near to your location.

This was due to the fact that search engines will only focus on keywords such as “Japanese restaurant” and provide you with the best possible results.

After this update, the search engine could interpret the intent which in this case is a “Japanese restaurant near your place”. And when you provide the location, it will show you the details of all the restaurants serving Japanese food that are near to your place.

What this means is emphasis was shifted to Context rather than focusing on certain words present on the page. Natural language queries were given more importance instead of a few words.

Things to keep in mind while creating content

Content is the foundation of SEO. If your content lacks value, no SEO strategy can help you out.

1. As I have mentioned before, create content by keeping the user’s point of view in mind. Before you start writing anything do comprehensive research on the topic. Find what others are offering and what they are missing. This will help you create a structure for your piece.
2. Avoid writing shallow articles. Posts with 300-500 words do not make the cut. Try to provide value to the user by sharing in-depth information with them. Articles with 1000+ words tend to do well on search engines.
3. Share your personal experience. It is one of the most valuable assets you have. Not only does it add a unique touch. But also helps in building trust and a personal connection with the people.
4. Use images, infographics, and videos to increase the visual appeal of the article. No one wants to read a block of text with no rich media. It also helps increase engagement.
5. The next thing you can do to improve your content is to update the old pages. Search engines love fresh content. In regards to this Google released an algorithm known as the Freshness update in November 2011.

This update was focused on giving priority to fresher and more recent content on the Search engine’s result page. Let’s understand the purpose of this update with an example.

If a global sporting event such as the FIFA World Cup is happening and you being a football fan want to see how your favorite team is performing. Now when you perform the search, you get the results from the previous years.

Are these results of any use to you? I don’t think so.

Is it a positive user experience for you? Again the answer is No

To overcome this, Google released this update. Now when you search for the FIFA World Cup it will return the most recent results.

What are the different types of websites that most likely require fresh content

1. Recent events or Trending topics– These are the topics that are currently happening. The websites that publish content in the field of entertainment, technology, politics, business, and many more related topics need to update or post new content consistently.
2. Recurring Events– Events that take place regularly. These events can be annual conferences, elections or sports-related events. Sites that cover and publish articles on such events also need constant updates.
3. General Topics- There are other topics as well that may require updates but not that frequently. For instance, if you have a blog that offers advice on creating websites, in this case, your blog may not require an update that frequently. You only need to update the old content when there are some major updates in the technology or guidelines.

Did you know

Frequent website updating is considered to be an important SEO tactic by 34% of marketers.
Click To Tweet

What can you do to increase the freshness of the website

If you publish content related to current affairs, important events, sports or news, consider adding and updating content very frequently on your website.

In other scenarios where the changes are not this frequent, make sure you update the website whenever there is a new metric or information available. Search through the older pages and update accordingly

Remember, content is the most valued item on the website. Create content that delivers value. Ultimately, they are the ones who will be engaging

Bots have no significance when compared to human engagement.

6. Optimizing Images

When you visit any major search engine such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others, you will find a separate tab for the image searches.

This shows images are not only an important visual component of the web page but also a vital asset that can be used for generating traffic.

Did you know?

Search engines can only read the content in the text form and cannot understand the images. Although, the SEO process and technology have evolved search engines still can’t interpret images.

And for this purpose, the search engines rely on an attribute called Alt text.

What is Image optimization

Image optimization is the process of compress the images without losing the quality and making them readable for search engines.

At times image optimization is overlooked which can affect the speed of the website and like I have mentioned before it is a waste of a traffic generating resource.

With the help of Image optimization, you can increase the chances of the images showing up on image searches and this can help boost the traffic.

Benefits of Image optimization

1. Increase in website load speed– Websites rely on visual media such as images to make it look appealing and increase engagement. These images are of high quality and have a large file size. If you use these images directly on your website, it can adversely affect the load time. Compressing the images will help increase the load times.
2. Magic of Alt text– Alt text is also known as alternate text. It is an HTML attribute that lets the search engine know what the image is about. In case the image fails to load it provides a small description in its place. Also, This text is used by screen readers for visually impaired to make your content more accessible to them.
3. Enhancing User experience– As we all know, no webpage is complete without visual media, in this case, its images. It improves the overall appearance of the site and increases engagement. Now, if you optimize the images, you will have a website that loads quickly and has relevant images that fit any screen size. And this all contributes to amazing user experience.

A website that offers great content that is visually pleasing has great user-experience and loads fast tends to get visitors regularly and improves the returning rate.

How to optimize images – Best Practices

• Image resizing– Most of the time the images you use on your website are either downloaded from websites that provide free stock images or are created using the online image creation website such as Canva or Picmonkey.

When you download the images, there is a chance that these images can be either small in dimension or can be too large. If the images are small then it may not be able to cover the desired area properly and if it is large then you may not be able to get the correct output in certain parts of your website.

To resize images you use tools like pic resize or upload them to either Canva or Picmonkey as these tools have pre-defined dimensions. All you need to do is select your desired dimension or you can also create a custom dimension. Upload the image and resize it.

• Compressing Images– Like we have discussed above high-quality images are very heavy. Due to the large size, these images take-up space and put a load on the server. What this does is increase the load time.

The solution to this problem is image compression. Be it you are using a stock image or you have created one make sure you compress the image before uploading.

If you are thinking, compressing will impact the quality of the image by making it pixelated or distorted.

I understand your concerns are absolutely correct. But to compress images there are tools available that will not affect the image at all. Here are the tools we recommend

1. TinyPng
2. WP Smush
3. ShortPixel

• Adding Alt text– As we have previously discussed, Alt text is also known as Alternate text and it as an HTML attribute that gives context to the image. When it fails to load, the text displayed instead will be the Alt text. It is used by screen readers to read out text for the visually impaired. Also, it helps the search engines know what the image is about and index it.

Here is the syntax

<img src="example.jpg" alt="alt-text" />

As Alt-text is a small description of the image, try to make it as close as possible to describe the image. Make sure it is not misleading.

How to add Alt text to images in WordPress

Adding Alt text to images is pretty simple if you are uploading a new image after the upload is complete, on the right you will see a box that says Alt text. All you need to do is add a small description and click insert into post. It will add the image to the post or page and Alt text to image.

Now, if you want to add alt text to an existing image, what you need to do is go Media >> Select the image >> it will open in a pop-up box and on the right, you will see a box that says Alternative text or Alt text. Add the text and it will automatically save it.

And that’s it you have successfully added alt text to the images on your website.

Using these tips will not only improve the rankings but the optimized images will be easily indexed in the image searches

7. URL Optimization

Creating an SEO friendly URL can get you an edge over your competition in rankings. An optimized URL tells the people and the search engines about the content of the page.

Consider it as a very brief description.

Here is how an SEO friendly URL looks like

https://example.com/your-keyword

In the above example, you can easily see and gather from the structure what the page is all about.

Benefits of URL Optimization

1. It improves the user experience by giving a hint to the people and search engines about the web page
2. Optimized links can be shared anywhere and these URLs are human-readable and can give you an idea of what to expect after clicking the link.
3. It can act as a ranking factor. When you add a relevant keyword to the URL structure it can improve its visibility on search engines.

Best practices for Optimizing URL structure

1. Keep the URL’s short, simple and easy to understand so that both humans and search engines can easily understand.
2. Use hyphens instead of underscore, spaces and other special characters as it increases the readability and certain special characters serve different purposes in a URL.
3. It is recommended to use lower case letters only.
4. Include your focus keyword in the URL but do not add too many keywords. Also, do not make the URL too long.

Final Thoughts

SEO is all about getting the basics right and creating a strong foundation to work on.

As you can see in this on-page optimization checklist we have only discussed factors that are related to the website structure and how to optimize them to create the best user-experience keeping in mind the guidelines.

A user-centric approach should be followed from the beginning and it doesn’t matter if it is a new page or post you are creating or its a completely new website.

I hope this article will help you optimize your site. Do let us know in the comment section

• According to you what on-page factors are a must to work on
• If you are new optimize these factors and share the results

You may like to read next

• Quick SEO tips to boost your Rankings
• How to create a Pinterest Business profile

Before you leave don’t forget to share this article with your friends on social media and Subscribe to our newsletter and receive tips delivered straight to your inbox.

The post The Ultimate On-Page SEO Cheat Sheet- Best Optimization Practices appeared first on GeekyPlug.

Whenever we discuss anything related to SEO, a phrase you will often hear is “SEO Friendly”.

In this article, we will be discussing some search preference settings for Blogger that will make your blog SEO friendly. These settings were not available for use before March 2012.

Earlier when Blogspot compared to WordPress, WordPress came out on top every time. But with the introduction of these settings, Google has done a great job in narrowing the gap between the two.

As we all know Blogspot or Blogger is one of the most popular and easy to use, free platform by Google. Also, certain factors that impact the performance of the blog such as page speed, image compression, and cache are taken care of by the platform itself with a big plus.

But still, there are certain elements that you need to configure manually to make your blog more optimized or SEO friendly.

Some of these settings will dictate which parts of your blog will be indexed in the search engine. So follow these steps carefully.

Before we begin this tutorial, in the previous article we discussed some basic SEO elements such as

1. Keyword Research
2. Content Planning
3. Title Optimization
4. Organizing posts
5. Image Optimization
6. URL Optimization
7. Fighting against spam

In case you have already configured the search preference settings, I highly recommend reading this article on Basic Blogspot SEO

Advanced SEO Settings in Blogger

Let’s start with the guide

Login to your Blogspot dashboard and go to Settings >> Search Preferences

Meta Tags

Under the meta tags, you will find the description which is by default set to disable. This description is a summary of your blog that will be displayed on the search engine results page.

Try to be as descriptive as possible, because of this description the users will know what your blog is about. Also, it will help boost the CTR which impacts the rankings. Here is what a meta description looks like on SERPs

Before we go ahead and enable this setting I would like to let you know, when you enable this you will also be able to add a description to your pages and posts which otherwise you cannot.

To enable the description, click Edit. It will ask if you want to enable search description. Select yes.

When you select yes, a box will appear where you can add a search description for your blog.

The length of the meta description is 150 characters max and after you have entered the description, the last thing you need to do is save the changes.

Adding Meta Description to Posts and Pages in Blogger

As mentioned above when you enable meta description in search preference, it allows you to meta description to your posts and pages as well.

To add a meta description to any post or page. Go to Posts or Pages and click Edit. It will take you to the editor and on the right, you will a new option that says Search Description.

Click it and it will show you the place where you can enter the description. Click done once you are finished adding and then press update to save the changes you have made.

Points to remember

1. The description of your blog is the prime advertisement spot on the SERPs. Keep the user intent in mind while writing one.
2. You can add keywords, but stay away from using too many as it will look spammed.
3. Do not use a single description on multiple pages. Search engines will not display such descriptions.

Custom Page Not Found

As the name suggests, using this setting will allow you to create a custom HTML message that will be displayed on the 404 error page instead of a generic message.

What is 404 error

A 404 error occurs when a webpage is not found. This can happen in two conditions

1. Either the link is broken or in other words, the page has been moved.
2. The URL is mistyped

Above is a screenshot of a 404 page and it clearly conveys the message “the page you are looking for does not exist”.

How can you create a custom 404 page on Blogspot

Under the section “Errors and Redirections” in the search preferences, you will the setting for Custom page not found. By default, it says not set.

Click edit and it will show you a box where you can add the HTML code.

Once you have entered the code the last thing you need to do is save the changes you have made. For the demonstration purpose, we created a custom HTML message. Below is the screenshot.

This is a very simple 404 message, you can add images and also link your social media accounts. It can act as a CTA. All I want to say here is be as creative as you want with your custom message possibilities are endless.

Custom Redirect

Custom redirect is a very important setting when you want to redirect a broken page from your site to a relevant working page.

For example, you had a page on your blog with the URL example.com/broken-link and due to some reason, the page was removed. What this means is the link is now broken. Anyone visiting that page will end up landing on a 404 page.

And you don’t want that. You want those visitors to land on a relevant page instead. And that page is example.com/new-link and the feature you need for this redirection is Custom Redirect.

How to set custom redirects in Blogger

This feature is available in the search preference setting under the heading Errors and Redirections.

To set custom redirects all you need to do is click Edit and enter the broken link or deleted URL in “From” and the new in ” To”.

And the last thing you need to do is click Save Changes

Custom Robots.txt

To understand and use this setting, the first thing you need to do is understand

What is Robots.txt

Robots.txt is a text file that is used by websites to instruct search engines crawlers or bots which parts of the website should not be indexed or processed.

With Blogger or Blogspot, the platform takes care of creating the robots.txt file for you and using Custom Robots.txt setting you can make changes to it.

To check for robots.txt, all you need to do is type the below-mentioned URL in the address bar of the browser and replace “example” with your domain name.

https://example.com/robots.txt

And here is how the robots.txt file looks like

With that said, there are certain parts of your website that you don’t want search engine bots to crawl such as categories, archives, labels, search pages, thank you pages, pages with duplicate content and more and you can do it via this file.

How to enable custom Robots.txt in Blogspot

You will find Custom Robots.txt setting under the section “Crawlers and Indexing”. All you need to do is click Edit and it will ask you if you want to “enable custom robots.txt”

If you want to create a custom robots.txt file select Yes and it will show a box where you can enter the robots.txt code and once done click Save Changes.

Note– As you can see in the screenshot above, there is a warning by the platform to use this setting carefully. I would also like to ask you to use this setting only if you are comfortable with the Robots directives or else a small mistake can cause the deindexing of important parts of your website.

Now, if you are thinking about block archives, search and other similar pages, let me tell you you can easily block these using Custom robots header tags and we are going to discuss it next.

Custom Robots Header Tags

Custom robots header tags are meta tags that follow a page specific approach and instruct the search engines on how to crawl and index individual pages.

Here is a list of all directives

To set custom robots header tags, you need to go to search preference and under the heading “Crawlers and Indexing” you will find custom robots header tags.

Click the Edit button and it will ask if you want to enable it.

Select yes and it will show a form where you can select and apply robots header tags to pages such as

1. Home
2. Archive and Search
3. Default post and page

We went ahead and completed the settings and you can use the same settings for your blog.

After completing the settings, the last thing you need to do is save changes.

Like, I mentioned before these tags work at the individual page level. When you configure these, you can also set these tags while writing new posts or on existing posts as well.

And that’s it you have successfully configured your search preference settings. But there are still 2 more points that we will be discussing in this article.

Enabling HTTPS

One of the very first thing people look for on a website is security. And a website is secured using an SSL certificate. Before you start thinking from where can you get one for your blog.

Let me tell you one of the best things about the Blogger platform is that you can secure your blog with a single click. This feature is not limited to blogs with Blogspot sub-domain. This means if you are using a custom domain name on your Blogger blog you can also use this feature.

How to enable HTTPS in Blogger

To enable HTTPS in Blogger navigate to Settings >> Basic >> HTTPS

Under the heading HTTPS, you will see the setting for HTTPS redirect and right in front of it is a dropdown. Select yes

As you can see in the screenshot above if the HTTPS redirect is activated all the visitors will be served pages on an encrypted connection. Else there will be 2 accessible versions of your website, visitors landing on HTTP will be served over an unencrypted connection and those landing on HTTPS will be served over a secured connection.

Also, we have written a detailed guide on this that you may like to read- How to enable HTTPS on Blogspot blog

Remember Google prefers HTTPS over HTTP and it is a ranking signal.

NoFollow Link

Nofollow links get its name from the Nofollow value that is assigned to the HTML attribute “rel”. As the name suggests, Nofollow tells the search engines to not follow the specific link or the page it is applied to. This means the bots will ignore this link and will also pass no value.

Which outbound links should be NoFollow

1. Any links intended for the purpose of the advertisement. Be it affiliate links or sponsored content, it needs to be NoFollow.
2. Spam is a huge problem. Often you will notice if your website allows commenting without moderation, you will find spam links in the comment section. Using NoFollow will allow your blog to avoid passing credit to bad sites. Filtering spam in WordPress is easy as you can use plugins such as Akismet anti-spam and in Blogspot, you need to activate the comment moderation.
3. Similarly, if your site allows posting of user-generated content without moderation, NoFollow will again help you not crediting the spam sites and staying away from penalty.

With that said, to add NoFollow to a link is a very easy task. All you need to do is when you can linking to a source in the editor select “Add rel=nofollow” attribute. And press ok to save the changes

Also, you may have noticed right above the “rel nofollow” attribute, there is another option that says open links in a new tab.

When you select this option it will open links in a new tab. I highly recommend using this option when linking to third-party sources.

Using this feature will also improve the dwell time or bounce rate as the person clicking on the link will stay on your page instead of the link opening in the same tab wherein they have to leave your site.

Final Words

When we talk about SEO and increasing the online reach, a very important role in this is played by your domain name. By using these settings your blog will definitely be more SEO friendly, but a brand is incomplete without a personalized domain name.

If you are using a sub-domain, I will highly recommend you move to a custom domain name as it looks more professional, trustworthy and is more preferred by search engines than a sub-domain.

Recommended read– Benefits of custom domain name

If you are looking to buy, we recommend buying from Namecheap or Godaddy

Before you leave, I would again like to stress on carefully using the custom robots.txt and custom robots header tags settings. These settings are very powerful and it is important to understand the directives before putting them to use.

You may like to read next –

• On-Page SEO Cheat Sheet
• Getting started with Pinterest for Business

I hope you find this article and use these settings to make your blog more SEO friendly. If you have any queries feel free to contact us via the comment section and also don’t forget to share this tutorial with your friends on Social Media.

To stay up to date with our content follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates delivered straight to your inbox.

The post Advanced SEO Blogspot – Search Preference Settings appeared first on GeekyPlug.

One of the very first decisions you have to take before starting a blog or a website is “Which hosting company should you go for?”

And it is one of the most crucial ones because you don’t want to start on the wrong foot and end up with a provider that offers no speed, has horrible customer support and getting a refund is even harder.

When I was thinking about blogging, I faced a similar situation and most of the time my mind was preoccupied with questions related to web hosting that I needed answers to.

I can understand if you are in a similar position because once the site is up and running you cannot afford to compromise on the uptime and the performance. Having an unreliable hosting service can impact the relationship that you are trying to build with the visitors.

And you don’t want that.

Now that you are here, the chances are Bluehost is on your watch list of hosting companies and you are looking for some honest feedback and review to make a final decision. That is what you will get.

This article is not a fluff piece and I will be sharing my honest opinion and personal experience on the service.

Bluehost Shared Hosting Review

About Bluehost

Bluehost is one of the oldest and biggest brand names in the web hosting industry. The idea of Bluehost was first conceived in 1996 and was officially launched on December 5th, 2003.

When it comes to shared hosting for WordPress, Bluehost is a recommended hosting provider by WordPress and powers over 2 million websites. Considering the number of companies in the market and the level of competition, it is a huge feat.

Bluehost has been in partnership with WordPress for over 10 years and has a staff of over 750 employees that help provide round the clock support to their customers.

Also, they have a dedicated engineering team for WordPress core development. Their commitment to open source is What helps them design affordable, high performance and secure web hosting solutions.

Bluehost Pros and Cons

Bluehost first started as a shared hosting web hosting company. With time and steady growth diversified into offering various other services such as domains, VPS hosting, Managed WordPress hosting and much more.

With that said, all hosting companies have their own set of pros and cons and so does Bluehost. It is you who has to identify which company and the plan will best fit your requirements and budget so that you get the most value.

Bluehost Pros

1. Very Affordable

When I started my search for web hosting companies, the first thing that caught my attention was their price point which is one of the cheapest in the industry.

The shared hosting plan starts at 3.95$/month which is a nearly 51% discount. If you are just starting, this is an amazing offer from a well-established hosting company.

Most hosting companies these days launch introductory offers, that is the discount is only applicable to the first term. This an introductory offer as well and you can only avail it on the first term.

To make the most out of it you should opt for 2-3 years.

2. Ease of Use

Bluehost has a very easy to use and WordPress centric cPanel. If you are someone who is just starting, let me tell you once you sign up with Bluehost, launching a website is one-click away. They have a very beginner-friendly interface that makes sure technical elements are easy to execute.

There are two ways to install WordPress

1. You can go through the WordPress installation process when you are setting up your account.
2. The other way is you can use the one-click install feature.

As you can see in the screenshot above when you are in your Bluehost dashboard, you can simply click Create Site button and in the next screen enter the name of your site, tagline and the URL that you want to use for the website.

And let the one-click install feature do the rest of the work for you.

In addition to this, every WordPress site on Bluehost benefit from the latest security and performance features such as

1. Free SSL
2. PHP 7
3. WP Staging
4. SSD hardware
5. NGINX + Cache
6. Free CDN
7. HTTP/2

Once everything is set up the next thing is site management. Managing multiple websites can be a challenging task even for the more experienced WordPress users. But the new site management dashboard makes the task super easy. Also, you can still access the Cpanel from the dashboard.

3. Incredible Uptime

One of the key factors that define a reliable web hosting company is the uptime. Think about a scenario where you have an online business and the website is frequently down and the consequences are you are losing trust, reputation, and revenue.

And you don’t want that. You want a company that should match the industry standard. In my year of experience with Bluehost, my site has faced a downtime of 4-5 minutes and the reason for the crash was a plugin.

With that said Bluehost is an EIG owned brand and this lowers the expectation.

However, speaking from personal experience,  I haven’t faced a problem when it comes to uptime.

4. Speed

“Is it going to be fast enough? ” One of the first few things that come to mind when you think or talk about web hosting.

When I was buying hosting, this question was haunting me until I made the purchase and the website was completely set up. For boosting website speed, Bluehost offers built-in caching and Sitelock CDN.

Below is the page speed result for GeekyPlug and I m pretty satisfied with the outcome. The site loads in under 2 seconds which is great.

Also, I would like to add Bluehost shared hosting is not the fastest on the block but is sufficient for beginners. I personally use WP Rocket cache plugin and Cloudflare CDN for helping me with the page speed and you can use them too and notice the difference.

If you are thinking why I m not using the built-in caching the answer is simple, buy any shared hosting plan in the market and will soon notice that built-in caching is not enough. You need a specialized cache plugin to help you with the speed.

And as you grow, you can upgrade to VPS or managed hosting as per your requirement and you will have more resources allocated to your site.

5. Security

“Free SSL certificate included”. This is amongst the first few lines you see when you visit Bluehost.com and they advertise this almost everywhere. This is 100% correct, Bluehost provides free SSL with every plan.

With a single click, you can enable Bluehost SSL certificate

When it comes to security, Bluehost is one of the best in the market and is one of the very few web hosting companies that allow you to access SSH (Secure Shell). This feature allows you to access configuration files securely.

With Bluehost, you get spam protection with the help of Spam Experts, Apache Spam Assasin, and Spam hammer. These tools help protect your email accounts and allow you to easily set filters.

6. Money-back Guarantee

Bluehost has a very clear cut money back policy which is mentioned on their homepage.

And it states “If you buy hosting from Bluehost and cancel within 30 days you will get a full refund. However, if you have claimed a free domain, Bluehost will deduct a non-refundable domain fee of $15.99/-.”

This price covers the cost of the domain name and you will retain the ownership of the domain until the end of registration unless you renew it. After 60 days, you can transfer it to other registrars.

It also clearly states Bluehost does not offer any refunds for cancellation after 30 days.

With that said, if you are still thinking about the domain fee, then let me tell you hosting and domain name are 2 separate products and as mentioned before, it is the introductory offer in which Bluehost is providing Free domain name for a year with the hosting of your choice.

It is up to you if you claim it or not. In case you don’t and want to cancel, there will be a full refund. There are no hidden charges.

7. Flexibility and Scalable

As mentioned before Bluehost powers more than 2 million websites and that makes it one of the largest hosting companies. They offer a wide variety of plans and services depending on your needs and budget that allow you to scale up with growth.

Once you have outgrown your initial plan and are looking for an upgrade or a completely different plan you can do it easily.

8. Proven track record

Bluehost has been in the market for about 15 years now and has grown significantly from its start. In a competitive market like web hosting, it is difficult to survive this many years if you are not on point with your service.

This means they are doing something right.

The next big thing is their association with WordPress as a recommended hosting provider. For over 10 years, Bluehost has maintained that spot which is commendable.

Some of you may think Bluehost sponsors a lot of WordPress related events and that may be the reason behind this. But let me tell you the kind of influence WordPress has on the community, it is next to impossible that they will recommend a mediocre service provider.

9. Customer Support and knowledge base

In all honesty, Bluehost has been in some negative light due to customer support. But they have worked on improving it.

Personally speaking, I haven’t faced many difficulties with their customer support and I rather found them helpful. The problems were resolved quickly and the waiting time was never more than 4-5 minutes. The support team was on point in providing the solution.

Bluehost provides 24 x 7 x 365 days of customer support through various channels such as live chat, telephonic and email.

Also, there is a huge library of articles on the site that can answer most of the questions quickly without having to contact the support team.

10. Freebies

When you sign up with Bluehost you get some freebies as a part of your plan. Here are a few things you get

1. Free SSL certificate
2. A free domain name for a year
3. Marketing credits.

11. Affiliate Program

Bluehost has one of the best and high paying affiliate programs. Anyone can join the affiliate program and there are no prerequisites. It is the best fit for anyone who is just starting and wants to monetize.

They pay 65$ for each qualified signup and you can earn up to 120$ per sale. Bluehost has paid over 5 million in commissions last year alone.

Bluehost Cons

1. Pricing and Renewal

Like most hosting companies, when you buy hosting for 12 or 24 months you cannot avail the full discount. You can only enjoy the full discount when you purchase hosting for 36 months.

But let me tell you this is not a huge drawback, every hosting company that offers such discounts have similar policies with regards to this.

Also, if you are thinking about the long term, this price is a steal.

When we talk about renewals, you will experience a price jump. The prices that you initially buy at are introductory offers and it is mentioned on the Bluehost website as well.

Web hosting space is very competitive, every company offers initial discounts to drive sales and renewals are higher. This isn’t something which is uncommon, but you must know everything before making the purchase.

2. Unlimited hosting is not really unlimited

Often you will notice hosting companies advertising about their unlimited shared hosting plans, but when in reality it is not. Bluehost also has plans that offer unlimited hosting.

If you are thinking, why are they using the word “Unlimited”.

The word unlimited is used because there is no fixed cap on the amount of resource consumption. This means there is no defined limit on the amount of resources/ disk space you can use.

If you are new to the online business world, these plans are sufficient for you. In my first year of blogging, I have only used 794.20 MB of total space.

Now, when your site starts to scale and use resources beyond a certain limit, then you will face issues such as lack in site speed and performance. And to solve this problem you will have to upgrade.

3. Bluehost Backup Policy

First things first, Bluehost does not offer redundant or mirrored backups. However, they do offer backups as a courtesy.

This means backup is not guaranteed. You are required to run periodic backups and store them offsite on your local system.

Another thing about Bluehost backups is, they are kept for 30 days only. Backups older than 30 days are overwritten by a newer backup.

If you are looking for a solution to this problem, Bluehost offers a premium addon “Site Backup Pro” that helps create a regular backup of your website.

But we tackle this problem differently, we use a WordPress plugin called UpdraftPlus. This plugin helps take the backup of our site daily and makes the backup/restore task so much easier.

4. No Windows Hosting

Bluehost only provides Linux based web hosting. This means if you are someone looking for windows hosting, it is a problem.

However, this is not a huge issue but worth mentioning. When it comes to web hosting Linux is the most used operating system.

5. Sitelock CDN

You will not find this point anywhere. This is a purely personal experience.

Earlier Bluehost was offering Cloudflare integration with the hosting plans. At the time I purchased and still today they are no longer proving Cloudflare CDN and have moved to Sitelock CDN.

After I was done setting up the account and the website, I went ahead and activated the free SSL and the next thing on the agenda was implementing the Sitelock CDN.

But the problem I was facing was when I activated the CDN, the free SSL would stop working. In the beginning, I was confused by all this and later contacted the customer service where the support representative told me “Free SSL will not work with Sitelock CDN and the free Sitelock plan does not provide SSL”.

To be honest, it did improve the speed, but for me, security is also on the priority list.

The only thing I didn’t like about all this was why offer a service that conflicts with the other.

With that said, I was able to find a workaround for this problem which was using Cloudflare CDN which is free and offers an SSL certificate and for the caching purpose using WP Rocket. I highly recommend using both of these.

6. No free site migration

Yes, you heard it correctly, they do not offer free site migration. Most hosting companies provide this service for free.

If you are looking to take help from Bluehost in the migration process, you will have to pay $149.99 which is quite expensive.

In this price, you can migrate up to 5 websites and 20 email accounts. The process is completely handled by experts and it will be an uninterrupted transition.

Bluehost Hosting Plans and Features

Bluehost hosting offers a wide variety of plans depending on your requirements and budget. They offer Shared, VPS, Managed, Cloud and Dedicated hosting solutions.

Here we will be briefly covering each of these plans and features.

1. Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is one of the most popular products of Bluehost. In this hosting plan, your website shares server resources with other websites.

If you are creating a new website and are not expecting a lot of traffic in the beginning, this is the best option for you. Shared hosting has 3 plans.

The Basic plan is priced at 3.95$/ mo, Plus at 5.85$/ mo, Choice plus at 5.95$/ mo and Pro at 13.95$/mo. Every plan includes a free domain name for 1 year, a free SSL certificate and 30 days money-back guarantee.

2. VPS Hosting

VPS hosting is an upgrade from shared hosting. VPS stands for Virtual private server. It uses virtualization technology to mimic the dedicated hosting environment.

In simple words, VPS is a server within a server. You will be sharing the space with the other users but the resources are not shared.

The next question is

When will you need VPS hosting?

If you are just starting, the shared hosting plans are enough for you. But once you start receiving a decent amount of traffic and you notice the website starting to slow down, often you are facing downtime and security related issues, then you must upgrade.

Bluehost currently offers 3 VPS hosting plans

All plans include

1. Free domain name for a year
2. 30 Days money back guarantee
3. 24/7 Support

3. WordPress Managed hosting (Bluehost WP Pro)

WP Pro is a fully managed hosting environment that lets you focus on what you do best and building websites, creating content and running your online business. And the rest of the technical aspects are managed by the host which in this case is Bluehost.

It is best for people who either do not have much time or are not very comfortable with the technical aspects of running the website.

There are current 3 plans offered by Bluehost

All plans include

4. Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is the one in which you have a dedicated server for your server. In other words, you are renting a complete server and you have all the resources to yourself and you don’t have to share anything.

This hosting is required by someone that owns a very large website with a high amount of traffic and needs a very high level of security.

Bluehost offers 3 dedicated hosting plans namely

Other Features included in plan

Bluehost Shared Hosting Plans

When it comes to shared hosting Bluehost has 4 plans

1. Basic

This is the entry level plan from Bluehost and is the cheapest. This plan is priced at 3.95$ for the first term and if best for beginners

Features of Bluehost Basic Shared hosting plan

1. You can use it for single website only.
2. 50 GB SSD storage
3. Free SSL certificate
4. 1 Free domain name for a year
5. 5 Parked domains
6. 25 subdomains
7. Unlimited Bandwidth

2. Plus

This is the most popular plan and I m using it as well. Plus plan is priced at $5.85/mo for the first term.

Features of Bluehost Plus plan

1. You can host unlimited websites
2. Unlimited SSD storage and Bandwidth
3. Free SSL certificate
4. Unlimited domains
5. Unlimited Parked domains
6. Unlimited subdomains
7. Spam Experts

3. Choice Plus

The next plan in the Bluehost shared hosting environment is the Choice plus which is priced at $5.95/mo for the first term. Don’t be confused between the Plus and Choice Plus plans as the initial pricing is almost the same but the features are different.

Features of Bluehost Choice Plus plan

4. Pro Plan

The last plan in the Bluehost shared hosting category is the Pro plan and the price is $13.95/mo. Again, do not confuse this with WP Pro as WP Pro is the managed hosting solutions by Bluehost and have different price and features.

Features of Bluehost Pro plan

If you are just starting your blog or website pick any of these based on your requirements and later upgrade when required.

Is Bluehost Shared Hosting the Right Choice for Beginners

The simple answer yes. Like we have discussed above, Bluehost has been in the market for over 15 years and on the WordPress recommended list for over 10 years. This means they are certainly doing something right.

The second thing is I have been using Bluehost hosting myself and the experience has been good so far and that means I won’t be changing hosts anytime soon.

The next thing is the plans are available at pocket-friendly prices. Some of you may think if it’s cheap then it’s not that good. Then let me tell you every hosting company has its pros and cons. If you are facing problems Bluehost offers 24/7 expert customer support with every plan. If you are still not satisfied then you also have the 30 days money-back guarantee. But I don’t think so you will need that after signing up.

The last reason why I recommend it Bluehost for beginners is that it has a very simple and beginner-friendly interface/ dashboard and the website can be set up in no time.

With that said, I think I have given you enough reasons to sign up with Bluehost.

I hope you find this article helpful. If you have any questions related to this feel free to contact us via the comment section. Also, don’t forget to share this review with your friends on social media to stay up to date with our content follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter.

The post Bluehost Review 2019 – Is It Reliable For Shared Hosting (Pros and Cons) appeared first on GeekyPlug.

When we talk about reliable sources that drive traffic to your blog, Pinterest is one of the front runners.

If you are still not using the platform, I will strongly suggest you start today and within and within a few months, you will see the results.

A few days back while browsing the Pinterest, I noticed the featured image of the blog was shared rather than the dedicated pin. It is important to keep in mind we create dedicated pins for each of our articles.

On carefully looking into this made me realize, some of the people may not be using the Pinterest browser extension to pin and when they share using the social share buttons, it pins the featured image.

To fix this problem we found a quick solution which is adding Pinterest hover button to images. Before we move further, this problem could have been solved using a social share plugin and it would have given us more functionalities such as hiding pins in blog posts and adding custom descriptions and titles.

However, we found some of them weren’t correctly working with the layout and so we decided to go with this option.

Also, we think by adding this button not only will it give the people to pin other images but also will encourage them to share more on Pinterest because whenever the mouse pointer will hover over the image a prominent Pinterest logo or Save button will appear.

Moving ahead,

This task can be accomplished in 2 ways

1. Manually
2. Using plugins

In this article, we will be discussing both the ways of doing it for WordPress and Blogspot. Now, if you are WordPress.com user and looking for a way to implement this then let me tell you if you are using the free plan you cannot edit the code or install plugins to add this functionality to your blog. (WordPress.com vs WordPress.org)

How to Add hovering Pinterest Save button on images

Before we move further, it is important to know while we were implementing this, we came across an official plugin by Pinterest that used to help add this feature to your website.

Unfortunately, the plugin was not available for download and was close on Feb 15th, 2019.

Moral of the story- There are currently no official plugins by Pinterest that help with this. However, other plugins can help you with this and we will be discussing them later in this article.

Creating Pinterest Save Button

Whenever we use the word manually some of you may think the process may be a little complicated and not for you. As a result of this, you may directly want to jump to the part where we are implementing using the plugin.

But things are different this time and the process is simple and very easy to execute. Also, if you just want to add this feature I highly recommend using this method rather than using plugins.

To add the Pinterest button to images, the first thing you need to do is visit the Pinterest widget builder and you will see a tool just like the screenshot below

There are 3 types of Save button you can create using this tool

1. One Image– This button will let the people share only a particular image from the page that you choose. Yes, you heard it correctly. You need to provide the link of the image that you want to be pinned.
2. Any Image– The next option you get is “Any Image”. Using this option you will be able to create a button that will give the people the option to choose and share from various images on your post or page.
3. Image Hover– The last option you get is to create the hover button. With this option, you will be able to add a button on images that will only be visible when someone takes the mouse pointer on them. It can be a Pinterest logo or a rectangle Save button depending on what type of button you have implemented.

Moving forward,

When you select the “Image hover”, you get 2 option below it

1. Round
2. Large

If you want a round Pinterest button on your images, pick round and to increase the size select “Large”.

What if you don’t want a round button. By default, Pinterest provides you with the rectangle Pinterest Save Button. Again to increase the size you have to select “Large”. Here’s how it looks

Also, when you go for the Save button rather than the Pinterest logo, you can select the language as well. If you have a blog in a language other than English. This is a great option for you.

How to Add Pinterest’s hover Save button to Images in WordPress

Adding Pinterest Save button manually on images

Once you are done making all the choices, you will get a code that you need to add to the footer of the website. You will find this code below the preview image.

Now, in the other tab of the browser login to your WordPress dashboard. If you are comfortable adding it to the footer of your website, the process is very straight forward else you can do it via the Insert Header Footer plugin which is explained after this part.

If you are comfortable in adding the code navigate to Appearance >> Theme Editor

It will take you to a new screen within the WordPress dashboard and on the right, you can see the list of all your theme files. Search for the file with the name Theme footer or footer.php

When you find the file click it and scroll down till you find the </body>  tag. Now paste the code right above it. Here is how it should look like.

The last thing you need to do is click Update File to save the changes and clear cache in case the changes are not reflected.

Using Insert headers and footers plugin

Like I mentioned for the people who are not comfortable adding code directly to the website can use Insert headers and footers plugin.

This is a free plugin and you can download it via this link. This plugin is also helpful if you want to add the search console verification code, analytics code or Pinterest site verification code.

Once you have downloaded and installed the plugin, you will find a new option in Settings “Insert Headers and Footers”. Click it and it will take you to the plugin settings where you will see 2 empty boxes labeled as

1. Scripts in header
2. Scripts in footer

Add the Pinterest Save button code in the Scripts in Footer box

The next thing you need to do is click Save to save the changes you have made and that’s it.

You have successfully implemented the Pinterest Save button on images.

After you are done implementing the Pinterest Pin it button on the images. The next question that comes to mind is

How to tell Pinterest not to save an Image

This thing again is pretty easy to execute and all you need to do is go to a page or a post and click Edit. It will take you to the WordPress editor.

If you are a  Gutenberg  user, click the three dots on the top right and it will show a menu and select Code editor. Once you are in the code editor you need to find the image. To find the image if you remember the name of the image, you can perform a search using it.

Remember images are always wrapped in  <img>  tag. In case you do not remember the name of the image you can search for  <img  instead.

When you find the image, the next thing you need to do is add  data-pin-nopin=”true”  at the very end. Here is what it looks like after adding the tag.

The final and the most important step in the process is saving the changes you have made.

If you are using the   Classic editor  when you enter the WordPress editor, you will find 2 options visual and text.

You need to select text and search for the image code as suggested above and here’s how the code looks like

Once you find the all you need to do is add  data-pin-nopin=”true”  at the very end and click Update to save the changes.

How to add hovering Pinterest Save button using plugins

If you want to add the Pinterest Hover Button using a plugin, the process is very simple and straight forward. While writing this article we did a search for free plugins that will help you implement this functionality and we found some of these plugins were not updated for a long time and are not compatible with the current version of WordPress.

We do not recommend using any such plugins as using them can be a threat to your website security.

For this purpose, you can use any of these 3 plugins (1 premium + 2 free) depending on what your needs are

1. Tasty Pins
2. Shareaholic
3. Pin it Button on Image hover

Why we recommend Tasty Pins for implementing this?

1. This plugin will help optimize your Pins for Pinterest. You can easily set a description of your pins. It lets you include hashtags, keywords and whatever is on your mind.
2. If you create multiple pins for your posts then you can easily hide them using this plugin. This means additional pins won’t be visible on the page, but when the visitors click the share button they will be able to see all the pins and share whichever pin they like.
3. Tasty Pins also has the feature where it forces the users to Pin the hidden image first rather than the visible one and this can be activated by just a click of a button.
4. With the help of this plugin, you can also add the Pinterest hover button to all your images and it gives to the power to disable pinning of certain images
5. This plugin is super fast and lightweight and you get the help of technical support if you are facing problems

All in all WP tasty pins is a complete package that allows you to optimize your pins to increase visibility and also you can add additional features to boost engagement on your website.

Using Shareaholic

Shareaholic is a social media plugin that you can download and use for free. It also gives you the functionality of adding hovering share buttons on images.

Before we begin, if you are already using a social media plugin and are satisfied and do not want to use Shareaholic but looking for a free plugin for the Pinterest hover button, scroll down a little we have another free plugin you can use for this purpose.

Moving forward

Download Shareaholic using this link and install it. You can follow our step by step guide on How to install a WordPress plugin.

The next thing you need to do is, go to the plugin settings and search for the option “Share buttons for images” and enable it.

The best thing about this plugin is it lets you add other social media buttons to your images.

To add other social media buttons, click Settings and it will take you to a new screen where you can change the design settings and just below that is the option to select Services. And on the right, you can see the preview.

In the final step, you need to click Save Changes to update the changes you have made. And that’s it you have successfully implemented Social share buttons on images using Shareaholic.

Using Pin it Button on Image hover and post 

This is another free plugin that you can use to add the Pinterest Save button on images. This plugin will only allow you to add hovering Pinterest button on images.

You can download the plugin using this link and install it. Once you are done installing, go to the plugin settings and it will take you to a new screen where you can change the “Pin It” button settings.

This plugin gives you the functionality using which you can exclude pages and images from showing the Save button which is amazing.

When you are done with the settings click Save to save the changes you have made. Now visit any page on your website and see the changes.

Adding Pinterest Pin It button on Blogger

Blogger or Blogspot is a free and very popular blogging platform by Google. Adding Pinterest Save Button to images in Blogger is very similar to how it is done in WordPress manually.

The first step in the process is creating the save button which is done exactly the same way as explained earlier. You need to visit the Pinterest Save Button builder and create one for your Blogspot blog.

After you have created the button, the next thing you need to do is log in to your Blogspot dashboard and head over to Themes >> Edit HTML

It will take you to the code editor and you need to find the  </body>  tag. For this, you can you the search function that is Ctrl + F for Windows and Cmd + F for Mac’s.

Add the code you have generated using the widget builder just above it.

After adding the code, click Save Changes and visit any page on your blog to see if the changes are reflected.

Congrats. You have successfully implemented the Pinterest Save button to the images on your Blogspot blog.

How to exclude images from pinning on Pinterest

To exclude images from being pinned on Pinterest, visit any Page or Post and click Edit. It will take you to the Blogspot editor.

In the toolbar, at the very beginning, you will see 2 options namely Compose and HTML. You need to select HTML, it will take you to the code editor where you need to search for the image to be excluded.

To exclude images you need to add  data-pin-nopin=”true”  at the very end of the code. Here is a screenshot

After making the changes, click Update to save the changes.

And that’s all

Once you have implemented the Pinterest Save button or Pin It button, I m sure it will encourage the visitors to share your content more on Pinterest leading to a boost in traffic.

While we are on the topic of Pinterest and boosting traffic, I will suggest you apply for Pinterest Rich Pins after you are done adding the save button.

As you know, SEO helps in bringing traffic from search engines. To optimize your website for search engines make sure you read our On Page SEO cheat sheet.

With that said, I hope you find this tutorial helpful and are able to add the Save button. If you have any questions feel free to send them our way.

Also, don’t forget to share this article on social media and follow us there. Subscribe to our newsletter and receive the latest updates and amazing blogging deals in your inbox.

The post Pinterest Save Button- How to Add Pin It Hover Button to Images appeared first on GeekyPlug.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the two most awaited days of the year in which you can find the best offers, deals, and discounts on your favorite products.

If you are unfamiliar with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, let me tell you a little bit about it.

Black Friday is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day and it marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Cyber Monday was created to encourage people to shop online and it is on Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday.

If you are looking to buy some products, this is the best time to make the purchase. These deals are not limited to physical products.

And this means if you are looking to start an online business or currently own one and are looking to buy Premium tools, plugins, themes, web hosting and anything related you can get them at the best price during this time.

If you are on a strict budget and looking to buy some digital products, chances are very high that you will get the product at dirt cheap prices.

With that said, in this article, we will be sharing the Bluehost Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deal

If you do not want to go through the complete article and just want to know about the discount. Bluehost offers web hosting at  $2.65/month on Black Friday to Cyber Monday .

Bluehost Black Friday and Cyber Monday Discount

Why Get Bluehost Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deal

While we are currently discussing the deals and discounts, let me tell you Bluehost offers a massive discount on hosting and other products during this time.

You can buy web hosting for as low as $2.65/month (original price $7.99/month) and with that, you will get a Free domain name for a year and Free SSL certificate to secure your website.

Isn’t this deal amazing? Be sure to grab it before it expires

Now, let’s discuss some more benefits of buying hosting from Bluehost

Credibility

Bluehost powers over 2 million websites and has been in the industry for over 15 years. Also, Bluehost has been on the list of recommended hosting providers by WordPress.org and has maintained its position for over 10 years which is a huge feat in itself.

Free Domain name

As mentioned before Bluehost provides a free domain name for a year and this is a huge benefit for those who are on a budget. You don’t have to spend 8-10$ on getting a domain name for your site. When you buy any hosting plan from Bluehost it comes with a Free domain name.

Free SSL

With every Bluehost hosting plan, you get a free SSL certificate. Did you know, it is because of the SSL certificate you get a green padlock in the browser address bar.

This green padlock tells the visitor the website is completely secure and this helps in building trust which is priceless. Also, when your website is running over HTTPS, it acts as a positive ranking signal. This means you get a little edge over your competitors on SERPs.

Page Speed

Bluehost offers built-in caching and free CDN to boost the site speed. Below is the page speed result for GeekyPlug and you can see the website loads in under 2 seconds which is pretty fast.

Uptime

Uptime is one of the most important factors that help you decide whether or not to go with a hosting company. Consider a scenario where the website is frequently down. What this does is negatively impact your brand’s reputation, trust, and revenue. And no one wants that.

In my personal experience of using Bluehost, I  haven’t faced any problem  when it comes to uptime from their end.

Flexibility and Scalability

Bluehost initially started as a company that only offered shared web hosting. With steady growth over time, Bluehost has branched out and now provides quite a lot of options depending on your needs and budget.

The best thing about buying hosting from Bluehost is anytime you outgrow your current plan, you can always upgrade and transition to a bigger plan and the process is seamless.

Customer Support

Bluehost offers 24/7 expert customer support to all its users. You can contact them via live chat, phone or email and your problem will be resolved quickly.

Also, in addition to this Bluehost has a huge knowledge base where you can find a quick solution to your problems.

As a Bluehost customer, on several occasions, I have contacted customer support and found them really helpful and knowledgeable. The queries were resolved quickly which made the experience even better.

Bluehost Black Friday Sale- $2.65/mo + Free Domain and SSL

As previously discussed, Bluehost provides web hosting at $7.99/month, but with this deal, you can get hosting at $2.65/month which is nearly 66% off.

Also, with this offer, you will get a free domain name for a year (more savings) and a free SSL certificate.

The deal starts at Thanksgiving Day and will continue till Monday midnight. Any purchase made during this time will be heavily discounted and the best thing is you can grab this deal using our special link right now.

During the offer period, the company will let you buy hosting for 12 months, 24 months and 36 months duration. Keep in mind more the duration better the discount.

Bluehost hosting Black Friday deal includes

Bluehost Cyber Monday Offer- Hosting at $2.65 + Free Domain + SSL

If you have missed the Bluehost Black Friday Sale and are looking for the discounted price. We got you covered.

On Cyber Monday, you can still buy hosting at $2.65/month and the actual price is $7.99/month. With this offer, you will also get a free domain name and SSL certificate to secure your website.

This sale will only be available for 24 hours that means the sale starts on 2nd December at 12:00 am and ends at 11:59 PM

Don’t miss out this time

Do let us know what do you think about this years deal and share with us your purchase.

I hope you find this article helpful. If you have any questions regarding this deal feel free to contact us. Also, don’t forget to share this deal with your friends.

To receive regular updates from us and get amazing deals like this straight in your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media

The post Bluehost Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deal 2019 – [Verified 66%] Discount appeared first on GeekyPlug.

On September 10, 2019, Google made an official announcement regarding the evolution of “nofollow” and the introduction of two new link attributes that will help understand the nature of the links. These link attributes are

1. rel=”sponsored”
2. rel=”ugc”

This announcement was groundbreaking and took the SEO community by surprise. In this article, we will be discussing what are these new attributes, the reason behind this update, its impact on SEO and what do you need to do.

With that said, let’s dive into the details

History of nofollow

Google alongside Yahoo and MSN introduced the nofollow link attribute 15 years ago to fight against comment spam.

Back in the day to raise the rank of a website spammers used the tactic of comment spam where they used to submit linked comments. Here is an example of such comment.

Still today this practice is being followed and this step was taken to ensure the spammers get no benefit from public forums.

This announcement was released on Jan 2005 and it clearly stated

After this update rel=”nofollow” became one of the go-to ways or web standards to not associate your site with certain links and pass the ranking credit.

Platforms such as WordPress were quick to implement these changes and with the release of WordPress 1.5, nofollow was automatically assigned to user-submitted links.

When we talk about manipulating rankings, link schemes or paid links are also used to achieve it.

Google has clearly stated, using such links are considered as a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can lead to a penalty. This includes any manipulative links to your site or outgoing links from your site.

Below mentioned are some activities that can result in a link scheme penalty.

• A very common activity that is considered negative is link exchange. This includes both “I link to you and you link to me” and pages created solely for the purpose of cross-linking. Here is an email of a recent one of many requests we received.

• Automatic link building using programs or services.
• Misusing guest posts, article submission, forum discussions, and similar activities by abusing anchor texts.
• Buying and selling links to boost rankings. This includes providing links in exchange for products, services or money.

This type of link building is often seen in sponsored posts where bloggers/ creators are paid or compensated in products where they either write a blog post and include a link in it or have to update an existing post with the link.

In most cases, creators do not get the choice of whether they want to attribute the link nofollow or not. This is a strict violation of the rules and can negatively impact the rankings of your site.

Here is an example.

This leads us to 2 questions

1. Why am I telling you all this?
2. Is this related to what we are discussing here?

Let me answer these questions one by one

Everyone wants to rank higher on Google and as quickly as possible. The above-listed methods are  shortcuts to disasters and not the key to success .

The search is a continuously evolving process and it involves the process of machine learning. When you use such activities you do see a short term positive impact but the penalty is inevitable.

It is always recommended to grow naturally with time and you will be rewarded in the long term.

Also, while I was creating this post I thought this could be a good opportunity to once again make the creators aware of what is right.

As far as the sponsored content is concerned, before the launch of 2 new attributes, Google has asked the webmasters to add rel=”nofollow” to the sponsored or ad link (this includes affiliate link or any other monetary links)

This screenshot was taken before this document was updated and we will be discussing all the changes a little later in this post.

The search is based on links. The 2 most common benefits of links are improving the navigation or reach of your page and increasing the Pagerank.

But,

Did you know?

Links also help in letting the search engines know about the content and the nature of the page. If you are wondering how this happens, let me explain it to you briefly

Frequently, while browsing the internet you may have seen web pages contain links that use anchor text. Here is an example.

What happens here is, when the bot/ crawler reach these anchored links it comes across 3 things

1. Anchor text
2. Attached link
3. Attribute used

If the anchor text is optimized like in the screenshot above, it defines the content of the linked page. The attribute tells whether you want to vouch or associate your website with the linked page.

Earlier there were 2 attributes

1. Dofollow
2. Nofollow

If you haven’t assigned any value to the rel attribute, it was by default set to dofollow. And to tell the search engines not to follow any links and block the PageRank you are required to add the value nofollow.

In most cases, the sponsored links or links that lead to pages of less value were marked as nofollow. But often while linking many webmasters also assigned the nofollow attribute to valuable links.

To better understand the nature of links, Google introduced the 2 new attributes and further evolved nofollow

Before we move forward it is important to understand what these 3 attributes are

rel=”nofollow”

Nofollow is the value that is assigned to the rel attribute when you do not want to vouch for a link or associate your site with it. It also tells the search engine not to pass the link credit for PageRank.

Before this update nofollow used to be a directive but now it is a hint. This means earlier if the bots came across this value, it was a strict instruction not to follow the link.

However, now the bots can ignore and crawl the link.

Syntax

<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">Nofollow syntax</a> 

rel=”sponsored”

As the name suggests, sponsored is the value that you will assign to the rel attribute when you are linking to the money-making links.

These links include affiliate links, sponsored links, advertisement or any other link that you are adding to the website and have a monetary/compensatory relationship with it.

Syntax

 <a href="https://example.com" rel="sponsored">Sponsored syntax</a> 

rel=”ugc”

UGC stands for User Generated Content. If your website accepts content and links from third party users, this value will be assigned to such links.

These links can be links in a forum discussion, blog comments, or any other similar types of links.

Syntax

 <a href="https://geekyplug.com" rel="ugc">UGC syntax</a> 

Comparison- Changes after the introduction of Sponsored and UGC

As mentioned above one of the major changes after the announcement was “nofollow” was no longer a strict instruction, it is now a hint.

This means earlier the bots used to ignore the links with nofollow attribute, but now these links can be crawled and the value can be ignored.

The next change is related to advertising and sponsored/monetary links

Before this update, Google has mentioned adding rel=”nofollow” attribute to all the sponsored links or in other words for the links you have been compensated for or otherwise to prevent the passing of PageRank.

After this change, Google has updated the link scheme document and has asked webmasters to add either rel=”nofollow” or any of the other granular attributes which in this case rel=”sponsored”.

Before

After

Most of the sites that allowed third-party contributions attributed the links as nofollow to avoid link scheme penalty.

As discussed before, nofollow was introduced to fight comment spam and PageRank manipulation. After this change, the third party links can also be marked as rel=”ugc” and this won’t change how the links are treated.

However, using these new attributes will help Google figure out the nature of the links.

Before

After

Impact on SEO

Before we start with this section, keep in mind the below listed 2 points and highlighted section of the screenshot that follows.

1. Google now considers nofollow a hint rather than a strong instruction.
2. To better understand the nature of links and how linking patterns work, the 2 new attributes have been introduced.

Here is the screenshot

Till now Google has always said, the links attributed to nofollow are ignored by the bots. This means the said links can’t be crawled/indexed and the rest of the information is also ignored.

However, in this release Google has mentioned, they will look at the words describing the links (anchor text), the attributes used and other signals to get a better understanding of the unnatural linking patterns.

With these new attributes, you still can tell Google that you don’t endorse a particular link. But keep in mind this instruction can be ignored by crawlers now.

When it comes to nofollow links, the opinion of the community has always been divided. A part of the community thinks Google has always been using nofollow as a signal or hint.

And this announcement somehow makes me think, there are chances Google has been using nofollow at times for ranking purposes.

The second thing that we need to discuss is the linking patterns. When we talk about linking patterns, it leads us to 3 questions

1. How you are linking to other websites?
2. How are the money-making links or sponsored links managed?
3. If you are running a website that accepts third-party content, how are the outbound links managed?

It is common for websites/blogs to link out to other related webpages or sources. If the webmaster does not want to associate the website with the link, the link is attributed with the nofollow which is what the webmaster guidelines have suggested.

Also, in the situation where the link is dofollow, you will not come across an exact match keyword as anchor.

Now, this takes me to unnatural link building. If you have a website that is only built for the purpose of selling links for ranking manipulation, the chances are very high the algorithm will understand the pattern and it will lead to a penalty.

Affiliate links, advertisements, and sponsored posts are some of the ways website owners make money online. On many occasions, Google has mentioned marking such links as nofollow and with the recent update, you can use the sponsored attribute as well.

If knowingly or unknowingly, you have included such links on your website and haven’t attributed them as nofollow or sponsored. This can be counted as the violation of link schemes and your website can be penalized for this.

Now, if you are currently following the guidelines and have the links attributed as nofollow. Then you don’t have to make any changes. Nofollow will continue to be supported

It is completely your choice if you want to change the nofollow value to sponsored. Here is what Google has to say on this  “Using sponsored is preferred, but nofollow is acceptable” .

This takes us to the next part which is the user-generated content or UGC. As discussed earlier, ugc will apply to all the links that are contributed by the third party users. These links can be found in

1. Forums
2. Q and A sites
3. Comments
4. Article submission
5. Guest posts
6. Directory Submissions
7. Bookmarking

The above listed are some of the popular ways to build links. We will be discussing how links from these sites can be treated by search engines.

When we talk about forums and Q and A sites, the websites are constantly moderated and various techniques are used to filter the spam.

To stay away from the link scheme penalty and block the PageRank credit these websites by default attribute all links as nofollow.

On reputed forums and question and answer sites, dropping links is considered malpractice until the link points to a very useful resource.

If you are a valuable contributor to such sites, chances are very high if you share a meaningful link it will carry some value even if it is attributed “ugc” or “nofollow”.

When it comes to commenting, this is one of the widely misused techniques to build links. If you have a website with decent traffic you already know what I m talking about.

Even after automatically adding nofollow to the links in the comment section, still today you will find linked comments that have nothing to do with the content of the website. Here is an example

If you are someone engaging in such behaviour this can get your site penalized as Google will catch up to such link building tactics. If you are new to the blogging world and you can use Akismet anti-spam to help with preventing spam.

As far as implementing ugc attribute is concerned, there is good news for WordPress users. WordPress will update this change in the next release.

Yeah it’s a one line change that I’ll make sure lands in the next WordPress release. It’s quite easy.

— Joost de Valk (@jdevalk) September 10, 2019

Before we move forward it is also important to keep in mind, other search engines currently do not support the new attributes, if you are thinking about going forward with the changes make sure you add the nofollow attribute to both user-generated content and sponsored links.

This means

• sponsored links will have both nofollow and sponsored attributes
• user-generated content will have both nofollow and ugc attributes

The next important thing that we need to discuss is the directory submissions and bookmarking. If you are new in the SEO realm, these are the 2 techniques that commonly suggested for building links.

Like other websites, there exists both low quality and high-quality directory submission and bookmarking sites. Google has clearly stated getting links from the low-quality directory or bookmarking sites will be considered as a violation of the webmaster’s guidelines.

After these updates, if you have build links using such websites, these links will carry no value and the worst part is getting penalized on top of that.

So avoid getting links from low-quality sites.

The next thing we need to discuss is Guest posting and article submission.

Before we move further, the first thing you need to understand is the difference between article submission and guest posting as both of these involve posting of articles on sites other than yours.

The primary difference between the two is article submission sites have multiple categories and do not have a strict moderation policy which can lead to people posting repurposed or duplicate content. These types of websites are generally categorized under content farms and links from these sites do not carry much weight.

When it comes to guest posting, it involves posting articles on highly reputed publishings, blogs, and other websites that are niche-focused. These sites have a structure and defined terms when it comes to accepting guest posts.

The content before publishing goes through a proper channel where it is scanned and properly edited by the site owner or the editorial team so that it is up to their standards.

Links from these posts are generally nofollow. However, Google has stated, “if you want to reward and recognize worthy contributors, these attributes can be removed from the links”.

Keeping this in mind, in my opinion, these links even if nofollow or ugc do carry some weight and help build authority. It is quite possible that if you keep making valuable contributions to reputed and well-maintained sites, it will not go unrewarded.

On the other hand links from article submission sites do not carry the same weight as these. It is better to focus on guest posting rather than consistently submitting articles to content farms.

As far as link attribution is concerned, the user-generated content is required to be marked as nofollow or ugc

Moving forward

In this article, you have seen a common phrase which is “these attributes are used as hints”

As you can see in the announcement Google has stated it may consider using some links for searches. This will depend on the attribute you have assigned along with other signals.

These attributes will help them better understand linking structures and nature of the links.

However, this is just an initial announcement and still, there is a lot of confusion regarding the value/benefit these attributes have for website owners.

This makes me think

Is implementing these link attributes necessary?

It is completely your choice if you want to switch from nofollow to these granular attributes. If you are currently using nofollow to block sponsored links and dissociate your site from links that you don’t want to vouch for. Then you don’t need to make any changes.

However, using these attributes will help Google better process links and linking system.

In case you haven’t marked your links correctly, this is the time to make the required changes.

• If it is a sponsored link/money-making link, attribute it to rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” any will work for this purpose.
• If your site has outbound links that you don’t want to vouch for, mark them as rel=”nofollow”
• For user-generated links such as comments, forum discussions, and similar links, attribute them with rel=”ugc” or rel=”nofollow”. Both will work fine.

What if you have user-generated content that is sponsored?

In such situations, you can use either nofollow or using rel=”ugc sponsored” will work just fine. This means you can use more than one value on the links.

Syntax

 <a href="https://geekyplug.com" rel="ugc sponsored">For user-generated sponsored content</a> 

What if the wrong attribute is used on a link?

According to Google, there is no wrong attribute except in the case of sponsored links. If you tag a ugc link as sponsored or non-ad link as sponsored, the link might not count as a credit to the linked website.

However, you shouldn’t be marking any sponsored links as ugc as any link that is related to monetization should be marked either sponsored or nofollow.

Does this change impact the robots meta tag?

No, this update has no effect on the robots meta tags. Google has also said, webmasters should not solely rely on nofollow to block the page from being indexed and it was never recommended to use nofollow for such purpose.

You should use some of the more robust mechanisms.

When can you start using the new attributes?

You can start using them now and nofollow will become a hint as of March 1, 2020.

Recap- Nofollow, Sponsored, UGC

Before you leave, let us recap all the important points once again.

1. Google has introduced 2 new link attributes sponsored and ugc alongside nofollow.
2. These will help understand the nature of links and linking patterns.
3. Nofollow earlier used to be an instruction to block crawlers from crawling a link and it is now a hint.
4. UGC and Sponsored are also considered hints.
5. Nofollow can still be used on links that you don’t want to associate your website with.
6. The sponsored attribute is for the monetary links. Be it the ads, affiliate links or sponsored posts. Also, nofollow can be used on such links.
7. The ugc attribute is for the links from third-party users. Such links can be found in the comment section, forum discussion, and similar places.
8. If your existing links have nofolow attribution, then there is no need to make the change. It will work just fine.
9. If you are unsure about which attribute to use on a link. go for nofollow. It works for all links
10. These are very specific values that Google has introduced. In case you are managing your links incorrectly, the algorithm can catch up to you soon.
11. WordPress will be introducing this change in the next patch.
12. Do not mark any UGC content as sponsored as it will lose the credit that it may have received.
13. Stay away from attributing sponsored links as ugc. Sponsored links can only be attributed as sponsored or nofollow.
14. You can make the changes now and Google will start using nofollow as a hint from March 1, 2020.
15. This update has no effect on robots meta.

With that said, I hope you find this article helpful and are able to properly adapt to this change. If you like this article feel free to share it with your friends on social media.

Next on the reading list

• On-Page SEO cheat sheet
• Quick SEO Tips

To stay up to date with content like this feel free to subscribe to our blog and follow us on social media.

The post Nofollow, UGC, Sponsored- Latest SEO Link Attribution Update appeared first on GeekyPlug.

Let me start this article with an interesting quote by Ramsay Leimenstoll “A small list that wants exactly what you’re offering is better than a bigger list that isn’t committed”.

This quote made me realize 2 things:

1. Online marketing channels are evolving at a rapid pace, be it SEO, social media or any other channel.
2. Email marketing is an asset and deserves more attention.

Think about this, frequently after algorithmic updates you will find messages about an increase or decrease of traffic flooding the social media. Also, you will notice the impact as well.

While all this chaos is happening, one thing is consistent, and that is your email subscribers. These are the people that believe in your brand, want to connect with you personally, and can hopefully buy from you someday.

With that said, here is an important fact about email marketing from Hubspot

>59% of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI
Click To Tweet

Isn’t that amazing?

Looking at this, if you haven’t started with email marketing yet, I will suggest you start now.

To build an email list and collect the email addresses you need a tool that will help you create opt-in forms and pop-ups that are attention grabbing and at the same time convert. Interested users can use these forms and pop-ups to provide you with their emails. 

And to help you with this you can use OptinMonster.

In this article we will discuss,

1. Benefits of using OptinMonster
2. Features
3. OptinMonster’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday deal
4. Pricing Breakup
5. What will you get in these prices?

If you already know the positives of OptinMonster and are here just for the deal. let me tell you this year OptinMonster is offering a huge  discount of 50% + Free  Instant access to OptinMonster University worth $1997 

OptinMonster Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale 2019

Why buy OptinMonster on Black Friday and Cyber Monday

OptinMonster was co-founded by Syed Balkhi of Wpbeginner and Thomas Griffin of Soliloquy in 2013. Since then, the plugin has evolved a lot and has become one of the most powerful and flexible solutions for capturing leads and maximizing conversions.

The plugin has over 900k+ active installations and has a rating of 4.3 out of 5, which is amazing.

After seeing these numbers, it clearly shows these guys know what they are doing; the company is incredible; the product is top-notch and after buying the product; you are in safe hands.

Features of OptinMonster

User-Friendly Interface

One of the first things that draws you towards a tool is ease of use. OptinMonster has a very clean and beginner friendly user interface.

Having a clutter free, inviting and organized user interface shows the company cares about the product and its users and wants to give them a solution that is easy to use and saves time.

Recently, OptinMonster has released a few updates and introduced new features. Here are some highlights: 

1. OptinMonster now allows you to filter campaign templates based on your goals and categories. You can use this feature to find the template that works the best for you. Not only will this save time, but will also improve the conversion rate.
2. While we are on improving the conversion rate, the next update also focuses on boosting it. OptinMonster has introduced new display rules where if you have visitors that are not triggering any of the campaigns and haven’t seen one in a long time can be directed to a funnel by setting simple rules to show them a campaign.
3. Often while creating an email marketing campaign, the builders do not show the size and dimension of the images. OptinMonster has updated its campaign builder to show this so you can easily know if it is the right size or not.
4. It has simplified the authentication process for WordPress users. Earlier, to authenticate it required you to use an API key which made the process a little confusing and now you can complete this process from your WordPress dashboard with a simple click of a button.
5. Also, with recent updates, now you can see what a campaign will look like on your website before you publish it.

You can read more about these updates on the OptinMonster blog.

With all these updates rolling in and more planned for future makes OptinMonster one of the best and reliable email marketing plugins

Offers Multiple Campaign Types

After you are done getting familiar with the interface, the next task on the list is creating your first email marketing campaign. 

For this first you need to select a campaign type. OptinMonster offers 9 types of campaigns to choose from.

Once you have finalized the campaign type, the next thing you have to do is create a template for your campaign.

Design Process Made Easy

When we talk about boosting the conversion rates and getting a clear message across to your customers, having a clean design helps.

A design that grabs attention and converts can be tricky to create. But with OptinMonster you get pre-built templates that make the design process easy.

You can also customize these designs to make them fit well with your site design.

Once the pop-up is created and you have customized the success message, the next feature we will discuss is

Campaign Triggers

This feature is what will make or break a campaign. I’m sure you would have heard this phrase before

In the right place at the right time
Click To Tweet

This phrase completely sums up the definition of campaign triggers. 

If you show the right visitor the right campaign at the right time, the chances of conversion are very high. Using OptinMonster, you can detect user behaviour and use smart triggers for this purpose.

OptinMonster offers 6 types of campaign triggers

After you have set the campaign triggers, the next feature is

Advanced Targeting

Now that you have set the trigger, the next important feature is Advanced Targeting.

Using this feature, you can create specific marketing campaigns for visitors based on 

1. Source
2. Location
3. Previous interaction/ engagement 

And much more

The next set of OptinMonster features helps you with campaign flexibility, personalization, and segmentation.

Easy to Manage

It is important how you interact with your subscribers. What if a subscriber has opted for a particular campaign and receives emails for another?

OptinMonster gives you the power where you can group the users together based on various factors and show them relevant campaigns.

Once you are done setting up everything, the next set of features helps you with the statistics.

Access to Actionable Insights

You cannot tell how a campaign will do or is doing until and unless you see the analytics. With OptinMonster you get access to actionable insights that will help you create/improve campaigns that will convert.

With that said, 

As you can see, OptinMonster offers tons of features and functionalities that make it one of the best lead generation plugin.

And on Black Friday and Cyber Monday,  OptinMonster is offering a 50% discount + free instant access to OptinMonster University (Worth $1997) .

What is OptinMonster Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale

Black Friday and Cyber Monday is the best time to purchase digital products. The discounts offered are huge and chances are the tools you are thinking of buying but avoiding because of price points will fit perfectly into your budget.

This year OptinMonster is offering a  50% discount and instant access to OptinMonster University  which is the free library of courses to skyrocket lead generation and sales.

If you are looking for an email marketing plugin, OptinMonster is the plugin for you and is available at the best price. 

When can you avail the OptinMonster Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer?

This offer will be available from November 25th, 12 am EST and will continue through the weekend until December 2nd 11.59 pm EST.

This is best discount OptinMonster will be offering this year so don’t miss out

What is OptinMonster University?

OptinMonster University is a library of free courses by OptinMonster that will guide you on how to boost your sales and lead generation by using email marketing.

Who can join OptinMonster University?

If your goal is to increase your reach and convert your visitors into loyal subscribers and paying customers, this course is for you.

There are no specific requirements. The courses are beginner friendly and provide actionable tips that you can use instantly.

What is included in the course?

1. Exclusive webinars and Video Training
2. Complete library of ebooks and guides
3. Downloadable checklist and cheat sheets
4. Instant unlimited access
5. Free Lifetime of upgrades

What is the duration of the course?

When you enroll, you get access to all the contents of the course. It includes both detailed guides and short execution plans.

Short plans can be completed quickly. However, you will need more time to go through detailed guides.

What will you learn in the OptinMonster University course?

You will learn quite a lot of things such as

1. How to get started with email marketing?
2. How can you create a lead magnet?
3. How can you easily convert visitors into subscribers?
4. How can you reduce cart abandonment?
5. And everything else you need to know about email marketing and maintaining a strong relation with your subscribers.

How can you get access to this course?

On purchase of any OptinMonster plan, you get instant and unlimited access to all courses and associated content.

As long as you will have an active subscription of OptinMonster, you will have access to all the course material and upgrades.

OptinMonster Plans- Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deal

As mentioned above, OptinMonster is offering a 50% discount with free instant access to OptinMonster University with all its plans. Here is a detailed pricing breakup for each plan

Basic Plan– Discount Price $9/month billed annually

Normal Price $19/month 

Plus Plan– Discount Price $19/month billed annually 

Actual Price- $39/month

Everything in Basic plan +

Pro Plan– Discount Price $29/month billed annually 

Actual Price- $59/month

Everything in Plus plan +

Growth Plan– Discount Price $49/month billed annually 

Actual Price- $99/month

Everything in Pro plan +

Final Words- Best OptinMonster Black Friday and Cyber Monday Discount

As mentioned before, OptinMonster has been in the market for over 6 years now and in this time it has established itself as one of the best email marketing plugins.

It comes with power-packed features and is recommended by industry experts. 

You can read all the testimonials and case studies related to OptinMonster here.

I’m sure OptinMonster is doing something right that is why it is recommended by so many experts. With that said, if you still haven’t got the deal, here is the link one more time.

I hope you find this article helpful. If you have any questions regarding this deal, feel free to contact us. Also, don’t forget to share this deal with your friends.

You may like to check- Bluehost Black Friday and Cyber Monday Discount

To receive regular updates from us and get amazing deals like this straight in your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media

The post OptinMonster Black Friday Deal and Cyber Monday Discount 2019 appeared first on GeekyPlug.

Often you may have seen the words “blog” and “website” being used in the same sentence, but imply a different meaning.

What does this mean? Is a blog different that a website?

If yes,

• What is the difference between a blog and a website?
• What qualifies as a website and a blog?

If you are new to the blogging world and are struggling to understand the difference, then let me tell you this can be confusing at first. 

However, if you read this article until the end, it will clear the confusion and will help you decide if you need a website or a blog. 

So without further waiting, let’s dive into the article.

Difference Between a Blog and a Website

Let me begin this article by saying, “You can only compare apples to apples and not oranges”. This means these are both similar in some ways yet different.

Another good example to understand this is synonyms; words with similar meanings yet when used in a different context have different meanings, such as start and begin.

The same holds true for the relationship and differences between a blog and a website.

What this means is, blog and website are very similar. Technically speaking blog is a type of website. However, when put into context, there are noticeable differences.

What is a blog?

To understand the meaning of the word “blog”, I did a search and here is the result.

It is a website that is updated regularly, be it adding new content or updating the old posts. It is generally run by an individual or small group, but this has changed now, even the large companies use the blog as a medium to communicate with their audience. 

It is an informal way of communication as blogging is the tool that can be used to

• project your thoughts and opinions
• Share information and experience
• Can be used as a daily journal

and much more.

Having said that

A blog is also known as “weblog” which is a combination of two words website and log. In a blog, the focus is more on the content.

The content on the blog is referred to as the blog posts. And these blog posts are displayed in the reverse chronological order (the latest post appears first).

This type of website is categorized as a dynamic website because the site or the content is updated on a regular basis.

As mentioned above, you can share anything to everything on a blog such as information, personal experience, opinions, use it as a journal, businesses can use it to update their customers about future events, plans and much more.

With that said,

The main purpose of using or creating a blog these days is to drive engagement as it offers a lot of opportunities for visitors to engage.

Example of Blogs

1. TechCrunch
2. Mashable
3. Engadget
4. Huffington Post
5. GeekyPlug

What is a website?

A simple and straightforward definition, it is a collection of web pages under the same domain name.

To understand this search for anything on the web, it will take to a results page which is a collection of links pointing to various web pages/ websites related to the query you search for. 

What if you search for the term “Google”, “Yahoo”, or “Bing”?

Are these websites? 

Let’s find out.

I searched “Google”, using the address bar of the browser. Below are the results

As you can see in the screenshot above, the first 2 results will take you to the Google search and the links after that take you to Google accounts or news sites.

As we already know, SERPs show a list of websites or web pages related to the search performed.

This means Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, or anything else including blogs is a website.

Every blog is a website, but every website is not a blog
Click To Tweet

In today’s time, whenever we talk about website, we relate it to something commercial. Although, there are a wide range of things that can be done using a website.

Also, in websites, the focus is given more to showcase products and services.  And if the website has a blog, the content is written to highlight the product and services.

Having said that,

It is important to keep in mind that not all websites are dynamic, some can be static. (It is the blog section of the website that is mostly dynamic rest of it is mostly static.)

Example of websites

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Amazon
4. Google
5. Wikipedia

Blog vs Website- What’s the Difference

Once you have understood what is a blog and a website, I’m sure you have already figured out that there is a very thin line that separates a blog from a website.

In this section, I will explain the differences in detail using examples.

Platform

“use WordPress for blogging”, you may have come across this phrase frequently.

Before we move forward, it is important to know, there are 2 types of WordPress. The first one is hosted WordPress which is WordPress.com and the second one is the self hosted WordPress which is WordPress.org. 

Whenever someone recommends WordPress or says they have a blog on WordPress, it generally means they are referring to the self hosted WordPress or WordPress.org.

You can see our article on WordPress.com vs WordPress.org This is a detailed comparison of both platforms.

Moving forward,

What is WordPress? It is a CMS (Content Management System)

CMS is a tool that helps you manage your content easily. When you use a CMS you don’t have to think about the technicalities of creating a web page.

WordPress is a type of CMS. Also, there are other CMS platforms as well such as

1. Joomla
2. Magento
3. Drupal
4. Prestashop

and more. Here is the complete list.

It is important because blogs are content heavy, you need a CMS to run a blog. But when it comes to creating a website there are no such requirements.

As previously discussed, websites can be both static and dynamic. The static websites are built using HTML and CSS.

While we are discussing platforms for the website and blog creation, often you may have seen blogs using free blogging platforms such as Blogspot and WordPress.com.

The question here is

Can you create a website using free platforms?

The answer is no, these platforms are meant for blogging and give more priority to display and categorization/ organization of content rather than pages. Also, there are tons of restrictions in using these platforms. 

If you are a hobby blogger or just want to blog for fun, then these platforms are for you. 

If you want to take a professional approach to blogging, it is better you start a blog using WordPress self hosted rather than free blogging platforms.

Content and Layout

As discussed before, a blog is more content focused whereas a website is a showcase of products or services and if the website has a blog, the content is created to educate the people about the product or services or share the future plans. 

When it comes to content and layout, there is a noticeable difference between a blog and a website. Let’s understand it with the help of an example

Blog

For blog, let’s take the example of GeekyPlug. It is a blog where you can find information related to SEO, WordPress, blogging and related topics.

When you visit the website, the homepage is a display of recent blog posts in reverse chronological order. Here is a screenshot.

This takes me to the question.

Can blogs have a custom homepage like websites?

Yes, blogs can have a homepage. However, it is not a requirement. Often you will come across blogs that have a homepage that is not a blog post display.

And on the custom homepage, you can find

1. Opt-in forms
2. Lead magnets
3. Social media follow buttons
4. The latest blog post
5. Information about the blog and owner

and much more. The aim is again to build a one-on-one connection with the visitors.

If you want to know more about Bluehost and their service you can read our in depth Bluehost Review

After making the purchase you can see our guide on How to start a Blog on Bluehost

Final Words

I hope you this article has answered all your questions regarding the difference between a blog and a website. And now you know which one to go for when starting out.

Do let us know what do you think about the blog vs website mystery.

If you have any questions regarding this feel free to contact us via the comment section and don’t forget to share it with your friends on social media.

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date and receive articles like this delivered straight to your inbox,

The post What is the Difference Between a Blog and a Website appeared first on GeekyPlug.