Category: Blog Topics

What is the way of approval of blog commenting and getting backlinks as well? If expert there, please tell us.

As a WordPress user, you’ve likely heard talk of Pinterest and the almost other-worldly power it possesses to drive FREE traffic to your website. And if you haven’t heard yet, please check out this epic post discussing how you can boost traffic to your WordPress site with Pinterest. There’s a reason why bloggers and WordPress […]

The post How To Optimize WordPress Blog Content for Pinterest appeared first on WPExplorer.

Do you want to learn how to hide a Pinterest image in WordPress?

Pinterest can be a great way to drive traffic to your blog, but displaying a Pinterest image in your post can make your content harder to read.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily hide a Pinterest image in blog posts while still letting readers pin a custom Pinterest image when they share your content on Pinterest.

Why Hide Pinterest Images on WordPress Posts?

Using Pinterest can be a great way to increase blog traffic.

But, the Pinterest recommended image sizes don’t always look good when added to blog posts. That’s because the Pinterest image dimensions are long and narrow (3:2) which doesn’t fit most blog layouts.

Not to mention, these large images have the potential to slow down your website.

So you might be wondering why do bloggers use longer Pinterest images?

• They stand out in the Pinterest pin feed and search results
• They allow you to repin your content with new fresh images
• They get more traffic than traditional image sizes

By hiding the Pinterest images, you can improve the appearance of your blog posts and make your site faster. All while reaping the benefits of letting readers pin a high-quality image.

Does Hiding Images Interfere with Pinterest Terms of Service?

You might have heard that hiding Pinterest images on your WordPress blog goes against the Pinterest Terms of Service (TOS).

But, this isn’t true.

Hiding a Pinterest image on your website is allowed, as long as you meet the following requirements:

• The Pinterest image matches the content of your post
• The Pin description matches the content or title of your post

Essentially, you can hide images on your WordPress blog as long as the image you’re hiding is relevant to your page.

Does Hidden Pinterest Images impact Google Ranking?

For Google to properly rank your site it needs to be able to index your content. This means the search engines crawl your website to see what pages and media your website contains.

Google isn’t necessarily a big fan of hidden images or hidden content. Especially, since hidden content can be associated with spam websites.

However for legitimate use-cases like this one, it’s completely ok for you to hide Pinterest images without impacting your Google ranking.

How to Hide Pinterest Images in WordPress

There are several WordPress plugins that makes it easy to hide Pinterest images in WordPress. There are premium sharing plugins like WPTasty or Grow by Mediavine (formerly Social Pug).

However, we recommend using the free Shared Counts plugin, and their free Shared Counts – Pinterest Image addon.

These plugins are extremely well coded and will not impact your WordPress website speed. Not to mention, they’re 100% free.

This is the plugin that we’re using on WPBeginner to add our social share buttons.

The first thing you’ll need to do is install the Shared Counts plugin. For detailed instructions, please read our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

The plugin settings are fairly straight forward, but we do have a detailed tutorial on adding social sharing buttons to WordPress that you can use as a guide to get started.

Once the Shared Counts plugin is fully set up, you’ll need to install and activate the Shared Counts – Pinterest Image addon to your site.

There are no unique settings to configure for this plugin.

It automatically adds a custom Pinterest image box to your blog posts.

Instead of having users pin random images from your blog post, you can create a higher-quality image that’ll perform better on Pinterest.

When your website visitors click on your Pinterest share button, Pinterest will pop up with the perfect image you’ve created for your post.

To add your custom Pinterest image for your blog posts, simply go to Posts » All Posts in your WordPress dashboard and open up the post you want to edit.

In the WordPress content editor, you’ll see a meta box labeled ‘Pinterest Sharing Image’ in bottom right-hand corner.

You need click on the ‘Select Image’ button and upload a new image or choose an existing image from your media library.

When you’ve found the image you’d like to use, you can add the ‘Title’ and ‘Alt Text’, then click the ‘Use Image’ button.

Next, click ‘Publish’ to publish your new post with the Pinterest sharing image, or ‘Update’ if the post is already live.

Now, when your visitors click the Pinterest share button there will be a pop-up that has your Pinterest image with the proper dimensions.

One of the best parts about using this plugin is that it automatically hides the Pinterest image for you.

Once you add your Pinterest featured image to your blog post, the plugin will add it to the bottom of your post, and apply the “display:none;” element automatically. This makes it completely hidden from view.

There is no need to add the image to your post and manually hide it or make any additional changes.

You might have seen other methods online, like using CSS to hide your Pinterest images, or adding HTML code with the “display:none;” element, but you don’t need to worry about any of that.

The plugin addon takes care of everything for you, which is why we recommend this option above all else.

Finally, it’s important you optimize your images before uploading them to WordPress. This plugin hides the image from view, but it still loads on your post. So, if it’s not properly optimized, then it could slow down your website.

We hope this article helped you learn how to hide Pinterest images on your WordPress blog posts. You may also want to learn how to verify your site on Pinterest for added functionality, and our expert pick of the 40 useful tools to manage and grow your blog.

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 Hide Pinterest Images in Your WordPress Blog Posts appeared first on WPBeginner.

When creating a blog, much of your focus will (rightfully) be on the content itself. However, how you’re presenting your content to the world matters, too. And we’re not just talking about the appearance or design here. The actual layout of how your content is presented can be instrumental in how site visitors interact with […]

The post How to Choose a Content Layout for Your WordPress Blog appeared first on WPExplorer.

This post is originally published on Designmodo: How to Create Featured Images That Draw More Readers to Your Blog

You’re familiar with how valuable images are on a website. They can: Break up otherwise long stretches of text. Visually complement the content on a page. Reinforce a brand’s visual identity and style. Simplify how many words are used to …

For more information please contact Designmodo

When starting a new blog, it’s a good idea to put some thought into who you’ll be speaking to. Your target audience will play a vital role in the type of content you produce, of course. But it also plays a role in the tone or voice you use throughout your writing. How you address […]

The post Finding the Voice of Your WordPress Blog appeared first on WPExplorer.

If you are a blogger or an affiliate marketer or a site owner that is looking for a content planning system that can streamline their site content, then you are reading the right review. Source: PublishPress website Introducing PublishPress Plugins PublishPress is a great plugin for WordPress teams to easily manage the workflow and organize content […]

The post PublishPress Review – Content Planning System Every Blogger Needs appeared first on WPArena.

You’ve followed all of the marketing guides, sales funnel tips, and carefully built your subscriber list, yet your online business seems to be plateauing. What gives? This problem is common for a lot of online business owners. You don’t really want to use typical social media influencers because it feels… overdone or fake. Instead, you’d […]

The post Your Guide to Blogger Outreach: How-To and What You Should Know appeared first on WPArena.

A core goal for any type of marketing is to build one’s brand authority. In a vastly competitive arena with no limit to the marketing messages audiences are subjected to consuming each day, they often turn to tried-and-tested products and services. Consumers are more loyal to brands they can trust—and so the more trust an […]

The post Drive Traffic to Your WordPress Blog with Instagram appeared first on WPExplorer.

How To Use WordPress Categories And Tags To Pinpoint Your Blog Niche Read More →

John is a public relations professional and he is often required you to send press releases and event invites to journalists, bloggers and influencers via email.

Reaching out to individual journalists can be slow so how do you send the same email to multiple people in one go? Some people use the BCC option in Gmail - compose a single email, put email addresses of all recipients in the BCC field and hit send.

That’s obviously the easiest option for sending bulk emails through Gmail but such generic email pitches are unlikely to get noticed.

Send Email Pitches with Gmail

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how you can use send personalised email pitches to your media contacts through Gmail and Google Sheets. You’ll be able to schedule your press releases in advance and also track which influencers have seen your emails.

The big advantage is that, unlike other mass email programs, messages sent via Mail merge are delivered just like regular emails directly in the Inbox.

Let’s get started:

How to use Mail Merge with Gmail

Go to the Google Workspace Marketplace and install the Gmail Mail Merge addon. You’ll need to grant certain permissions so that the add-on can send emails from your Gmail accounts. It also needs permission to attach files from your Google Drive.

Now that the add-on is installed, type sheets.new in your browser to create a new Google Sheet. Inside the sheet, go to the Addons menu, choose “Mail Merge with Attachments” and then select the “Create Merge Template” menu.

Your sheet now has all the essential columns that are required for running mail merge but can add more columns. We’ll add Location and News Outlet columns as shown in the above screenshot.

The next task is to get the media list into this Google Sheet. You can either import groups from Google Contacts, from your Mailchimp campaigns or, if you are an Excel user, export as CSV and directly import the CSV file into Google Sheets.

Create an Email Template for Merge

Open your Gmail, create a new email message (see screenshot) and save the template in your drafts folder. The email can have {{markers}} enclosed in double curly braces and these are replaced with actual values from the Google Sheet in your outgoing emails.

When we enclose some text inside double curly braces, it becomes a marker and these are replaced with values in the sheet. You can also add emojis in the subject and body.

Next, we can add some attachments to our email template. You can either upload files from your computer or you can bring directly from your Google Drive.

Configure and Run Mail Merge

Now that our email template in Gmail is ready, go back to your Google Sheet and choose Configure mail merge from the Mail Merge menu under add-ons.menu.

Follow the step by step wizard to configure merge but there are a few important things you should know.

1. You can send emails on behalf of any email address that is associated as an alias in your Gmail account. So an intern can send emails on behalf of the manager while logged into her own Google account.
2. You can add a CC or BCC email address and all your merged emails will be copied to them as well. Remember that Gmail counts every CC or BCC recipient as a separate email and thus it counts towards your daily email quota.
3. Mail Merge includes email tracking so you can know who opened your email or clicked the links. For email newsletters, you can even include an unsubscribe option in your email messages.

After the configuration is done, go to the Send Email Section, select the Send a test email option and hit the Go button.

Mail Merge will take the merge data from the first row in the Google Sheet and send you a test email. You can find the test email in your Gmail Sent folder.

If you are satisfied with the test email, go back to the Google Sheet, select the Run Mail Merge option and hit Go to perform a live merge. That’s it.

The emails will be dispatched immediately and you can check the Mail Merge Status column in the sheet to track the sending progress.

You can add more rows in the Google Sheet to send the same email to another batch of people and when you hit send, Mail Merge will automatically ignore the rows that have already been sent the email.

Mail Merge - Tips and Tricks

1. You can schedule emails - just add a date and time in the Scheduled Date column and run merge again to schedule the emails.
2. If you have a lot of rows in the sheet, you can skip sending emails to specific rows by hiding those rows in the Google Sheet. Alternatively, you may use filters in Google Sheets to only show rows that match certain criteria. When you run merge again, emails will be sent to visible rows only.
3. If you wish to cancel scheduled emails, you can either empty the scheduled date column or you can go to the Mail Merge menu, choose Help and click the Cancel Scheduled Mail option.
4. With Mail merge you can also send different attachments to different people. See how-to guide.
5. You can also create drafts with Mail Merge and this is a handy option if you wish to review the emails manually before sending them to real people.