5 Free Essential WordPress Plugins
One of the best things about WordPress is the amount of flexibility and customization that can be done through the use of plugins. Now, it’s never a good idea to load your WordPress installation up with a ton of plugins because that can really put a load on your site and slow it down. If you have a bunch of old plugins (and themes) installed that you aren’t using it’s a good idea to delete them so they aren’t using up resources. Almost every WordPress website is going to use at least 1 or 2 plugins. We put together a list of 5 Essential WordPress plugins that will help your website’s search ranking, security and speed as well as keeping it backed up and helping people contact you. Not only these plugins great, they’re free! Most of them have premium features/versions that you can buy, but for most websites the free versions may prove valuable enough. SEO – Yoast SEO WordPress is a great platform when it comes to SEO. Yoast SEO takes it to thge next level. Not only do you have complete control over your page titles and descriptions, Yoast SEO will analyze your pages and give you an in-depth analysis of both the good and bad parts of the page, including: keyword density, proper page title/description, amount of words and a Flesch-Kincaid readability score. Your page analysis comes with an easy Green/Yellow/Red light indicator to show you how your page is doing. If you see a green light, great job! Red, it’s time to check to page analysis to see where you can improve. Yoast SEO also allows you to easily...
Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?
What is the new Google update all about? In just a few weeks (as of the time of this post) Google will be implementing their latest search algorithm. In an effort to deliver better search results to mobile users, the new algorithm will favor “mobile-friendly” websites. The downfall is that websites that aren’t mobile-friendly will be penalized and will fall in ranking. Once rolled out, the algorithm change is expected to have a significant impact on search results; perhaps even more of an impact on search rankings than either Panda or Penguin, two of the most impactful search algorithm updates Google has ever rolled out. What exactly is a mobile-friendly website? Mobile-friendly websites are designed to look good on mobile devices like phones or tablets. The best way to make a mobile-friendly website is to use a responsive design. Responsive websites will automatically change based on the size of the screen that the website is being viewed on. Take a look at the image below. It shows how the Bend International School website we recently built will look on a computer, laptop, tablet and a phone. If you look closely you’ll see that different parts will either resize or change position depending on the screen size. Another aspect of mobile-friendly website design is navigation. When using a website on a phone menus and navigation can be difficult to use. In responsive website designs the navigation will change to a more mobile-friendly style of drop-down menus when the screen size gets too narrow. Is your website Mobile-Friendly? If you don’t know, it’s a good idea to check your website out. Google...