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Weekly Links Roundup – Podcasting Mics, WordPress Updates, Social Media Marketing

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Thinking about starting a podcast? Or already doing one, but need to upgrade your gear? Here’s a review of the top 10 podcast microphones and some reasons to justify getting one!

Do you keep your WordPress website up to date? A recent study showed that only 36% of WordPress users have the latest version of the core software installed. That’s a big security problem. Did you know that the WordPress folks publish the details about the reasons for each update they publish in their changelog? That makes it easy for everyone (including hackers) to learn about the vulnerabilities in old versions of the software. Here’s an example of that from May 2019. So if you’re not up to date, hackers have a roadmap to exploiting your website.

(If you need help with updates (as well as backups, security, high-quality hosting and much more) sign up for one of our WordPress Care Plans and get 10% off any monthly plan when you sign up in March with coupon code O1485GNVFH.)

If you’re thinking about getting started with social media marketing, you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed. Where do you begin? That’s a great question and here’s a post that tries to answer it. Start with a clear goal (get people to see your products; share promotions; show how customers love your services) and then think about the content types you want to share. The social media platform(s) you choose to concentrate on must fit with your brand, what you want to publish, and what your customers are using. This is a great article for starting out!

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

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 – WordPress and SEO, Google or Facebook Ads, Blogging, Getting Testimonials

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

It’s true that WordPress is my favorite CMS (content management system). That doesn’t mean it’s the right CMS for every business. However, WordPress may be one of the best CMS platforms for SEO. Learn what makes WordPress so SEO-friendly and why it may be a good fit for your business if search engine optimization is important to you.

If you’re considering advertising your business on social media, you have some big questions to answer. One of them may be where to advertise. Are Google Ads or Facebook Ads better for your business? This is a big article with a lot of info and it may provide the answers you need to move forward with your ad buys.

Here is yet another ultimate guide to blogging, but this one from Yoast is an easy read. It covers everything from how to get started and what to write about to marketing and maintaining your blog.

Finally… I always encourage clients to collect and share customer testimonials on their websites. Whether they are within your site (my favorite plugin for managing them is Strong Testimonials) or on a third-party site like Google Reviews, it’s easy to display them on your site and gain the credibility and trust benefits. Learn how to get good testimonials from your customers.

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 – WordPress History, Domain Names, Tracking Clicks, Product Photos

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

I know it’s been a long time (about 6 weeks!) since the last post. Today’s post I hope brings an end to that unplanned break.

It’s been a crazy summer that included a death in the family, a broken elbow and hand, a sad lack of paddle boarding, and a badly-needed vacation. But now that things have settled down, I plan to get back to weekly blogging (or thereabouts).

Just for fun – here is the history of WordPress in 4 minutes. If you’re a long-time WordPress user, you’ll get a kick out of this. Maybe. I did.

Looking for a domain name for your new business venture? It’s more important than you might think to make a solid decision. Learn about domain names and how to choose the best one for your organization.

Tracking link and button clicks in your site is an important part of understanding site traffic, yet Google Analytics doesn’t let you do this very easily. Setting it up to track in Analytics is a tedious process. This tutorial shows you how to use the MonsterInsights plugin to track those clicks. This will help you do things like track clicks on a phone number or on a link that goes outside your own site.

Finally… The importance of having high-quality product photos for your ecommerce site can’t be overstated. Learn how to take great product photos that really entice your visitors to buy.

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

Why are My WordPress Email Notifications Not Sending?

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WordPress by default uses a server’s PHP Mail service to send notifications or ‘transactional emails.’ These are automatic emails triggered by something a user does on the site, such as submitting an order or a form. The site might sent out an email confirmation in response to both of these actions.

But sometimes the PHP Mail service is not set up on a hosting server at all. This is common on shared servers where the host wants to avoid mail abuse. Other times, it’s set up incorrectly, resulting in your notifications either not being delivered or only getting delivered sporadically.

Email notifications graphic
Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

In those cases, it’s necessary to use another mail server’s SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), which tends to be more reliable than PHP Mail. This is easier than it sounds!

You have a few choices. You can use any of a number of SMTP plugins for WordPress (my current and long-time favorite is Post SMTP) with either option, so you’ll need to install and activate that plugin first.

Using Your Own SMTP

The first option is using SMTP associated with one of your email accounts, like a Gmail, GoDaddy or Rackspace account.

Setting up an SMTP plugin in WordPress to work with one of your outside email accounts is pretty simple. Most SMTP plugins have a wizard that walks you through the steps. You’ll  need the email address and password, and the SMTP host and port. For example, here are the SMTP settings for Gmail (as of the writing of this post).

This setup usually works fine but is not ideal, as it’s still not the best for ensuring a high level of deliverability. Deliverability is an issue because these types of transactional emails need to get through quickly and without failure.

Third Party Email Services

The other option is using a third party service like SendGrid. I use SendGrid myself and recommend them mainly because using their system reduces the possibility of having your site’s email notifications flagged as spam. Nobody can guarantee 100% deliverability, but tools like SendGrid help to improve your odds.

As of this post, SendGrid is free for up to 100 emails per day. You can set it up for 1 month to get 40,000 free emails and it will show you how many per day the site is sending to see if you’re within 100/day limit. Above that, it’s $14.95/mo for 100,000 emails per month, and so on for higher limits.

Many WordPress SMTP plugins, including Post SMTP, include the option to set up third party email services like SendGrid.

More Reliable Email

Whichever option you choose, you will be able to count on more emails being delivered correctly than when you relied on your host server alone. And that’s worth taking some time to set up SMTP on your site.

Need help? Feel free to contact me or add a comment below.