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Your Daily Budget In Google Ads

Matthew Wilson Leave a comment

What is the Google Ads daily budget?

Google Ads allows you to control your costs by setting a daily budget for your ad campaigns. If you are running a search campaign, this means that Google will continue to run your text ads for search queries that trigger your keyword bdigital until your budget is exceeded. At that point, your ads will no longer be served for the rest of the day.

However – there are cases when Google may overspend. It is important to understand that setting a daily budget does not guarantee an exact spend – or even a spending limit.

Google may decide to “dip into your daily budget”!

Good old Google is always trying to help you get more clicks. According to its support site, it may “dip into your daily budget” and end up spending more than the amount you’ve told Google you’d like to spend.

“Dipping into your daily budget for other days in the month helps to optimize the performance of your campaigns and helps make sure that your ads can run a little more on days when they’re very popular.”

In other words, if there is a high volume search day, Google may overspend on your campaign to compensate for other days in the week when search volume is lower. In a statement in their Help documentation, Google poetically explains the reason behind this change:

“Internet traffic is like an ocean. Some days, there will be small waves. Other days, there will be great big ones. So, if your ads don’t show up much because of low traffic, then we’ll make up for that by showing them more when traffic’s higher.”

Ok, fine. But how much will they overspend? I’m afraid there’s worrying news on that count:

That’s right – Google may overspend 2x your daily budget to “help” you.

While this might make sense for a consistent monthly advertiser who has their keyword buys dialed in and optimized – it is frustrating for a new Google Ads user who is trying different strategies in short bursts to see what works for their business. Now a failed experiment may cost 2x what you expected it to.

I believe this should be an option – and not a default setting. Regularly exceeding daily budgets set by its customers does not create a sense of trust.

Help! I went over my daily budget!

While Google may decide to exceed your daily budget on a particular day, they claim that they will not exceed your monthly charging limit (Your daily budget * 30.4) over the course of the month. This means that if Google does overspend on one day, they might underspend on another day to compensate. This doesn’t help you if you’re running a shorter duration campaign – but it is some small consolation.

In short – your daily budget is an important tool to control your costs – but you must understand when and why Google might exceed it – and adjust as appropriate.

But what if I’m running a short campaign?

If you are running a campaign of limited duration (under 20 days), the implications of this new change are that you should either plan on spending up to 2x your stated daily budget – or set it to a lower amount as much as 50% under what you’d like to spend. Google has reportedly said that it is “highly unlikely” that a short campaign would consistently overdeliver by 2x the daily budget – but it remains to be seen how that plays out in reality.

Where can I find more information about this change?

Complete coverage of the implications of this change can be found in Ginny Marvin’s excellent article on Search Engine Land.

Got Comment Spam? Akismet to the Rescue!

Matthew Wilson Leave a comment

Akismet is a WordPress plugin that protects you from comment spam. This begs the questions: “What is Comment Spam?” and “Why do you need protecting from it?”

What is Comment Spam?

The bane of bloggers everywhere is an incipient form of spam known as comment spam. Comment spammers will post seemingly genuine comments to your blog posts which praise the quality of your blog post.

Seems harmless, right? It sounds like they love your blog! Unfortunately, you’re being played.

Why Spammers Leave Comments

These commenters will include links to sketchy-sounding websites (such as 136710.claimapplewatch.com in the above example) on their commenting profiles. If comments are approved and published, they will provide that sketchy website with a backlink – which is an essential criteria in Google’s famous PageRank algorithm.

The more comments they leave (and which you and other bloggers approve to be published), the higher their sketchy website could rank on Google organic searches. It doesn’t matter to them if no one ever clicks on their link – just the fact that it is published on your site could be enough to generate higher organic rankings – and thus, more organic traffic.

The Real Annoyance

While you can moderate comments to prevent spammy comments from being automatically published, comment moderation can start to take a lot of time. Over time, you might start getting hundreds of comments a weeek – all of which need to be manually moderated. That’s when spammy comments can really start to become a major annoyance.

Manually deleting comments is no fun at all. It takes time away that you could be using to create more awesome content!

Enter Akismet

Akismet will automatically send obvious comment spam into instant obscurity so you won’t have to give it a second thought. You won’t be bothered by 99.9% of comment spam again – and if Akismet isn’t quite sure whether a comment is spam or not – it will give you the choice and let you decide.

Sound like a good deal? Ok – let’s get it hooked up!

Activate Akismet

Akismet is pre-installed as a plugin for every UNI blog that we’ve created for this class. You’ll just need to activate it by clicking on the blue “Activate” link in your Plugins directory.

Once you activate the Akismet plugin, you’ll need to set up your account. This is a little tricky, so follow along closely!

Log in to Akismet using Google

Akismet uses WordPress.com account logins to authenticate – but we are not using WordPress.com and the last thing we need is yet another account to keep track of. Fortunately, you can also authenticate with a Google account – first click on “Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.” link at the bottom of this page:

Ok, so that was a lie – we don’t have a wordpress.com account. But look at the next page – it gives you the option to log in with your Google account at the bottom of the page!

Name Your Price

Choose a pricing plan. When you get rich and famous you can get a commercial account and give Akismet big bucks for protecting you from comment spam. For now, just choose the Personal “Name Your Price” plan.

On the next page, it will allow you to name your price. Since you are a student and your blog is not a commercial business, choose $0.

Activate Your Site and Enter Your API Key

Logged in? Good. Now you’ll be asked to “activate” your site and may need to enter your blog URL. Once you do so, you will receive your very own Akismet API key, which you can now enter in WordPress:

Enter your API key and click “Connect with API key”. Akismet will now be active and will start blocking spam immediately. If you’re curious, you can check in from time to time and see just how much spam Akismet is blocking.

Three Reasons to Join AAF (American Advertising Federation) at UNI

Matthew Wilson Leave a comment

The American Advertising Federation (AAF) is the only national organization that includes members across all disciplines and career levels in the advertising industry. In addition to professional chapters all across the country in every major metropolitan area, AAF also has hundreds of college chapters – including one right here at UNI. The wide professional network of this organization is but one reason to join AAF while at the University of Northern Iowa.

If you’re a UNI student with a passion for advertising, digital media, and creative ideas, here are three big reasons why AAF is the best student organization for you.

3. You will expand your network of industry professionals if you join AAF

AAF-UNI visiting global agency VML in Kansas City

Why wait until after you graduate to get to know professionals in the advertising industry?  At AAF we believe in making connections now.

  • You’ll visit advertising agencies in Cedar Falls, Waterloo, Cedar Rapdigital, Des Moines, Minneapolis and Chicago.
  • You’ll hear guest speakers from local and regional advertising agencies, tech firms, design studios, and digital agencies.
  • You’ll get to hear a panel of ad pros speak about how they got into the industry at our annual “Meet the Pros” event.
  • You’ll have the opportunity to attend a career fair in Chicago sponsored by global ad agency Leo Burnett.
  • You’ll have the opportunity to learn about advertising internships – including the Stickell Internship program.

2. You’ll work on real advertising campaigns when you join AAF

The district-winning 2015 Pizza Hut NSAC team from UNI. We placed 13th nationally!

The highlight of our year is working on a national ad campaign for a big name client through AAF’s National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC). NSAC is a once-in-a-lifetime experience you won’t want to miss out on. This year, we’ll develop a multimillion campaign for Wienerschnitzel Hot Dogs and pitch it in Kansas City at the District competition. Past clients have included:

  • Pizza Hut
  • Nissan
  • Snapple
  • Ocean Spray Cranberries

1. You’ll make lifelong friends and meet cool new people when you join AAF

The award-winning 2017 Tai Pei NSAC pitch team.

AAF-UNI gives you the opportunity to start making valuable professional connections across a multitude of disciplines that will be beneficial in your career in advertising.

At real ad agencies, creative designers work in teams with business analysts. Social media marketers work with copywriters. AAF gives you the opportunity to work with UNI students in other majors who you’ll likely be working with in the future!

Last Thought

If you think a career in advertising sounds like a blast – you should know something: It is. But you should also know that it’s a tough industry to get into – and you’ll need the experiences, professional contacts, and opportunities that AAF provides to get your foot in the door.

Bottom line: Join AAF!

Like AAF-UNI on Facebook

Learn more about AAF-UNI on our website.

How To Export Your UNI WordPress Site

Matthew Wilson Leave a comment

Many #unidigadv students continue their personal branding website after our class project is complete – a few just like to have it online to refer to on their resume or portfolio site. This article will walk you through how to export your UNI WordPress website.

If you just want to save your WordPress posts and pages as work samples, you can read my post on how to simply print them from your web browser as PDF files or use a screen capture extension to take full-page screenshots of each of your posts.

If you want to transfer your entire site to a new location where you can keep it active and add more content in the future, this article will take you through the steps needed to migrate your WordPress site from the UNI server to a new location that you will control and maintain.

1. Install the “All-In-One WP Migration” Plugin and Export Your WordPress Site

Log in to your UNI WordPress account and mouse over the “Plugins” menu – click on the “Add New” option. Search for the All-in-One WP Migration plugin and click Install Now.

Once you have installed the plugin, click “Activate” to make it active. Then it will show up on your side nav bar.

When it does, click on the “Export” option. You should see a dialog box that looks something like this:

The plugin allows you to export to a variety of formats – the easiest is to export as a FILE.

Once you click on Export File, it will take a little time to compress all of your website’s assets into one downloadable file. Once it is done, you’ll be prompted to download it to your local computer.

Once downloaded, save it in a safe place until you are ready to import it into your new WordPress installation.

If you’re not ready to import it anywhere yet – you can keep this file for future use. But if you’re ready to transfer it to a new WordPress installation, go to step 2!

2. Get a Web Hosting Plan and a domain name (URL)

The next thing you need to do is to get a shared web hosting plan. Shared web hosting means you get space on a shared web server. In addition to your WordPress site, you could also host other websites for yourself (e.g. a portfolio site), your projects, or for clients.

Dreamhost offers the best shared hosting package that I’ve found. It includes no storage or bandwidth limitations, unlimited domain hosting, and one-click WordPress installations. They also include a free domain registration with an annual plan. For month-to-month billing the cost is $10.95 / month – but if you prepay for 1 or 3 years in advance, the cost comes down to $9.95 or $7.95 a month respectively.

If you Google “Dreamhost coupon” or “dreamhost discount” often you can find special deals on hosting plans that make it even more affordable.

Often hosting plans will include a domain name registration. You’ll want to select a domain that is relevant to your personal brand or your name. Note that many fun Top Level Domains (TLDs) are now available besides the common .COM, .ORG, and .NET.

Once you have a hosting plan and domain in place, you’re ready to install WordPress.

3. Install WordPress

Once you are set up with your Dreamhost account and custom domain, you need to install WordPress. Fortunately, Dreamhost offers a one-click installer for WordPress in the “Goodies” section of their web hosting control panel.

You’ll just need to fill out the domain and subdirectory (if applicable) that you wish to install WordPress into and click “install it for me now”.

For more information on this step, consult Dreamhost’s help article on installing WordPress with a one-click installer.

4. Install the “All-In-One WP Migration” plugin and Import XML file into your new WordPress installation

Log in to your new WordPress installation hosted on your new Dreamhost account. Download, install, and activate the All-in-one WP Migration plugin like you did in step one. Then under the menu click on the “import” option.

Click “Import From File” and navigate to the exported file you created in step one.

It may take a little time, so be patient as it imports.

5. Check your imported content

Generally, I have found that exporting and importing works pretty flawlessly as far as the content goes – but you may have to do a few things to bring your site back to its former perfection:

  • If you used a custom theme, you’ll need to install and apply that theme on your new WordPress installation.
  • If you tweaked your theme’s customization options on the old site, you may need to re-apply those changes manually to your new site.

Once you’ve double-checked that all of your content imported correctly and that your site’s theme looks correct again, you should be good to go.

6. What about your old WordPress site on the UNI server?

UNI IT will automatically remove your old site – there is no need to do anything else on the UNI server.

That’s it! You now have a new WordPress installation with all of your old content running on a shared hosting environment.

How to Customize WordPress Theme Type Styles Using Google Fonts

Matthew Wilson Leave a comment

If you’re using WordPress and want to easily customize the type styles in a pre-built WordPress Theme using the many open source typefaces in Google Fonts, you’ll want to utilize the Easy Google Fonts plugin.

For example, let’s say you’ve installed the Baskerville theme but aren’t crazy about the header typeface. How do you change it?

Using a test site that I created for demonstration purposes, let’s walk through the process.

Find the Style

The first thing you need to do is identify the CSS style that controls that headline text in the HTML file code. If you “view source” on the home page of your blog and search for the words “The awesome test site” you’ll find it in the code:

You’ll notice in the code that the header text “The awesome test site” is surrounded by an H1 tag that contains an inline style assigned the class “blog-title”. To view the current settings for this style, we’ll need to find and view the CSS file for the Baskerville theme.

In the same source code, do another search for the words “.css” to see all of the associated stylesheets on this page.

As you see, there is a stylesheet associated with the Baskerville theme embedded in the HTML code. Click on the link for that CSS code and load it up in a separate tab. Search for the style “blog-title”.

Bingo! There it is. Currently it has assigned the typeface “Pacifico” to the blog title style. Copy the style name here (“.blog-title”).

Create a Font Control

Now we’ll create a custom font control using the Google Fonts plugin that will allow us to modify this style. Back in your WordPress dashboard, navigate to the Google Fonts section under the Settings menu.

Here, you’ll want to create a new font control with the name Blog Title. In the “Add CSS Selectors” box, paste in the exact style name that you copied from the CSS file (i.e. “.blog-title”). Save this font control.

Customize Your Style!

Now if you navigate to the Appearance/Customize/Typography settings, you will see a new option available.

If you click on Theme Typography you should now see the font control you just created. Click “edit font” to modify the settings for this style. All the available Google Fonts will be available in the Font Family menu. I chose a typeface called “Didact Gothic”, which is similar to the Futura typeface.

You should see your changes in real time in the preview pane on the righthand side of the screen. Once you are happy with your typeface choice, save and publish your set. Your blog will now have a custom header typeface!

 

Use Google Analytics with your WordPress Blog with the MonsterInsights plugin

Matthew Wilson Leave a comment

Google Analytics is used by tens of millions of websites worldwide – it is a free tool to help you track and analyze the traffic on your WordPress blog or website. This post will guide you step-by-step through the process of setting up a Google Analytics account and connecting it to start tracking your WordPress blog traffic using the very awesome MonsterInsights WordPress plugin.

You’ll need to have a functioning WordPress site available at a public URL to complete these steps. Note that these instructions are for installations using WordPress.org platform – not the commercial version at WordPress.com.

Ok, so let’s do this!

1. Create a Google Analytics Account

(If you already have one, skip to step 2)

Creating a Google Analytics account is quick, easy, and free. You’ll need to navigate your browser to http://analytics.google.com/ and log in using a Google account.

2. Create a Web Property

Once you have signed in, you’ll need five key pieces of information to create your first web property to monitor using Google Analytics:

  • An account name (e.g. “Matthew’s Sites”)
  • Your website name (e.g. “UNI Digital Advertising Blog”)
  • Your website URL (e.g. “digital.uni.edu/advertising”)
  • An industry category (Pick one that fits)
  • Your time zone (Central Time)

Once you have your web property created, you will be assigned a Tracking ID by Google. This Tracking ID is all you will need to connect your WordPress blog.

Write down your tracking ID and open a new tab. Navigate to your WordPress blog and sign in.

3. Configure the MonsterInsights plugin

Now we will configure the MonsterInsights plugin in WordPress (If you don’t have this plugin, you’ll need to install it into your version of WordPress).

For UNI Digital Advertising students, this plugin is pre-installed for you – you can find it by clicking on “Insights” at the bottom of the left navigation menu.

You’ll have to authenticate your Google account to be able to configure Google Analytics to track your blog and to access your web property from WordPress.

Authentication involves signing in to your Google Account and pasting the authentication code into the MonsterInsights dialog box, then clicking “next”.

 

Once you have pasted the code and clicked “next”, you’ll choose the web property you want to associate with your WordPress blog. Choose the web property you just set up.

 

Cool – Google Analytics should be tracking your blog now!

4. Confirm that Google Analytics is Working Correctly

This is a fun one – kind of the equivalent of looking in the mirror to see if you’re really there.  Go back to Google Analytics and select the “Real Time” clock icon on the left hand navigational menu.

Click on the Real-Time “Overview”.  Now open a new browser tab and navigate to your blog url (the one you are trying to track).  Once your blog’s home page loads up, go back to Google Analytics tab and look at the real time overview report.  You should see this:

Nice work.  You’re watching yourself read your own blog.  This proves that it works and that everything is set up correctly.  You’re done – go do something fun, like find animated GIFs of people clapping!


If you see 0 active users – something is not right.  Go back to step three.

Update: You can also use the excellent Google Tag Assistant Chrome plugin or the Ghostery browser extension to check to ensure that the Google Analytics code is properly working.

 

Using Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress

Matthew Wilson Leave a comment

Implementing SEO best practices with your WordPress blog has gotten super easy since the development of the excellent Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin allows you to write and manage title, meta description, and open graph protocol tags all in one interface.

The Yoast SEO plugin is pre-installed on our class WordPress blogs. You can find it on the left hand nav menu – it is called “SEO”. First, we’ll be working with Search Appearance.

screen shot of SEO menu

Search Appearance

If you don’t know what title and meta description tags are, you’ll first want to read my blog post about them. In the Yoast SEO submenu, you can select the “Search Appearance” option.

The first thing you’ll want to do is take a look at the title and description for your home page. The title is coded to dynamically add content from your current site name, page name, and site description – but you can change this based on Google’s requirement that a title should be unique, descriptive, and accurate. 

Write a description for your site that is also unique, descriptive, and accurate that further describes to a potential reader what your blog is about. Think about keywords you want your blog to be associated with. 

When you’re done, click “Save Changes”. Next, you’ll enable Facebook Open Graph Protocol tags.

Facebook Open Graph Protocol Tags

Before you complete this step, you should read my blog post on Open Graph Protocol (You can ignore the part about Blogger code – that was what students in the past had to deal with).

Once you’re open graph enlightened, go ahead and select the “Social” option from the Yoast SEO Plugin submenu.


You’ll want to make sure that under the “Facebook” tab, that Open Graph meta data is set to “Enabled.” This will automatically use the title and meta description tags you wrote from the previous step and add open graph tags that use the same data.

If you want to customize the title or description of your home page, you can do so in the section called “Frontpage settings”.  You can also upload a preview image to use for your blog’s home page. This image should conform to Facebook preview image standards.

  • For best display, use an image that is 1200 x 630 pixels.
  • Note that images in other sizes and aspect ratios may get cropped.
  • Next best image size is 600 x 315 pixels. Images smaller than this will appear in a smaller preview size.
  • Facebook will not display a preview image smaller than 200 x 200 pixels.

Ok – now you’re ready to write title and meta description tags for your individual blog posts. There isn’t a submenu option for that. You’ll do that while you’re editing the post itself.

Adding Titles & Meta tags to WordPress Blog Posts

Go to one of your blog posts and scroll down past your post copy. You should see a Yoast SEO content area:

This gives you a “Snippet Preview” of what your blog post’s google listing will look like. As you can see, WordPress has automatically created a title based on the post title – and has autofilled the meta description with the first paragraph of your post. Let’s make that a bit more readable by clicking “Edit Snippet”.

You should make the title and description unique, accurate, and descriptive – while piquing the curiosity of the reader to get them interested in clicking on the post in Google Search results. For example, this is a better description than the first paragraph of the article:

You can also designate a Focus Keyword for each post. A focus keyword is a word or phrase that you want your post to be associated with. In the example above, we might designate a focus keyword like “productivity apps”.

The plugin gives you feedback on how well your page content and SEO tags relate to your focus keyword.

In general, you should fix things with red or orange dots until as many dots as possible are green.

Get into the practice and discipline of doing this for every blog post you write for maximum SEO benefit.

Ready to check your work? 

SEO Tools To Check Your Tags

First you should check your title and meta description tags by using the Meta Tag Analyzer.

Then check your open graph tags with the Facebook Open Graph Object Debugger. 

The Yoast SEO Plugin will also insert Twitter Card tags. You can check how your pages will appear on Twitter using the Twitter Card Validator.

Create Your Own Branded Favicon

Matthew Wilson Leave a comment

What is a Branded Favicon?

Ever notice that some websites have neat little custom icons next to them in your browser tabs when you load them up?

These icons add an element of unique branding to websites, giving them a professional appearance.

They’re known as branded favicons.



Favicons are literally “favorite icons” – short for when bookmarks for websites were called “favorites”.  They are very small (usually 16 x 16 pixels). In addition to appearing in the address bar, favicons also appear in browser tabs, bookmarks, and the links bar.

How do you Create a Branded Favicon?

Traditional favicons are saved in the ICO graphic file format (used for old school Windows icons). Photoshop used to be able to save to this format, but no longer does. Not to worry – just create a 16×16 pixel GIF or PNG and use the icon utility ConvertIcon.

There are even online tools like favicon.cc or the favicon generator to help you create and save them.

A newer type of icon is the Site Icon, used by WordPress. The Site Icon can be a PNG or GIF up to 512 x 512 pixels. Once uploaded, WordPress automatically creates a favicon, along with many other icon sizes in between for various mobile devices.

Adding a Favicon to your Websites

Once you have your custom 16×16 favicon in the ICO format (or 512×512 Site Icon), here are some instructions on how to get them working on your site or blog:

Favicons on websites

Favicons can be hand coded into any HTML file with a single line of code in the HEAD section:

However, doing this for every page in a site is tedious and prone to inevitable error. An easy workaround is that most browsers will automatically look for a file called favicon.ico at the root level of your site. If you simply copy your favicon file to your root level, you should be good to go.

Favicons on Blogger blogs

Easy. Go to the Blogger admin page and click on Layout. You’ll see on the top left of your layout an area called Favicon where you can upload your ICO file by clicking on “Edit”.

Favicons on WordPress sites

WordPress users have it a little easier – they can use PNG or GIF files that are 512 x 512 pixels. WordPress will resize as needed. Just go into Appearance / Customize in your WordPress admin page. Most themes will allow you to customize your “Site Identity” which includes a custom site icon. Just click on “Select Image” and upload your 512 x 512 PNG or GIF image. WordPress takes care of the rest.

Now that you know what favicons are and how to create them – why don’t you make one for your blog?

How to Embed Tweets into Your WordPress Blog Posts

Matthew Wilson Leave a comment

One of the powerful aspects of social content is that it is portable – that is, it can be easily shared and republished in a variety of ways.  Whether it is an Instagram photo or a Tweet, this content is designed to be shared as a social object. This post will take a look at Tweets and how you can embed tweets in WordPress blogs or websites in their native format.

Embed Tweets on Your WordPress Blog

Twitter content is perfect for sharing.  Tweets are usually concise thoughts that are short and to the point.  They can quickly summarize a person’s point of view, opinion, or outlook without getting too detailed.

You can easily screen-capture a tweet and include it in your blog as an image, but if you want to give readers an easy way to favorite, retweet, or reply to the tweet right from your blog page, you’ll want to embed it.

Every tweet has a “More” menu accessible by clicking on the button with the three dots that appears at the end of the tweet.  Go to this menu and select “Embed Tweet”.



This will give you a snippet of custom code that can be added to a website or blog.  To get this code, simply copy it from the “Embed this Tweet” dialog box and close it.


To embed this tweet in a WordPress post, simply create a new post (or edit one you’ve already started), select “text” editing mode, and paste the code from Twitter. Save the post and preview or publish it.

Here’s an embedded tweet to show you how this content appears in a WordPress post:


Notice how you can reply, favorite, or retweet the content right from this page?  Any links or hashtags are also clickable.  MUCH more functional than a screenshot.

You can similarly embed a tweet in another content publishing tool or website by pasting this embed code snippet directly into your HTML code.

Can I Embed Tweets in Facebook Posts?
No. This method will NOT work as a way to embed tweets in other social media content.  Here is what happened when I tried to use this embed code in a Facebook post:


Facebook does not allow HTML markup tags within status updates, so the code appeared exactly as it is.  

For more info on embedding Tweets, see this Twitter Help Center article.

Two Essential Plugins for Your WordPress Blog

Matthew Wilson 2 Comments

Tracking the traffic to your blog and optimizing it for Search Engines and Social Media shares is extremely important.  These are things that you’re going to want to set up as soon as you can.

In the old days, changes to websites for SEO purposes (like customizing title tags and meta tags) and connecting Google Analytics were a matter of customizing the website’s code by hand.  

Today, WordPress users have the benefit of being able to install and use powerful plugins to extend and enhance their blog’s capabilities without the need to code by hand.  These plugins offer a simple user interface that is easy to use.

If you are interested in tracking activity on your blog with Google Analytics or optimizing your blog for search engine rankings and social media sharing, there are two essential WordPress plugins you should consider using on your blog:


1. Google Analytics Plugin by Yoast
This plugin ostensibly simplifies the process of installing and monitoring Google Analytics from WordPress.  

After creating your Google Analytics account, you simply install the plugin in WordPress and authenticate with your google account as described here.  That’s pretty much it!


2. WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast
This powerful plugin can handle SEO duties as well as Open Graph tags for Social Media Optimization.

Follow installation instructions and then take a look at their very informative Guide to Higher SEO Rankings for WordPress sites for more information on setting it up.

Compared to more stripped-down blogging platforms like Blogger, you’ll find that the functionality in the SEO Plugin is pretty comprehensive – not only can you customize your Title and Meta Description tags, but you can even enable Open Graph Protocol tags to handle social media optimization.

You’ll find a ton of other features in this plug-in that you can configure – and if you’re someone who finds SEO fascinating – I encourage you to explore this plugin and see what it can do!