5 Best WordPress Business Directory Plugins

Are you looking for the best WordPress business directory plugins?

A business directory helps users discover service providers in a particular niche or category. At the same time, it helps those businesses find customers and opportunities.

As a website owner, you can even make money online by selling paid listings on your business directory.

In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best WordPress business directory plugins to help you save some time and money.

Best WordPress Business Directory Plugins

A good business directory plugin allows you to easily create lists of businesses organized by location, category, and other parameters.

Business directories help users find new vendors while helping businesses connect with customers and other businesses.

Unlike a Google Search, a business directory is made up of curated listings with description, reviews, and photos. This makes them more useful for users looking for specific businesses.

You’ll be looking for a business directory plugin that allows you to do all that. We will also highlight business directory plugins that allow your users to submit listings, integrate paid submissions, and search options.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress business directory plugins that you can use.

1. Formidable Form

Formidable Forms is one of the best WordPress form builder plugins on the market. It allows you to create advanced forms and add them to your website.

Using the real estate listings template, you can create a form that users will use to submit their entries into your directory. Then, you can display the business directory listings on a WordPress page.

It comes with many premium add-ons to add more features and functionality to your WordPress business directory. Formidable Forms fully supports MailChimp, PayPal, WPML, and WooCommerce.

For more details, check out our step by step tutorial on how to properly create a web directory in WordPress using Formidable Forms.

2. Business Directory Plugin

Business Directory Plugin is a free WordPress plugin to create a simple business directory. It comes with basic features required to run a web directory like customizable form fields, accepting payments for listings, etc.

It allows you to sort entries into categories and tags, create featured entries, and customize entry forms.

If you want to access more features and add-ons, then it has a pro version as well. The premium features include multiple modules, Google Maps support, user ratings, zip code search, file upload, and more.

3. Connections Business Directory

Connections is a powerful business directory plugin for WordPress. It comes with a set of custom fields that can be used to create almost any kind of web directory. In the privacy settings, you or your users can set privacy level for certain custom fields like business phone numbers or internal messages.

Displaying your directory on the front-end is very easy. You need to add a simple shortcode to your directory page. It offers custom shortcodes with extensive options to customize the appearance of your business directory.

Connections plugin also comes with template support so that you can choose a layout for your listings from pre-built directory templates.

4. GeoDirectory

As the name suggests, GeoDirectory allows you to create a location-based business directory like Yelp, TripAdvisor, YellowPages, etc. Using a simple interface, your users can submit listings to the directory. These listings or entries are pointed on the map, and your users can search for locations, businesses, neighborhoods, etc.

You can monetize your website by selling the directory listings. GeoDirectory also allows you to display event listings, create multi-location directories, and add payment gateways.

5. Name Directory

Name Directory is another free WordPress directory plugin. It allows you to create a business or personal directory easily. Using the configuration options, you can select a layout and customize plugin functionality.

It supports shortcodes to display directory listings on a WordPress post or page. You can sort the entries to show new listings on top of the page, allowing those entries to gain more exposure.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress directory plugins. You may also want to check out our list of the best email marketing services for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 5 Best WordPress Business Directory Plugins appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 06, 2019 at 06:00PM

How to Create a WooCommerce Contest to Boost Loyalty and Engagement

Do you want to create a WooCommerce contest to boost customer engagement and increase sales?

Contests are an easy way to get new visitors to your WooCommerce store, increase brand awareness, and keep customers engaged.

They can also help you boost customer loyalty, improve conversions, and increase sales in the long run.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily create a WooCommerce contest to boost loyalty and engagement.

Why Run a WooCommerce Contest?

As an online store, you need to bring new customers to your website. The challenge is that most of these users leave without making a purchase.

Only 30% of customers who add products to their cart actually finish the checkout. This is why we have a comprehensive guide on how to recover abandoned cart sales in WooCommerce.

Once a user leaves your website, it is hard to bring them back unless you find ways to stay in touch.

Adding contests and giveaways allows you to provide users a fun reason to stay a little longer. They also help you collect email addresses, user responses, and grow your social media following.

All of this ultimately leads to more sales and increased customer loyalty.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily create a WooCommerce contest to grow your business.

Creating a WooCommerce Contest Giveaway

For this tutorial, we’ll be using a plugin called RafflePress. It is the best WooCommerce contest / giveaway plugin that allows you to easily run viral contests and giveaway campaigns on your website.

It comes with social actions that help you amplify your reach and find new customers. It also helps you grow your email list, increase social media followers, and boost customer loyalty.

Note: our team built RafflePress to help us grow our online presence. Based on user request, we released it as a plugin for anyone to use.

First, you need to install and activate the RafflePress plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin will add a new menu item labeled ‘RafflePress’ in your WordPress admin sidebar. Clicking on it will take you to the plugin’s settings page.

First, you will need to enter your license key. You can find this information under your account on the RafflePress website.

After entering your license key, you are now ready to create your first WooCommerce contest.

Simply visit RafflePress » Add New page to get started.

This will launch the RafflePress contest builder.

First, you need to provide a name for your new contest campaign. After that, you need to select a template to use as a starting point.

RafflePress comes with several goal-based contest templates to choose from. These templates are designed to help you get the best results for specific goals like growing your email list or social media following.

You can select one that best suits your goals. If you are unsure, then start with the classic template.

RafflePress will now load the template in the builder.

Add a Prize to Your WooCommerce Contest

Let’s set a prize or incentive for your WooCommerce contest. You need to click on the pencil icon under the Giveaway Prize Details section to enter the prize title and description.

After that, don’t forget to upload prize image which will be prominently displayed with your contest.

Next, you need to choose the start and end date for your contest. We recommend leaving enough time before the start / end date to ensure that you can promote it properly.

Add Actions Users Need to Perform to Join The Contest

Actions are the tasks you want website visitors to perform in order to join the contest. RafflePress comes with a number of actions designed to help you reach your intended goals.

You need to select actions that help you maximize your reach to new audiences as well as existing customers.

For example, if you run a fast fashion eCommerce store, then you would want to increase your Instagram following.

Let’s start adding actions to the contest.

Simply switch to the ‘Actions’ tab from the left menu, and you’ll see a list of actions.

You can click on an action to add it to your contest. It will appear below the prize description section.

You can then click on the individual action to see action settings in the left column.

Each action comes with some basic settings. You can set a title, the number of entries users will earn for completing it, allow daily entries, or make an action mandatory.

Apart from these settings, you will also see settings related to specific actions.

For instance, if you want users to visit your Instagram profile, then you will need to enter your Instagram profile URL.

You can add as many actions as you like. Adding more options gives your users more ways to participate, and helps you reach more marketing channels.

RafflePress seamlessly integrates with all the best email marketing services, so you can use it to grow your email list.

Bonus Tip: Prioritize channels based on your campaign goals. For instance, if you wanted to grow your email list, then you need to move it up and make it mandatory.

You can simply drag and drop actions to arrange them in the order you want customers to join in.

Once you are done, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.

Customize WooCommerce Contest Design

Next, you would want to change the appearance of your contest widget so that it stands out.

Simply, click on the ‘Design’ section from the left column and then select a layout, font, and button color for your contest widget.

You can also set a background color or image if you want to create landing page for your contest (more on this later in this article).

Once you are satisfied with the design click on the ‘Save’ button to save your progress.

Configure Contest Settings

RafflePress comes with a number of options that give you full control of your contest campaign.

Switch to the ‘Settings’ tab from the left menu and click on the ‘General’ tab. From here you can set basic options for your giveaway including the option to show winners, number of entries, limit signups per IP, and more.

After that, switch to the ‘Giveaway rules’ tab. RafflePress includes a Rules Generator which allows you to easily generate contest rules for your campaign.

After that, switch to the ‘Email Verification’ settings. From here you can turn on email verification, which will only accept entries from users who verify their email address.

Next, click on the ‘Success tracking’ option. If you want to add Google Analytics or other tracking code like Facebook pixel, then this option allows you to add those scripts.

Next, click on the ‘Success Redirect’ tab. From here you can redirect users to any page after they successfully complete all actions. This could be a WooCommerce product page, a landing page, or simply a thank you page.

Finally, you’ll reach the social logins section. From here you can turn on social logins and allow users to join the contest by signing in with their Facebook account.

Once you are done reviewing settings, don’t forget to click on the Save button to store your changes.

Publish and Add Contest to Your WooCommerce Store

Now that your contest is ready, it is time to add it to your WooCommerce store.

RafflePress makes it super easy to add your giveaway anywhere. There are three ways you can do so.

• You use the RafflePress block to add giveaway in a blog post or a page
• You can use shortcode to add it anywhere posts, pages, product pages, sidebar widgets
• You can also create Giveaway landing page

Let’s check out each of these items.

1. Adding Contest Block to Blog Posts / Pages

Simply create a new post or page in WordPress or edit an existing one. On the edit screen, click on the add new block button and then select RafflePress.

You’ll see RafflePress block appear in the editor. From here, you need to click on the drop down menu in the block settings and select the contest giveaway you created earlier.

2. Add Contest Using Shortcode

Shortcodes come in handy when you want to add the contest to a product page, sidebar widget, or with a page builder plugin.

First, you need to edit the contest giveaway and then switch to the ‘Publish’ tab. From here, click on the shortcode option and copy the shortcode you see on the screen.

3. Create a Contest Page in WooCommerce

RafflePress also allows you to give your contest widget its own landing page. You can find the option under the Publish tab while editing your Contest giveaway.

You can launch the landing page settings by clicking on the link. From there you need to create a URL for your landing page. Once done, you can click on the view button to see your landing page in action.

RafflePress will take you to your contest landing page. You can now copy the URL and start promoting it across your marketing channels.

Promoting Your WooCommerce Contest

Now that you have created and added your WooCommerce contest, it is time to start promoting it.

We recommend adding your contest before it begins and give yourself plenty of time to build anticipation and excitement for the contest.

You can give a shout out to your email newsletter subscribers and spread the word around on your social media profiles. Reach out to influencers in your industry, friends, and family members to help you get the ball rolling.

You can also promote it on relevant online communities and forums. And don’t forget to promote it across your website using a platform like OptinMonster, so that your visitors are aware of it.

Choosing Contest Winners

RafflePress will automatically start your contest on the time you selected in settings and will end it on your selected time as well.

Once the contest has ended, RafflePress can also help you pick a random winner.

Go to RafflePress » Giveaways page and click on the ‘Need Winners’ link next to your contest.

The plugin will now ask you how many winners you want to choose. After that, it will randomly pick the winners.

You can then email those users to let them know and provide the necessary information to get their prize.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily create a WooCommerce contest and build customer loyalty. You may also want to see our expert pick of the best WooCommerce plugins for your online store.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create a WooCommerce Contest to Boost Loyalty and Engagement appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 05, 2019 at 07:02PM

How to Add Your WordPress Site to Google Search Console

One of the most important step in optimizing your WordPress site for SEO is adding it to Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools).

Google Search Console offers specific webmaster tools to help website owners monitor and maintain their search presence and rankings.

In this guide, we will show you how to easily add and verify your WordPress site in Google Search Console also known as Webmaster Tools.

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google to help website owners monitor their website’s presence in Google search results.

It helps you track search rankings along with keeping you updated about site errors, security issues, and indexing issues that may affect your website’s search performance.

If you are serious about growing your website, then you need to add it to Google webmaster tools from day one.

That being, let’s take a look at how to easily add your site to Google Search Console.

Adding Your WordPress Site to Google Search Console

First, you need to visit the Google Search Console website and click on the ‘Start Now’ button.

Next, you’ll need to sign in with your Google / Gmail account.

Once logged in, you’ll be asked to enter your website URL.

There are two methods for site verification: domain name or URL prefix. We recommend the URL prefix method because it is more flexible.

Keep in mind that Google considers an HTTP and HTTPS as two different protocols. It also considers https://www.example.com and https://example.com as two different websites.

You need to enter the correct website URL used by WordPress.

If you are unsure, then there is an easy way to find out the exact URL you need to enter. Simply login to your WordPress admin area and go to Settings » General page.

There you will see your website’s URL in the site address field.

After entering your correct website address in Google webmaster tools setup wizard, click on the ‘Continue’ button to go to the next step.

Now, you’ll be asked to verify ownership of your website. There are several ways to do that, but we will show the HTML tag method because it is the easiest one.

Click on the HTML tag to expand it and then copy the code inside it.

Now, you need to add this Google site verification meta tag in WordPress, so Google can verify that you are the owner of the website.

Most WordPress tutorials will guide you to just edit the header.php file in your WordPress theme and add the code just above the <body> tag.

However, we don’t recommend this method because if you update or change your theme, then the HTML tag will disappear.

Google periodically checks for the HTML tag and will disable your access to the site data in the search console if it cannot find the verification tag.

Here is how to make sure that Google can always verify your ownership of the website.

First, you need to install and activate the Insert Headers and Footers plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to Settings » Insert Headers and Footers page and paste the Google HTML tag code you copied earlier inside the ‘Scripts in Header’ box.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your changes.

You can now go back to Google Search Console settings and click on the ‘Verify’ button.

Google Search Console will now look for the HTML tag in your website code and will show you a success message.

Note: If you don’t see a success message, then you need to clear your WordPress cache. This will ensure that Google can fetch the latest version of your website.

That’s all. You have successfully added your site to the Google Search Console (Webmaster tools). You can now click on the ‘Go to Property’ link to visit your Google Search Console dashboard.

From here you can see your website’s performance reports and index coverage.

Before you do that, let’s tell Google a little bit more about your website. This will help Google crawl your website a bit more efficiently.

Add XML Sitemap to Google Search Console

An XML sitemap is a file that lists all your website content in XML format, so search engines like Google can easily discover and index your content.

The easiest way to add an XML sitemap to your WordPress website is by installing and activating the Yoast SEO plugin.

Upon activation, go to SEO » General and switch to the ‘Features’ tab. From here, you need to scroll down to the ‘XML Sitemap’ option and make sure that it is turned on.

Next, you need to get the XML sitemap link. Simply click on the question mark icon next to the XML sitemap option, and you will see a link to your XML sitemap.

Clicking on the link will take you to your XML sitemap. From there, you can just copy the URL from your browser’s address bar.

Alternatively, you can directly access your XML sitemap by adding sitemap_index.xml at the end of your website address. For example:

https://ift.tt/2HrV0S0

Now that you have XML sitemap ready, let’s help Google find it quickly.

Simply switch to the Google Search Console dashboard and click on the Sitemaps menu from the left column.

After that, you need to add the last part of your sitemap URL under the ‘Add new sitemap’ section and click the Submit button.

Google will now add your sitemap URL to your Google Search Console.

That’s all, you have successfully added your website to Google Search Console.

The next step is to learn how to use the treasure trove of information in Google search console to grow your business. We have a complete Google Search Console guide for beginners which shows you how to make the most out of Google Search Console data.

Google Search Console and WordPress FAQs

Having helped thousands of readers add and verify their website in Google search console, we have seen just about every question you can think of. Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions.

1. How can I upload a Google HTML verification file to my WordPress blog?

Google Search Console allows few different ways to verify website ownership. In this article, we covered the easiest method which is to use the Google site verification meta tag. However some website owners prefer to upload the HTML file to verify site ownership.

To upload the Google search console HTML verification file to WordPress, you will need to login to your WordPress hosting cPanel or connect to your hosting account using FTP.

Next, you need to upload the HTML verification file inside the /public_html/ folder of your website. This is the root directory where you’ll see other WordPress folders like /wp-admin/, /wp-content/, etc.

2. Should I use a Google Site verification plugin for WordPress?

There are many WordPress plugins that are designed specifically to help you with Google site verification. However you don’t need to use them because you’ll likely need to verify ownership on other webmaster tools and platforms like Bing, Yandex, Pinterest, etc.

It’s much better to use the Insert Headers and Footers plugin because it lets you add site verification for all platforms (in a single plugin).

3. How can I become a power user of Google Search Console?

Google search console has a lot of useful information that you can use to grow your business. We have created the ultimate Google Search Console guide that you can use to become a power user.

4. I’m running into problems, is there a Google Search console phone number that I can contact?

No, there’s no Google search console phone number that you can contact. If you’re running into problems with Google search console, then you can use their online support center. For specific questions about WordPress, you can always join our free WordPress help group to ask your questions.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily add your WordPress site to Google Search Console. You may also want to see our guide on how to get more traffic to your website, and our comparison of the best email marketing services for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add Your WordPress Site to Google Search Console appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 04, 2019 at 05:00PM