Launching a new WordPress website for a small business can be time-consuming and even overwhelming. From getting your business license, to deciding on a name, to opening a business bank account, your to-do list is already a mile long.
With the online sales atmosphere extremely competitive, you will need to quickly figure out how to generate sales, what kind of products you will have on your website, how to drive more online visitors to your website and convert those visitors into customers.
Luckily, the custom functionality you need for your WordPress site has almost certainly already been written in the form of a plugin. Plugins are pieces of code that alter the way your WordPress site works. If you choose your plugins judiciously, your life can be made a lot easier.
With nearly 46,000 plugins to choose from, WordPress plugins can alter the design of your website, increase your profits by streamlining your sales funnel and do so much more.
Not all WordPress plugins are free; some of the very best plugins require a small purchase fee. The amount of time and expense you can save with the right WordPress plugin can greatly outweigh any purchase price.
With that being said, let’s get down to nitty-gritty and take a look at a few ideas for plugins that can improve your management of your WordPress site and result in more sales. Here is a list of some popular WordPress plugins that have been known to have a positive effect on websites’ profits.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO has come to be known as one of the best SEO (search engine optimization) plugins out there. A website optimized for search engines is easier for search engines to find, and can appear higher in the search rankings than competitors that are poorly optimized. This plugin, and others like it, takes the complexity out of all parts of SEO. With this plugin guiding you or the website administrator, you will publish more search engine friendly content.
Not all of the features are free. However, the most important features are free, such as reports on your page titles, meta tags, social media engagement and XML sitemaps. These make it easier and quicker to optimize each page you publish through WordPress, ultimately driving more traffic to you.
Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps
Sitemaps may seem trivial, but they are essential to your website. Sitemaps make your web content crawler friendly by putting your posts and pages in a format that is in turn more easily read by search engine crawlers.
Every time you update your site with new content, Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps updates your sitemap and keeps it clean. After Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines have indexed your sitemap once they’ll be back time and again to check what’s new on your site. You can just sit back and continue updating your website with quality content.
Local SEO and Business Listings
If you are trying to stand out from the crowd in your local area, then this free plugin is for you. Many businesses thrive on the traffic they receive from people who are local to them, and this is what makes localized searches so important. If your site makes it clear to search engines where you are located and the services you offer, then you’ll fly up the search engine rankings for searches made in your local area.
Local SEO and Business Listings is an all in one local SEO plugin. Even though this plugin has some advanced features that will help boost sales, the free version still comes loaded with plenty of awesome features, for instance:
- Local SEO Settings
- Local Competitor Analysis
- Sitemap Generator
- Local Keyword Rank Tracking
- Web Analytics
For a new WordPress website, localizing your content can pay dividends.
Broken Link Checker
Don’t you hate it when you are checking out someone’s site and you see something that interests you so click on the link, only to find the page is no longer available? Now imagine if that happened to one of your readers. They saw something they possibly wanted to buy, they clicked the link, and bam! Like a customer who just was turned off by a rude cashier, you just lost a sale. Not good, right?
Unfortunately, broken links happen – we can’t escape them. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way for you to know if you had a broken link or two on your WordPress website?
That’s where Broken Link Checker comes in. If there is a missing link on your website, it will identify it to you. Whether it’s a link to an image, a post, or in a comment, don’t worry, because this plugin has your back. You will be notified about missing links so you can plug the hole and save your sales.
Akismet
Discussions and comments on your posts can pay dividends in useful, free, index-able content, and visitors will perceive your site as an authority in your field to which people gravitate. Unfortunately, spam comments and spam messages never stop. They are something every website owner has to deal with. They just keep coming and coming.
WordPress has a plugin with the answer. Akismet dissects comments to see if they are the spammy kind or not before you even see them. Again, a free version exists but a license may be required for advanced features.
Sucuri
Let’s face it, security online these days is an absolute must. Many small business websites tend to overlook this type of maintenance. However, how quickly they run to secure their sites after they have either been hacked or infected. Too late then, wouldn’t you say?
Why not save yourself the hassle and headache and secure your website in the beginning? Sucuri i is a WordPress plugin designed to just that. Its job is to keep websites safe from malware.
With an added firewall, WordPress has removed all the confusion you find in installing most security plugins with Sucuri. This plugin is easy to use and it comes with an easy to understand configuration. Additionally, if your website is compromised, this plugin is highly effective for performing forensics. It also helps you scan and remove the malware from the website.
WordPress Ecommerce WD
Making it easy for your readers to purchase products and services from you can drastically increase sales. WordPress Ecommerce WD is an ecommerce plugin that does just that, without all of the expense and difficulty of huge commercial WordPress plugins that drastically change how your site look and feels.
WordPress Ecommerce WD is extra easy to set up, has multiple built-in themes, a wealth of customization options and it integrates seamlessly with PayPal.
This list of seven excellent WordPress plugins will help you to increase your profits and manage your business as effectively as possible. WordPress provides you all of the tools you need to build a successful small business, and WordPress plugins are extremely powerful.
