Friday, October 23, 2020

9 Best WordPress Facebook Plugins to Grow Your Blog

Are you looking for the best Facebook plugins for WordPress?

Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform with more than 2 billion monthly active users. That’s why there are many WordPress Facebook plugins that can help you maximize your online presence.

In this article, we have hand-picked the best WordPress Facebook plugins to grow your website and get more traffic.

Best Facebook plugins for WordPress

Editor’s Note: If you’re looking for chatbot or messenger bot plugins, then please see our list of the best chatbot software for small businesses.

1. Smash Balloon Custom Facebook Feed Pro

Smash Balloon Custom Facebook Feed Pro

Smash Balloon Custom Facebook Feed Pro is the best Facebook plugin for WordPress. It lets you connect your WordPress site to your Facebook account with the click of a button.

With Custom Facebook Feed Pro, you can easily add your Facebook posts to any WordPress post, page, or sidebar. It comes with multiple layout choices with easy to use styling options.

You can take full control of your feed. You can choose to hide things like comments, likes, reactions, and shares.

It supports multiple feeds, so you can use them in different areas of your site. This plugin works with both Facebook pages and groups and helps you drive more engagement towards your Facebook community.

You can also use it to display your Facebook user reviews, embed your Facebook photo albums, create a carousel, and more.

Note: There’s also a free Facebook Feed plugin by Smash Ballon with limited features that you can use.

2. RafflePress

RafflePress

RafflePress is the best contest and giveaways plugin for WordPress. It lets you easily run a contest where people need to take specific actions to enter.

Contests are one of the fastest ways to get a ton of likes and engagement for your Facebook page. RafflePress comes with a built-in giveaway template for growing your Facebook page.

To enter your contest, people will need to visit your page on Facebook and/or view one of your posts or videos.

It comes with a drag and drop contest builder where you can simply add actions and assign them different numbers of entries into the contest.

You can also use it with other popular social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram, or run giveaways to grow your email list.

RafflePress lets you easily draw a winner, too. In fact, you even get a link to email the winner from inside the app itself.

3. Shared Counts

Shared Counts

Shared Counts is one of the best social media plugins for WordPress. It allows you to easily add social sharing buttons to your WordPress posts. This includes buttons for Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more.

It is highly optimized for speed and performance and can accurately show shares count for different social sites. It even comes with multiple button styles. This means you can choose the style that looks best on your site.

4. Pixel Cat – Conversion Pixel Manager

Pixel Cat – Conversion Pixel Manager

Pixel Cat – Conversion Pixel Manager allows you to add Facebook retargeting pixel to your WordPress site. This pixel allows you to show customized ads to Facebook users who have visited your website.

Pixel Cat also helps you track WooCommerce customers and show them better ads in their Facebook feed.

There’s also a Pro version that gives you extra power and flexibility.

5. Social Reviews and Recommendations

Social Reviews and Recommendations

Social Reviews and Recommendations lets you display Facebook page reviews on your WordPress website. It comes with an easy to use widget that allows you to connect your website to your Facebook page and display Facebook users’ reviews.

This helps you add social proof to your website and build trust in your brand. The free version works fine, but you will need to pay for the ‘Business’ version to display reviews in the Schema.org rich snippets format.

6. Facebook Page Like Widget

Facebook Page Like Widget

Facebook Page Like Widget allows you to easily add a Facebook page plugin to your blog’s sidebar. It is extremely easy to use and comes with a shortcode that you can use to display the Facebook Like box anywhere on your website.

It comes with the same customization options as the default Facebook page plugin. You can show or hide profile pics, include your page cover, customize width and height, and select language.

7. Nextend Social Login and Register

Nextend Social Login and Register

Nextend Social Login and Register plugin allows users to register and login on your website using their social profiles. It supports login with Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

This plugin works seamlessly with the default WordPress login and registration forms. Users have the option to use Facebook or use the default signup method. Once registered, a user can disconnect their social account at any time by visiting their user profile page inside the admin area.

8. FAuto Poster

FAuto Poster

FAuto Poster allows you to automatically share new articles on your Facebook page or profile. Upon activation, you will need to connect it to your profile and authorize your website.

It allows you to choose which content you want to share: posts, pages, and custom post types. You can even disable sharing for a single item before publishing it.

FAuto Poster is a lightweight plugin that’s quick and easy to install and configure. There’s also a pro version, which lets you automatically post to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Tumblr as well as to Facebook.

9. Social Snap

Social Snap

Social Snap lets you automatically post your content to Facebook. You can use it for other social media sites as well, including Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

It doesn’t just work for your new content, either. You can also use Social Snap to automatically re-share older content. That way, you can drive more traffic to content you’ve created in the past.

Social Snap also lets you add social links to your posts and pages and display follower counts. This can be a great form of social proof and can help grow your Facebook following.

Bonus: All in One SEO

All in One SEO

All in One SEO is one of the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It has a huge range of features that let you optimize your content to rank higher in search engines.

Although it’s not a social media plugin, we’ve included it as a bonus on this list for one very important feature. All in One SEO lets you add Open Graph metadata to your content. This means you have more control over how your content displays when it’s shared on Facebook.

Using All in One SEO, you can set a custom image thumbnail to appear alongside your content on Facebook. You can even give your content a different title or description to use on Facebook. Most importantly, it fixes the incorrect thumbnail issue on Facebook.

We hope this article helped you discover the best WordPress Facebook plugins to grow your blog. We also recommend going through our proven tips to drive traffic to your WordPress site, and our comparison of the best email marketing services to connect with your readers.

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 9 Best WordPress Facebook Plugins to Grow Your Blog appeared first on WPBeginner.


October 23, 2020 at 05:00PM

Thursday, October 22, 2020

How to Automatically Translate WordPress (Easy Method)

Do you want to automatically translate your WordPress site into other languages?

There are few different ways to translate your WordPress site: you can manual translations yourself, hire translators, or use AI powered translation tools which have gotten quite good over the years.

In this article, we’ll show you how to automatically translate WordPress using machine learning (the easy method).

Automatically translating WordPress the easy way

Why Automatically Translate Your WordPress Site?

Automatically translating your WordPress site lets you easily provide content in your users’ own languages.

Whereas translating your site manually takes a lot of time. You can make a multilingual WordPress website and pay translators to help with translations, but your costs will increase as you add more languages or hire more translators.

Automatically translating your site is quick and affordable. You could just translate a few important pages, or you could translate your whole site.

The translation quality may not be as good as manual translations. However, AI-powered tools have become much better and can provide a quicker and cost-effective alternative.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily set automatic translation on a WordPress site.

Setting Up the WPML Plugin

The easiest way to automatically translate WordPress is to use a translation plugin. We recommend WPML for this.

WPML is a premium plugin and you need their ‘Multilingual CMS’ plan or higher to run automatic translations.

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

Upon activation, click the ‘Register Now’ link that you will see on your plugins page. You will then see a page where you need to enter your site key. You can find this under your account on WPML website.

Entering the site key for WPML

Now, go to the WPML » Languages page in your WordPress admin. This will show the WPML setup options.

First, simply select the language for your current content, then click the Next button.

Selecting your content language

Now, you need to choose the languages to enable for your site. Just check the box next to the ones that you want to use.

Selecting your translation language(s)

The language options on your site will appear in a language switcher.

WPML will prompt you to choose an order for the languages in the switcher. You also need to choose what to do if a translation is missing for a specific page.

Choosing the order of languages for the language switcher

Below this, you can go ahead and add the language switcher to your navigation menu. If you prefer, you can add it to a widget or the footer area of your website.

Finally, you have the option to link to translations either above or below your posts. If you enable this option, you can choose how these translation links will look. You will also see a preview:

Setting up the translation links for your posts

When you’re ready, click the Next button to move on.

WPML will then ask you whether you want to send themes and plugin information to WPML.org. This can help speed things up if you need support.

Enabling compatibility reporting for WPML

Then, you need to enter your site key if you didn’t do so before. If you’ve already entered it, simply click the Next button.

After that, you will see some recommendations for other components to install. Go ahead and install and activate the String Translation and Translation Management addons at this step:

Viewing the setup recommendations

Finally, click the ‘Skip and Finish’ link in order to close the setup wizard.

Translating Your Content Automatically

To translate your content, you need to go to the WPML » Translation Management page in your WordPress admin.

Here, you need to choose who will translate your site. We recommend choosing ‘Only myself’ here:

Choosing who will translate your content

Next, you will see some details about the Advanced Translation Editor. Simply click to continue. You will then see a Summary, where you just need to go ahead and click the ‘Done!’ button.

After that, you will be taken to your translation management dashboard.

Here, you need to click on the ‘Translation Tools’ tab then the ‘Sign up for free’ button to set up automatic translations:

Signing up for automatic translations

Tip: You get 2,000 words/month of machine translation for free.

You will then be prompted to enter your billing details.

After that, click on the ‘Translation Dashboard’ tab. From here, you can select the content that you want to translate. We’re going to translate our About and Contact pages.

Simply check the boxes next to your chosen pages:

Viewing the list of pages in the translation dashboard

Once you select the content, you will see a word count estimate. This helps you budget for the automatic translations.

Next, scroll down to the ‘Select translation options’ section. This will default to creating translations of your chosen content in all languages, but you can change the settings if you want.

After making your selection, click on the ‘Add selected content to translation basket’ button.

Clicking the button to add your selected content to your translation basket

You should now see a new ‘Translation Basket’ tab at the top of the screen. Clicking on it will show you the pages that are ready for translation and total number of words that will be needed.

Go ahead and click the ‘Send all items for translation’ button:

Send your content for translation

You should then see a success message.

Next, go to the WPML » Translations page in your WordPress admin to see your translations queue.

To use the automatic translater, just click the ‘Take and translate’ button next to a version of a page.

The translations queue for WPML

You will then see the advanced translation editor. Here, you just need to click the ‘Yes, translate automatically’ button:

Click to automatically translate your content

WPML will now automatically translate your content into the chosen language using machine learning.

The completed Spanish translation of our content

Simply click the ‘Complete’ button at the bottom of the screen and you can then translate your other pages in the same way.

Viewing Your Translated Pages on Your Website

You can visit a page on your website and view the translated versions. Here’s how our About page now looks on our demo website:

The About page on our demo site, with translation language options shown

If we click the link for the French version, we see the translated page.

The About page, translated into French

Automatically Translating WordPress Content in Bulk

If you have a lot of content to translate, it’s quickest to do it as a batch. As before, you first need to add the content to your Translation Basket then send it for translation.

After that, go to the Translation Tools tab. Here, you will see the list of translation jobs. Click the checkbox at the top of the list to select them all:

Selecting your content for bulk automatic translation

Only 10 items fit on each page. You need to select any jobs on any subsequent pages too. Simply click the ‘2’ button to the bottom right of the table to do so.

Once you’ve selected all the jobs, click the ‘Translate automatically’ button:

Click the button to run the automatic bulk translator

They will be automatically translated for you. You can view the completed versions by viewing your site as before.

If you want to edit an automatic translation, simply go to Pages » All Pages in your WordPress dashboard. Then, click on the pencil icon for that language:

Editing one of the translations

This will then launch the Advanced Translation Editor.

The Advanced Translation Editor for WPML

To learn more about WPML, check out our article on creating a multilingual site.

Changing the Language of Your WordPress Admin

WPML also lets different users select different languages within the WordPress admin area.

it’s easy to do this by going to Users » Profile and selecting your preferred language from the Language dropdown:

Setting your WordPress admin language

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page.

Now, your admin area will then be translated into your chosen language:

The WordPress admin area shown in French

We hope this article helped you learn how to automatically translate WordPress. You may also like our article on the best translation plugins for WordPress, and our comparison of best online business phone services for virtual teams.

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 Automatically Translate WordPress (Easy Method) appeared first on WPBeginner.


October 22, 2020 at 05:00PM

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Welcome PushEngage to the WPBeginner Family of Products

Today, I’m extremely excited to share that PushEngage has joined Awesome Motive, and it is now part of the WPBeginner family of products.

PushEngage is a leading push notification software with over 10,000+ customers in 150+ countries who use the platform to reliably send over 9 billion notifications each month.

Welcome PushEngage to WPBeginner Family of Products

PushEngage & Push Notification Overview

PushEngage is a popular web push notification software for publishers and store owners. It helps you increase your website traffic, boost user engagement, and increase overall revenue.

Basically you can use it to send targeted personalized messages to users and bring them back to your website.

This can include new blog post notifications, product announcements, abandoned cart reminders, and more.

Push notifications go directly to the user’s web browser or mobile device which means it has a much higher engagement rate.

Web Push Notifications on Both Mobile and Desktop

For more details, see our guide on how to add push notifications to WordPress.

I first started using push notifications over 3 years ago and quickly realized that the click rate, engagement, and opt-in rate is significantly higher than my email newsletter or any other engagement channel.

Today our push subscriber list is larger than our email newsletter list, and push notifications consistently make the top 5 traffic sources on WPBeginner.

After seeing these results, I had all our companies start implementing push notifications, and they too have seen amazing success.

To make it easy for WPBeginner users to get started, we’re offering a forever free plan on PushEngage.

Grow Your Traffic with PushEngage for Free »

Background Story – Why PushEngage?

If you’ve been reading WPBeginner for a while, then you know that I’m obsessed with optimization.

Once I find something that works, then I want to improve it to get even better results.

This is a lot harder to do when you have no influence on the development team that’s building the actual software.

While some push notification software have developer APIs, they’re often unreliable and aren’t flexible enough to do the level of customization that I want for our businesses.

Furthermore, almost all of them have a really terrible integration with WordPress.

Since we use WordPress on all our sites, I needed a deeply integrated solution that can do automatic subscriber segmentation based on blog categories, seamless integration with our various eCommerce platforms for cart abandonment reminders, and an easy setup wizard that our team can use to add push notifications our new brands.

Since no other software had 100% of what I wanted, we started building an internal solution beginning of July.

Then 3 weeks later, completely randomly, I got an email from a friend, Andrew, who told me that I should chat with Ravi from PushEngage about a potential acquisition.

I was first introduced to Ravi by another friend, Harsh Agrawal, from ShoutMeLoud in 2017. That was when I first started using push notifications. I tried to invest in PushEngage but the timing wasn’t right.

But as soon as Ravi and I started chatting again, we knew that this was the right time for both of us.

Ravi has built an amazing team and a reputable brand at PushEngage. We share a similar vision and commitment to helping customers succeed online.

We talked and quickly came to an agreement where the entire PushEngage team would join Awesome Motive, so we can build the most user friendly push notification solution for WordPress and beyond.

I’m super excited about this acquisition and am looking forward to sharing our product development & business growth playbooks with the PushEngage team to bring more amazing features to the WordPress community (even faster, since we don’t have to build from scratch anymore).

What’s Coming Next?

Our work is just starting.

We will be leveraging the scale and knowledge of the Awesome Motive team to build more innovative solutions to help you maximize the full power of push notifications.

As part of this, we’ll build deeper integration with other Awesome Motive products, and popular platforms like WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, MemberPress, and others.

In the coming months, you can expect to see easier workflows to set up highly personalized push notifications campaigns that’s proven to drive results, improved opt-in technology that’ll help you get even more subscribers, and introduction of new message channels that you can use to expand your reach.

We have a lot to cover, but we’re up for the challenge. We have an exciting 12-month roadmap, and I know you’re going to love it.

If you have suggestions on features you’d like to see in the PushEngage platform, then please let us know by sending us a message via WPBeginner contact form.

In the meantime, I highly recommend you to take advantage of our free plan on PushEngage to start building your push subscribers list, so you can grow your traffic and revenue.

As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner. We look forward to bringing you more amazing solutions to help you grow your business.

Yours Truly,

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner

The post Welcome PushEngage to the WPBeginner Family of Products appeared first on WPBeginner.


October 21, 2020 at 03:31PM

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

How to Track Website Visitors to Your WordPress Site

Are you looking for an easy way to track your website visitors in WordPress? Tracking the number of website visitors on your site can help you get insights to grow your business.

You can better understand your audience, look at which posts they like, where they come from, and how they use your website.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily track website visitors on your WordPress site (step by step).

how to track website visitors in wordpress

Why You Need to Track Your Website Visitors

Tracking website traffic is one of the most important indicators of your website’s performance. More visitors means more opportunities for converting them into subscribers and customers.

It also unlocks promising insights that you may have missed.

For example, you can find out which country or city your visitors are from. This can help you deliver personalized content or figure out which languages you should translate your website in.

You can see which blog post is getting a lot of traffic and then try to come up with similar topics to help your users.

Another benefit of tracking your website visitors is that you can uncover which source they used to find your website.

For instance, did the users perform a search on Google and then landed on your webpage, or maybe they found your brand mentioned link on another site or platform.

This way you can focus your marketing efforts and investment on channels that work. That said, let’s take a look at how to set up website visitor tracking in Google Analytics.

Setting up Google Analytics to Track Website Visitors

Google Analytics is the most powerful website visitor tracking software on the market. It allows you to see how many visitors you are getting and what they do while visiting your website.

First, you need to sign up for a Google Analytics account. You can use any Google or Gmail account to sign up.

Google Analytics sign up

Next, you will be asked to provide an account name.

Enter account name

After that, Google Analytics will ask to choose a platform. You need to select the web here.

website visitor tracking in wordpress

Next, you need to provide your website name, URL, country, and time zone.

Google Analytics account settings

After that, click on the Create button to continue.

Finally, you will be presented with the Google Analytics tracking code to copy and paste into your website.

There are several different ways to install Google Analytics on your WordPress site.

However, the easiest way is through MonsterInsights. It’s the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. You can use it to connect Google Analytics with your site without the need to edit code.

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

Note: the free version of MonsterInsights plugin is a great place to start for beginners.

Upon activation, you will be taken to a welcome screen and you will also see a new menu item labeled ‘Insights’ in your admin area.

On the welcome screen, click the button that says ‘Launch the Wizard!’.

launch MonsterInsights setup wizard

Next, you will have to select a category that best describes your website. You can choose from a business website, publisher (blog), or eCommerce. After selecting a category, click the ‘Save and Continue’ button.

Select Website Category on MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights will now ask you to enter the license key. You can find the key in the MonsterInsights account area under the Downloads tab. Copy the key and paste it in the wizard. MonsterInsights will then verify the key.

You will then have to connect your Google Analytics account. To do that, click on the ‘Connect MonsterInsights’ button.

Enter License Key

Now, select a Google account or sign in to one which you used when signing up for Google Analytics.

select google account

On the next screen, you will be asked to give MonsterInsights access to your Google Account. Click the ‘Allow’ button at the bottom to continue.

allow monsterinsights to access google account

Now select the website you want to track from the dropdown menu. Once you have done that, click the ‘Complete Connection’ button to continue.

Select Your Website

MonsterInsights will now connect your website with Google Analytics. To finish up the setup process, the plugin will ask you to select some recommended settings.

You can specify the file formats you want to track, set up affiliate link tracking, check who can see the reports, and enable options to receive automatic updates. After configuring the settings, click the ‘Save and continue’ button.

Recommended Settings in MonsterInsights

On the next screen, you will be asked to install some addons. You can skip this step for now and click the ‘Save and continue’ button.

Recommended Addons

In the final step, the wizard will tell you that you are all set to use MonsterInsights. Click on ‘Finish Setup & Exit Wizard’.

Finish Setup

You are now ready to use MonsterInsights and view your website traffic reports inside your WordPress dashboard.

Viewing Website Visitor Reports in WordPress

To view your website visitors, you can use different MonsterInsights reports. They help you save time, as you don’t have to navigate through Google Analytics and try to find data that matters for your business.

Note: Dashboard reports will vary based on the MonsterInsights plan you use.

Let’s look at each report and how you can use it to track website visitors.

Overview Report

To start, go to the Insights » Reports page from your WordPress admin area. Here, the first report you will see will be the Overview report.

You can select the date range and then see the total number of sessions and pageviews for your website along with the average session duration and bounce rate.

The report also shows you which device your visitors use to visit your site. This can help you optimize your website for different devices and make sure you have a responsive WordPress theme.

It also gives you a breakdown of new and returning visitors.

MonsterInsights Overview Report

If you scroll down, you will see more reports that will help you see where your visitors are coming from.

The Top Countries report shows the region where most of your traffic is from. You can use this data to come up with different strategies based on geolocation.

Next, is the Top Referrals report, which shows the websites that are sending traffic to your site. Using this information, you can create partnerships, find guest post opportunities, or find similar websites to promote your posts and products.

Top Countries and Top Referrals Report

The last report you can view under Overview is the Top Posts/Pages. These are landing pages and blog posts that attract the most website visitors.

Top Posts and Pages

Publishers Report

Next, you can click on the Publishers option from the top menu and get more insights about your visitors.

The report shows you more stats about your popular landing pages along with the number of visits they get, the average duration, and the bounce rate.

You can use this information to come up with more content topics and increase your web traffic.

It also tells you which outbound links and affiliate links are getting the most clicks. If you offer downloadable content, then you can also track which file type gets the most downloads.

Another important report you can view for tracking your website visitors is by looking at the demographics. MonsterInsights shows the age and gender of your visitors.

You can do a lot of things with this information. For example, it can help you set the right audience for retargeting ads in Facebook. Another way of using the data is by creating content for specific age groups and gender.

Age and Gender of Website Visitors in WordPress

Search Console Report

MonstrInsights can help you find out which search terms people enter in Google to find your website through its Search Console report.

The report displays data about the Top 50 Google Search Terms along with their number of clicks, impressions, CTR (click-through-rate), and average position.

Search Console Report

You can boost your website traffic by optimizing your website for similar keywords and improve the rankings of search terms that are not in the top 10 search results on Google.

Do check out our guide on how to add WordPress site to Google Search Console.

Ecommerce Report

If you have an online store (eCommerce), then MonsterInsights can help you track its performance. The enhanced eCommerce report gives you an overview of the conversion rate, number of transactions, revenue, and average order value of your online store.

It even shows the most popular products that generate a lot of sales. However, to track your website visitors, you can scroll to the Top Conversion Sources report.

These are referral websites that send highly converting traffic to your site. You can invest in promoting your store and products to such websites in order to boost traffic and sales.

Top Conversion Sources

For more details, see our guide on how to WordPress conversion tracking guide.

Dimensions Report

MonsterInsights allows you to track additional information about your visitors by using custom dimensions. These reports are not available by default in Google Analytics and allow you to track custom interactions on your website.

For instance, you can set up tracking popular categories, tags, post types, authors, focus keywords, and more. It helps you see what your visitors like on your website.

custom dimensions report monsterinsights

Real-Time Report

The last report you can view in WordPress for tracking your website visitors is the real-time report.

It shows how many people are currently active on your site and shows you the real-time count of your traffic.

Real-time report MonsterInsights

In addition, you can also view the geographic location, top pages, and top referral traffic sources that are driving website visitors at any given time using the real-time report.

By using these reports, you can easily track your website visitors and create strategies to grow your business.

We hope this article helped you learn how to track your website visitors to your WordPress site. You may also want to take a look at our complete WordPress SEO guide and tips to get more traffic to your website.

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 Track Website Visitors to Your WordPress Site appeared first on WPBeginner.


October 20, 2020 at 05:00PM