When you have established your online presence, you could feel that it takes everything to keep it going.
Not to mention that any failure could cost you too much of everything. There has to be a better way, you might think.
This thought could have crossed your mind multiple times in an hour. In the era of technology, when machines think instead of us most of the time, is there nothing you can automate and get off your chest?
There is something that could help you automate a lot of work on your site and get the desired result. If your site is on WordPress, then you can use one of the numerous plugins to get a bunch of work off your chest.
Here are the top 6 things you can automate with the right plugins. It will help to make your site a success while giving you the much needed time to focus on other essential things.
1. Your website’s security
With the massive issues arising recently about cybersecurity, regardless of how small your site is, you need it to be hacker-proof. Still, making sure that everything is airtight is constant work, putting people into “set it up and leave it” frame of mind. Consequently, many WordPress websites are a threat, not only to their respective customers but also to anyone on the web.
Surely, you don’t want to be that guy? Here is what you could do first, instead of reading up about WordPress security (not saying that you shouldn’t!). You should install a useful security plugin. Mind you, not all of them are good, and you should spend some time figuring out what is the valid deal out there.
However, if you go with Security Ninja, for example, you can run over 50 security tests on your site. Why would you need to run tests if you are unsure what the results mean? Don’t worry. Every result is clearly explained, documented, and comes with a great deal of information on how to fix it. Just a delight! You can also opt for a pro version, which is, in its essence, all in one solution for your website’s security. There are also many other security plugins out there that you could check out, too, to worry about your safety instead of you!
2. Legal pages
They probably crossed your mind several times already, too. Not only do you have to protect your website, but you also have to protect yourself from any potential legal mess. Many people tend not to use Terms & Conditions, Disclaimer, or Privacy Policy in the future, which could cost them a lot in the long run.
Now, any of these is equally important in the era of data privacy on the internet. People are getting familiar with it, and they should be informed on how their data is going to be used by your website. You should get a lawyer to help you out with these.
While you are at it, you can add a privacy policy in no time to your website, and modify it according to what your lawyer suggests. For example, you can go ahead and use WPLegalPages to get the job done for you, as it allows you to generate up to 25 legal pages and add them to your website. You can also use it to add responsive pop-ups to your site, to ensure that your visitors are informed and that they can choose their next action on your site adequately.
3. Mess on your site
No, we’re not talking about automating your website to act crazily and cause you even more stress than you need. Trust us, it will do it without the help of a plugin or two. Don’t believe us? Check out your website’s media library!
The mess tends to just happen. You could already have one-too-many plugins on your site causing it to misbehave. Or, there are numerous legacy or testing posts on your site. You could also have anxiety revolving around the fact that you have many contributors on your site. Getting all these things taken care of is a time-consuming, manual hard work. No wonder it often gets pushed to the bottom of the to do list. Even if you did your best to create a to do list that’s effective.
Still, getting rid of the mess can also be automated with the right plugin. If you put your trust in WP Reset, for example, you can clean up the mess with a single click on a button. Clean each of the messy segments of your site, from plugins to posts in a blink of an eye. Or, restart the whole website and start again! It’s alright – we won’t tell anyone it happened.
4. On-page SEO
What is the point of having a website if you are ranking on the 37th page of Google? It is not up to you at all times how your site will rank; it is mostly up to your visitors. Still, your content should be optimized to give you an extra push in the right direction.
With ever-changing Google algorithms, it is safe to say that no-one knows what content optimization truly means. Most of the time, while you are optimizing, you are just hoping you are doing the right thing. However, with the right plugin, you can rest assured that almost all of your SEO struggles will bear results.
For example, if you go ahead and install the famous Yoast SEO, which will provide you with great options for optimizing your content. It will help you choose your keywords to rank for and help you optimize your content to get the most of the specific keywords. You can effortlessly edit meta description, titles, and it will give you clear instructions on internal and external linking, for example.
While it doesn’t rewrite the content for you, you might consider this not to be a great “automation” plugin. Still, with so many useful features, you will soon find yourself optimizing content in the autopilot mode, and without so many questions left unanswered. Apart from Yoast SEO, there are other numerous plugins you can try out that will help you get the most out of your SEO efforts.
5. Your Links
An essential part of your SEO efforts are the links that you are using in your content. Both internal and external links are equally important in the eyes of Google. If placed right, meaning that they fit organically into the content and bring only value to your visitors, these can both help you jump up on Google’s search result list.
Internal links will help you keep your visitors longer on your site, which Google will consider that you have useful information for them. On the other hand, external links can help put you “in good company,” if you are linking to the authority websites in your field. Then, there are those that you need on your site but don’t want Google to see: the no-follow ones.
However, just having a couple of links in your content will soon turn into a sea of links, and you will have to manage them all somehow. It is where you could go ahead and use WP External Links, and autopilot another significant aspect of your site. It helps you manage all your links in bulk, and helps you set your links so that they are working for you, and not against you!
6. Content planning
We all love WordPress, but let’s be honest here. After a while, tracking all your content efforts can become a hassle. While the Admin Dashboard is perfect for many things, overviewing the whole website and creating a content marketing plan can be somewhat of trouble.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if WordPress came with a content calendar so that you could effortlessly get an overview of scheduled content and what still needs your attention? Somewhere where you could add that you need a blog post about kittens in two weeks? Especially if you are not the only contributor to the site, this is quite a missing piece that could make you throw the whole puzzle into the trash.
Or, instead, you could go ahead and get yourself CoSchedule. In essence, it is an all-in-one editorial calendar, which lets you arrange everything with a drag and drop feature. From the next kitten blog post, marketing content, and even social media content included, you can effortlessly schedule everything in one place. From there, all it takes is one look to figure out what goes where next, and what is missing for your marketing pieces to do their job correctly.
Back to you
If you expected plugins that will work with the “set it up and leave it” line, you are probably disappointed by now. However, by now, you have also figured how tremendously time-consuming and, honestly, boring the tasks mentioned above are. It is easy to see that even though these plugins can’t do the job for you, they can help you save time and nerves.
So, if you were looking for a quick solution, go ahead and install some of these. With any of these plugins, you can stop wasting too much time on any of the tasks. There are so many other things you need to think about when it comes to your website. Let these plugins take care of some of it!
Published on September 3, 2019 under content, cyber security, WordPress website. Modified on January 24, 2022.
