Last month, we published a video guide to easily install WordPress (WP) which gives you an outstanding content management system (CMS) right out of the box. While operating WP in its original form is relatively effective, it is much like driving a car with merely stock features…lack luster at best. However, like your car, you have the opportunity to add enhancements to the stock WP platform and completely customize your site to be a phenomenally efficient business tool. Take a look at the top 9 plugins that you absolutely need for your business website:
- Akismet — To date, this plugin alone has stopped almost 22 million “spams”. Easily installed and a true necessity for all business sites, this plugin virtually filters out any and all spam comments to allow a better overall experience for your website visitors. Along with that, you also have the benefit of monitoring actual comments instead of sifting through the spam before you respond to your true readers.
- DoFollow — Use this plugin hand-in-hand with the Akismet as the two will enhance each other. While the Akismet blocks spam, the DoFollow plugin removes the “nofollow” tag which is automatically applied to all external links in comments. Essentially, a “follow” tag will allow backlinks to other websites to be found by search engines while “nofollow” tags prohibit them from being found. So, the long and short of it, there will be a link benefit to people posting comments on your site.
- CommentLuv — Blogs are meant to form a community and deliver relevant information to that community while fostering interactions and discussions. CommentLuv is a superior plugin to help support those relationship goals. This plugin will visit the website of your commenter and retrieve the latest related blog posts, tweets, or diggs which they can choose from at the bottom of their comment box. Essentially, this provides even more of a benefit for people to leave their comments and therefore will initiate more reader loyalty.
- Thank Me Later — The 3 “I’s” of a business blog and website are: Interaction, Interaction, Interaction! It is a tremendous benefit to you and your company to find ways to connect with your blog audience. The Thank Me Later plugin automatically sends a customized e-mail or e-mail campaign to your readers who comment which has the potential to significantly and positively alter your readership.
- FD Feedburner — Access to your business and its updates is probably one of your priorities when it comes to your website. However, did you know that you can make distribution of your updates even easier with the FD Feedburner plugin? This beautiful creation allows you to moderate all of your feeds simply by inputting your feed URL into the control panel. Nothing in business is ever that easy…except this plugin!
- Zemanta — As you venture into the distribution of your blog and content through Feedburner, it’s important to now enhance your content with related images, links, videos, and other search engine optimized tags. However, because you don’t have time to search for all of that, there needs to be a tool out there to help you, and…there is! Zemanta does all of that for you and much much more!
- ReTweetMeme Button — Allowing your visitors to be social on your blog is a huge benefit and something that will build readership. The TweetMeme button plugin for WordPress will give your viewers the opportunity to retweet your posts to their Twitter account which also gives you the chance to hit a larger audience. It’s a win-win for everyone, and a needed feature of your business site.
- All In One SEO Pack — Search engine optimization is one of the hot button issues throughout companies of all sizes. From small to large businesses, people are looking for ways to generate more organic content through search engines, and the All In One SEO Pack is the tool with which to accomplish that task! You have outstanding flexibility with this plugin to alter/optimize every minute detail within WP.
- WP Super Cache — Static websites load significantly quicker than dynamic sites, and is considered a huge downfall of WordPress because almost all of their pages are still considered dynamic. However, with WP Super Cache, you have the chance to make all of your pages and posts load faster through self-generated static content. In other words, with no work on your end, this plugin takes your dynamic site and makes it a static source.
Like many other companies, you may want your site designers and/or developers to use WordPress as your Content Management System due to its strength and ease of use. However, make sure that you ask to have your WP site enhanced with business plugins that truly help form a relationship with your readers.
*Should you need a more efficient business website, please don’t hesitate to contact IMPACT today and request a free one hour consultation.”
Need Help?
If blogging and website design are something that you are interested in but don’t know how to get started, contact us today to schedule your free marketing analysis.
Sources:
“The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing”-E-Book
SlideShare.net
Image Source: HubSpot, “The 2011 State of Inbound Marketing”, E-Marketer.com
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