Creative Storefront» Plug-Ins We Love

SEO Smart Links Plugin

John Muldoon — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:33:17 +0000

This is a handy plugin for the internet marketing crowd. It does a number of things very well, but my favorite feature is the ability to universally turn a given word on your blog or website into a link to a specific page. This is really great for SEO and for affiliate marketers. The fundamental benefit is the same for each; you’re passing your audience to someplace that should be contextually relevant to them.
In the SEO world, you’re also passing authority and PageRank for a keyword which becomes the anchor text of your link. For affiliate marketers, you can write a really useful post about website hosting, for example, and every time you mention one of your smart link keywords, it can turn into your affiliate link to Go Daddy. Maybe you were planning to create those links anyway, this just saves you time. Just as an example.
You also have the ability to set a maximum number of smart links to be generated on a given page or post. This is good because none of us wants to be spammy or mess up our users’ experience. I set the limit on this page to 3 links, so even though all of these are among my smart link words, the plugin stops linking them after the third: go daddy, domain, domains, domain name, hosting.

I’m using this on a client’s website to link certain technical keywords contained in their copy to a glossary page which defines those words. This is a real help in terms of user experience for sites which may be unable to avoid technical or complicated language.

In all, a great plugin that can really help streamline and accelerate your content-driven internet marketing business. Throw the developer a bone, I’m sure he could use a cup of coffee.

Link to SEO Smart Links Plugin.

What’s the best forum plugin/add-on for WordPress?

Bradley Charbonneau — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:18:12 +0000

We have some “private” discussions going on here at Creative Storefront and I’d like to have them here on the site somehow rather than just emails.

User Access Manager: we can create categories that are only accessible to certain users. Works well, but then are posts sent to RSS? Also are posts then visible by title, but then restricted/closed? Are they listed in the Recent Posts? (I don’t want them to be.) I think I’d rather have these private/back room discussions less prominent.
bbPress: forum software built by Automattic (the same people who run WordPress), so of course there’s seamless integration. Full-blown forum software so it has all of the bells and whistles.
WP Forum: a WP plugin that’s been around a while, but hasn’t been updated in since Sep 2008.
Forum Server: they modestly promote, “This is a much more advanced and better than the WP-Forum plugin … ” but hey, worth looking at.

Thoughts?

How to install Google Analytics on your self-hosted WordPress Site (video tutorial)

John Muldoon — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:02:13 +0000

I thought I’d try my hand at making a video tutorial. This first-pass is a little rough, but I think the point comes across. It’s something many of you already know how to do: installing Google Analytics in your WordPress blog.

I know there are a ton of Google Analytics plugins for WordPress, but the one I like is called “Google Analytics for WordPress” by Joost de Valk (who has a number of other excellent plugins. I like how well it handles tracking clicks to downloads and external links, and how you can select not to track your own activity when you’re logged in as an administrator.

Hat tip to the Capture Fox plugin for Firefox for making an excellent FF plugin for screecast videos.

Here’s the How-To (hit Fullscreen to enjoy all the delicious goodness):

You got Flickr in my Facebook

Bradley Charbonneau — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:43:47 +0000

I was trying to remember that old Reese’s ad and, well, with the In-ter-net it was gall-darn-easy (you got peanut butter in my chocolate). Have I ever mentioned I’m a total Reese’s fanatic?

So I get this question quite a bit:

“I have photos on my Facebook page, but I want them on my website, too. Can I import them or something?”

I’m not a heavy Facebook user so I didn’t know the WordPress or Flickr plugins off the top of my head, but a quick look at the WordPress plugin directory and there were plenty to choose from. But that’s assuming they’re using Facebook and WordPress. Sure, my clients are, but if you’re not, I’d suggest using a photo-sharing site like Flickr and then integrating those images into Facebook. Why? Because Flickr (or Picasa or others) do a great job at one simple task: photos. Because they’re so popular, usually they’ll have friendly export/import/integration/plugins to help you get your photos elsewhere.

So then you could integrate your Flickr photos into your Facebook page, your MySpace page, your website (with WordPress or something else) or even just use Flickr on its own for photos.

How do you get your peanut butter in your chocolate?