Here at Monkey C Media we use WordPress almost exclusively to build our author websites. Just one of the reasons we use this platform is because of the flexibility and plugins available. Below we explain which WordPress plugins for author websites we recommend for authors and why.
There are Many Helpful WordPress Plugins for Author Websites
There are a lot of options out there for plugins that do everything from making your website run smoothly to allowing you to build a contact list and even sell your book directly from your site. Also note that there are both paid and free plugins. So be sure to consider your budget when choosing your plugins. The plugins you choose will depend on your specific needs of course, but when it comes to WordPress plugins for author websites, we recommend a few. But first, let’s go over the types of plugins out there and why you need them.
Plugins that Connect You to Your Audience
Sharing Plugins
Sharing plugins allow your readers to share your content with their network on their chosen social platform. This is a good thing—this is how content goes viral and the number one way to grow your audience and reach more people. For example, let’s say you read this article about WordPress plugins and you love it. With these plugins you can share it on your Facebook page letting your other author friends know about it. Simply click the Facebook icon and the plugin does the rest. Easy Peasy.
Subscriber Plugins
Building an email subscriber list remains the most powerful way to build an audience of loyal followers. Making it obvious, enticing, and easy is key. There are numerous plugins for this purpose. You just integrate your plugin with your contact manager, sit back and watch your list grow. There are tons of great contact managers out there by the way. We recommend Mailchimp, Sumo and Constant Contact. As your list grows, you’ll need to pay for this service (so plan ahead and know what your costs will be as your list grows).
WordPress Plugins for Author Websites to Keep Yours Secure and Running Smoothly
Security Plugins
Not to get too far into the proverbial weeds here, but it’s important to understand what WordPress is in order to understand why it can be a security issue. WordPress is based on open source code. This means that it’s open to the public to freely use, change, adapt, and study. There are a ton of people creating plugins and widgets to support WordPress, which also means that it’s more likely built on outdated code. And outdated code is the number one way hackers inject malware into WordPress sites. Therefore, the best thing WP users can do is keep everything up to date and install security plugins so our sites remain running securely and smoothly.
SEO (search engine optimization) Plugins
Search Engine Optimization is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine (as defined in the Oxford dictionary). The key to getting that traffic is creating lots of fresh relevant content optimized with keywords and other metadata (more on this in our next post on SEO). SEO plugins for author websites make this process easier.
Analytics Plugins
Analytics plugins allow you to track your traffic, see where it comes from, and how long visitors stay on your site. Thus revealing which pages visitors are most likely to read, or exit your site from, and more. This is one of the biggest challenges for many of our clients. But understanding how your readers are engaging with your content lets you provides value for them in the future. This means you’re more likely to obtain a loyal group of fans!
The WordPress Plugins for Author Websites We Use and Recommend
Before installing a plugin for your author website, you need to consider the speed, reliability, security, and functionality of the plugin. With so many options out there, choosing which ones to use can be a bit confusing. So here’s our list of WordPress plugins for author websites we recommend.
For Newsletter Opt-In Forms
Bloom
This is a paid plugin offered through Elegant Themes. Bloom allows you to create an on-page opt-in form that integrates with most every newsletter service (like MailChimp or Constant Contact). The best part is that with Bloom, you’re able to create static opt-ins as well as fly-ins and pop-ups. These are proven to convert more traffic, even though we all know how annoying they are—they work.
Sumo.com
Sumo offers free and paid options to build your subscriber list, which allow you to create an opt-in for free for up to a million visitors per month. The paid version of this WordPress plugin for your author website allows you to remove the Sumo branding, get advanced analytics, email integrations and more. So it’s really up to you and your needs and budget.
For Social Sharing
Monarch
This is also a paid plugin offered through Elegant Themes. Social sharing buttons make it easy for your readers to share your content on their social platforms. Monarch also offers a variety of ways to customize your social sharing buttons, from where they are placed to how they appear on your website. This means being able to customize them to fit the whole look and feel of your website to best fit your brand.
SEO Plugins
Yoast
Yoast also has both paid and free options. We love Yoast SEO as a WordPress plugin for author websites because it really does make optimizing your website for SEO easy! This plugin helps you improve the readability score(a part of SEO) of your blog posts, create title tags and quality page content. And this plugin does a lot of the work for you. We think the paid version is worth it, but the unpaid version does the job too.
AllinOne
As the name suggests, this WordPress Plugin for author websites allows you to copy and integrate other SEO plugins on your website. It also offers a whole wide world of options on how you view and manage your SEO settings. For instance, you can choose which web pages you want to Google to index. Meaning, you can choose which pages you want to be found in a search.
Important Analytics Plugins for Author Websites
Google Site Kit
This handy little WordPress Plugin for author websites is integrated with Google allowing you to access insights on how visitors found your website, and how to improve your content to make your website more discoverable to your audience and more.
Laras Google Analytics Plugin
This analytics plugin adds a full Google analytics dashboard widget to your WordPress admin interface. This makes it easy to track and analyze traffic across all your web pages in one place. It’s very visual and shows insights into who is viewing your pages, how long they stay, and how many views particular pages get, and more. This means access to valuable information about your audience and how they respond, or not, to the content on your website.
Recent Comments