The Best WP Plugins for your New Site

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WordPress has changed things a lot in the world of Web design for small business and is becoming an increasingly commonplace platform for a site to be built on. This is down to the ease of creation, power and also the flexibility of the WordPress platform – in fact there are over 30,000 plug-ins for WordPress.

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This sounds great and in a lot of ways it is, however it can lead to confusion. The paradox of choice is truly something that can cause problems for those trying to select the correct plug-ins to use on their site. So, to limit confusion, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favourites.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

A personal favourite – WP SEO by Yoast is a great tool that adds to the already good SEO functionality of the site. The plug-in allows you to add a raft of Meta data easily, specify which pages Google should rank and even helps with social media integration and sitemap creation. It’s easy to use, powerful and a great addition to any site’s arsenal.

Disqus Commenting

Disqus is a commenting system that replaces the original WordPress option. Unlike the quite limited WordPress option, Disqus makes commenting easier, faster and more interactive. It also facilitates community creation, allows indexing of comments in Google and even auto syncs so your comments are backed up – great for a new WordPress web design.

JetPack

Originally only available if you hosted your site on WordPress, this nice clean plug-in is feature rich and shows a whole host of stats. From social networking, to contact forms, to site activity info – it collates a variety of information into one place, making keeping on top of your site a lot easier.

Floating Share Bars

There are a number of great floating share bars out there at this moment in time, though Digg Digg is possibly our favourite. Floating share bars run up and down the side of the page or blog in a neat and attractive manner – essentially floating around the page. The fact they are visible at all times on a page, no matter how long it is, means people are far more likely to click it. It’s certainly one to implement and one we’d recommend at bibblestudio.co.uk if you are hoping to create any sort of social following.

Akismet

There’s social media and then there’s spam and Akismet is there to prevent the former. It’s a powerful, free tool that is easy to add and just side lines spam, preventing it taking up space on your site and making your loved place look a bit scammy.

W3 Total Cache

Caching is often a necessity for sites with plenty of images as it helps speed up these memory hungry additions. W3 Total Cache is a great addition that adds all the caching features you require and speeds up your site – something that’s very important with mobile versions of a site.

404 Redirected

Hitting a 404 is a pain and a broken link can cause all sorts of SEO and usability issues. So, adding this plug-in will help as it automatically redirects anyone who falls on the dead page to an apt live one. This helps sites pass link juice between pages and means there are no dead ends.

These WordPress plug-ins are must have additions for a variety of websites and could go a long way to making using and caring for your site a lot easier.

 

SEO Advice When Creating a New Website

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Web designers are often in a separate department to the SEO consultants. It is the designers job to make an attractive, user friendly website and the SEO consultants job to prepare the site for the search engines.

Often good web design means a good user experience, which is what the likes of Google wants. However the SEO guys are often left wishing some things had been done differently, so as to please the likes of Google. Below are a few things to keep in mind when creating a new website so that it has the best chance of ranking in Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Web Design

Use a platform which can easily be customised and edited

There are many platforms for creating sites including Joomla, Drupal, Magento etc… The one which stands out as being the easiest to edit is WordPress. This platform works brilliantly for most types of websites from magazine or news sites to blogs to ecommerce stores.

The reason is because WordPress is so popular. The sheer number of developers creating excellent themes and plugins means that the answer to a functionality question is usually just a quick search away. WordPress is relatively easy for website owners to learn, even if it is just to create the occasional blog post. The cost of excellent themes to use a a base design is around $50, so WordPress can save a lot on design costs too.

Use a design with a responsive theme or a have a mobile version

It is absolutely essential to have a website which looks good on mobile devices. People do not want to have to pinch the screen to enlarge text when visiting a website on their phone. For most sites a responsive design is the way to go. This will automatically re-size the text and other elements on a page depending on the visitor’s screen size. Most new WordPress themes are responsive.

For websites with certain elements such as customised booking forms, responsive design may not be suitable. In these situations you should create a mobile version of the website. You then add a little code telling web browsers when to show the full version and when to show the mobile version of a site. Having a mobile or responsive version may increase rankings for mobile searchers.

Make sure that your website loads as fast as possible

One major ranking factor is page load speed time. This is especially important for people with slow internet connections such as mobile users on the go. Images should be compressed and you should also use a caching plugin (if using WordPress). Upgrading from a shared hosting account to a VPS or dedicated hosting will also help to speed things up. There are web page speed checking websites like Pingdom to help with this.

Allow for meta information to be edited

The basics of on-page SEO is to ensure your keywords feature in the page text and headings on the page. This can be aided by editing the meta tags. It is essential to enable this functionality, which can be done with a plugin like SEO Yoast for WordPress. A good plugin like this will also have other options such as creating sitemaps which can help with indexing in the search engines. It is also important to allow image alt tags to be edited as this can help with SEO too.

Other SEO advice to keep in mind

First and foremost you want a website which is easy to use for visitors. This means a clear menu structure which is easy to understand and navigate. Pages shouldn’t link out to every other page on a website. Instead it is better to group similar pages together under one menu item. This also helps to retain pagerank on the more important pages.

SEO

When you do want to highlight a certain page to Google it can be linked to from within another pages’ text. By using a keyword for that page you may also help improve it’s rankings in the search engines. For example if you wanted to rank for SEO Cheshire you could include a link with that phrase like so: SEO Cheshire. This may just help people find the linked page when searching for an SEO consultant in Cheshire.

When SEO-ing a page you can use the Google Keyword planner to find the most searched for and relevant phrases. You can then take these phrases and include them in your copy and meta tags. This should be done in a way which does not hamper the user experience i.e. don’t over do it. The idea is simply to highlight what a page is about so that Google knows what phrases to rank it for.

The Quest for the Perfect and Cheap Stock Images

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As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” No matter how cliché and overused the saying has become, it is reiterated again and again because it is a universal truth. Humans tend to be visual creatures, and as such, tend to absorb information quickly using the sense of sight. Also, if you are trying to convey a thought, idea or concept, you can literally spend a thousand words trying to explain it. However, a single, well-thought out photo can get the point across better and faster. That is the reason why there are plenty of photo agencies that sell cheap stock images that are available for everyone.

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Cheap Stock Images Prints and Printing Providers

Typically, most marketing campaigns and advertising strategies rely on pictures to convey their ideas to their user base. Whether it is print ads, bulletin boards or pamphlets, pictures are almost always present in one way or another. Big companies often order a specific photo shoot from professional photographers and models that work hand in hand with their big marketing team to produce the best quality photos to be used.

However, this takes a considerable amount of time, money and manpower and not every company has the capacity to do this. Especially for small entrepreneurs or start-ups, they do not have the extra money or manpower to do this. This is where stock photos come in as they are a very good alternative to studio-made photo shoots.

Of course, custom-made photo shoots have an advantage since it is made with your brand in mind; however, stock photos aren’t bad or as generic as people make it seem. There are countless stock images that you can use and that huge amount of choices can help you find one that will suit your needs. Also, they are significantly cheaper which makes it perfect for small, blitz-like campaigns or quick mock-ups.

The Different Stock Image Agencies

As with any growing industry, businesses that cater to providing end users with plenty of good quality stock images are seemingly as numerous as the amount of images themselves. However, there are a few names that are more popular than others and these are the agencies that most people visit when looking for stock images.

Shutterstock

This agency is a popular stock gallery that offers really affordable prices. You can get one royalty free stock photo for the low price of 28¢. Also, by signing up to their services, you will be able to avail of various freebies and bonuses such as their weekly free photos.

Dreamstime

You can grab a royalty free stock image for only 20¢ and you also get to enjoy a free photo gallery upon signing up. Their sign up procedure is quick and easy and they offer a flexible system wherein you can grab a 20¢ photo easily.

Fotolia

This agency is a very popular one since you also get a free image gallery to use. However, it also offers a Microsoft add-on as well as the Fotolia Desktop—their centralized hub for all of their services. Also, you get to purchase stock images for as low as 14¢ and this makes the agency a great deal.

Depositphotos

On Depositphotos, you can actually purchase a stock photo for as low as 10¢. This gives you a royalty free stock photo that you can use anywhere. As of now, they are offering a free trial for all new sign ups in which you can download 5 photos every day for one week for a total of 35 photos of 10¢ photos. Membership is free which makes it a very good agency to sign up for.

PhotoSpin

This agency has a very huge library of stock images where you can grab a photo for less than 1¢ per image. It boasts of more than 2.5 million images so you are sure to find the perfect images for a very low, low price.

Looking for the Perfect Cheap Stock Images

Unfortunately, despite the features and offers, the abovementioned agencies can never be considered the perfect place to look for any and all type of stock photos. Different agencies offer different images and to look for the perfect image suitable to your needs is daunting. Fortunately, you can easily solve this by visiting Photo and Pictures as they carry the most extensive list of excellent images that carry the perfect stock image that you need. Visit their website www.photoandpictures.com.