Today's savviest blogs and brands understand the importance of a seamless social-local-mobile experience not only for the experience of end-users, but also for visibility on the search engines.
WordPress, by far the most used CMS in existence, offers plenty of ways to be mobile, social and local (oftentimes at the same time).
Here are eight great WordPress plugins that can help blogs and brands better their SoLoMo experience.
Mobile searches drive conversions. In fact, 55 percent of conversions (store visit, phone call or purchase) happen within an hour. This means, businesses need to be found with local phrases to increase visibility and provide customers with easy access to information. Yoast's Local SEO plugin for WordPress offers features (e.g. KML file and Geo Sitemap that Google needs, address output in Schema.org format, route planner, support for multiple locations, etc.) that will help websites rank locally and on Google Maps, as well make contact pages better to look at and, of course, easier to use.
Particularly useful for bloggers, FourSquare API allows users to share/show their last checkins to let followers know where they are, where they've been and, overall, build SoLoMo engagement. Sharing FourSquare checkins with readers can also increase a blogger's authority on certain types of content through their badges, checkin history and mayorships.
This contact widget for WordPress comes with enhanced markup for microdatas & microformats, so that search engines can use it in their search results. The widget can help display contact information about a business or person below your website in search results, and even a location map. Contact info like telephone number and email address are also linked so that visitors can click on it and make a call (through mobile or skype) or send a mail from their computer or mobile devices.
Perfect for regional websites (about a city or town), personal websites where you want to share what the weather is like where you're blogging from, travel sites, local outdoor services and more, WP Wunderground is a highly rated plugin perfect for locally focused websites.
User-generated content, especially reviews, are a big part of the search (and social) ecosystem now. WP Customer Reviews allows you to set up a specific page on your blog to receive customer testimonials for a business/service or to write reviews about multiple products (using multiple pages).
Content marketing is huge. Due to its impact on visibility and social engagement, every merchant, service provider and information publisher has, at the very least, a company blog. Others go more in-depth with white papers, case studies and other branded content. Not all website owners (or admins) are editorial mavens, however, so this WordPress plugin gives an overview of a blog and when each post will be published to see what day needs content or how the schedule can be tweaked. Users can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage their entire blogs.
Nothing says local like a local business directory. Connections is a simple to use directory manager, which can help businesses create an addressbook, business directory, staff directory or partners directory. There are fields for addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, IM, social networks, an image, a logo, bio, notes and more.
This WP plugin helps users share, bookmark and email posts and pages using all the popular social networks, including Google+. Additionally, the plugin is localized in English, Chinese, Spanish, French and other languages.
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