This is a guest post by Nadia Jones. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.
Bloggers know that running a blog is not a simple task: it takes a lot of time and effort to ensure that your blog is constantly updated with valuable and unique content and that it’s aesthetically pleasing—aesthetics play a huge role in attracting a strong audience; and as many bloggers may already know, without a strong audience it’s very difficult to earn revenue from your blog(s). But there are certain web browser “add-ons” that can simplify the way you go about running your blog, can help you appear higher in search engine rankings so that you increase your traffic, and can even make the blogging experience more engaging for your readers—and the best part? They’re all free. To learn what these add-ons are, continue reading below.
This add-on, which is designed to “fire up your blogging,” acts as the ultimate organizational tool to maintain your blog(s)—it allows users to post, edit, add tags, write notes and save post drafts all from a designated central area. It even allows users to add photos to your blog(s) by simply dragging and dropping images from your desktop –no need to upload or copy and paste any links. The add-on is available for most of the major web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox and Safari and supports most major blog platforms, including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, and Tumblr just to name a few.
2. Zemanata:
One of the easiest ways to gain trust from your readers is to post content that is backed by authoritative and reliable sources. This add-on is a convenient tool that simultaneously formulates a list of relatable links, tags and spam-free news articles and supporting images as you type your posts—you can even filter the results to find copyright free content. This way you don’t have to waste precious time scouring search engines to find what you are looking for. This add-on also supports most major blog platforms, including WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr and works on most of the major web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
3. All-in-One SEO Pack (plugin):
If you decide to only download one add-on designed to improve search engine rankings, this is “the” add-on to have—this free extension helps you do pretty much everything: it automatically generates Meta descriptions and helps you generate keywords; it helps you create titles for the best optimization; it gives you suggestions so that you can create the best page navigation links and canonical URLs; and it even helps you avoid posting duplicate content which can get you in all sorts of trouble with search engines (your site can get suspended and you might just get sued for copyright infringement). And with more than 8 million downloads to date, the plug-in has proven to be effective time and time again. This add-on is unfortunately only available for WordPress users.
4. Tin Eye:
This add-on is the perfect addition for bloggers who want to improve the quality of their photos. This is how it works: the add-on uses “reverse image” software to locate either the original source of an image you found so that you can give proper credit or check its copyright; or you can upload a poor quality photo to find a higher resolution alternative. This add-on supports all major web browsers.
5. Broken Link Checker (plugin):
Ask any SEO expert and they will inform you that one of the major no-no’s is containing broken links in your blog posts. Not only will search engines not file and store pages with broken links (which ultimately harms and weakens your rankings), but your readers may lose trust in your site all together—how reliable do you seem linking to sources that lead to dead, 404 sites? But even if you’re careful about writing the correct HTML coding sometimes sites just expire. Here’s where this particular plug-in comes to the rescue: it monitors all of the content in your blog, including new and old, and regularly checks for broken links found in posts and comments so that you can immediately correct the issue. This add-on is only available for WordPress users.
6. Outbrain Ratings:
This add-on, which is technically more of a widget, is great because not only does it allow users to rate your posts as the title suggests (which can help your audience be more engaged with your blog), but it also can suggest other posts that are related to the one they are currently reading—this adds traffic and increases page views to both new and old articles/posts. Like all the others, this widget supports all major blog platforms and web browsers.
7. Translate Gadget:
An excellent way to increase your number of followers is to make yourself accessible to non-English speakers. In order to do this, all you need to do is simply download this add-on which allows your foreign readers to translate your blog content to their native tongue.
8. Google Analytics (plugin):
Lastly, there is no point in trying to make your blog the most recognizable blog the internet has to offer if you don’t even know if people are visiting your site. With this plug-in however, you will be able to monitor and keep track of all your web traffic so that you can know if all of your hard work is paying off. This plug-in will not only allow you to see outbound clicks and page views associated with each author and category, but it will also give you some great insight into your readers’ behavior—it can show you what kind of content your audience favors and is more likely to read so that you can cater to them. Available for WordPress users.
Author Bio:
This is a guest post by Nadia Jones who blogs at online college about education, college, student, teacher, money saving, movie related topics. You can reach her at nadia.jones5 @ gmail.com.
