What Plugins Do We Use on Our WordPress Blogs?

“>Our Favorite Plugin – MaxBlog Ninja Affiliate – 33% Discount Available for 1 Week OnlyWhat Would You Do Differently If You Were Starting Out Again?Can I See an Example of Your Website?How to Add a Tracking ID to Your Amazon Product ReviewPopular PostsHow Much Did We Make on Amazon This Month? How to Write Product Reviews That Convert How Many Product Reviews Do You Need to Write to Start Making Money Online ? How to Write a Product Review When You Don’t Own the Product 20 WordPress Plugins to Increase Blog Traffic Saturday, September 4th, 2010at9:01 pm 

We’ve used a lot of plugins over the years but there are a handful of them that are our favorites and whenever we create a new blog, these are the plugins we automatically upload.

1. TinyMCE Advanced – This one we can’t do without. The TinyMCE Advanced plugin does a multitude of things but what we use it for mainly is the ability to add extra formatting options to our posts, in particular font size and font family selections. We also use it to easily add nofollow to our affiliate links. A definite must.

2. MaxBlog Ninja Affiliate – My absolute favorite plugin of all time. I love this one, however there is a catch – it’s not free. But it has paid for itself over and over. The Ninja Affiliate plugin allows you to create affiliate links quickly and easily.

So let’s say your site is about fishing rods, and over the years you’ve created hundreds of blog posts all about a particular brand of fishing rod. Then one day you decided that it would be a good idea to add affiliate links to all of those posts. This would probably take you many hours of work.  But, with the Maxblog Ninja Affiliate plugin you can easily do it in about 5 minutes. You simply enter the affiliate link once in the backend along with the keywords that you want to add an affiliate link to, and this plugin does the rest. Wherever it sees those keywords on your posts, it adds an affiliate link behind them. It also automatically adds affiliate links to any new posts you add. One other benefit of this plugin is that it can cloak your affiliate links so they look like regular links on your site.

Read our MaxBlog Ninja Affiliate plugin review.

3. All in One SEO Pack – we have used this plugin for years on our blogs. It basically helps with optimizing your posts and pages for the search engines. We have always just used the default settings but I am sure if you studied this plugin you could get a lot more out of it.

4. OIO Publisher – this is another paid plugin but if you want to advertise on your blog then this is a must have. It makes the process so easy – all you need to do once this plugin is set up, is approve the ads. It’s so simple and a huge time saver.

5. WordPress Database Backup – This is another must have. If for some unforeseen reason, you lose your site then having a backup of your WordPress database will make getting your website back a whole lot easier. This plugin will email you a regular backup of your database which you can store on your computer.

6. Adsense Target – On our product review sites, we will often add Adsense adds to our articles. These are extra informational type articles that we add to boost our blog/website content.Note: we do not add Adsense to the product reviews themselves, this would defeat the purpose of our plan, we just put Adsense on the articles.We use this plugin to increase the quality of the Adsense ads displayed. It helps to better match the Google ads to the content on your blog and hence result in a higher click through rate.

7. Internal Link Building – This is another favorite. This plugin automatically creates internal links on your blog. In other words, links from one page on your site to another page on your site. This can really help to boost your site. This plugin is particular good if you have a huge site and haven’t been particularly diligent in linking between posts. You simply assign keywords

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Filed under: Amazon, Blogs..., Plugins, WordPress

Laying the foundations for a successful WordPress website

Hi my name is Mitz from WordPress Website Builder. I build websites for a living and love sharing what I know about websites. When building your first, second, or one hundredth website, laying the right foundations down in the first place should be your number one task. Certain things just have to be done and I have found that a “website foundation checklist” is a great help. As I only use WordPress for my websites, the list only applies to this content management system and the steps I use to build a WordPress Website. Many of the steps will be familiar to you, however we often forget to complete them all before launching into a website or blog.

Research a niche.Make a list of keywords that apply to your niche.Buy a domain name that includes your top keywords.Install the website. Upload WordPress.Install a basic theme. You will probably change it later so don’t waste time now.Add Categories that use your keywords. Do not make them up as you go.Change permalinks structure and settings for WordPress.Install all your plugins that you use. (I have another list for that)Create a Twitter account, a Facebook Page, and a Feedburner account. Hook these accounts into Twitterfeed.Add links to these accounts on your sidebar.Add your Mailchimp or Aweber optin code to the side bar in the top position.Setup 7 auto responder emails to to go out to your new optins.Add 5-10 great posts. Schedule 20 more.Change your privacy settings to let the world in.#1  Research a niche

There are many ways to research a niche, however the easiest one is to do a search in Google for something you are interested in. Then do the same search in the Google keyword tool and Google insights. What you are looking for is a niche that gets people searching for it but doesn’t have too much competition. Some people also go to Clickbank to find a product to sell and then create a website around that. If you are new to all of this then I have already prepared a basic step by step article and video tutorial showing how to research a niche for your new website.

#2  Make a list of keywords that apply to your niche

When you are researching your niche in Google search and Google keyword tool you will see a list of related searches and keywords that you can add to your keyword list. These words are great to use as WordPress categories, subjects for posts, and link building anchor text.

#3  Buy a domain name that includes your top keywords

Buying a domain name with your keywords in it can take you to the top of Google organic search. If you build the right foundations to your website you will most likely stay there too. For example the first website I made was a great domain name, Tips4pc.com, however I wanted to rank for “computer tips” and the guy that included this in his domain name is always number one in Google search. I have to struggle while he has the keywords in his domain name. After a few years I finally woke up to this mistake and created all my websites with keywords in the domain name. I am number one for all of these.

#4  Install the website. Upload WordPress

Again I have learnt by my mistakes and now use WordPress for every website I build. Why not use it when it does everything for you?

#5  Install a basic theme. You will probably change it later so don’t waste time now

This is where most people waste time, installing a theme, tweaking it, and then changing their minds and starting all over again. I now install a simple theme, very basic with minimal features, and add to it. By the time you add the plugins and banners, the whole website comes alive.

#6  Add Categories that use your keywords. Do not make them up as you go

People usually just slap any old category into a WordPress website, however I have found that if you plan your categories and create them beforehand thoroughly, you will benefit from more natural search traffic. If your categories are clearly defined it also helps the visitor find what they want.

#7  Change Permalinks structure and settings for WordPress

Of course everone knows you have to change the permalinks in WordPress. It takes about one minute to do and changes your urls into search engine friendly URLS.

#8  Install all your plugins that you use. (I have another list for that)

Yes I have a list of plugins that I use and choose from that the ones I need for a particular niche or style of website. Installing plugins is very important and must be done before launching your website. That way every post from the start will be pinged, added to the sitemap, and optimized, all to your advantage. Comment plugins encourage input from website visitors which is a must when building a website.

#9  Create a Twitter account, a Facebook Page, and a Feedburner account. Hook these accounts into Twitterfeed

For every website I create it’s own branded Twitter account, Facebook page and a Feedburner account. Then I go to Twitterfeed.com and enter all these details in. Twitterfeed will publish my posts automatically to my Twitter and Facebook accounts via my RSS feed. So all I have to do is post on my website and information is shot out everywhere. Of course there are other software and websites that do the same thing. It doesn’t matter which one you use as long as you are doing it.

#10  Add links to these accounts on your sidebar

Once you have created these accounts you should make them accessible on your website. This way you will get people following you. It will not happen if you do not display the icons.

#11  Add your Mailchimp or Aweber optin code to the side bar in the top position

If you do not have a Mailchimp account or an Aweber account then you are not serious about your website marketing and your foundations. Both these companies offer a free signup for new accounts so you have no excuse. I have a Mailchimp account and it is used to collect email addresses for me. I just create a new list for every website I build, then create a form for that list, and get the code and paste it into a text widget on my sidebar. Its that easy. Mailchimp does the rest.

#12  Setup 7 auto responder emails to to go out to your new optins

If you set up emails in your account to send out to your optins and certain times, automatically, it will save you time and stress in the end. I usually setup 7 emails to send out over a few months. The more emails you have lined up, the better. In the emails you can link back to your website, add affiliate links, and more. Always give valuable information to keep them wanting more. Setting up this foundation is very valuable. You do not want people signing up to your list and then receiving no correspondence from you. You need to keep your website fresh in their minds and give them a reason to visit.

#13  Add 5-10 great posts. Schedule 20 more

When starting a website you need to make it look like it has some content. Visitors who land there want to see something interesting. You also need to make sure your content is relavent to your niche and valubale information at the same time. If you are not very good at writing content yourself you can outsource the job. This is all the rage at the moment. Scheduling your posts in advance will give you time to concentrate on other things like getting traffic and SEO.

To schedule a post simply ==>click on the Edit link next to Publish immediately==>then move the publish date forward==>click ok==>the publish button will then change to a schedule button==>press it to schedule.

#14  Change your privacy settings to let the world in

I know this might sound like a lot of work, but who said it was easy to start a website? You can just slap up a website and hope for the best, but why not do the hard yards first and then sit back and relax, knowing that the background work is done. Once you have done all these steps you can concentrate on creating great content for your website, knowing that the wheels are already turning.

I have more details about each step on my newest website WordPress Website Builder. If you examine this website you will see that I have followed the steps above to the T. The website is ranked #1 for my main keywords ” WordPress Website Builder” and is climbing the ladder on other harder to get keywords also.

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Filed under: Motivation, foundations, Laying, successful, Website, WordPress

Amazon WordPress Plugins – Our Review of WP Zon Builder

Just recently we were lucky enough to be given a copy of an Amazon WordPress plugin to review. To be honest, we had never heard of this plugin so when the owner asked us to review it, we really weren’t expecting too much. After all, we have used the ReviewAzon plugin for quite some time on a few of our blogs and are very happy with it. We didn’t think anything could match it….that is until we actually tried WP Zon Builder.

This is one feature packed plugin and at this point we think it just nudges out ReviewAzon as our top Amazon plugin….not by much mind you, but just enough that we can say that we prefer WP Zon Builder over ReviewAzon. And I actually don’t like saying that because ReviewAzon is such a great plugin and you won’t regret buying it but for us the WP Zon Builder has a few extra features that have won us over.

As anyone who has read this blog knows, we make a nice income from promoting Amazon products and we are always on the lookout for anything to make our lives easier. And although we don’t really use these types of plugins in a big way, we still like them because they allow us to add reviews that automatically include all of that extra data from Amazon like images, prices, specifications, weights, measurements and so on. This means we don’t have to manually add this data ourselves.

You can use these types of plugins in one of two ways:

1. Adding products using the content from Amazon without making changes – This involves adding Amazon products to your blog without you making any changes to the content that comes over from Amazon. You can literally spend an hour or so using this plugin to add thousands of Amazon products to your blog and take the rest of the year off as the content is drip fed  to your site. I’ll show you how this works a little later in this article.

2. Adding products using the content from Amazon BUT you make changes – What this means is that you use this plugin to bring over the content from Amazon but you make changes to that content and replace it with your own product review. This plugin allows you to do that so the content isn’t just a duplication of what is on the Amazon product page.

We use both options but we definitely prefer the second option. If you can add your own review then you will be streets ahead of the rest of others using these types of plugins.

How Does the WP Zon Amazon Plugin Work?

You can add Amazon products in one of two ways with this plugin:

1. The first method involves creating a new post

You pretty much create a new post as you would any other post on your blog and add the product details there. I actually like this method because it gives me a little more control over what is in the post. What I do with this method is simply click on Posts –> Add New and under the text box is a section that I can enter an Amazon ASIN (each product on Amazon has an ASIN number) and then I click Insert. This automatically places a piece of code in my text box which displays an image of the product, a title of the product with a link to Amazon using my affiliate link, the average rating and the total number of reviews. This is what it would look like:

Then once I add my own unique content my post will look like this:

2. The second method involves adding posts en-masse.

With this method you can add hundreds, if not thousands, of posts in less than half an hour. Not my sort of style personally but great for those wanting quick, massive amounts of content added to a site.You can even stagger those posts so that they go up randomly for any period of time you set. You can even back-date them so that they are posted with dates in the past.

You can also use this method, as we do, for finding products based on a specific criteria that you set. This is one of the features we really love about WP Zon Builder. The filtering system is excellent and allows you to narrow down the search based on category, keyword, maximum and minimum price, average rating and the number of customer reviews. You can also sort those results by Featured Items, Bestselling, Relevance, Price, Newest Items and items On Sale.

This is a view of the Find Products page in the WordPress dashboard.

From this page you select your products and add them to a Queue. Once you’ve added 1 or more items you then click on the Post Products link from the dashboard menu and select the dates you want those posts to go up on. You can let them all go up straight away or select from and to dates so that they go up randomly during that period. There’s also a check box that you can select which prevents duplicate products from being posted.

This is what the posts look like if you select this method. If you notice it has brought all of the details over from Amazon. I haven’t changed a thing. However, the beauty of this is that I can change it if I like. I just go in and edit the post and add or change what I like.

Notice also that it has also automatically brought over the consumer reviews from Amazon and added them as comments. I really like that feature. You have the option of turning that off if you like or if you decide to keep the customer reviews you can change the settings so that you can select how many comments are displayed and only show comments that have a minimum rating. You can also sort those reviews by rating, most helpful, and submission date.

There are so many features that this post could go forever so I am just going to summarize the main ones below:

You can automatically use Amazon tags as your post tags or alternatively create post tags from the Amazon product title or use neither if you like and just create your own.There is an option for creating ‘pretty’ links so that your links to Amazon look like regular links and not long affiliate type links.The plugin links with the All in One SEO Pack plugin so that it will automatically set your All-In-One SEO Pack post titles, meta keywords, and meta descriptions for any Amazon product posts. Y0u can turn this option on or off.An update button within each post so that you can update the product details that have come over from Amazon at any time. The creator of this plugin tells me that he will be adding an automatic update feature in a future release of this plugin.You can make the links to Amazon nofollow if you like.This plugin will work with any theme. We use the Flexsqueeze theme for most of our sites but this will work on anything according to the creator of this plugin.This works with any Amazon country affiliate program.It includes widgets so you can add products to your sidebars.Click Reporting which provides stats on which products are getting clicks through to Amazon.You can use more than one Amazon Associate ID and if you need to you can easily change the Associate ID for the entire site.It integrates with other plugins like phpOStock, phpBay, Auction2Post, and other plugins that display Overstock.com and eBay products. We haven’t tried this function as yet so we can’t advise on how it works.You can search for and add Youtube video reviews from within the post itself.

This is a great plugin and we highly recommend it whether you want to add mass product posts or individual unique product reviews.

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Filed under: Amazon, Amazon, Builder, Plugins, Review, WordPress