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Should You Use a Page Builder in Your WordPress Site?

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I’m not a big fan of page builders – those tools that help you create just about any kind of layout you can dream up in WordPress – mostly due to the bad experiences of my few clients that once used them.

I’ve seen firsthand the huge mess of cruft (unnecessary code) left behind all over the site when someone decided to remove the page builder plugin; extracting the content is a painful, time-consuming job. I’ve seen clients frustrated by too many decisions. I’ve seen how they can slow a site to a standstill with the large amount of additional code they inject into pages and posts. And I’ve seen how they can destroy the consistency of a site’s look when a client’s team creates a different layout on every page.

I prefer creating the custom fields that support the content a client needs to display, making it super-easy for them to work with, rather than giving them a tool with 100 different layout options and wishing them luck.

However, not all page builders are the same. And now there’s Gutenberg, a page builder built right into WordPress. I’m overall neutral on Gutenberg, though I have used it from time to time for things I once needed a plugin to do quickly.

Here’s a recent article about page builders and (in the author’s opinion) why they may not always be a good choice. And for a more balanced view, here are the pros and cons on using page builders in WordPress. Read before you decide, because once you commit it may be hard to unwind it later.

Weekly Links Roundup – Great Photos, Free Stock Photos, CCPA Compliance

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Are you a stickler for great imagery on your website to show off your products or services to the max? Or is it just one of those things that doesn’t get a lot of attention – you either have little imagery or use photos you took on your phone? Whichever camp you’re in, the quality of your site images says a lot about your business. Learn why having great images is so important to giving a professional impression to your customers and how high-quality photos improve your credibility.

To follow up, here’s a review of 10 sources for free stock photos that have pretty good variety in their collections.

By now, you’re likely very familiar with GDPR (the European regulations that improve consumer privacy and control over personal information). Now we have the CCPA, the California Consumer Protection Act. CCPA is similar to GDPR but compliance will require you make some additional changes in your website, especially if you have customers in CA.

Many smaller business will not be impacted because they don’t meet at least one of the thresholds, which are:

  • annual gross revenues of $25 million;
  • annually buy, sell, receive, or share for commercial purposes the personal information of 50,000 or more consumers, households, or devices; or
  • derive 50 percent or more of its annual revenues from selling consumers’ personal information.

However, it’s still a good idea to get familiar with the new regulations because we’ll likely see more of these in the future. Learn how to make your WordPress site comply with CCPA.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Top CRMs, Polling Plugins, Nonprofit Content Strategy, Local SEO

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Do you currently use CRM (customer relationship management) software for your small business that you like? Tell us about it in the comments below!

But if you don’t, and you’re looking for one, here’s a review of 9 top CRM software tools for businesses. CRMs help you track notes, leads, contact info and much more for each of your customers. I use Freshworks for my helpdesk so am looking into Freshsales by the same company.

Would you like to collect visitor feedback or run surveys on your site? Of course there are plugins for that! Learn how to use a WordPress polling plugin on your site. The linked post contains reviews and usage info for a number of popular polling plugins.

If you run a website for a nonprofit, this is for you – learn about content strategy for nonprofits, including the planning, development and deployment of your site’s content.

Finally… Brightlocal (a company that provides services geared to improving local SEO) did a big study of the Google Analytics data of over 11,000 local businesses to look for trends. Although over 92% of consumers search for local businesses online,what’s “normal” traffic for one industry may be completely different for another. As you might have guessed, car dealerships, restaurants, hotels, entertainment and local stores got the most inquiries, while cleaning, marketing, and landscaping companies were at the low end of traffic.  How did your company’s Analytics stack up against the others in your industry? Let us know in the comments below.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Content First, Free Plugins, FAQ Plugins, Gallery Comparison

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

One thing that often surprises my design clients is the immediately request for their content when their website project starts. Often, especially for a first website, they have no clue what content they’re going to have. This makes my job as a designer much, much harder. Having all the different types of content that will be on the site up front (at least the types, if not the actual content) is absolutely necessary, as the content drives the design. A site that is all about news articles on the home page will be designed very differently than one with a lot of products to sell, for example. This is why we start the design work with a mockup showing the different types of content that are planned for a given page. To help illustrate, here’s a post about the Content-First Method.

If you’re hiring someone to design and build a new website, do yourself and them a favor and spend some time developing your content strategy before jumping right into the look-and-feel. It will save time and money during the project. Realizing you’re missing important content pages or sections after the design is done or the theme is built can be expensive to remedy.

Here’s a collection of purposeful, generalist free plugins for WordPress sites. I don’t agree with all the choices, but it’s good to get different opinions – there are many plugins to go around for most uses and what works well for one user may not fit the bill for another. The ones in this list I use regularly are Yoast SEO and CoBlocks.

If you get a lot of the same questions over and over from clients and prospects, consider adding an FAQ page. You can collect all those questions and answers in one place and create a very useful resource for customers, while saving yourself time. What’s not to like about that? Here’s a roundup of the 8 Best WordPress FAQ Plugins – I’ve used Accordion FAQ several times and like that one for ease of styling with CSS.

If you’re looking for a gallery plugin for WordPress, two of the most popular are FooGalley and Envira Gallery. I’m a big fan of FooGallery and use it often, but I’ve also heard good things about Envira Gallery. Here is a head-to-head comparison of these two top gallery plugins so you can compare them before deciding.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – WordPress Care Plans for Agencies, Landing Page Copy, Link Building Tips, Optimizing LinkedIn

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

I’m happy to announce the launch of our new WordPress Care Plans for Agencies at WP Minder (Red Kite’s sister company). If you’re the owner of a WordPress agency struggling with keeping client sites in good working order, or looking to offload your WordPress maintenance, please check out that link – maybe we can help each other out!

Writing great copy that engages readers can be hard. Here’s a list of top 10 tips for writing landing page copy that converts (makes users buy, sign up, or do whatever it is you want them to do). The most important may be keeping the content focused on the one goal you want the client to complete.

Link building is hard too. It’s necessary to drive traffic to your site, but it’s also time-consuming and can be very frustrating. But here’s a post from ProBlogger on how to eat that elephant one bite at a time. This looks promising. Learn how to build hundreds of backlinks in just 5 minutes per day.

And finally… this is a big post on how to optimize your LinkedIn profile. Not on LinkedIn? If you’re a business serving other businesses, you should be – LinkedIn’s search can drive traffic to your profile that may result in professional relationships and new clients. That’s why it’s important to tweak your profile so it gives the best picture of who you are and what you have to offer.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Business Blogging, Scannable Content, Testimonials Slider, Video Galleries

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Think blogging is a waste of time? (Hint: it’s not, if you do it with a focus on quality and consistency). Here’s a quick guide on starting a blog for business and why it really does matter if you’re trying to make your website the strong online base for your marketing efforts that it should be.

And if you’re taking the time to write well and frequently, make sure your content is also very easy to read. Most people today scan instead of reading – so you need to focus on great headlines, short paragraphs, lists and subheadings to break up your content. Here’s a guide to making your posts more scannable.

One of the most important types of content you should include in your business site is testimonials. Comments from your customers often have a big impact on potential new customers wondering if your product or service is a good fit for them. They increase your credibility. Learn how to use one of my favorite plugins, Strong Testimonials, to build a testimonial slider in WordPress.

Finally… recently I needed a video gallery plugin for a client site. Here’s one of the reviews I found for the best WordPress video gallery plugins. I actually wound up using GridKit, which was perfect for our particular project.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.