Digital interactions are becoming more refined every day, and we have access to a wide range of digital tools that can collect our data, our browsing habits, and record some of our information on different servers.

Customers are well aware of such practices, so they are getting more reluctant to sign up for certain services online. If your website doesn’t inspire confidence, they will inevitably cross over to one of your many competitors who do their best to educate them on every single security measure they have in place.

All of those customer behavioral habits paired with the expansion of the digital realm make it a growing challenge for businesses to keep their digital platforms perfectly safe. Hackers are getting more skillful, the malicious programs they’re using are more refined. So digital brands need to go beyond traditional preventative measures to improve website security.

We have compiled a list of several useful tips to help you in achieving this particular goal. So that you can grow your digital presence in a secure, customer-friendly manner.

Work on Security

The standard technology for keeping an internet connection secure and protecting any sensitive data that is being sent between two systems is called SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer. This technology stops criminals from reading and altering any information transferred, including potentially personal details.

You and everyone who sees your website are protected when using an SSL certificate. The SSL prevents anyone outside the website from seeing a user’s personal information whenever they enter it on a website.

WP Force SSL is a fantastic solution that will assist you with all SSL-related issues. Let’s review a few of the things it provides. The first is that it will cover all you would require to support your SSL. This implies that since it is an all-in-one tool, you may save time and money by not having to purchase a variety of various tools.

Regular Software Updates

Web software solutions are far from finite products that you simply “plug and play” and leave be for the rest of the time. On the contrary, all of your website features require ongoing monitoring, maintenance, and above all, updates that come with security patches to prevent sensitive data leaks and other weak links in your online presence.

Regular software updates fall under the category of “must-do” for absolutely every single business that has a website today – without regular updates, you risk providing hackers with a loophole they can use against you.

That means that every single tool you use that is digital, be it a CMS platform, a ticketing system, a reporting tool, or an automated payment solution. It needs to be updated regularly and managed properly by your team to prevent security issues down the line.

The more your team grows. The greater this challenge becomes. Since it’s often a single individual that might fail to update their software and risk exposing your entire business to cyber-attacks.

A Dedicated Security Team

Your employees may consist of skilled marketers, SEO gurus, content writers, salespeople, graphic designers, you name it. But they often lack the most basic website security awareness necessary. To keep your e-commerce store or even your business’s website fully secure for all online interactions and exchanges.

That said, more companies are now enriching their teams with educated security experts to run a tight ship.

Each business should have its cyber security professional on board that will manage, monitor, and implements the latest security measures. Plus, they can educate your employees and train them during onboarding on how to manage passwords properly. When to notify them of updates, and how to implement other best practices to keep your business safe and secure.

Rely on a Firewall

Web application firewalls, or WAF for short, are some of the most effective solutions any website requires for spotless security and prevention. It’s considered the pillar of cybersecurity, and businesses of all sizes and industries are using them to keep their sites protected from hackers and data leaks.

With such a security measure in place. Any inbound and outbound traffic on your site will be thoroughly checked and monitored at all times. To prevent sensitive information leaks and similar issues that can ultimately wreck your reputation and your business.

It’s an excellent option for smaller businesses that don’t have the internal resources or the financial means to operate a large-scale cybersecurity sector on site.

Choose the Best Plugins for Your Site

Every website platform has its security patches and plugins you can use to build upon your existing website structure. And ensure the safest possible customer journey on your site. As time goes by, the most commonly used and trusted platforms, such as WordPress, continuously publish advanced security plugins for preventing spam and other unwanted malicious attempts to weaken your site’s security.

Depending on your site’s structure and current security measures, you should look into the kind of plugins that make the most sense for your business. Of course, this is not a one-time effort. But should be an ongoing strategy that your IT team should monitor and select optimal plugins for your business.

Enforce a Strong Password Policy

Using strong passwords is one of the simplest ways to ensure that your website is secure. Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean that it’s any less important than any other security measure. With the help of advanced tools, hackers often use brute force for password-cracking.

That’s why your passwords should be long – a minimum of ten characters – and complex. With both upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters to defend against brute force.

Luckily, hackers are not the only ones with handy tools in their arsenal. There are many helpful tools and software that can help you calculate the strength of your passwords and easily generate new passwords. It is necessary to change your passwords frequently. These tools will help you come up with new, improved ones in no time.

If you’re struggling to remember all of your passwords, you can use password management tools that will help you keep track of all of your password changes.

This password policy should be applied across your organization, not only for your website security.

Wrapping Up

As you have noticed, there isn’t a single most effective solution for any given digital business out there. It’s your responsibility towards your customers as well as your reputation. To uphold the promise of safe purchasing and browsing on your website. By any means necessary, including the ones listed above.

These helpful tips can help you keep your digital business safe from harm. And play a key role in making your customers happy. So use them as part of your website security strategy and grow your digital presence.

The post Effective and Affordable Tips to Improve Website Security appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

All of it aims to evoke emotions and inspire action, and all of it comes in the form of what can be called a trigger. From a psychological perspective, every decision we make has its roots in something that initiates it, a source.

It can be a well-placed CTA button, a review you’ve shared on social media to establish trust, or something entirely different.

Even without knowing it, you’ve been using profound but straightforward psychological tools to generate leads, get more people to your site, and improve conversions. Knowing what those tools are can be of even greater help to choose the right kind in the right moments.

Here are a few ideas for your website performance that can improve your customer connections and give you the conversions you need.

Learn How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Website Performance

Use Colors to Appeal

In addition to comprehensive and consistent storytelling, which is essential to your brand identity and connecting with your audience. The visual aspect of your brand is equally important in establishing that connection.

Even more so in boosting your website performance, since colors evoke specific emotions, create the right atmosphere on your website. They shape your customers’ impression of your brand. So, consider the use of color when making a business logo for your brand, and you’ll be able to appeal to your visitors’ emotions from a new perspective.

While you may love the color red, perhaps your brand should be represented by a subtler shade such as grass green, or sunny yellow. Each color has a different connotation on a deeply subconscious level. It means that you should research your color palette and choose the shades that represent your values and the emotions you want to evoke.

Create a Sense of FOMO

The fear of missing out is far from a new emotion. But it has found its way into modern-day marketing rather recently, and it has spread to how social networks operate, too.

FOMO can be easily evoked with the help of social proof on your website if you can show that other people are purchasing your products or signing up for your services. Your new visitors will be more inclined to join in the hype, especially if you have a limited collection or a limited offer.

To achieve that, integrate a social proof tool into your website and customize little pop-up notifications that will inspire customers to trust you more and even buy more quickly due to the level of interest in your offers.

Simultaneously, these digital tools help you showcase the relevance of your brand and inspire trust in your customers. Simply because they’ll be able to see how many other people are relying on your service or product.

Build Trust With Certificates

Cybersecurity is one of those growing concerns among business owners as well as customers. Among so many digital companies, yours needs to assert that it’s perfectly safe to purchase from your website.

Leaving credit card information, creating accounts, or anything else that requires high levels of trust. It is something that customers will consider with great care before they take such a leap.

Let them know that it’s not at all a leap of faith, but a well-calculated decision based on industry-relevant evidence. Depending on your business and how you operate. Emphasize what kind of security measures you’ve implemented to protect your customers’ and visitors’ security at all times.

After seeing prominently placed certificates on your site, they’ll be much more inclined to buy from you.

Time-Limited Offers

A ticking clock is bound to have anyone feel a little urgency to make a choice. Sometimes, this is the perfect way to get people to decide in favor of your product or service that seems to be on offer for a limited amount of time.

More brands are using a simple count-down timer on their products and sales offers to show real-time how soon the sale ends to invite more people to use that limited time window to save money on a purchase.

Why does this work? Chances are, if someone is already on your product page, checking out a specific offer, they have an interest in it. They might be doing something else. They might be in a hurry and inclined to postpone their decision. Unless that is, you give them a reason not to.

This time-bound trigger is simple enough and effective to “nudge” customers to get to the checkout sooner rather than later. Everyone wants to save some money when offered a chance.

Wrapping Up

Using psychology is by no means trickery. It’s merely appealing to our fundamental principles of behavior and discovering the key “triggers” for your particular audience.

We’ve listed some of the most widely-applicable ways to inspire action from your website visitors. Hopefully, they will help you improve your website performance and grow your customer base as well as existing customer loyalty over time.

The post How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Website Performance appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

The whole premise of the platform is to make website management and content creation as straightforward as possible, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some technical terms you won’t have to learn if you are to manage your site like a true pro.

Assuming that you have the right theme and have installed some of the essential plugins, now’s the time to focus on developing a winning content marketing strategy that will propel your brand up the SERPs and build your reputation in the online and offline worlds.

Here are the steps you need to take.

Steps to a Winning WordPress Content Marketing Strategy

Perform Thorough Content Research

First things first, understand that there can be no content strategy without a content audit, and some good old content research. After all, knowledge is power. You need to know everything there is to know about what makes a piece of content stand out in the oversaturated online world.

Not only will content research help you find out what to write about, but it will also tell you how the pros in your industry do it in order to build online buzz and get their pieces trending.

Start by researching the top-performing content in your niche. This is the content you’re after, the content that will serve as the framework for your own pieces. The keyword here is “framework” because you don’t want to copy your competitors. Nor do you want to adopt their content strategy – because what works for them might not work for you? Instead, you want to identify what works best in your field, and then put your unique twist on it.

Focus on identifying customer and reader pain points, aim to go deeper into every subject with your pieces, and conduct detailed SWOT analyses of your content vs the competitors’ content to find where your opportunities truly lie. Once you have those insights, it’s time to organize your content marketing strategy.

Organize Your Content Schedule

Meticulous organizations are the second pillar of a winning WP content marketing strategy because there’s nothing that spells disaster like shooting in the dark. Instead, you need to know exactly when you should be posting, where you should be posting it, and how you should be engaging with your audience.

No matter if you’re running a small WP blog site or a marketing department for a large corporation. You need to have an editorial calendar with this information.

There are many plugins out there that you can use to run a seamless editorial calendar without letting anything slip through the cracks. Whichever plugin you choose, you need to make sure that it’s able to accommodate all of your content needs. And that includes all tasks such as posting, guest blogging, on-going sharing and dissemination, promotion, and more.

Create Content With SEO in Mind

With the first and second phase behind you, you can finally get in on the fun stuff – creating amazing content. By now you have gathered, through research mostly, that the top-performing content is engaging, that it goes in-depth on every subject, that it portrays a brand’s personality, and that it integrates the best SEO practices in the modern online world.

And speaking of SEO, your content needs to be optimized to rank high in both the local and general searches.

If you’re aiming to improve your ranking for multiple different locations, make sure to keep the language and cultural context in mind. Using content transcreation will allow you to make sure that your audience will truly understand your message and not just your words.

That way you will ensure that your content will actually provide value to the specific local audience. Which is essential if you want your website to rank well.

Build Up Your Mailing List

The next step is to build up your mailing list in order to make content dissemination much more efficient and effective. Sure, disseminating content across social media and publishing it on your website (and other authority websites) is effective. But you need to be able to establish a direct line of communication between your brand and your customers. Email marketing is the way to do just that.

Luckily, you can choose from a number of newsletter popup plugins that will help you capture the visitor’s attention and offer them a compelling incentive to leave you their email address. This could be the simple promise of amazing content rich with valuable information. Or it can be a more tangible incentive such as a sign-up discount or a free trial. It’s up to you to inspire your guests.

Monitor Performance and Fine-Tune Where Needed

And finally, it’s time to circle back to the first big point we made today – knowledge is power. Once you have put your content marketing strategy into effect, it’s time to keep close tabs on every piece and every content type (blogs, videos, infographics, etc.) in order to gauge its performance.

You’ll need to establish the relevant KPIs based on your goals, and monitor them continuously over time to identify the top performers in your strategy. Filter out the winning content, rinse, and repeat.

Wrapping Up

Content marketing is one of the primary pillars of digital marketing, and as such it’s one of the most valuable assets you have at your disposal. With these steps in mind and the right plugins at your side. You will have built a winning WP content marketing strategy that will take your brand forward as a whole.

The post 5 Steps to a Winning WordPress Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

Still, just because you’ve powered your WP site with the WooCommerce plugin doesn’t mean you will immediately rank above your competitors.

Namely, research says that WooCommerce has already supported almost 30% of all ecommerce sites. In other words, the competition is fierce, and it keeps growing. Therefore, to stay competitive and perform better in the SERPs, you need to have a solid WooCommerce SEO strategy to back you up.

Here are a few simple tips that may help you here.

Polish Your Page Titles

A page title is one of the first things a user will see when navigating through Google’s SERPs. Precisely because of that, you need to optimize them for both your target audiences and search engines. Make them informative, descriptive, and, yet, to-the-point. When a user reads a page title, they should immediately know what your page is about.

As for WooCommerce sites, there are two types of page titles you should optimize- category pages and product pages.

Category pages don’t relate to specific products, but they still help your searchers find the right products faster. To get the most out of your category pages, make your titles highly informative and clear. Optimize them for some broader keywords. For example, if you’re selling smartphones, then your category page title could be “Smartphones,” while your product page titles would specify the model of the smartphone.

Even though keyword optimization is still the backbone of your stellar rankings, always keep in mind that you’re not optimizing your title tags for Google’s crawlers only. Your content should always be user-oriented. Keyword stuffing will only hurt user experiences, drive less traffic to your website and, consequently, seriously harm your rankings.

Optimize Your URLs

One of the first steps you should do when building an SEO strategy for your WooCommerce store is to enable permalinks. Also called permanent links or pretty links, permalinks allow you to use your product categories and names in your URLs instead of the traditional product IDs.

Why is this important?

Well, this helps you create more informative and user-friendly URLs that will drive greater traffic to your site and help users find the desired products faster. For example, without permalinks, your product page URL would be something like “yourwebsitename.com/itm/product name/2648931?hash=item1598.” With added permalinks, it would look like this “yourwebsitename.com/product-category/product-name.

You get the difference.

Now, as for enabling WordPress permalinks, all you need to do is go to Settings > Permalinks and pick a compelling and straightforward URL structure that suits you most.

Write Persuasive Meta Descriptions

Even though they don’t help you rank higher, meta descriptions are an immensely important part of your SEO strategy. Standing right under your title tag and URL, they closely describe the purpose of your page, tell a user what kind of content they can find on a page, and persuade them to click on it. If written strategically, they can significantly grow your click-through rates and drive more qualified traffic to your website.

It’s important to know that Google sometimes uses meta descriptions as featured snippets. So, if you want your meta description to appear there, make sure it’s informative, original, and easy to understand both by readers and search engines. Most importantly, each page on your website should contain a unique meta description, with a relevant keyword and a compelling call-to-action that entices a user to choose you over your competitors.

As for the length of meta descriptions, Google has recently altered the rules of the game. Your meta descriptions should be engaging and to-the-point, so keep them somewhere between 120 and 160 characters.

Tailor Keyword Research to Search Intent

Keyword research and optimization are not all about finding the most popular keywords in your niche and adding them randomly on your website.

First, you need to understand who your audience is – what their problems, expectations, and needs are. As an online brand, you’re probably targeting the audiences all around the globe. One of the most critical steps you should take is to regionalize your campaigns and tailor your keyword optimization strategy according to your local audience’s needs.

For example, if you’re focusing on selling your product to New York audiences. Then you need to choose keywords that will help you appear higher in the local search.

You should also keep in mind that people are visiting your website for multiple reasons. Based on these reasons, we can identify several key types of search intent.

1. Navigational (a user searches for a particular website).
2. Informational (a user clicks on your site to improve knowledge and find answers to specific questions).
3. Investigational (a user lands on your website to learn something, but chances are they may buy from you).
4. Transactional (a customer knows what they want, and they’re ready to make a purchase).

Precisely because of that, you need to identify the keywords that address your visitors’ search intent.

For starters, you can enable Google Analytics’ Search Console to identify the keywords people are using to find your website and do a particular action.

Rely on the Right WooCommerce SEO Plugins

Once you decide to do SEO on your own, keep in mind that it’s not as easy as it seems. Namely, you will need to consider numerous factors, such as optimizing your site regularly, setting the right metrics, tracking your key KPIs, and A/B testing everything you do. Doing all of that is almost impossible if you don’t invest in the right tools to back you up.

Now, one of the most excellent benefits of WooCommerce lies in the fact that it comes with a number of plugins and extensions that will make your life easier.

When starting, Yoast SEO will win your heart. It has become one of the most renowned SEO plugins for a good reason – it helps you optimize different aspects of your SEO strategy. For example, it enables you to choose focus keywords for your website pages, as it gives you suggestions on how to best apply your focus keyword on a page.

You can also set meta tag templates. Check your content readability. Analyze your dofollow and nofollow links. Get internal linking suggestions. Take care of technical issues (such as duplicate content), and so forth.

In addition to the Yoast SEO plugin, there are also a few additional plugins to keep in mind. For example, with Broken Link Checker, you can identify broken links on your page and fix your 404 error pages to boost user experiences. Another excellent plugin is MonsterInsights. Powered by Google Analytics, it lets you observe your website performance right from your WP admin page and create super-detailed reports.

Even though most of these plugins are quite user-friendly, doing everything by yourself can get overwhelming. While you probably won’t need to hire the entire in-house SEO team, but you can always consult freelance marketing experts if you can’t keep up on your own. Working with freelancers will enable you to get help when you need it without committing and breaking the bank.

Simplify Your Website Navigation

Optimizing your pages for the SERPs is essential. But have you ever wondered what happens once a user lands on your website? One of the first things they will see once they land on your website is your website navigation.

Website navigation helps users do research, find the right products, and make purchases faster. That’s why it needs to be clear and informative. Include all relevant categories and, at the same time, mind the complexity of your site navigation.

Too many categories in your website navigation may confuse and overwhelm your customers. You are preventing them from taking the desired action immediately. All website menu labels should be clear and informative, allowing a user to find a product instantly.

Add Interlinks to Your Key Product Pages

Linking to high-quality outside resources is essential, but internal links play a fundamental role in your WooCommerce SEO strategy. Namely, they allow users to move from one page to another effortlessly. Pass link juice from top-priority pages to the ones with the latest authority, and help you build a search engine-friendly website architecture.

For starters, analyze your website and identify your high-priority website pages. These could be, for example, essential product pages or category pages that still don’t rank well in the SERPs. You could use these highly authoritative pages to pass link juice to your lower-ranked pages and help them rank higher.

Sure, when adding internal links, do so organically. Make sure that every internal link you add to your priority page makes sense for it. For example, you could feature your priority product in the sidebar or even build an exit-intent popup.

A/B Test Everything You Do

Just because you’ve built a solid WooCommerce SEO strategy and started implementing it doesn’t mean you can now kick back and relax. Ecommerce SEO is a highly dynamic industry that changes at an astonishing pace.

Most importantly, there are no proven tactics you could apply and immediately grow your rankings, traffic, and conversions. You need to assess your online store’s performance regularly to see what works for you. Experiment with your tactics, run A/B tests, and track your WooCommerce SEO KPIs to get the most out of your strategy.

How do you implement WooCommerce SEO to grow your traffic and conversions? We’d like to hear from you!

The post The Complete Guide to WooCommerce SEO Optimization 2020 appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

Simply put, WordPress offers various services and benefits that consumers find more than appealing. There’s no doubt that you’ve heard or read about numerous ways to set up and design your WP website.

However, there’s another aspect you should focus on that will make your site complete. That factor is pages your WP site should include. Note that these pages are not a part of your regular website schedule unlike other posts and pages reserved for blog posts and content.

Regardless of whether you use WordPress for an e-commerce store or a blog. These pages are essential to have due to various reasons, such as legal factors, customer service, and support, etc. With that in mind, here are a few pages every WP website should have.

About Us Page

The name of this page is pretty much self-explanatory. Nevertheless, it’s one of the most important pages your WP website should have. The “About Us” or “About Me”, if you’re a blogger or a personal brand, is designed to tell a story to consumers. It must outline the people or a person behind the website or a company.

Who you are, what you do, your mission, promise, core values, and other relevant information should be displayed for everyone to see on this page. In other words, this page humanizes your website and tells consumers that there are real people with a purpose behind whatever it is that you do.

Contact Page

The contact page is designed to provide consumers with the means to contact you. The information you should provide is phone number, location, email, directions with a map if possible, links to social media pages and so on. You should also include a contact form if consumers want to leave a public comment on your website.

People might seek additional information regarding your products or services, have questions regarding certain topics you blog about or have run into inconveniences on your website they want to report. That’s why it’s important to have a contact page so that you can be more available to consumers.

Disclaimer Page

This page is relevant for bloggers who make money out of their hobby. Many bloggers earn money from their blogs, which is why they need a disclaimer page. If you post advertisements on your website or endorse products and services via affiliate marketing you must state that you do so. That way you can inform consumers and users of such activities and let them know your website is monetized.

Privacy Policy Page

It’s no secret that many web owners collect information about their customers, website visitors, and users. Even if you refrain from such activities, third-party tools or plug-ins may do so through website cookies. That’s why you need a privacy policy page.

You can browse through relevant business document templates, in order to determine what your privacy policy should include. Essentially, you must inform consumers about how you collect information, which information is collected, the purpose behind collecting data and how you intend to use it. Oftentimes, this is required by law, so make sure your privacy policy page is properly designed and updated.

Ensure to review this policy regularly for any updates or changes related to the cookie consent notice.

Products and Services Page

This page is essential if you use your WP website as an e-commerce store but without any platforms or plug-ins that will create a store for you. This page will help organize your products or services so that consumers can seamlessly browse through them and navigate your website with efficiency.

FAQ Page

Frequently asked questions (FAQ) page is designed for consumers who prefer self-service over contacting your support staff. The information that should be included here depends on the purpose of your website.

For instance, if you have an e-commerce store on your WP website. The FAQ page should contain information about various policies, shipping costs, order fulfillment, payment methods and so on. On the other hand, if you’re running a blog, your FAQ page should include information about topics, posts, terms and conditions, copyright and trademark policies and so on.

Write for Us Page

Many bloggers support other bloggers and businesses when content is involved. Bloggers are looking for additional exposure while businesses oftentimes engage in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) activities, such as guest posting and link building.

What’s more, the bloggers themselves are looking to enrich their websites with relevant guest content so their users can enjoy a good read. If you’re one of such bloggers, then you should definitely include a “Write for Us” page. This will allow other bloggers, businesses or freelance copywriters to contact you regarding submitting their articles.

Just make sure you include information on this page that outlines what type of content you accept, which topics you cover, and conditions regarding article length, tone of voice, grammar and other factors you consider when reviewing guest posts. That way, you can make the process more seamless as only relevant content will be coming your way. Which you can sort out and weed out the unwanted ones.

Relevant website pages on your WP site don’t always include blog posts and content pages. If you want a functional website that provides the proper and necessary information. You must determine which additional pages your WP site should include and design those important pages properly.

The post 7 Important Pages Every WordPress Website Should Have appeared first on WP Pluginsify.