Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hey there, this is Amelia in this class. What are intend to do is just show you 10 WordPress plug ins for your blog's that are free that you should consider using under bar. And I will tell you I have several blocks now and I wish that someone had just simply given these to me in the beginning before had gone out and had to do the research myself. I spent money in places that I realize now that I didn't need to simply because I didn't know. So just look at these 10 plug ins is sort of, ah, like a help you up like a fast forward to get you through what took me several months to figure out and several dollars toe waste and hopefully you will find value. Let's go ahead and jump in and get started.
2. How to Upload a Plugin in Wordpress: So in this video, I want to show you quickly how you can upload and install and activate a plugging in your WordPress site. So we're looking here. Is that the dashboard of one of my blog's? And if I want to add a plug in, what I will do is go here to the left and go down until I see plug ins so you can either click on plug ins or click on Add new. But I'm just going to select plug ins. Click. And hopefully this loads quickly, depending upon what I have for my connection. Okay, so if I want to add a new plug in now that I am on the screen that shows everything that I have uploaded, I will click add new. And as we wait now, there are two ways to add a plug in. One is you can search here and on the right for your plug in, or you can get your plug in directly from another website. So you have a private company that builds plug ins and you purchase the plug in it downloads, and when you download it to get it into your WordPress site, you would select upload plug in. When you do that, it asks you to choose a file. And when you select choose file, it will take you to, ah, the place where you have your downloads and you would just select your download. But let's say I don't want to do that because I didn't purchase. Ah, plug in for this example. So I'm going to search plug ins and I'm going to search for pretty links and so I can see all the various ah link options. Short links by pretty links is the plug in that I'm looking for. So I will select Install? No. And this is exactly how long it takes. So I'm not cutting and pasting anything so you can see exactly how long this takes. Once it has been stalled installed, I need toe. Activate it. So I will click the activate button, and it will take just a few seconds less than a minute to activate it. You could see appear on the left that my computers thinking. Now I can scroll down and check to see Okay, my plug in is activated. Um, I confined information about it. Now if I want to go and customize the plug in or the whatever it is that I have uploaded. There are lots of places you might find it, and it depends upon the plug in that you've got some of the plug ins when you activate them , they pop up here on the left so you can go in and make changes to them. Some of them will pop up in tools. Some of them will pop up where you might use them. So, for example, the smush it plug in. You'll find that up in media, so sometimes you might just have to scroll around to see where it is so that you can can go in and make changes to it. Now that I have it over here on the left, I can click to make changes to it, to customize it, to make links, to do everything that I need to do. And that is how you install a plug in in your WordPress site.
3. Recommended Plugin 1: for anyone running a website, a blogger seller in anybody who has tons of images on their page, it is so critical that those images load quickly now for beginners. One of the things that frequently do is put just any image on the page without looking very carefully at what sized the images. They may not have the skills to really check that out and figure out how big and images or even really understand why that it matters. But what they'll do is they'll get images. They'll take photos or download photos, or get free star quotas from pixels dot com or on splash dot com and then upload them right to their block. You know, they want a good looking block. They want to attract visitors, and they want to bring people in and, of course, having photographs on your pages, something that Google is looking at when making a decision to send traffic to it. So you gotta have some sort of images, but you don't necessarily understand in the beginning what those images conduce to your load speed. And we know just as users of the Internet that we cannot stand pages that load quickly We need things fast, like snap your fingers fast and I frequently back out and go back to the search engines. If the page that I'm clicking on just doesn't load quickly enough, uh, you contest, you know, the speed of your website. There's tons of free websites. You can go and do that on, but anything that's going to take more than a couple seconds to load, you're gonna lose that customer, that reader. And so one of the ways that we can speed up your website is to compress the photographs on it. And this plug in is a free plug in with WordPress, and I love it because it's super easy. It's called. Well, I don't know how they actually pronounce that. I call it re smush it. Ah, but what you do is you install this plug in in WordPress, and even if you already have photographs on your page, what it will do is it will shrink essentially the file size of any media, any photographs that you have that you're using in your media library and on your page. It won't necessarily make the photograph actually smaller on the page. It will just reduce the file size. Now, some of these really beautiful photographs, you know, that there are really high resolution and really large files. For the most part, you're not gonna need something that could be printed out four foot by four foot because most people who are cruising around and landing on your site or probably doing it from a cell phone and the photograph that they're seeing on their phone is, I mean, a couple inches at most in the same thing with the desktop or a laptop image. You know that we just don't need the pictures to be that high quality. And so this plug in will are quickly once installed. Take care of that for you. And really, all you do is install it and then go to your media section in your WordPress block and just tell it to smush everything. And it will just start running, and you will never have to touch it again. When you upload photographs are media to use, you won't have to ask the plug in to smush it. It will just do it, and you won't have to worry about this issue again.
4. Recommended Plugin 2: if you haven't heard of Yost for a CEO, this is one that is essentially one of the most important plug ins that you can install in your WordPress site and begin to use. I kid you not every single person that is really serious about blogging and especially using WordPress is using Yost. It's a free plug in. There is an upgrade. You know, you could pay for more features, but ultimately the free version is sufficient. But what Yost does is it makes it stupid easy for you to create content for your blogged it so that the search engines will look at it and then actually send you visitors. So if you don't know that much about Seo, which stands for search engine optimization, there are tons of secret formulas that Google on being now who will use to decide where to send the traffic. And if your site, if your content doesn't fit in with within that super secret algorithm, then you're not gonna get any visitors to your block. And so Yost. What it does is it's easy to install its Frida install. You know you can find it on WordPress dot or but once you have it installed. I'm just going to go to one of my blocks. When you go to write your content what it will do, what it will start you with is essentially step by step, leading you through what it is that you need to do to make sure that you're post that your site is optimized, that the word I'm going to use optimized is basically ready for search engines to crawl it , which means, you know, to to go look over it and decide whether or not they want to send traffic to it. And so to use Yost, what you start with, rather than just starting, appear, and typing out your content is you pick your focus key phrase. And once you do that and I just selected dog collars once you do that, then it tells you essentially with a system of traffic lights, what you need to do to get the best possible S CEO score based upon your content. So if you look down here, I haven't done anything else in the post other than just put in my focus key phrase and you look down and it shows me all the things that I need to do in order to optimize my post for the search engines. So you know, it gives me the red, which are things that are super important to take care of orange, which are, you know, yellow are, you know, is not as important. But then also green and so up here in the top bar, Um, you know, when that light is green, you should be good to go. So it gives you the key phrase issues that also gives you readability. And you know, you won't be able to see here in this video much about readability because I haven't written anything. But what it will do is tell you and give you suggestions about how to make your content more easily consumed by your readers, which is also a part of the search engine, uh, super secret formula. You know, people will argue about how important readability is, but, you know, I would say that if you're looking to get free traffic, and this is super important to you, then focusing on doing everything possible to get the best score the bus rating, the best review from Google so that they will send you free traffic. I would do just about anything that Yost said to do so again. This is another free plug in that is widely widely used by bloggers and anybody running WordPress.
5. Recommended Plugin 3: one thing you may not be thinking about as you are spending hours and hours of time crafting you're written or visual content for your blogged is how easily someone can come and snag it. So, uh, this WP content copy protection and no right click is a free plug in that I use on my blocks because what I don't want to see is someone coming along and simply, uh, highlighting my constant than hitting copy and paste just about anywhere they want. So what WP content copy protection does is it makes it so that there is no right click available on the page, so you nobody can right click and then save any of the images on your page. They also can't copy any of the content on put it anywhere. So if someone wanted to steal your content from your page, they would essentially have to do a side by side and type it out into another document into another post into another page. Uh, you know, I hate to assume this, but this is what I do assume is that people who are stealing content are generally not willing to spend the time, and the effort to create their own content. They're not willing to sit down with a word doc or, ah, Post and we're press and actually type things out. They want something that they can get quick and fast and, you know, just just taking it without using it themselves. And you see this happening frequently if you are using or hiring people on up work or fiber or any of the freelance sites. You know, you you asked for an article, and then you have Teoh really check it to make sure that hasn't been just straight stolen from another content creator. And so, you know, just to keep your material safe, a safe as you can possibly make it. I mean, you can't make it 100% safe, because again, it's out there on the Internet, and there are people out there who don't either have the ability to do what you do, or they don't want to spend the time to do what it is that you do. So there There are people out there who are going to try to take what you have and this free plug ins, content, copy protection and no right click. It's a plug in that will help you do that
6. Recommended Plugin 4: if you are using your block for affiliate marketing or for selling products or you have tons of outbound links, essentially, you know, having post where you might have multiple outbound links, you should consider Ah wordpress Plug in that turns those links to a no follow link. What can happen is when you have an I don't want to say absurd, but posts like comparison posts where you are reviewing like 25 of the best tactical knives and each one of those, uh, items each one of those products. Each one of those sections may have one or two outbound leaks. What can happen is that Google may see or may believe that your site is a spam site and will hit it with a penalty. So there are two types of external links, and when I say external links, that means a link that if someone clicks on it, it will take them away from your website. So, uh, an internal link is one that if someone clicks on, it will be taken to another page inside your website. There are do follow external links and no follow external links. If you have a do follow link than Google will keep track of that link and then, you know, apply sort of its formula because when you link to another side and another thing, a site links to you, you know, there's a certain amount of that I'm putting out my air quotes link juice passed along. Basically, when someone links to you, they're watching for you. And when you link to someone else, you were botching for them. So a do follow link is I'm vouching for that website. That website is good. I'm passing along whatever it is that I have to them and a no follow link, Google search engines will basically disregard that link, and we'll just go over as if it wasn't actually there. So if you're going to be doing affiliate marketing or you're going to be recommending a lot of products, you should consider a WordPress plug in that will convert your do follow links to know follow links so that when you have a really extensive, really in depth post, the default will be just converting all of the links in that post to a no follow link. Now you can add do follow links to your post you just have to manually do that. But rather than have it be the opposite where the default is, all of your links are Do follow links. There will be no followed links. The WordPress plugging that I'm currently using Ah for my side is WP no external links. Use it because it's the easiest one. Essentially, once you download and activated, it converts all of the links on the site to know followings, regardless of how you have them set up previously, um, it's super easy, and it's one that you would use if you care about the number of outgoing links that you will have.
7. Recommended Plugin 5: one of the challenges when you first start using WordPress when you first start blogging when you really get serious about trying to make money with WordPress, site is all of the doo hickeys and doodads and widgets and things that you need to actually insert into the code. So if you are are connecting your website to Pinterest, for example, because you want to create rich pins and get the boost with Pinterest because they have their code on your site, you need to be able to do things like insert the code into the header or footer of your website. The same is true if you want to use the Facebook pixel. If you want to run Google ads on your page. If you want to have any sort of connection to other tracking codes, you're going to need to be able to know how to put that code into the header. I remember the first time I started my first website and I was trying desperately to figure out how to get my website verified with Google Search Council and I could not figure it out and it was excruciating and I tried again and I tried again, and I tried again. And I wish now that I knew that a simple plug in existed that would assist me to do that. And so I am recommending that if you are brand new to blogging into using WordPress and you were just working to monetize your blogged that you consider the insert headers and footers plug in. This is one where it simply gives you the option to put the code into the plug in, and the plug in will go ahead and add the code where it needs to go in your theme so that you don't have to actually open up the editor so that you don't have to actually go in and make any changes to your code because what can happen is if you don't do it right. If you mess up and you make a change, you could essentially cause massive damage to your website, and you may not have the ability to fix it. So plug ins like these are really handy and can really facilitate this process and stop you from having to pull out your hair like I did
8. Recommended Plugin 6: a simple Blufgan that you may find really useful to protect your website from getting hacked or from bots is the limit. Log in attempts. Reloaded. Plug in. There's a older plug in called limit Log in attempts. The Reloaded version is the updated version that was updated in 2018. So what this one does is it limits the number of times somebody can try to enter a password to get into your work. Rest so we're press by. Default allows unlimited log in attempts. So if you are not thinking about this necessarily or if you have a maybe an a password that is not complex looking end up happening. Is that hackers? Or, you know, the bad guys? This mayor quote the bad guys. All they have to do is use bots to just continue toe attempt to get into your WordPress account, and eventually they could figure out your password just simply by running programs. To do that, there's no like person sitting behind this, you know, continually trying to put in the password. It's just programs running this. And so what will happen is that once you put a limit on it, WordPress will just stop letting that that individual or that, um, that i p address to continue to make attempts to lock into your page. This is again another super valuable and simple free plug in. It's easy to install. Ah, but it's something that you may not even realize is happening to your website simply because you just don't know. Um, you know, you don't have to make it like one or two attempts. I mean, five attempts seems reasonable, but for you, you just want to make sure that you keep your passwords handy so that you don't end up blocking your own self.
9. Recommended Plugin 7: so a key component of getting traffic to your blog's your WORDPRESS website is the social sharing signals. So Google and all of these search engines they track how many of the social sharing platforms link back to your content. And so you want to make it as easy as possible for people to be able to share your content on their social media sites. And you say, What are social sharing buttons? All you have to do is look at just about any page and you will see buttons that can make it easy with one click or two clicks without having to leave the page without having to go to Facebook and then potentially get distracted and Facebook to share your content So you can see here on Neil Patel's blogged askew scroll down these three buttons pop up. Here's another one we're again. You can see the simple share buttons and then another where the share buttons across the top. There are other plug ins that will put the share buttons at the bottom. I'm not going to specifically recommend one of these as the best social sharing plug ins. I personally use WP social share, but there are tons of these plug ins. If you simply go to wordpress dot org's and search Social Sharing, you'll get so many options that are highly rated. You see, you know at least three of these plug ins have five stars with more then thousands and thousands of installations. So one of these ways will be a good and easy solution. Frito, add these social share buttons to your word plus site.
10. Recommended Plugin 8: Have you ever heard of the cash? It's spelt C A c h e and you might think of it as catch or kashka. It's kind of like niche or Nesha. I never quite know how to pronounce it, because usually when I see the word cash, I'm sitting behind my computer and I'm by myself. Um, having a plug in for your WordPress bog that addresses the cash conduce a a lot to improve the speed of your website. And this is something that is fairly critical when you are just getting your website going . This isn't something you want to be dealing with down the road. Get it started early. First know what is the cash or what is the cashing? Well, you gotta look at the basics of essentially the Internet. Websites are viewed maybe millions of times per month if you're you know, if you're awesome. Um and you have a great website. But every time a browser, you know, your chrome, your fire fox, your safari requests. Ah, webpage. He knows with your hosting service, the server has to do a bunch of stuff. It has to do a bunch of math, so it will send to your browser when your browser requests it, um, your pose, your head or your foot or your widgets. All this stuff, um this contain, ah, lot of time because it has to do it over and over every single time. So what a plug in like WP fastest cash does is it makes the server remember the final result rather than having to do all the math and pull all the data to put out the finalized product to your website. Um, I think it's easy to understand the cashing process by looking how pages served to you. Let's say you have a blogged that has cashing enable. Do you have a plug in that allows this cashing stuff? Ah, the first time someone visits your home page, they will receive the page in the normal way. The request is made processed on the server, and the resulting Web page is turned into a file on HTML file and sent to the browser when cashing has turned on the server stores this ht maw file. Ah, usually within its ram. It's random access memory, which is much faster. So the next time you or anyone else comes to the home page. The server doesn't have to do all the processing and version two HTM Oh, it will just send the already prepared html file to the browser. So what kind of plug ins can you get to be to make this happen, to make this calculation happen, so that when people come to your page, they get the cached version and not the version that has to go to the server and do all this mental math? Well, I have a free plug in to suggest and also a paid plug in suggest the cash is something fairly technical, and I won't expect you to understand it. But I will expect you to understand how important it is and not ignore it. Because it is technical. You can install ah, plugging like WP fastest cash. This one is free to install. But you know, as you look at it, it is maybe a little intimidating when you first look at the page and look at the plug in your like that or No, I don't really understand most of what this stuff means, but I have this one installed on one of my blog's and I found that the set up was relatively easy and quick and much more painless than it appears. Another plug in that many people online really, really recommend Is WP rocket. This is a paid plug in, Um, you look at the page and it's a little less intimidating, But again, you know, just know that it's out there. Ah, people rave about this plugging of paid plug in, but it's not necessary to have a paid plug in for the cash. You can accomplish this with WP fastest cash or another WordPress plugging. That's hardly rated. Just look through the comments, look at the ratings and then pick one to upload and install in your WordPress website.
11. Recommended Plugin 9: Here's another plug in that you should consider for your blog's. This is another free plug in, and it's called Word Fence Security. Now we were talking about in another plug in the W P ah limiting Loggins Plug in. This is a plug in that will actually incorporate the that feature of limiting Loggins, but will also incorporate other features is far security for your blog's. So you make stick with the limiting Loggins attempt because he already are running some source security. But it doesn't have that feature the word fence. Security is a free plug in that does incorporate that feature. It is installed and millions of WordPress sites, and it's fairly highly rated. Um, but it also will do more things for you as far as protecting your website again. There are lots of people and lots of bots out there trying to do malicious things to your website for whatever their reasons are. And for you, it's up to you to protect your product protector site, using a security plug in of any kind, and your WordPress site may come with suggestions for plug ins. A lot of times thes are premium plug ins. They want you to pay to use them. There is a premium version of were friends, but the free version is sufficient to do what it is that you need to do. And I highly suggest that you check it out.
12. Recommended Plugin 10: if you are doing affiliate marketing or putting links on your website is something that is important or links basically anywhere you are probably familiar with stiffly bit Lee. Any of these links shield er's that cover these really long and scary ugly links. So when you are trying to get someone to click on your website to go to a product, there's a ton of information that is loaded up in that link. It may have your affiliate i d. It may have instructions for when the customer lands on the page, and it leaves this freakin long, long, long link that that just looks really scary. And customers people around the websites may think that you're trying to send them to some kind of spam or some sort of virus or some place that's going to do bad things to them. They get scared of those links and they won't click them. So what pretty links does is it allows you to change that link to shield that link using you're blogged using your website, so a link that goes to ah click bank dot hop dot net forward slash you know 2345 slash a B , C, D and squiggle. Whatever you can name that your link page, for example. Blair Williams dot com slash and call it whatever you want. This is a free plug in, and it also gives you the power to track the length so you will know when someone clicks on it. And if it's a unique click versus somebody who had come back, um, and it allows you also to change the direction of your links without actually having to go to the content. So if you put the same link all over the place, if you put it on YouTube, if you put it in your profiles and you put it all these places and you want to change that Ah landing page where that link sense people, you would simply change it in the plug in and not have to go to maybe hundreds of places to change those links one at a time. Because what you're changing is where the link directs the user. So this is a powerful tool that is friendly to use its way used by many, many people and um, and is also very useful and cheap. Naturally,
13. Wrap Up and Outtro: Thanks everybody, for watching this class going through this with me as we went through the 10 free plug ins for ah, beginning bloggers for the project for this class. And this would be really helpful for anyone else who is interested in a program like this is if you have other free plug ins that you really like that you think would be really beneficial for other beginners. Let us know in the discussion or post something in the project section that shows us what it is that you're doing with these plug ins. I want to use this course as, ah, place for community for people Teoh help each other to help us all get through this initial period of, you know, I just got started and it's really hard when you first get started because there is so much to learn and there's so much to know and it feels so overwhelming. And so you know, this skill share places such a great place to share that information. So if you have information, don't be afraid to share. Don't be afraid to help out other people who are watching this. And I look forward to seeing you guys in the next class. Thank you so much.
Emilia Gardner, Learning every day!
