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8 Top Chrome Extensions for WordPress Users

WordPress is fairly easy to use.  However, sometimes it becomes a time-drain when you have to do everything in the actual wordpress platform.  Lately, I have been utilizing a lot of Chrome Extensions.

If you haven’t ever used a chrome extension – I highly recommend you try them out.  They can dramatically increase your productivity!

 

Expresscurate

A content curation tool for WordPress bloggers. You need to configure it by –

1. Installing free ExpressCurate WordPress plugin

2. Installing ExpressCurate Chrome extension

3. Finally, Restarting your Chrome browser and start curating

Features include:

  • Content discovery – ExpressCurate will analyze web pages as you browse through them and suggest articles to curate — based on your predefined keywords (you can define them within ExpressCurate).
  • Curate-as-you-read – You can also curate as you come across an interesting article by clicking on the ExpressCurate button in Chrome toolbar.
  • Curation template and tools – ExpressCurate provides a pop up window with predefined fields and tools for you to select a quote from the original article, add a headline, add your annotation, select images, and more.
  • SEO Optimization – In the same pop-up window, ExpressCurate enables you to add the essential SEO attributes, such as meta keywords, descriptions, pick categories, and more.
  • Publishing – Once done with working in the curation window, click on “Curate Now” and ExpressCurate will generate a post draft in your WordPress blog.

 

MultiPress

With “Press This” function you can publish on your own blog about anything you found online, This extension helps you to move contents to your own site.

 

WP-Write

It allows users to publish new posts directly from the Chrome. Supports WordPress.com blogs and self-hosted WordPress sites, uses XML-RPC API.

 

WordPress Keyboard Shortcuts

Gives a complete list of keyboard shortcuts for WordPress. Keyboard shortcut includes Visual Editor shortcuts, Comment moderation shortcuts and Advance shortcuts.

 

PicMonkey > WordPress

This extension let’s you submit screenshots to PicMonkey and then Auto-saves the edited image to wordpress.

A word of caution for this extension: it’s probably the most confusing plug-in to set-up.  The set-up involves synching your wordpress account with your PicMonkey account using API keys.  However, there is a very useful explainer video on the extension page to walk you through the set-up.

 

WordPress Admin Bar Control

Instead of having the admin panel take-up valuable screen space you can use this chrome extension for admin duties.  This is especially helpful when editing on smaller devices.  It follows your chrome installs so you don’t have to install a plugin on each site.

 

WordXPress

If you post a lot on your site, I highly recommend this extension.  It makes it dead simple to post a lot of content on your site.

One major downside with this extension is that you cannot save to drafts.  You also cannot upload multiple images at a time.

 

Tiny Best Image Optimization

This plugin is not wordpress specific, but I had to include it because it’s so awesome!

If you are constantly resizing images for posts I highly recommend this plugin.

 

Summary

 

Hopefully these chrome extensions will help you become more productive with managing your wordpress site.  If you would like to talk about your wordpress site and different ways you can increase traffic and conversions on your site, contact us at the following:

INFO@SPECTRUSS.COM

or

423-800-8633

Did I leave your favorite extension out?  Let me know on facebook.

 

 

Categories
Events

Spectrum 2016 Gala and Live Auction

The Spectrum 2016 Gala and Live Auction was held last Saturday, November 12, 2016. It was set under a grand tent on the Hunter Museum’s beautiful river terrace. Housing over 500 guests, the black-tie dinner has been another successful night celebrating art at this premier arts gala and most important fundraiser of the year for the museum.

Following the silent auction from Thursday evening, which showcased 61 works of art, an additional 28 featured pieces were set for the gala’s live auction. Art was carefully selected to fit the Spectrum collector’s taste from galleries in Asheville, Chattanooga, Dallas, Santa Fe and New York.

Our team at Spectruss have been very thrilled and overjoyed to provide sponsorship for this prestigious and prominent event in our city. We’re glad to have shared the evening with our friends, colleagues and all the guests in attendance, enjoying delectable food, drinks and the beautiful art.

We now look forward to providing our professional service in design and technology for the Hunter Museum of American Art and continue to support our museum.

Enjoy a few of our photos below and checkout the photos from the red carpet on our Facebook Page!

 

Spectrum 2016 Gala & Live Auction: Red Carpet

 

Categories
Marketing

SEO for the Holiday Season: Exactly What You Need To Do To Double Your Traffic

The last two months of the year can be a great time to sit-back, relax and enjoy the holiday season.

However, if you own a web-business and are focused on increasing leads and revenue from your site, it’s a great time to work on search engine optimization.

Here is the Step-By-Step Guide to SEO for The Holiday Season

 

1. Build Content For Popular Holiday Search Trends

 

The first thing to do to find popular holiday search trends is use Google’s Keyword Planner.

If you have a hard time brainstorming ideas, it’s always a good idea to check out Google Trends.

 

2. Optimize for Mobile Search

 

As you can see in the chart above, mobile traffic (specifically from smartphones) is where the vast majority of growth is.  It would be highly ignorant to ignore this traffic source during one of the busiest shopping seasons of the year.

According to Google, 3 out of 4 consumers are more likely to visit a store if their local search results were helpful.

Source: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/how-digital-connects-shoppers-to-local-stores.html

Here are some action steps to help you get started with mobile SEO

 

3. Improve Site Speed

load time for seo

If you only have time to do one-thing for SEO, I would highly recommend you focus on site load times.  Bounce-rate is a HUGE factor in search-engine optimization.

Google has indicated site speed (and as a result, page speed) is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages. In addition, a slow page speed means that search engines can crawl fewer pages using their allocated crawl budget, and this could negatively affect your indexation.

Page speed is also important to user experience. Pages with a longer load time tend to have higher bounce rates and lower average time on page. Longer load times have also been shown to negatively affect conversions.

You can analyze your site’s speed using Google’s Page Speed Tester.

 

Most websites stand to shave a few milliseconds off load time by implementing some quick fixes:

  • Minifying scripts
  • Optimizing images
  • Gzip compression
  • Cache optimization

 

4. Improve The Copywriting On Your Site

 

SEO copywriting is all about creating useful, compelling, and valuable content, which targets specific keywords so that other people will gladly promote it on social media platforms.

This increases the authority and relevance of your content and improves its ranking in Google for the selected keywords.

One of the most helpful things you can do to attract people to your content is create an engaging headline.  Use the tool below to generate some ideas.

http://www.inboundnow.com/apps/kill-writers-block/

If you need actual writing help for SEO I highly recommend the CopyBlogger’s blog.  It’s an extensive blog that is full of exhaustive resources on copywriting.

 

Ask

My wife and I love olive oil – yea, I know it’s a little wierd.  A local olive oil store asked us for advice on how he could get his current customers to buy more.

I told him to solely focus on getting his customers on his email list so he could be communicating with his customers about any exciting new products and announcement he had.

My wife told him to start keeping track of all the interesting recipe’s he was using for olive oil and to give recipe recommendations with all the olive oils.

The absolute crazy thing is this guy actually implemented both ideas and sold his store for millions of dollars!  The point is, ask your customers (people who are already spending money with you) what they want and give it to them!

You might be wondering what this has to do with SEO.  Actually a lot.  Did you know that the Frequently Asked Questions section is one of the highest ranking pages on a lot of websites?  This is because people post millions of questions to google everyday.  If your site answers these questions you will rank higher.

Measure

Here are some reports you should be looking for to stay on-track of your SEO duties and the results of this work:

  • A report on the three top-performing keywords, including search volume, target pages, and dwell time.
  • A report on the top-performing holiday-specific keywords.
  • A report on the percentage of mobile traffic vs. desktop traffic for the year-to-date.
  • A report on the top-performing content pages for their closest competitor.

A report on traffic increases since July.

 

Summary

Instead of just coasting into the holiday season with eggnog and in-laws, accelerate your business.  At Spectruss, we provide a lot of the services listed above for all of our customers.

If you need help implementing any of these ideas let us know!  We would be glad to help.

 

 

Categories
Marketing

Rank Fast on Search Engines With These Quick Tips

Are you finding it tough to rank for any kind of keyword in google?

Search engine algorithms are constantly being updated and more companies are building out their online presence.  This means that it’s going to continue to get harder to rank.

However, at Spectruss we have found some basic SEO tactics can cover about 80% of the heavy lifting when it comes to SEO strategy.

spectruss-chattanooga-seo-resources

Here are some quick strategies to rank fast on search engines:

Research User Intent

The best general strategy is to go after long-tail ranking terms.

For instance, at Spectruss we are not a general web agency.

We are a full-service web-design agency based in Chattanooga, TN with the sole-focus of accelerating our customer’s business.

You have to be extremely specific about who your target customer is before you even start optimizing your site for search engines.

The first thing I like to do when researching keywords is to use Google’s keyword planner.

Note, that when it says competition is “High” that just means there is a lot of demand for people buying those ads.

Don’t just write for things you think are interesting.  You need to produce content that people are actively searching for in your business.

For instance, if you owned an outdoor apparel store you wouldn’t want to just rank for ski equipment or gloves.

The terms—”ski equipment” and “gloves”—aren’t very descriptive. You might not be able to get a focused understanding of what the user is searching for.

But the long-tail keywords are valuable. Someone searching for “men’s red Burton Gore-Tex ski gloves” is looking for a specific product.

With a few additional variables, you can create and deliver precisely the kind of content the user is seeking:

  • Buy men’s red Burton ski gloves
  • Compare men’s red Burton ski gloves
  • Research men’s red Burton ski gloves
  • men’s red Burton ski gloves features
  • men’s red Burton ski gloves accessories

If you can figure out the long-tail intent—and it’s not that difficult—you can masterfully craft content that will match that intent. As a result, your content will quickly rise to the first page.

 

Craft A Unique Headline

According to The Science Post, 90% of people don’t read past the headline.

This means you need to really nail the headline so you can grab attention

There are tons of good copywriting books on just writing headlines.

However, I have two strategies for writing copy that have never let me down.

 

Strategy 1: Use Google Ads

Major companies invest millions of dollars in google ads constantly testing different headlines and which ones get the most clicks.  You can benefit from this research and simply copy the headlines they are using in their ads.

I always do this when writing for e-commerce companies and the results have never let me down.  Direct-response copywriting is a time-tested technique that is extremely compelling to website owners wanting to make a positive ROI without a significant investment.

Strategy 2: Steal from Amazon

One of my weird hobbies is reading Amazon reviews.  It’s truly fascinating for several reasons.  However, for writing headlines and creating content it’s a gold-mine that very few people utilize.

In Amazon reviews you see EXACTLY what the buyer was wanting IN THEIR OWN WORDS.  If they are disappointed they tell you exactly why they were disappointed IN THEIR OWN WORDS.  It’s really a copywriters dream.

The most significant thing you can steal is the most up-voted reviews.

Strategy 3: Use Formulas

I also like using formulas which always seem to do well.

The most basic formula I use is this:

[End result they want] + [Time period] + [Address the objections]

Examples:

  • [How to make amazing sushi] + [In 10 minutes] + [For under 5 bucks]
  • [Make a website] + [By tonight] + [With zero experience]
  • [Grow your email list] + [This month] + [Without paying for advertising]

You can also reverse these around and be more direct with this formula:

[Take this action] + [Specific Time Period] + [End Result]

Examples:

  • [Consult with me] + [For 1 hour] + [And I’ll improve your SEO Ranking]
  • [Talk to just 3 of your customers] + [For 5 minutes] + [To laser-target your sales pitch]
  • [Put this liquid in your cast iron skillet] + [Wait 1 hour] + [And you’ll never have to clean it again]

 

Produce A lot of Content

Produce, Produce, Produce

Articles that rank high in Google typically have over 2,000 words and have internal and external links as well as pictures and videos.

If you want to consistently rank high in Google you have to be dedicated to produce very high-quality content on a consistent basis.

 

Summary

I’m obviously not going to tell you that you will rank number 1 in Google for a term like “credit cards.”  However, I can tell you that you can rank for very specific terms that your customers care about.

If you want a more in-depth analysis of your site and how you can ultimately get more traffic to your site contact us at Spectruss by phone or email.

423-800-8633

info@spectruss.com