Friday, 30 July 2021

19+ Free Google Tools Every WordPress Blogger Should Use

Are you looking for the best free Google tools to grow your WordPress blog?

Google offers a wide variety of free tools to help bloggers and website owners improve their SEO, get more traffic, be more productive, and more.

In this article, we highlight the best free Google tools that every WordPress blogger should use.

19+ Free Google tools every WordPress blogger should use

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the most comprehensive analytics tool for WordPress blogs and websites.

It tells you how your visitors found your website, what devices they used, what pages they viewed, and how they interacted with your website.

This information helps you better understand your audience, so you can plan and execute an effective content strategy. You’ll be able to see what topics and pages convert the best and steadily improve your website over time.

The easiest way to add Google Analytics to WordPress is using MonsterInsights. It’s the best analytics solution for WordPress used by over 3 million websites.

It lets you view your Google Analytics stats directly in your WordPress dashboard.

MonsterInsights stats dashboard

For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

2. Google Search Console

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a set of tools that helps website owners monitor and maintain their search engine presence and rankings.

It helps you see what keywords people use to find your site, notify you of site errors holding back your rankings, and much more.

Plus, you can submit an XML sitemap via Google Search Console to help search engines crawl your website better.

The easiest way to add Google Search Console to WordPress is by using the All in One SEO plugin. It’s the best SEO plugin for WordPress used by over 2 million websites.

For more details, see our guide on how to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

3. Google Programmable Search

Google Programmable Search

The default WordPress search feature is quite limited and not very good at finding relevant content. As your website grows, you’ll want a way to help your visitors find what they’re looking for.

Google Programmable Search gives you an easy way to add custom search to your WordPress site.

You have complete control over the content it will search, and you can design the search feature to fully blend into your website.

For more advanced search with customization options, we recommend using a WordPress search plugin like SearchWP, but Google Programmable Search can be an affordable option to get started.

4. Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager allows you to easily add and manage code snippets, or “tags”, to your website. Tags are commonly used by analytics and marketing tools to add tracking or other features to your site.

Adding tags to your WordPress site usually requires custom code. These custom code snippets load an external script, and it’s hard to manage them all.

Google Tag Manager solves this problem by allowing you to manage all your external codes from one dashboard.

You only need to add one Google Tag Manager snippet to your site, and then you can manage the rest from a single dashboard.

For more details, see our guide on how to install and setup Google Tag Manager in WordPress.

5. PageSpeed Insights

Google PageSpeed Insights

Having a fast loading website is one of the most important parts of providing a good user experience and solid WordPress SEO.

Google PageSpeed Insights is a website performance monitoring tool. It tells you how your website is performing on both desktop and mobile devices.

The results are broken down into different sections, so you can see what’s holding your site back. There are also resources and best practices to help you fix any issues you might be having.

PageSpeed Insights results

For more details on running a website speed test, see our guide on how to properly run a website speed test.

If you’ve found that your website has performance and speed issues, then there’s a lot you can do to improve this.

First, we recommend using high performance WordPress hosting, like Bluehost or SiteGround.

Next, you can use a WordPress caching plugin like WP Rocket. Caching plugins reduce the load on your server and speed up your WordPress site.

If you’re serious about boosting your site speed, then check out our ultimate guide to WordPress performance and speed.

6. Google Mobile-Friendly Test Tool

Google Mobile Friendly Test

For many WordPress websites, a high volume of traffic can come from mobile devices. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, then you’ll create a poor user experience, and you can lose out on search engine rankings.

The Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool will tell you how well your website is optimized for the mobile web. It will give you a detailed breakdown of any issues and what you can do to fix them.

The easiest way to ensure your website is optimized for the mobile web is by using a responsive WordPress theme. These themes will automatically adjust to your visitor’s screen size, so they’ll look perfect on mobile devices.

7. Google Ads Keyword Planner

Google Ads Keyword Tool

The Google Ads Keyword Planner gives you insights into what people are searching for in Google search. It pulls data from the Google search results and paid advertisers.

Using this tool, you can generate a list of keywords related to your blog and see which keywords get the most searches per month. The data doesn’t provide exact numbers, but it does give general estimates.

Google Ads Keyword Tool results

This tool can also help you generate new ideas for your blog posts, plan your content strategy, and run your own pay per click (PPC) advertising campaigns using Google Ads.

If you’re looking for even more ways to do keyword research, then see our list of the best keyword research tools for SEO.

8. Think with Google Research

Think with Google

Think with Google Research is one of the best market research tools. This collection of tools will help you understand your market, spot new trends, and grow your website or online store.

The data and insights you can gain depending on which tools you use.

For example, the Market Insights tool can help you find new regional or global markets to expand into.

Think with Google market insights

There’s another tool that shows retail categories that are growing in popularity, along with the related search terms. This tells you if the niche you’re in is growing in popularity.

Think with Google rising retail categories

For those who have a YouTube channel, or edit videos, you can use the audience finder tool to uncover new audiences on YouTube.

9. Google My Business

Google My Business

Google My Business is a tool that lets you add your local business information to Google, so it can display your business information in search results.

If you run a local business, or provide services to a local area, then Google My Business is something you cannot miss.

Displaying your business information in Google search results will boost your brand’s search visibility, and bring you new customers and potential leads.

You can combine this with the Local SEO features from AIOSEO to further enhance your local business listings in Google.

10. Google Optimize

Google Optimize

Google Optimize is a tool that helps website owners optimize their websites by running A/B split tests. This lets you compare two different versions of a page to see which converts better.

For example, you can run a split test of two different sales pages to see which one leads to more customers.

By split testing, you can gradually optimize pages on your site to get the highest conversions possible.

You can create a split test simply with the drag and drop builder. Google will automatically show the variations to your visitors randomly and gather data.

For more details, see our guide on how to add Google Optimize to WordPress.

11. Google Adsense

Google AdSense

Google Adsense lets bloggers and website owners easily monetize their websites with display ads. Adsense is one of the longest-running display advertising programs.

Once you’re approved for the program, you can add the display ads to your site and start making money.

To easily manage and display your ads, we recommend using a WordPress ad management plugin.

You can also combine revenue from Google Adsense with other income generating activities like affiliate marketing, and selling online courses.

For more details, see our guide on how to properly add Google AdSense to WordPress.

12. Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Calendar, & Gmail

Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms

In terms of productivity tools to help you create better content, Google has you covered. You’ll find a wide range of tools for mobile and desktop, including Google Docs, Sheets, Forms, Calendar, Gmail, and more.

The main advantage of using Google’s productivity apps is the easy sharing features, with full privacy control, unlimited revisions, inline comments, and real time collaboration, all without needing to hit the save button.

Plus, there are all kinds of innovative ways to integrate these tools with WordPress. For example, you can connect WordPress forms to Google Sheets, integrate Google Calendar with WordPress, and more.

There’s also a premium version of these same tools called Google Workspace. This gives you the same functionality, plus a professional business email address, more cloud storage, support for two-factor authentication, and more.

13. Google Drive

Google Drive

Google Drive is a cloud storage tool you can use to store all of your Google Docs, Google Sheets files, and more. The free version shares 15GB of storage across your Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos accounts.

You can use the free cloud storage space to store any file you want and sync them across other devices with a Google account.

If you’re looking for a place to store your WordPress backups safely, then this can be an ideal option.

14. Google Maps

Google Maps

Google Maps gives you a great way to embed interactive maps into your WordPress website. Adding a map to your website can show your visitors where you’re physically located.

This is a must have feature for local businesses like restaurants and cafes.

If you’re a travel blogger, then you can also make use of Google Maps by creating and embedding an interactive map of all the places you’ve been.

15. Google Alerts

Google Alerts

Google Alerts will instantly notify you any time your brand or name is mentioned on the web.

It only takes a few seconds to create a Google Alert for your brand name or keywords, so you’ll get email notifications when you’re mentioned online.

It’s an important tool to use for building a strong brand image. Plus, these alerts can help to notify you of backlink opportunities and potential business partnerships.

16. Google Trends

Google Trends

Google Trends gives you a bird’s eye view of what’s trending in the world of search. You can browse through the latest curated data, or search for keywords related to your niche.

This tool can be helpful in addition to other research tools like the Google Ads Keyword Planner. When you enter a keyword, you’ll be able to see if its popularity is trending up or down.

You can use these insights to decide on new niches to go into or new article topics to write about.

17. Google Fonts

Google Fonts

Typography and font choice play a very important role in the design and usability of your website. Google Fonts is a great place to look for free fonts you can use on your website.

You can download and use these fonts directly from Google, or embed them into your website and serve them from Google’s servers.

For more details, see our guide on how to add custom fonts in WordPress.

18. Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts is a free conference call and video meeting tool from Google. It offers secure messaging, phone, and video conferencing for teams and businesses.

This is perfect for smaller teams who want to have quick conversations and easily share Google Docs during the call.

Users can join video meetings with a dial-in number or meeting link.

19. YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is not just a video hosting service, it’s also the second most popular search engine on the web. Millions of users are looking for video content on YouTube all the time.

Adding videos to your blog content can help you get more engagement, but we recommend that you never upload videos to WordPress. Instead, we recommend to host them on YouTube.

We have our own WPBeginner YouTube channel where we host all the videos that we embed on our blog.

If you want to add your YouTube videos to WordPress, then see our guide on how to easily embed videos in WordPress.

Free Bonus Google Tools

There are many more Google tools that are free and can be immensely helpful with your WordPress blog. Some of them are:

Google is often launching new tools and services and many of them are available for free or at a very competitive price.

We hope this article helped you find some new free Google tools that every WordPress bloggers should use. You may also want to see our list of 40 useful tools to manage and grow your WordPress blog and our picks of the best push notification software to get more traffic.

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.

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Thursday, 29 July 2021

How to Easily Integrate Zoom Meetings & Webinars in WordPress

Do you want to easily integrate Zoom meetings and webinars in WordPress?

By integrating WordPress with Zoom you can automatically enroll customers, visitors, and new members into Zoom video calls and webinars.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily integrate Zoom meetings and webinars in WordPress step by step.

How to easily integrate Zoom meetings & webinars in WordPress

Why Integrate Zoom Meetings and Webinars with WordPress?

Integrating Zoom with WordPress lets you easily automate your meeting and webinar registration process. This can save you a lot of time that you can spend on other business tasks.

Zoom is one of the most popular meeting, webinar, and video conference call software in the world used by over 300 million daily participants.

It’s a must have tool for businesses with remote teams or WordPress website owners who need to get in touch with customers and clients virtually.

With that said, let’s take a look at how you can easily integrate Zoom meetings and webinars in WordPress.

Here’s a quick overview of the topics we’ll cover in this guide:

Install and Activate the Uncanny Automator Plugin for WordPress

The easiest way to connect Zoom with WordPress is by using Uncanny Automator. It’s the best WordPress automation plugin that helps you create automated workflows in WordPress without writing any code.

Uncanny Automator

It’s like Zapier for WordPress websites, but without the high costs.

Uncanny Automator acts as a bridge between different plugins, apps, and tools and lets them talk to each other. It’s equipped with all kinds of automated workflows that you can set up in a couple of clicks.

To learn more, see our article on how to create automated workflows in WordPress with Uncanny Automator.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Uncanny Automator plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll also be asked to install the free version of Uncanny Automator. The lite version of the plugin has limited features, but it will be used as the base for the pro version.

Then, you need to navigate to Automator » License activation and enter your license key. You’ll find this information under your account on the Uncanny Automator website.

Uncanny Automator license

Now that Uncanny Automator is installed and activated, let’s move onto setting up your Zoom account.

Set Up Your Zoom Account the Right Way

In order to integrate Zoom and WordPress, you need at least the Pro version of Zoom and the Zoom webinar addon.

There is a free version, but you’ll need to have a paid account in order to set up the integration.

First, head over to Zoom and sign up for the plan that best suits your needs. If you want to integrate webinars, then you need to purchase the Zoom webinar addon too.

Zoom webinar addon

Once you have a premium account, go to the Zoom App Marketplace and sign in to your account. Here you will create an app that sends data between Zoom and WordPress.

Next, click the ‘Develop’ menu item and select ‘Build App’ from the drop down menu.

Build Zoom app

This brings you to a screen where you can choose the type of app to build.

Locate the ‘JWT’ box and click ‘Create’.

Create JWT app

Next, you can name your app in the popup. The name is to help you remember the purpose of the app, and won’t be visible to your visitors.

Enter your app name and click ‘Create’.

Name JWT app

On the next screen, you need to enter your ‘Basic Information’ and ‘Developer Contact Information’. This will be used so the Zoom team can reach out to you if needed.

After that, click ‘Continue’ at the bottom of the screen.

Enter Zoom developer information

Next, you need to copy the ‘API Key’ and the ‘API Secret’ key and paste them into your favorite text editor to save them for now.

Then, click ‘Continue’.

Copy API app credentials

After that, you can click ‘Continue’ on the next screen too.

Then, you’ll get an app activation notification similar to the image below.

App activation success

Create a New Zoom Meeting

Now, you can create a new Zoom meeting that you’ll connect to your WordPress site.

Inside your Zoom account click the ‘Schedule a Meeting’ link, and then fill in your meeting details.

Schedule a Zoom meeting

Make sure you check the ‘Required’ box in the Registration section, otherwise the integration won’t work.

Then, click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the screen.

Create a New Zoom Webinar

To create a new Zoom webinar, click the ‘Webinars’ menu option under the ‘Personal’ tab inside your Zoom account, and then click the ‘Schedule a Webinar’ button.

Schedule a Zoom webinar

On the next page, you can enter all of your webinar information.

Just like creating a Zoom meeting, you need to make sure the ‘Required’ box is checked in the Registration section.

Zoom webinar registration required

After that, click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the page.

Connect Zoom Meetings and Webinars with WordPress

After Uncanny Automator is activated and Zoom is set up, you need to connect both of these together.

To connect them, first go to Automator » Settings from your WordPress dashboard and click on the ‘Zoom Meeting’ menu option.

Then, paste the ‘API Key’ and ‘API Secret’ keys that you copied earlier.

Enter Zoom meeting API keys

Once you’re done, make sure to click ‘Save API details’.

If you want to integrate Zoom webinars too, then click the ‘Zoom Webinar’ menu option.

Then, paste the same ‘API Key’ and ‘API Secret’ keys that you used above and click ‘Save API details’.

Enter Zoom webinar API keys

Now that we’ve set up Zoom and integrated it with WordPress, let’s look at some of the neat things you can do with this Uncanny Automator integration.

Register Users for a Zoom Meeting After Form Completion in WordPress

This integration will automatically register users for a Zoom meeting the moment they fill out a form on your website. This can be used to onboard new clients, schedule coaching calls, and more.

If you don’t have an active WordPress form on your website, then you need to create one now.

Uncanny Automator works with all major forms solutions including WPForms, Formidable Forms, and more.

For this tutorial, we’ll be using WPForms. It’s the best contact form plugin for WordPress used by over 4 million websites. There’s also a webinar form template in the form templates pack addon that makes form creation easy.

For more details, see our step by step guide on how to create a contact form in WordPress.

Now, you’re ready to connect your WordPress form with Zoom.

To do this, you’ll be creating what’s called a “recipe”. In Uncanny Automator, “recipes” are the automations that link different plugins and apps together.

To get started, navigate to Automator » Add new, click the ‘Anonymous’ option, then click the ‘Confirm’ button.

Select anonymous recipe in Uncanny Automator

Anonymous recipes can be triggered by any user, while logged-in recipes can only be triggered by users logged in to your website.

You need to choose the type of recipe that best suits your needs and then click the ‘Confirm’ button.

Next, you’ll be asked to give your recipe a name. This will help you remember the different recipes you create, without being visible to your users.

Each recipe has two different parts, the trigger and the action.

Triggers and actions breakdown

The trigger is the event that will start the recipe, and the action is the task that runs after the trigger takes place.

For your first trigger, you need to select ‘WPForms’ in the ‘Anonymous trigger’ meta box.

Select WPForms anonymous trigger

Then you have two different options to choose from.

We’ll select the ‘A form is submitted’ option, since this will send all form submissions to Zoom.

Select a form is submitted trigger

After that, select your form from the drop down list, then click the ‘Save’ button.

Select WPForms form

Next, you need to create a new ‘Subscriber’ user in WordPress. This new user role will be used to send the form data to Zoom.

For more details, see our guide on how to add new users and authors to your WordPress blog.

Once you’ve done that, choose the ‘Existing user’ option in the ‘Actions’ meta box.

Select existing user action

This brings up new panel called ‘Set user data’. Here you will enter the information from the new user you just created.

Select the ‘ID’ option and enter the ID number from the new user.

The, click the ‘Do nothing’ radio button.

Enter user ID and select do nothing

After this, click the ‘Save’ button to save your recipe so far.

If you don’t know the user ID, then navigate to Users » All Users in your WordPress admin panel.

Then, open up the new user and locate the user ID in the web page URL.

Locate subscriber user ID

Once you’ve done that, click the ‘Add action’ button.

Then, you need to select ‘Zoom Meetings’ from the list of integrations.

Select Zoom meetings integration

This will give you two different options to choose from.

To add a new user, select the ‘Add the user to a meeting’ drop down.

Select add user to meeting

Then, you can choose the Zoom meeting you want users to register for in the ‘Meeting’ box, and then click ‘Save’.

You want to make sure you’re selecting the right meeting name, otherwise users will be registered for the wrong meeting.

Select Zoom meeting

To publish your recipe, all you need to do is click the toggle in the ‘Recipe’ box, so it turns to ‘Live’.

Now, when your users fill out the form, they’ll automatically be registered for your Zoom meeting.

Make WPForms to Zoom meeting live

Register Users for a Zoom Webinar After Form Completion in WordPress

Another popular integration is registering users for a webinar when they fill out a form on your website.

To do this, you will follow the same steps as above. However, you’ll select ‘Zoom Webinars’ instead of ‘Zoom Meetings’ in the actions section.

First, follow the same initial ‘Triggers’ section as above.

Then, click the ‘Add action’ button and select ‘Zoom Webinars’.

Select Zoom Webinars integration

This will bring up a drop down menu.

Simply select ‘Add the user to a webinar’ from the list.

Select add user to webinar

Then, select your webinar from the drop down list and click ‘Save’.

Select new user webinar

Next, you need to make your recipe live, so new users will be automatically enrolled in your webinar.

To do this, simply click the toggle in the ‘Recipe’ box, so it says ‘Live’.

Make WPForms Zoom webinar live

Register Customers for a Zoom Webinar After Purchase in WordPress

Another way to connect WordPress with Zoom is to enroll new customers in a product webinar after they make a purchase on your WooCommerce shop.

First thing, you need to have your WooCommerce store set up. If you’re still building your store, then see our step by step guide on how to start an online store.

After your WooCommerce store is set up you can navigate to Automator » Add new, click the ‘Anonymous’ option, then click ‘Confirm’.

Select anonymous recipe

Once you’ve done that, you can give your recipe a name.

Then, select ‘WooCommerce’ in the ‘Anonymous trigger’ meta box.

Select WooCommerce trigger

This brings up a drop down list of trigger options.

Select the first option from the list, since this refers to a customer completing an order.

Select a guest completes trigger

After that, select the ‘completes’ option in the ‘Trigger condition’ box to start the automation when a customer completes a purchase.

Then, click ‘Save’.

Select completes trigger condition

Now, you can choose a specific product in your store or have the automation run when a customer purchases any product.

Simply select the product, or products, you want to be part of the automation, and then click ‘Save’.

Select all products in store

Now, you can move onto the Actions section. You’ll see different options here depending on if you chose the anonymous or logged-in recipe above.

If you chose the ‘Anonymous’ option, then you need to create a new Subscriber in WordPress. This new subscriber role will be used to send the WooCommerce order data through.

For more details, see our guide on how to add new users and authors to your WordPress blog.

Then, select the ‘Existing user’ option in the ‘Actions’ meta box.

Select existing user option

This brings up a box for you to enter your new subscriber information. Select the ‘ID’ option and enter the user ID.

Then, click the ‘Do nothing’ option and click ‘Save’.

Enter user ID and select do nothing

If you don’t know the user ID, then you can find it by navigating to Users » All Users and editing the user profile.

In the URL for the page, you’ll find the user ID.

Locate subscriber user ID

Once you’ve done that, click the ‘Add action’ button.

Then, choose the ‘Zoom Webinars’ integration from the list.

Select Zoom Webinars integration

Next, select ‘Add the user to a webinar’ from the drop down list.

This will automatically register new customers for your webinar.

Select add user to webinar

After that, you need to choose the webinar from the drop down list in the ‘Webinar’ box.

If you have multiple webinars running, then make sure to choose the webinar that’s associated with your WooCommerce products.

Select new product webinar

The last thing you need to do is make your recipe live.

To do this, simply click the toggle in the ‘Recipe’ box, so it says ‘Live’.

Make WooCommerce to Zoom recipe live

Now, when your customers purchase a product, they’ll automatically be registered for your product webinar.

Register Members for a Zoom Meeting After Sign Up in WordPress

When you’re running a membership site, registering new members for a Zoom call can be a great way to welcome them into your community.

If you haven’t set up your site yet, then see our ultimate guide to creating a WordPress membership site.

You can also register new users for a Zoom orientation call when they join your online course.

After your website is set up you can navigate to Automator » Add new, click the ‘Logged-in’ option, then click ‘Confirm’.

Select logged in trigger

We’ll be choosing the logged-in recipe, since new members will have an account on your website.

Next, select the ‘MemberPress’ trigger in the ‘Logged-in triggers’ box.

Select MemberPress trigger

Here, you have a few different triggers to choose from.

We’ll select ‘recurring subscription product’, but you can select the product type that’s right for your site.

Select recurring subscription trigger

Next, you need to choose the subscription product from the drop down in the ‘Product’ box.

After that, click the ‘Save’ button.

Choose trigger product

Now, it’s time to add an action to your recipe.

Simply click the ‘Add action’ button in the ‘Actions’ box.

Click add action button

This brings up a list of available integrations.

Here you can choose the ‘Zoom Meetings’ integration.

Select Zoom meetings integration

Next, you’ll have two different options to choose from.

You need to select the ‘Add the user to a meeting’ option.

Select add user to meeting

Then, select the Zoom call for your new members in the ‘Meeting’ box.

After that, click the ‘Save’ button.

Select new member Zoom call

The last thing you need to do is make your recipe live.

To do this, simply click the’ Draft’ toggle in the ‘Recipe’ box, so it turns to ‘Live’.

MemberPress to Zoom recipe live

Now your new members will automatically be enrolled in a Zoom member orientation call.

Besides Zoom, Uncanny Automator also allows you to create countless other recipes for different plugins and apps like Twilio and Google Sheets.

We hope this article helped you easily integrate Zoom meetings and webinars in WordPress. You may also want to check out our ultimate guide on how to start a podcast, or our expert comparison of the best business phone services for small business.

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.

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