What is the Importance of H1 Tag for SEO

Each post comprises multiple headings. Among the lot, h1 or the HTML tag seems to have its own importance allotted. It is primarily used for stating the title of a page and known to be the first header for the page. The formatting mainly differs depending on the rest of the tags used in the post. A page can have as many tags as possible and named as H2, H3 and so on. Right now, H1 Tag for SEO holds some primary importance, which you better learn first. These points will help you understand the significance it holds and the reasons behind its growing importance these days.

Tips To Development Of An Engaging Custom WordPress Template

 

There is no second thought about WordPress CMS as being one of the widely used platforms for creating a custom website using WordPress theme. Whether these themes are premium or available for free, they can help a website get an aesthetically appealing look to attract the targeted audience. WordPress themes can easily be expanded using extra settings, some plugins, and bits of code. To put it in simple words: you can get a custom WordPress template or theme for your website with a handful of personalization and customization done as preferred.

Here are a couple of tips to build a better custom WordPress template for your website:

1) Optimize the pictures of template

Though the pictures already used in the template are optimized by its designers, you can still make your own bits to make it even better for your website. You may streamline the custom WordPress themes development by reducing the size to increase the upload speed of your website. You can do this by simply clicking on “save for the web” feature available on the Adobe Photoshop toolbox. In addition, there are plugins like Smush.it that you can use to enhance the quality of pictures used in your website without having to impact their quality and resolution. The pictures you should consider optimizing are headings, logo, CSS background images, icons, stock images, etc. This will help you improve the user experience on your website.

2) Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

Someone has rightly said, simplicity is the best way to appeal customers, which is why you should not run over the edge with additional, insignificant designs, drop-down menus, liveliness, etc. You might find using all of these additional functionalities and features to your website as they look very pleasing, but your users won’t be excessively intrigued. Instead, they may get puzzled with all the additional things they see on your website. So, keep it all simple and elegant.

3) Reduce the file size of WordPress theme

Some WordPress themes make use of not-so-minified JavaScript and CSS documents. You probably would want to upgrade the layout by reducing their file sizes. This particular technique is known as minification by disposing of the additional characters such as tabs and spaces. Talking about HTML, plugins such as W3 Total Cache, which will help you minify the front-end HTML code; however, with respect to JavaScript, you can minify it with the extraordinary JavaScript Compressor available on the internet to enhance the speed of the website.

4) Prominent Contact Form

“Contact us” Form is an integral part of a website, wherein people fill in their information so they can be contacted by your sales team. When designing a custom WordPress template, it is highly advised that you take this page into account. However, while adding the tabs into “Contact Us” form, ensure you are asking only necessary information. Anything that a customer would not like to share should not be included in the form.

5) Testimonial & Clients

No matter what kind of store you have built online, displaying testimonials along with clients’ names is important as they are testified statements from real users. Reading reviews is a trending technique used by online users to consider a particular brand, and if you consider putting a testimonial on your website, half the customer journey is covered. Nowadays, video testimonials are on trend!

6) Apply a custom favicon

You perhaps have noticed the small symbol that represents a website in browser tabs, which represent your business and looks proficient. To include this favicon on your website, all you need is the code that accompanies inside the header.php in your theme.

7) Secure the template code

A website owner can accomplish this task by removing the insignificant WordPress code available inside the labels of the format created when developing a website. This activity will additionally help your users to know that the WordPress version you are using can help them to assault that your site is making use of many loopholes in the definite versions.

8) Overwrite only the CSS that needs modification

Many CSS styling comes with the themes are good. However, to get your desired design, open the source code of your blog, and analyze what all classes and ids need styling according to your preference. Make changes to them so that the styling can fit your needs.

Endnote

The tips mentioned above will definitely help you increase the appeal of your custom WordPress theme or template. In addition, they will also help you improve promotional strategies so you can bring more traffic to your website. Let us know in the comment section if you benefited from these tips!

 

Source:

http://hirewpgeeks.over-blog.com/2018/tips-to-custom-wordpress-template-development.html

Be Aware of Most Popular Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

 

Getting more and more customers is probably the first priority for any businessman. It is how the business starts pouring in! However, it isn’t as easy as it sounds because there are many things to be taken into consideration. From optimizing your website for search engines to marketing techniques like content, email, etc., everything accounts for the traffic that arrives on your website. Some even migrate the website to responsive WordPress design for better results. No matter what you do, one thing that needs to be kept in mind is to attract organic traffic. There is no point in getting traffic, which isn’t regular.

 

Here are a couple of tips for you to start getting users on your website:

Analyze SEO

SEO is the optimization of the contents on your website. Analyzing it on a regular basis will help which particular contents are working fine, and which contents need better keywords and descriptions. There are many tools that can help you analyze SEO of your websites such as Google Webmaster Tool and SEO Report Card.

Detach and Reject Bad Inward links!

Never ignore inescapable bad incoming or outgoing links. These bad links will make the website slow and tough to increase its classification. After analyzing all your links, you need to mark them by selecting the Monitor Backlinks.

Consider Moving Your HTML site to WordPress

If you are still using an old HTML site, it is time to change it to a WordPress site for making things easier for you, such as adding pages, content, etc., and to start making use of thousand design templates available. By converting static HTML website to WordPress, you can have more SEO benefits without losing your old traffic.

Email Marketing

To attract your customers, there is one more powerful marketing known as Email marketing. It is the way to make your customers aware of the new product and new services to boost your traffic. As compared to mouth marketing, Email marketing is more effective.

Use Social Media Channels

For the promotion of your content and to increase the rush of your website, you need to be active on social media. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ are best for the socialization of any website. Pinterest and Instagram are the image-heavy social sites, those found at more great sites. Google+ also shows the customized results and is best for a B2B niche. So social media marketing is the foremost way to promote your website.

Examine and Evaluate Keywords

To find the desired information, people start searching for the keywords that represent the whole phrase. Though you need to identify the most favored words when you start the new blog for your website, it is still a much-needed practice. Generally, people attempt the lengthy keywords as the balance of short keywords. So first step should be to search for such keywords and then create the keyword.

Responsive & Faster Site

You must ensure that your site’s response is better and faster than other sites because it represents that your website is working better as compared to other sites. On the other side, if your website is not working properly and not giving a good response, it means less traffic on your website. If your website takes more time to upload, it leads to high bounce rate. So make sure that the optimization of image’s size, page structure, and third-party plugin functionality is properly done on your website.

Add Some Video To Your Content

Videos based content is the most powerful tool or strategy used by most of the online business owners. To construct your site more engaging and to attract visitors, videos play a vital role. Video marketing is a way to grab and hold your audience attention, and it is growing on a daily basis.

Explore The Opposition Or Competition!

You must be aware of your competitors to know what they are doing to gain traffic to their business. With the help of software called BuzzSumo, you can accumulate the performance of their sites, and use the analysis to build the level of your website accordingly. Also, you can search which are the most talkative or searched topics on their sites, and then emulate that content. This will boost the traffic more.

Conferences & Host Webinars

Attending the events to provide an insight into your industry is an outstanding concept to gain new traffic to your business. Either go to a seminar or attend a webinar to interact with new users or potential customers. You can even host a webinar within your conference room to share the ideas and expertise of your industry with the new clients.

Conclusion

These tips are the topmost methods to take your website to the top. You can also focus on readers’ needs and discover even more sophisticated keywords to win the search engine game. Keep them in mind, and you will never have to struggle for the traffic.

 

Source:

http://hirewpgeeks.spruz.com/pt/Be-Aware-of-Most-Popular-Ways-to-Increase-Traffic-to-Your-Website.2-8-2018/blog.htm

Skills You Need to Become a Top WordPress Developer

Becoming a top WordPress developer requires a lot of hard work, professional knowledge, determination, energy and a passion for doing something innovative. If you think this is a simple job, then you are completely wrong. It is a difficult task that requires in-depth expertise and professional skills from a developer.

In this blog post, we will collect some of the useful skills that will help you become a top-notch WP developer.

1. Technical Proficiency

If you want to become the top-class WP developer, you need to understand your technical capabilities –pick out your favorite acronym such as CSS, PHP, HTML or MySQL.

Being a developer, you may already have some basic understanding about these languages, but still you need to elevate your skills to bring innovation into your work.

2. Determination and Self-Motivation

Determination, focus or self-motivation is what that transforms a learner into a professional developer. So before becoming a developer, you have to leave all the redundant distractions out of your live. Just focus on your ultimate goal and try to understand and each and every aspect of WordPress.

3. Marketing skills

Many developers find marketing as one of the daunting tasks as it becomes difficult to know exactly about the web customers, what they want and how to convey the desired message to them. But a good WP developer is the one who is great with marketing skills.

4. Precise Planning Skills

If you want to be an expert WordPress developer, you need to stick with the solid planning skills. Working with clients and getting their work done on a given time span needs accurate planning.

While setting the goals, you need to set the deadline as well in order to meet the requirements of your clients and customers.

5. Test your Work

As a WordPress developer, it is extremely important for you to run a test on your site. If you have written some code, then you need to ensure that they work smoothly across multiple browsers and operating systems.

In fact, you need to run a test on themes and plugins that you have developed for WordPress sites.

6. Practice is a must

It is a great saying that “Practice makes a Man Perfect”. So whatever you learn try to practice it again and again. Utilize your skills and showcase it on your own sites. Read tutorials and follow it by your own. Through this, you will be able to enhance your professional proficiency and also introduce cutting-edge concepts to the web development world.

Conclusion

Becoming a top WordPress developer is a tough job but not impossible. First, you need to develop your basic and then professional skills by understanding the different aspects of WordPress, cutting-edge technologies and a lot more.

Source:
http://wpgeeks.tumblr.com/post/137154859691/skills-you-need-to-become-a-top-wordpress

 

You Need To Know: Common Responsive Design Mistakes

As the use of different mobile devices is dominating the Internet search, individuals involved in the web-based businesses need to adopt the responsive web design (RWD) approach to give the best website browsing experience over computers, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones. When the responsive website design is implemented, a lot of mistakes take place. If you don’t sort out those mistakes sooner, they can affect the performance of your site badly. In this article, main responsive design mistakes and their solutions are highlighted. Just go through them and implement that in your RWD projects.

1. Desktop First Approach

In spite of the rapidly increasing use of different mobile devices for Internet surfing, there are many web developers who are still creating websites with desktop users’ needs first. They adjust the website for a responsive design later. But, one must know that following such a step would require you to do lots of work and chances of mistakes are higher. It will kill lots of your precious time too.

Solution:

As 57% of traffic comes from smartphones and tablets, you must design websites with mobile first and desktop second approach. This will allow you to address the needs of both mobile/ desktop users and create ample business opportunities easily.

2. Neglecting the UI/UX factors

In short, UX and UI factors make it easier for visitors to use website easily and comfortably. Website designers give a great importance to these two factors when they create websites for desktop users. But, while adjusting websites for a RWD, they neglect UI/UX factors completely. It may repel mobile visitors away if they feel problems while using your site.

Solution:

Implement the necessary UX/UI features on your website without any fail. If you are doing this for WordPress websites, wordpress theme customization services will act as a helping hand for you.

3. Neglecting The Speed Factor

Website loading speed matters a lot in the web-based business. Today’s tech-savvy people want everything to be fast and smooth. When they try to access your site, they expect it to load in the smallest possible time. If your website is slow, they will stop visiting it and switch to its alternative without making any delay. So, there is no benefit of having a great with advanced functionalities if it is slow.

Solution:

There are many ways you can make your website fast. Just take those steps and make sure that your website or its pages load quickly on all devices.

4. Navigational Problem

Most of the people easily view all the navigational items when they browse websites on a desktop. However, if you implement all navigational items to mobile users, this can drive visitors away from your site. Always keep in mind that mobile devices have limited space.

Solution:

Display only the most important navigational items. Hide all least relevant items in the main navigation bar. You can use sings (such as “+” or “-”) to hide the navigation items. Visitors can expand or contact the navigation menu easily by clicking on them. Make sure that visitors don’t face navigational issues while visiting your site through mobile devices. Eliminate unnecessary links to keep your site simple and appealing.

5. Hiding Content From Users

In order to eliminate a number of constraints, many website owners hide some important components of content for mobile users, such as third-party scripts, data tables, heavy features, complicated elements, background images etc. If visitors find any difference between the content displayed on your desktop version and mobile version of your site, they lose trust in your brand. This results in the poor performance of your site.

Solution:

Try to keep your content precise and straightforward. Website developers should keep the SEO element in mind while creating sites and eliminate unwanted elements, allowing mobile users to get all the required information easily.

6. Inappropriate Call to Action Buttons

Call to action buttons are necessary for the success of websites. It encourages visitors to take actions, such as buying products and services, registering for submission of comments, downloading of E-products, reading useful content, etc. When developers try to create a mobile-friendly website, they have to display everything into the small screen. As a result, they keep the Call to Action buttons small. Small sized CTA buttons make people press wrong buttons which may displease them instantly. Such unhappy visitors don’t buy anything from you and leave your site instantly.

Solution:

Don’t ignore the huge importance of CTA buttons. Keep their sizes at appropriate levels and attach them properly on your site. Well-placed CTA buttons contribute a lot to the overall usability of the website and help its owner to generate ample business opportunities.

7. Not Enough Testing

Before making a website live, developers have to test it for a number of factors, such as compatibility with all leading web browsers, multiple operating systems, UX/UI problems, navigational issues, loading speed, etc. Most of the entrepreneurs don’t test their website for these vital tests. As a result, they face lots of problems when it goes online, like negative feedback from visitors, lower ranking in search engine results, etc.

Solution:

When you resort to an RWD, just test your website for all these factors. This will help you to eliminate errors from your site and make it ready for mobile visitors. You should conduct A/B testing to know which version of your site is more beneficial for users and you too.

Final Words:

While working on WordPress web design services, web developers make a number of mistakes. These silly blunders can ruin websites if those mistakes are not corrected on a priority basis. These are the top 6 RWD mistakes with their solutions. Just keep them in mind and pave the way for success coming in your way.

Source: https://hirewpgeeks.wixsite.com/blog/single-post/2017/09/26/You-Need-To-Know-Common-Responsive-Design-Mistakes

How to Convert Any Existing Site to WordPress

The passion and affection for WordPress CMS have increased a lot in recent years. These days, even common individuals prefer entrepreneurship to fixed time jobs to make an entry into the business world (on the web) and do the justice with the huge potential/talent they have.

The rush towards the WordPress CMS is caused by a number of factors. If you think from the perspective of customers and website visitors, they like to visit only those websites that help them to get the required information quickly with a little search. If you are running an ordinary website with an old-fashioned look and layout, there is a huge probability that the majority of knowledgeable visitors will like to avoid your website, which means fewer business opportunities for you.

If you plan to convert your existing website into WordPress, then take some steps in advance and use the right technology/tools/process. Just have a look at to do list which is detailed here below:

1. Make A Blueprint For The Future WordPress Website

Most of the web developers treat website planning and blueprint as a time-consuming work. They start creating or migrating websites without any plan or having any blueprint. As a result, they face problems to manage different assignments related to the site development/migration, such as determination of the website architecture and goal, target audience, call to action buttons, website navigation structure, stuff to be migrated, keyword list, etc.

So, before converting your existing website to WordPress, you should have a well-designed website blueprint at all costs. It will help you to carry out the site development works systematically, track the pages you create, and make sure your site is completely ready to be used by visitors once it goes online.

2. WordPress Installation

Once you have a website blueprint, just install the WordPress on an offline server or your domain. If you want to use the same domain, you need to opt for a new subdirectory to install WordPress. Alternatively, you can use the migration process to take your existing site to a new host.

Once you install the WordPress site successfully, you need to minor adjustments in your website depending on your needs. Here are some essential settings:

Settings	Purpose
Update website permalinks	Helps your site or its rank well in search engine results,
Update opt-in forms	To get more subscribers
Erase unused themes	Website customization
Take website backup	To restore your website easily if something goes wrong all of a sudden

Install Essential plugins

WordPress plugins are a boon for both coders and non-coders. With its help, they can easily add new features and functionalities to WordPress websites and make your blogging life easier. You may require different WordPress plugins depending on your specific needs. Just have a look at some commonly used plugins:

• WordPress SEO by Yoast– A great help in SEO exercise,

• W3 Total Cache– To increase website performance in terms of loading, user experience, downloading times, etc,

• Akismet Anti-Spam– To combat spam and malicious traffic to your website,

• MultilingualPress – To help visitors read your site content in their favorite language,

• iThemes Security – To protect your WordPress site from hackers and online security issues,

• BackWPup– To take your website backup

Note: WordPress offers plugins for almost all features and functionalities. But, you should use only those plugins that help you to run and manage your website easily. Using too many plugins can make your site slow. In this case, your site’s SEO ranking and business opportunities start to decline little by little. If you are a non-technical person, switch to website conversion or migration services provided by the WordPress development companies. They have experienced developers that could code your site well and help you to get the site you want.

3. Content Migration

If your existing website has popular content, you would not like to disappoint your loyal visitors on a new platform. Just delete all those contents that are no longer usable. Import your content to the WordPress platform easily. Alternatively, use a WordPress plugin to complete this process quickly.

In case your existing website is built with a CMS (other than WordPress), there must be an import tool. Just view the content-importing scripts available in the Codex, follow the instructions, and complete the content migration progress. If you have less than 100 contents, you can do it manually as well, provided that you are familiar with PHP, JS, HTML, and CSS.

4. Use A Theme

Depending on the nature of your website and specific business needs, install a theme on your WordPress site. You can use a free or premium theme. Before choosing a theme, check it from different angles and make sure that you pick the best theme for your website. You can also use a child theme to create your website and customize its look.

5. Website Design And Customization

This is the step where your website creation, customization, and migration skills are put to the test. Once you complete the above-mentioned steps, you need to customize your website design and make sure that all elements of the site are in proper order, such as source code, Style Sheet, header, Doctype, Meta tags, Scripts, wp_head, body_class, menus, Footer, Home Page, internal linking, Standard Page Template Link, Breadcrumbs, Widgets, Custom Post Types, etc.

Make sure that your code your website or pages very well. Take the help of professional WordPress developers if you face problems with website migration.

6. Test And Launch Your Website

By now, your WordPress website is ready. Now test whether its elements are working properly or not. Take a look at your website and check it for cross-browser compatibility, mobile responsiveness, broken links/styles/ functionality, etc. If everything is OK, just make your site live!

Final Words:

Operating and managing WordPress website is much easier than ordinary websites. By following the above-mentioned tips, you will be able for site to the WordPress conversion and get some respite in website operation, customization, management, interaction with the targeted audience, etc.

Source:

https://hirewpgeeks.wixsite.com/blog/single-post/2017/11/10/How-to-Convert-Any-Existing-Site-to-WordPress

8 WordPress Mistakes And Easy Ways To Avoid Them

No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. Making mistakes is not a sin in any way. But, not learning from your mistakes and making no efforts to eliminate their repetition is definitely a crime.

The same holds true in the context of WordPress. Individuals try to create WordPress sites using themes and plugins & start their web-based business as soon as possible. In this way, they make a number of mistakes that are likely to affect their sites sooner or later.

Here, we have highlighted some main WordPress mistakes made by the individuals and suggested the appropriate ways to avoid those silly blunders. Let’s go.

1. Using A Free WordPress Theme From An Unreliable Source

All those who begin their WordPress journey have not enough bucks to buy expensive premium themes to create their favorite websites. As a result, they download free WordPress themes from anywhere available on the web.

Free WordPress themes definitely make the things cheaper for you. But, in the long run, using free WordPress themes can bring several problems to your site as they may have malicious codes and various security loopholes.

Solution

You should choose a free theme from reliable resources only. Furthermore, before selecting a theme for your site, you must review it from all angles and make sure that it fits your needs perfectly. If you can afford, you should buy a good-quality premium theme. This will help you to make your WordPress site look attractive, appealing, and different from other similar sites.

2. Using Too Many Plugins

A large number of WordPress plugins are definitely a boon for non-coders. With the help of WordPress plugins, you can easily add necessary features to your site without writing any code.

But, when you integrate too many nonessential, bloated and misconfigured plugins on your site, they consume a lot of bandwidth & create the massive HTTP requests on your site’s server. It makes your site slow, which affects its ranking and performance, both.

Solution

Just delete all unused and illegitimate plugins from your site. Use only those plugins that help you to expand the clout of your site and achieve your goals. It would be better for you to learn the basics of different programming languages. This will help you to increase the features of your site easily by writing the codes yourself. It also helps you to manage and maintain your site like a professional.

3. Using Easily Predictable Login Credentials

WordPress has a single login mechanism, which allows site owners to sign into their sites easily by filling the username/Email and password. The problem with most of the webmasters is that they are extremely careless about the security of their sites. They use easily predictable and common login details to protect their sites.

Malicious hackers and expert cyber criminals can easily break into such sites and can create havoc, causing a great loss to their websites and reputation.

Solution

Never be reckless about your website security. Use a strong, random and unpredictable username and password to protect your site. Keep changing your password/username regularly to leave hackers clueless about your site’s login details. You can also use 2-factor authentication to add an extra layer of security around your site. You can use Password Managers to boost your site’s security manifold.

4. Not using Automated backups

Most of the site owners don’t take the backup of their sites regularly. When their sites go offline owing to some unpleasant reasons (such as cyber attacks, server downtime, excess traffic, etc,) it becomes very difficult for them to retrieve their website.

Solution

You should have an automatic backup system to recover your site fully once it goes offline. For this, you can use WordPress backup plugins.

5. Ignoring New updates for WordPress, themes, & Plugins

When you operate WordPress sites, from time-to-time, you get several notifications to update your site, themes, and plugins. There are many website owners, who ignore these important updates considering them unimportant. However, this makes their websites, prone to various online security vulnerabilities.

Solution

Update your WordPress site, themes, and plugins whenever you get notifications about that. New updates can help you add new features to your site and make it more user-friendly. You can also get rid of your site’s security loopholes and increase its performance up to a great extent.

6. Using a bad hosting server to run the site

The majority of WordPress site owners look for an inexpensive hosting company to operate their sites within a restricted budget. But, when they run their sites on a low-quality server, they invite many problems such as malicious traffic, frequent downtimes, slow loading speed, lack of sufficient bandwidth, etc. All these can destroy online businesses.

Solution

Get rid of the temptation of low-priced hosting services. Invest in a reliable hosting company to keep your site live 24*7 and ensure its smooth performance.

7. Not using Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides you a comprehensive report on how your website is performing and how visitors are reacting to your content and offerings. Several site owners don’t use Analytics service on their sites, which makes them clueless about what’s working or what’s not working for their site. This results in the wastage of lots of their efforts and resources and they don’t get the desired results.

Solution

Just install Google Analytics on your site as soon as possible and analyze its report on a daily basis. Based on the report, you can make improvement in content marketing and digital marketing campaigns and get the desired results.

8. Not Adding An XML Sitemap To Your Site

An XML sitemap is a list of all the pages that are available on your site. It allows search engines to find and index your site or its pages easily and effortlessly. If your site has no XML sitemap, then you may face problems in getting your site or its pages indexed and ranked by search engines.

Solution:

Add an XML sitemap to your WordPress site as soon as possible. You can use WordPress Plugins to complete this important task easily. Once your site has an XML sitemap, you can easily get it indexed by search engines.

Final Words

Creating a WordPress site an easy work. Anyone can easily do that. But, while running WordPress sites, be careful about the above-mentioned blunders. Just avoid these silly mistakes and have a successful career in WordPress blogging or web-based business.

Author Bio

Brandon Graves is an expert WordPress developers. He has an excellent command on how to deal with different WordPress issues easily. He keeps writing on custom wordPress development services, plugin development services, etc. For more info on the WordPress, please follow him on Twitter.

Source:

http://www.apsense.com/archive/8-wordpress-mistakes-and-easy-ways-to-avoid-them.html

Top 9 Things To Know Before Selecting The WordPress Developer

In this modern and highly digital world, there is a trend among entrepreneurs, IT Professionals, tech-savvy people, and business firms to have their online presence with WordPress sites. WordPress has made it possible for them to create and operate professional looking websites only with a little investment.

A good number of people don’t want to get involved in website creation process. That is why they look for professional WordPress developers to get their WordPress created without any fuss. There are many WordPress developers in the market. All of them boast about the WordPress development skills, but their actual expertise is not up to the mark. This makes it difficult for people to find a suitable and talented WordPress developer. So, what are the essential things that you should keep in mind while looking for a good WordPress developer? Just consider some points detailed here below:

1. Knowledge Of Programing Languages And Experience

For developing simple WordPress sites and blogs, there is no need to learn different programming languages. Even a non-technical person can easily create WordPress sites with the help of plugins and themes.

When you tend to operate a operate a WordPress site professionally, you need to optimize your site with security, loading speed, website caching, etc. To perform all these activities, WordPress developers need to have a decent command over different programming languages such as PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS.

So, while looking for a WordPress developer, make sure that he/she has a sound knowledge of all these programming languages. Never forget to inquire about the developer’s experience in WordPress development services. This will help you to find a better candidate for the competition of your WordPress development projects.

2. Cost Vs Services Offered

Although, nothing concrete can be said with 100% certainty when it comes to the cost of hiring an experienced WordPress developer. Different WordPress developers charge different rates for their services.

So, you should give more importance to the project requirements at first and then evaluate the cost of hiring a WordPress developer. Look at the price tags and services offered by various WordPress developers and choose a developer that is offering a number of WordPress development services at the lowest possible price tag.

3. Problem Solving Skills

When you operate WordPress sites, from time-to-time, you face lots of problems, such as WordPress parse or syntax error, internal server error, error in a database connection, display of white screen of death, WordPress sidebar below content problem, connection timed out, problem with image uploading, locked out of the WordPress Admin Area, WordPress maintenance mode stuck, 404 Errors, missing Images, conflict between two plugins and themes or between a plugin and a theme or the vice versa.

So, while hiring a WordPress developer, you must check whether he/she is able to solve these WordPress problems or not.

4. Quick Turnaround Time

Just ask straightforward questions to the WordPress developers what will be his/her turnaround time. It is extremely important as many WordPress developers have several projects on WordPress site development and they tend to delay your project in some cases.

5. Check Beyond The Developer’s Portfolio

All professional WordPress developers have their work portfolios with real samples of the projects they have completed. Most of the WordPress talk big about their development skills and hide their real potential.

So, you should not believe the developer’s profile blindly and available testimonials. If possible, contact a person who has already availed the services offered by the developer and inquire about the service quality clearly. This will help you to choose the right candidate and discard the inferior ones.

6. Contact Directly

In place of providing your project to an unknown WordPress developer, it is always better to communicate directly with the prospective freelancer through Skype chat, Email, and phone call and gather more information about his/her real capabilities. If possible you should have a face-to-face meeting with him/her and discuss each and everything (related to your project) clearly and straightforwardly.

7. Experience besides WordPress

There are a number of things that WordPress developers must know about WordPress and online presence in general. Generally, the person must have the knowledge of all essential skills related to the WordPress website designing such as editing images with Fireworks and Photoshop, UX/UI- knowledge, conversion rate optimization, website hosting expertise, WordPress Core, Theme, Plugin, etc. A developer will all these virtues can provide you custom WordPress solution easily and quickly.

8. Monthly Maintenance Services and Backup

Good WordPress designers always offer the available service plan and updates if you need to add new functionalities and features to your services. There are many developers that only create your website, but they don’t provide any backup or support you may need while operating your site. You need to hire a WordPress developer that is ready to assist whenever you need assistance to run your site smoothly and keep it live.

9. Security Of Your Business Details

The WordPress developer you choose for your project must maintain the privacy of your important business details such as payment details, general security details, website credentials, communication between you and him/her, etc.

Final Words:

WordPress allows you to create a solid online presence easily with a little investment. If you are looking for a WordPress development company or freelance WordPress developer, you should keep the above factors in mind to pick the best WordPress developer/company in an easy way.

Author bio:

Brandon Graves is an expert WordPress developer working with HireWPGeeks. He has an excellent command on how to deal with different WordPress issues easily. He keeps writing on custom WordPress development services, plugins development services, etc.

Source:

http://www.sooperarticles.com/internet-articles/web-development-articles/top-9-things-know-before-selecting-wordpress-developer-1588310.html

Top 5 Captcha Plugins For WordPress

 

Tech-savvy people use different websites/blogs to get a number of products and services. When you initiate the website registration, subscribe Email Services, book tickets online, etc, you are asked to pass a test-CAPTCHA, before completing the tasks. Actually, CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computer and Humans Apart. It is also known as the type of Human Interaction Proof (HIP), which is simple and straightforward for humans, but impossible for bots to solve. Generally, most common CAPTCHA is an image of several distorted letters.

These days, the CAPTCHA is widely used by many individuals to improve the security of Internet based applications and prevent bots (automated programs) from damaging websites with automated entries or SPAM. They also prevent dictionary attacks (Attacks under which an automatically generated script or computer program tries random passwords on login forms to sign into websites/blogs unfairly). Approximately 200 million CAPTCHA are solved by humans around the world every day and this figure is likely to go up in years to come.

Most of the WordPress bloggers receive more than 100 spam comments per day. It is very difficult to handle all of them manually in case you are not among hardcore WordPress experts. Fortunately, there are many CAPTCHA plugins to control SPAM traffic to your site. If you want to add the CAPTCHA feature to your website, just consider the following options:

 

1. Captcha

 

This CAPTCHA plugin helps you to apply a super security captcha form into web forms and keep your website aloof from SPAM traffic easily and quickly. The plugin uses math logic for CAPTCHA, which is easily understood by humans. It has no complicated CAPTCHA that includes complicated combinations of letters, pictures, or hard-to-read words. This plugin asks visitors to complete just three simple actions- add, subtract, and multiply. Based on your specific business needs, you can use the captcha for comment forms, password recovery, login, and registration. The plugin supports a number of languages also.

 

2. SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam

 

SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam is another good option you should try. This plugin can help you to add Secure Image CAPTCHA to your website easily and effortlessly. You can place the captcha on different sections of your site, such as comments, login, registration, lost password, etc. So, visitors will be asked to clear the CAPTCHA test to submit comments, to login and register for goods and services. This will protect your website from automated entries made by bots. The plugin is fully compatible with Akismet too. So, you can easily use both of them on your site and can combat the SPAM attack effortlessly.

 

3. Simple Google reCAPTCHA

 

Simple Google reCAPTCHA is relatively a new plugin, but it is very useful and beneficial. It’s lightweight and robust, putting only a little burden on your site’s server. With this plugin, you can protect your website against SPAM and brute-force attacks. It supports BuddyPress and WooCommerce & available in 3 different languages. You can place CAPTCHA on the Comment form, New password form, Registration form, Login form, and Reset password form and humiliate bots easily.

 

4. WordPress Captcha and Anti Spam Plugin by Captcha Bank

 

Captcha Bank is perhaps the most powerful Plugin with which you can safeguard your site from all types of spamming activities. It prevents professional online trollers, Spammers, and bots from flooding your site with SPAM. It has a bullet proof captcha validator which adds an additional layer of protection to your website.

The plugin has different text captcha. You can customize their text color, background, styling, etc, as per your needs. It also has simple Maths operations such as arithmetic, relational or arrange order. If you want, you can make Captcha Case-Sensitive, making it difficult for human spammers to get involved in spamming activities.

The plugin supports important WordPress plugins, such as WooCommerce, BuddyPress, and Contact Form 7. Place Captcha on Login Form, Registration Form, Comment Form, Admin Comment form, or any other places on your site and make them safe from automatic submissions of queries.

 

5. Uber reCaptcha

 

Uber reCaptcha is a worthwhile option if you are looking for a lightweight and useful CAPTCHA plugin. Using this plugin, you can easily add reCaptcha protection to the WordPress login form, registration form, comment form, and recover password form. This will help you to eliminate spam comments or brute-force attacks easily against your WordPress site/blog and keep it safe. It also Supports audio or image captcha types in a number of predefined languages.

 

Final Words:

WordPress website security matters a lot for all those individuals who operate WordPress websites with business prospects in mind such as WordPress developers, entrepreneurs, individual businessmen, etc. A secured website can bring about lots of traffic and business opportunities for its owner. You can use the above-mentioned WordPress plugins add CAPTCHA to your site and combat the spamming activities and other types of security risks (to your site) effectively.

 

Source: http://www.apsense.com/article/top-5-captcha-plugins-for-wordpress.html

5 Common PPC Pitfalls and Tips to Avoid Them

 

All individuals who operate the web-based business, want their sites to rank well on all leading search engine results. It helps them to get the desired traffic and create leads one after another. For this, they use different SEO tricks.

On a number of occasions, you don’t get the desired results despite optimizing your website with the latest SEO practices. This is where PPC comes into play and helps you sustain in a highly competitive web-based business.

The full form of PPC is pay per click. In simple terms, it is a costly internet marketing technique in which advisors place advertisements and pay fees whenever one of their advertisements is clicked. It’s a process of getting your keywords displayed on the first page of search engines and diverting a huge amount of traffic to your site for lead generation.

PPC, if implemented well, helps you to achieve the ultimate goals of your web-based business. If you make mistakes in PPC campaigns, you experience a huge financial setback and suffer great loss in terms of website traffic, generation of leads, and sales.

Have you also placed PPC ads? Not getting the desired results despite exerting your best efforts? If yes, then you must avoid making PPC mistakes. Just have a look at common PPC blunders and tips to avoid them-

1. Redirecting the audience to your site’s homepage

 

As PPC is a costly internet marketing technique, all advertisers want to get the maximum return on the investment they make. So, when a customer clicks a PPC ad, he/she is taken to the homepage of the website. The reason behind this move is that advertisers want to sell several useful items to the interested customers.

But there is no guarantee that customers that land on your website through PPC ads are interested in your offerings. They may go away from your site if your offer/product is worthless. If it happens several times with you, just be careful as it diminishes the outcome significantly.

Solution

 

Determine high performing keywords, phrases, and terms associated with your business. Place those terms carefully in PPC ads and try to redirect visitors to specific product pages for increasing the outcome of your conversion rate optimization.

In case, you redirect the audience to your site’s homepage, make sure that visitors easily find all key products/services on the front page. Just keep your site’s navigation path simple and hassle-free so that visitors can easily search the desired products/services.

2. Monotonous ad content

 

 

In the web-based business, quality content helps entrepreneurs to fascinate the targeted audience and encourage them for buying their products and services time and again.

Because of a huge gap between demand and supply (of quality Content), most of the advertisers use lousy content to create PPC advertisements. As a result, you don’t get the desired business opportunities despite spending a lot of money on PPC advertisements.

Solution

 

Determine high volume keywords for your business. Create quality content to run PPC ad campaigns. Make sure that your content motivates the targeted audience to buy your products/service. Take the help of professional content writing agencies if you have the shortage of quality Content. Do split test before running the PPC ad.

3. Neglecting local factors

 

 

All PPC advertisers aim for a lower CPC (cost per click) while running PPC advertisements. It is almost impossible to keep the ad cost under control if you ignore the local factors.

Let’s understand it as an example- Suppose you sell your keywords all over the world. But, your audience residing in Australia loves to deal with a local service provider rather than contacting you directly. If you ignore the huge importance of business localization here, you are bound to pay more only for little business opportunities.

 

Solution

 

Localize your PPC advertising campaigns and make sure that you have a local vendor in specific areas to address the needs of the targeted audience.

4. Not tracking fraud networks

 

 

All leading search engines (on which you place PPC advertisements) have networks to distribute your ads. Some networks are fraudulent, which send fake traffic to your website with high bounce rate. In this case, your CPC is increased up to a great extent and you get only a few chances for lead generation.

Solution

 

It doesn’t matter how affluent you are, even a single cent matters a lot in PPC advertising game. Make sure that your ads are distributed to the right network. This will reduce the CPC cost significantly and give you genuine visitors for conversation.

5. Poor handling of affiliates

 

Several companies use affiliates to garner more and more business. The problem here is that some affiliates don’t show any interest towards the success of your PPC campaigns. If this happens, you not only pay for CPC, but also to affiliates. All these increase the overall cost of your PPC campaigns and slash the profit margin.

Solution

 

It will be better for you to run PPC campaigns yourself. If you want to use affiliates for PPC advertisements, ask them to bring quality traffic for the generation of leads one after another.

Concluding remarks:

 

PPC is a costly way of promoting your products and services on the web and taking the web-based business to the next level. Just avoid the above-mentioned PPC pitfalls and gain success easily.

Author bio:

 

This article is contributed by Brandon Graves, a wordpress developer (convert html to wordpress) and digital marketing expert. Just follow him on Google plus to get his updates instantly.