WordPress continues to reign as the leading website developer and CRM. With thousands of user-friendly and free themes, it’s a beginner’s paradise. Unlocking the myriad of tools and useful plugins available can seem a daunting quest. But this blog is here to remind you that when it comes to digital marketing success, it’s always about the links.
As a result, we have crafted this detailed guide outlining the fundamentals of WordPress link manager tools. Keep reading to learn which tools have staying power and how the predictions of these tools might affect your business.
The Fundamentals of Link Management ⚓
Over the last handful of years, link management has shown significant market growth. Originally, link management tools focused on link-shortening capabilities. With the masses now able to shorten a URL with a variety of link-shortening plugins, link management tools have branched out.
What can you expect from modern link management tools? The short answer is analytics. Data measuring click-through rates, geographical clicks, and even the type of devices the clicking happens on. This is to say that link management tools provide critical details about consumer experience, and where optimization is needed.
It All Comes Back to SEO 🔙
Digital marketers understand that long-term success is achieved when SEO best practices are in play. Why is that? Optimizing the website, the content copy, or media content shared with a niche requires consistent adjustments. The analytics data that link management tools provide brands, as a result, is priceless. Besides, link building is one of those aspects of SEO that are ongoing.
Whether embedding internal or external links, tracking their performance reveals much. Though an external link carries more ranking weight than an internal link, both are necessary for optimization. But what are the benefits of such tools to your business’s bottom line?
Benefits of WordPress Link Management Tools ⚒️
Link management tools of any kind are designed to streamline workflows. Business owners juggle multiple time-consuming projects in a day. This makes link management a priority implementation. Thankfully, WordPress provides these management capabilities via the software (plugins) available therein.
Therefore, WordPress users get easy access to tools that improve their business while saving them time. How? Offering thousands of plugins at no cost to users aimed to organize, measure, and secure websites across the board. This is achieved by way of security checks, backups, and automation, just to name a few.
Does that all sound intimidating? It is not our intention, though understandable. Suffice it to say that WordPress, in general, is a user-friendly interface. So there’s no need to know everything or to be a self-proclaimed tech wizard to use them to your advantage.
What’s more, the platform routinely notifies users of updates, system failures, or maintenance. This makes sure that your visitor’s experience isn’t interrupted, or if it is, not for long. It’s an amazing feeling to create on a platform that cares and shows it. These sentiments overlap when we get into the WordPress link manager tools that have brought users the most success this year.
Trending WordPress Link Manager Tools 🔗
In the wake of the pandemic, many people have turned to remote working or taking their chances with digital marketing. WordPress has undoubtedly seen unprecedented increases in users as a result. Ripples, doing what they do, undulate outward into the innovation and creation of link management tools. Here’s a brief list of the WordPress link manager tools that saw the most traction this year:
WordPress Links Manager – Create and manage sets of links from an admin panel. This tool can be added to a sidebar as a widget to display links at will around a website. But it falls short for serious affiliate marketers.
ClickWhale – Best for affiliate marketers, social media influencers, and bloggers. Professional level customization, link management, tracking, and conversion. Categorize, shorten, and embed links with ease.
Lasso – Customize link displays while monetizing unused links or keywords. Users also can organize and sort links into a display grid and create vanity links. Great for affiliate marketers and bloggers.
ShortLink Analytics – shorten links and track unique and repeat visitors to a website. Customize tracking capabilities by geolocation or time stamp. Great for digital marketers.
ShortyPro – Automate and optimize links by clicks. Great for conversion tracking in the e-commerce realm of affiliate marketing or online sales.
Although these WordPress link manager tools lead the pack, who’s to say which tools take the lead tomorrow?
WordPress Link Manager Tool Predictions & Trends 🚨
The amazing WordPress link manager tools featured in this blog all have one thing in common, your success. That being said, the predictions and trends for link manager tools remain feature-based.
The expected features like analytics data, customization, and user-friendliness still apply. Brand identity and unique URLs lead the charge. Branded links have stronger click-through rate results. This proves that customers expect this level of transparency. Proving how useful it is to connect offline ads with online content, QR codes are also high on the list of trends.
Expect to see more AI and machine learning enhancements in the WordPress link manager tools next year, too. These advancements will likely bleed into analytics. Further allowing digital marketers to predict click performance based on past performances. Another plausible possibility is block-chain-based link management tools. What else can we expect?
Personalized link experiences for users where they are navigated to multiple landing pages from a single link. These landing pages will be catered to the purchasing profile and preferences of the visitor, of course. There will also be enhancements in security features. This is in direct response to the increases in hacking and phishing scams in digital marketing campaigns. Anticipate an increase in the presence of trust badges as a result.
Flexible connection formatting remains a priority, too. Each device uses a different operating system that can make automatic formatting difficult. Fingers crossed, developments here make all of our lives that much easier.
All of these positive predictions are great, but what about the setbacks?
Link Manager Tools Challenges & Setbacks 🟰
Progress for progress’s sake never gets anyone anywhere they truly want to be. The same goes for WordPress link manager tools. All of the advancements aside, challenges remain. Are you curious as to what those challenges are?
- Balancing user privacy and data collection
- Link rot and link integrity
- Platform-specific requirements
Despite the world we live in, full of security and firewalls, privacy remains a concern for digital users. Data collection walks a fine line of strict rules laid out globally. As a result, there are plenty of pop-ups or disclaimers embedded into websites to be sure of user consent.
Link rot and integrity refer to the gradual inaccessibility of a specific link over time. When a user consistently receives a ‘404 Error’ it can be frustrating. This harms SEO, too, because the link doesn’t redirect the user back to your website. Instead, it stalls them in place.
Each digital platform possesses unique criteria for foreign connections. Link manager tools are forced to stay up to date and pivot quickly if necessary to adapt to these interfaces.
Despite this, WordPress link management tools remain highly sought-after. As a result, they will continue to morph and change to meet user expectations. We would be remiss, though, if we didn’t reflect on our excitement for the changes to come.
Now that you have a solid grip on what’s to come for WordPress link manager tools, which tool fits your digital marketing business needs?