The tools listed below are those that I write about and recommend in my book WordPress Websites for Business (Amazon page). I encourage you to check out the book for the strategies and tactics that will place your business head and shoulders above your competitors, and return many benefits and results in the form of increased leads and sales. You will avoid very common mistakes that have plagued so many companies because they didn’t know that what they were doing was wrong, and unfortunately inflicted massive penalties on their website. You’ll learn performance techniques that will load your pages within a second or two. They’ll increase your conversions by multiples, stabilize your business and set it up for growth. Be ready!
You can see details of the book by clicking through to it in the sidebar.
Here you can see testimonials of the work that I have done for many customers.
Six Powerful Checklists, Online Tools Provided as Free Downloads for Buying This Book
As gratitude for purchasing this book I am providing you with six separate tools/checklists that will assist you in building the best website possible for your business. Just click on the links to download the documents. They are:
- WordPress Websites for Business Resources – THIS PAGE contains the complete list of every one of the resources I use and mention in the book.
- 32 Keyword Tools – 30 free and paid keyword analysis tools used by the pros for ideas and for qualifying keywords to ensure you use the most relevant and valuable keywords for your business.
- New Website Checklist – This document lists and describes all of the important information you need to assemble to get your website built like hosting, theme recommendations, a list of the important website pages you have to include in your website, logo and images, association logos, social media links and much more. It also includes shopping cart information requirements and important information about comparison shopping engines, which can have a significant effect on your bottom-line sales results.
- Sample WordPress Website Documentation – To fully document logins, backups and how to use WordPress.
- Source code discussed in this book – Microsoft Word has a nasty habit of changing some of the characters that you type into a document, so I’m providing you clean code in a text file that you can use directly on your website. The code in that file includes:
- org code for your web pages to identify your company’s name, address and phone number and other critical information so search engines will recognize your company and check for it in the important local citation directories.
- .htaccess code to speed up your web page load times
- .htaccess code to do 301 redirects
- Header code required in your child theme’s css file.
- php code to load your parent theme’s style sheet on the back-end to speed up page load times.
- php code to create a shortcode to load your page/post titles into your footer.
- Footer area code to load the page/post title into a link in the footer of your pages/posts.
- php Code to set the maximum number of stored revisions for your pages/posts.
- Recommended robots.txt code for your website.
CSS Designs
Recommended WordPress Themes and Page Builders
Elegant Themes, and their Divi theme
The Genesis framework at Studiopress.com
Beaver Builder page builder
WP Beginner review of drag and drop page builders
Registrar to Buy Your Domains
Hosting Companies
Bluehost – shared, VPS, Dedicated
Hostgator – shared, VPS, Dedicated
RoseHosting – Managed VPS hosting
Quora article I wrote about an optimized nginx web server using HTTP/2
Website Online Testing Tools
http://www.webpagetest.org/ test page load times
https://varvy.com/pagespeed/ – test page load times
http://gtmetrix.com – test page load times
https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly – mobile friendly test
Google Keyword Planner keyword analysis tool
https://validator.w3.org/ – test the validity of the code on your site
https://www.whatsmydns.net/#NS/ – test the DNS values of worldwide Internet DNS servers
Productivity Tools
RoboForm desktop-based secure password manager and automated form completion tool
LastPass browser-based secure password manager and automated form completion tool
https://filezilla-project.org/ – free FTP software
BuzzSumo online tool to find what articles are the most shared by keyword or UL, find who is doing the sharing and who is linking to the articles.
Scoop.it – content curation productivity tool
http://schema-creator.org/organization.php – create schema code for your website for better search engine rankings
InfiniteWP – open source, free manage management tool with (paid) plugins that allows you to manage many WordPress sites from one dashboard.
ManageWP – paid multi-Wordpress site management tool that includes backups and security scan
https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool – test your schema code for errors. Error-free code will boost your search engine exposure and rankings.
https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ – create a search engine xml sitemap, and (for a small fee) purchase it to install on your site to keep your sitemap up to date.
http://www.httrack.com/ – make a copy of your website for reference when you replace it.
https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/ – MySQL safe database search and replace tool
http://geositemapgenerator.com/ – create a geositemap for local businesses
SEO, Backlinks and Content Intelligence
http://ahrefs.com track backlinks, keywords and brand mentions. “The biggest and most accurate database of live backlinks”.
http://backlinko.com – SEO intelligence. Subscribe to Brian Dean’s newsletter and his youtube channel. Here is a 10 minute example of the power of his videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyiikzjg9a0.
UberSuggest.io – long-tail keyword search tool
http://soovle.com – long-tail keyword search tool
http://www.wpsuperstars.net/rich-snippets-schema-plugins-for-wordpress/ – Rich Snippet plugins article
Market Samurai detailed keyword, competitive, domain analysis tool. It also helps you find authoritative articles online and products to promote and earn money.
Top SEO Experts to Follow and Content Resources
If you’re serious about writing content that will perform for you then I recommend you get on these email lists:
http://neilpatel.com/ Neil Patel
http://incomediary.com Michael Dunlop
http://backlinko.com/ Brian Dean
http://www.copyblogger.com/content-marketing/ “It’s fast, it’s free, and it delivers the finest online marketing education on the planet.”
https://moz.com/learn/local/citations-by-category – local citations by category
https://moz.com/learn/local/citations-by-city – local citations by city
http://searchengineland.com/top-50-citation-sources-for-uk-us-local-businesses-104938 – top US/UK citation sites for local businesses
https://www.google.com/business/ – claim your Google My Business local account if you are a local business
https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/resources/best-wordpress-image-optimization-plugins – article about the best image optimization plugins. I use Compress JPEG & PNG images.
Software Development Checklist – just that. I have been keeping it up to date for years. If you need a custom database software system then make sure to read this first, or ignore it at your peril!
Reference Tools and Articles
The Value of Google Result Positioning, https://chitika.com/google-positioning-value, (June 12, 2013)
How to Pick a WordPress Theme
http://www.21stsoft.com/how-to-pick-a-wordpress-theme-quickly-to-save-time-and-money/
Chris Soames, “The Number One Spot – how to use the new search curve CTR data”, http://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-optimisation-seo/seo-analytics/the-number-one-spot-how-to-use-the-new-search-curve-ctr-data/
comScore Releases February 2016 U.S. Desktop Search Engine Rankings”, https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Rankings/comScore-Releases-February-2016-US-Desktop-Search-Engine-Rankings, (March 16, 2016)
Brian Dean, “We Analyzed 1 Million Google Search Results. Here’s What We Learned About SEO”, http://backlinko.com/search-engine-ranking, (September 2, 2016)
Jayson DeMers, “Post-Mobilegeddon Update: Is The Impact As Catastrophic As Predicted?”, http://searchengineland.com/post-mobilegeddon-update-impact-catastrophic-predicted-221772, (June 18, 2015)
Brian Dean, “This (Simple) White Hat SEO Strategy=59% More Traffic”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=263xIymvLl4, (June 16, 2016)
http://www.21stsoft.com/landing-page-tools-to-increase-conversions/ – list and description of online landing page tools
LeadPages.net – maybe the best landing page tool out there, with analytics and recommended designs that have had millions of visitors prove them as the best for your company.
Dan Leibson, Vice President Local & Product, Local SEO Guide, “How Does Google’s Local Search Algorithm Work?”, http://www.localseoguide.com/guides/2016-local-seo-ranking-factors/, (June 23, 2016)
Ed Burghard, “Three Moments of Truth”, http://strengtheningbrandamerica.com/blog/2011/02/three-moments-of-truth/
Jan Carlzon, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Carlzon wrote Moments of Truth
Jennifer Reingold, “P&G Chairman A.G. Lafley Steps Down-For Good, This Time?”, http://fortune.com/2016/06/01/pg-chairman-a-g-lafley-steps-down-for-good-this-time/, (June 1, 2016)
Emily Nelson and Sarah Ellison,” In a Shift, Marketers Beef Up Ad Spending Inside Stores”, Wall Street Journal,http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB112725891535046751
“Moment of Truth (marketing)”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_of_Truth_(marketing)
Jim Lecinski, “ZMOT: Why It Matters Now More Than Ever”, https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/zmot-why-it-matters-now-more-than-ever.html, (August 2014)
Myles Anderson, “Local Citation Services Compared – Moz Local vs. BrightLocal vs. Yext vs. Whitespark vs. Advice Local vs. Synup, BrightLocal”, BrightLocal, https://www.brightlocal.com/2016/11/02/moz-local-vs-yext-vs-brightlocal-vs-whitespark/, (November 2, 2016)
Sean Work, “How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line”, https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/
http://www.21stsoft.com/how-to-massively-distribute-seo-content-in-seconds/ – How to massively distribute your website content in seconds. Use this list to distribute your WordPress content.
http://google.com/analytics – excellent, free analytics from Google
http://www.dashboardjunkie.com/ – Google analytics customized dashboards. Free and simple to install and use.
Recommended WordPress Plugins
https://wordpress.org/plugins/browse/popular/ – popular plugins
https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/free-custom-sidebars-plugin/ – free custom sidebars
Dagon Designs Sitemap Generator – user sitemap generator
https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-page-tester/ – split-tester plugin
https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/ab-split-testing/ – article about split-testing plugins
Simple Page Tester – a simple split test plugin
Perry Marshall’s SplitTester tool – plug four numbers into it to see which of your split test candidates has statistically won
Visual Website Optimizer – multivariate testing tool, very reasonable prices, extremely powerful
https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/ – WordPress Jetpack plugin includes many great plugins with it
http://www.nextscripts.com/social-networks-auto-poster-for-wordpress/ – Social networks auto-poster
http://onlywire.com – online service to post your WordPress content to 50 power sites
BackupBuddy – premium WordPress backup plugin
https://www.wordfence.com/ – top WordPress security plugin
Defender plugin – premium WordPress security plugin that uses the Hardening WordPress guidelines direct from WordPress about securing a WordPress installation.
WPMUDEV – has many premium plugins you should consider using on your site
https://wordpress.org/plugins/autoptimize/ – AutOptimize is the best page load time optimization tool I have found
https://www.monsterinsights.com/ – the most popular Google analytics plugin
Akismet is a free crowdsourcing plugin that manages spam comments
Yet Another Related posts Plugin (YARPP) is a popular plugin that has over 300,000 active installs and provides a widget that you place onto your sidebar containing posts that are related the post your visitor is reading.
WP Super Cache is a great WordPress cache management plugin.
Broken Link Checker plugin – checks the site for broken links and quickly allows you to fix them.
The DDSiteMapGen plugin creates a visitor sitemap that lists all of the pages and posts on your site.
Local Citation Submission Services
- com – a natural, gradual placement of your NAP citation listings is what Google loves, and SweetIQ lists your site this way. They also monitor reviews of your company that appear in the citation sites, and provide you easy access to respond to them if you so desire. The listings stay when you terminate the service, which is very important. An excellent service from my experience.
- com – a company that will list your NAP on a one-time basis in the number of directories that you pay for. They have varying levels of service and granularity in terms of the amount of information about your company that is listed. If you aren’t going to be changing the information in your NAP citation directory listings then this is a good choice. They provide the list of citation directories that they’ll submit to, but if your chosen directories are not in that list they’ll work with you to submit to those also. Another excellent service.
- com – Yext submits your NAP listings to a comprehensive list of the most important citation sites, and it happens immediately. When you update your listing it is changed in all of them in real-time. They manage duplicates which can cause problems for your online rankings if duplicates aren’t managed like this. The drawback of Yext is that if and when you terminate the service you lose all of those listings. The Yext advantage is that their service allows you to make real-time changes to your company listing allowing you to place seasonal offers that would be important to your business.
Competitive Analysis Tools
SpuFu – see what kind of text ads your competitors are running and what keywords they are buying
Follow.net – see what banner ads your competitors are running
WhatRunsWhere – will give you a comprehensive look at the online advertising your competitors are engaging in.
Website/SEO Health Checkup Tools
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/#download – a desktop tool to analyze your pages and content
http://webceo.com – has a free version that comprehensively checks your site pages and content
http://raventools.com – paid tool that checks the health of your entire site
http://deepcrawl.com – paid tool that checks the health of your entire site
Disclosure:
I have carefully combed through the tools that I have used for many years in my business within this book, and I have an affiliate relationship with the providers of some of the products or services I have mentioned. As such, I may be compensated monetarily when you purchase from those providers. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the author and publisher exclude all representations, warranties, undertakings and guarantees relating to this book. Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing paragraph, the author and publisher do not represent, warrant, undertake or guarantee that the information in the book is correct, accurate, complete or non-misleading, and that the use of the guidance in this book will lead to any particular outcome or result.
Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.
The products and services mentioned in this book are truly recommended by me based on my personal experience with them, and my opinion is that they are the best on the market for the purposes described.
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