Your online visibility as Digital Nomad starts with a well-functioning website. Fortunately, you no longer have to be a coder or web designer to build a website yourself. WordPress makes it possible to put a website online with the touch of a button, as if you were installing an app. However, in terms of design and functionality, a standard installation of WordPress is very basic, so you will get used to it premium (read: paid) themes and plugins to better design and optimize your site for a larger audience.
10x essential WordPress apps and plugins
Anyone who dares to invest a few tens or hundreds of euros in Premium themes and plugins for his or her website will work more efficiently and have more time for other important things. If I have learned anything from the past 10 years of building websites and (travel) blogging, it is that the WordPress apps and plugins below have proven to be essential. These are my personal tips for advanced websites. These are 10 apps and plugins that are essential for online success as a Digital Nomad.
1. Why WordPress?
In short: There are 2 billion websites on the internet and 835 million run entirely on WordPress. WordPress is public, free and community driven. It is the easiest to use of all the web builders out there and works largely automatically. WordPress is perfect for both beginner and advanced websites.
2. Astra Theme & AI Website Builder
Do you want to put your creative self to the test, but do you have no knowledge of coding and/or technical know-how for building and especially designing a website yourself? No problem: astra-theme is here to make your life easier. It is not for nothing most popular WordPress theme in the world. It is loved by many and we understand why.
Astra Theme is a super fast, lightweight theme for your WordPress website that allows you to design a website using 'drag and drop'. You won't have to type a line of code to design a beautiful website yourself. Everything goes through a clear interface, making designing your website child's play.
Tip:: Do you want to build a new website even faster? Then choose the premium Astra-Theme with Business Toolkit. This gives you access to their new AI Website builder (ZipWP). Among other things, I have our new one there business website built with it.
3.YOAST SEO
YOAST is a Dutch company and the SEO plugin from YOAST is one of the most installed WordPress plugins in the world. The free version quickly takes your website a number of significant SEO steps further. However, are you serious about your website? Then invest 99 euros for one of the most valuable Premium plugins you will ever use.
4. WP Rocket
Speed is key for SEO. The name says it all, with the WP rocket plugin generate rocket speeds on your website. With the push of a button, your website pages load up to 80% faster. An essential and easy-to-use plugin that sets up almost everything for you on autopilot.
Google sees website speed as an increasingly important factor and it has a major influence on your ranking. You can't ignore it anymore. Speed is becoming increasingly important online and a slow website will therefore never perform. Therefore, invest in the best (and simplest!) caching plugin for your WordPress website.
WP Rocket makes speeding up your website child's play, without too many difficult settings.
5.Imagify
From the makers of WP-Rocket. Your website is now full of large, beautiful photos that enrich your website but also make it a lot slower. Of Imagify convert (fully automatically) all your photos (both old and new) in WordPress to the new WebP standard. Photos load with this tool 70% faster with no visible loss of quality and you can link the plugin to WP-rocket for an extra speed boost.
6. SocialSnap
With the Social snap plug-in you make sharing messages on social media, among other things, child's play. Did you know that readers of Wereldreizigers.nl by far the most use of the 'Share via WhatsApp button' on the left side of the screen, or at the bottom of the bar on mobile? Now you do!
7. Lasso Left
Over the years you write hundreds of articles containing thousands of links. Affiliate links in particular often expire, causing your visitors, the potential customers, to end up on dead links. Bad for SEO and bad for your turnover. Lasso Left makes managing all your affiliate links easy. If you need to make any changes to the links afterwards, Lasso will make sure it's done throughout your website, not just one article. Lasso has saved me hundreds of hours over the years. Literally.
Time is money and dead or expired (affiliate) links on the website cost you money. Lasso Left ensures that your visitors no longer end up on dead affiliate links and you can update expired affiliate links on hundreds of pages at the same time with the push of a button.
Oh yes, and you can use it to create beautiful call-to-action displays, like this one!
8. WooCommerce
Turn your website into an online store in no time. With the WooCommerce plug-in you can easily add goods to your website to sell, both physically (e.g. backpacks) and digitally (online course, presets, videos, PDFs, etc.).
9. Compliance
Do you also hate those cookie banners that you see on every website? Me too... Unfortunately, this is mandatory in the EU and behind this annoying button there is a lot of legal jargon, which is hardly understandable for us normal people. To prevent future problems, make sure your website fully complies with all privacy regulations Compliance plugin. The plugin not only provides a simple cookie banner but also well-written privacy pages and disclaimers.
10. Less is more
Last but not least: keep it clean. You use apps and plugins to improve your WordPress website, logically. However, realize that every plugin (except WP Rocket) that you add to your website is a potential risk and makes the website heavier and slower, which in turn is at the expense of speed and security. Make sure you have a fast theme and limit the number of plugins you use. Be critical. Dare to remove plugins that do not add many extras from your website. Less is more!
Your online business depends on a good name and fast hosting. With a slow website, Google will never rank your website high in the search results. In the mobile age we now live in, speed is more important than ever - so make sure that it is already right in the basis of your website.
Cloud86 is known as the fastest web hosting in the Netherlands and their Trustpilot reviews don't lie: there simply isn't anything better at the moment.
