WordPress is one of the most popular platforms available today to host blogs and develop small websites. It is excellent for both huge businesses and small startups. There are plenty of functions that help creators attract an audience and make the best of the blog. There are more than 75 million WordPress websites and more than 20,000 posts are published on the platform daily.
Many bloggers and website managers might think that you have to be a professional web developer or a designer to update the look of your site. This couldn’t be farther from the truth! Giving your website a mini makeover can be quick, easy, fun and free and we’ll show you how. It is the very aspect that will bring the audience to the blog. In order to make your readers stay, there must be a continuous flow of high-quality materials.
WordPress is a very powerful CMS and the majority of its users aren’t maximizing its full potential and power. We put together a list of X tips that can help you take full advantage of the features and power that WordPress provides.
Now, done with the basics, here are several tips that will make improving your WordPress blog easier. So, lets get started.
Loading Speed
It is so annoying to wait for a page to load. Even if only 15 seconds pass, it feels like forever. Even a small delay leads to a reduction of visits to the blog.
Clients’ experience is essential, so one should make sure that the loading speed is satisfactory. Here are a few ways of enhancing it:
- Choose hosting wisely. There are many hosting opportunities. The cheaper ones are usually not so good when it comes to loading. That’s why it is better to choose a bit faster option like WP Engine;
- Check the site’s speed with tools like Pingdom. What are the expectations? The best variant is not more than 2 seconds; the acceptable one is up to 7 seconds. Everything more than 7 seconds is too much;
- Use a caching plugin to optimize blog;
- Optimize images before posting.
Page speed is an essential factor as Google uses it for ranking purposes.
Integrate Your Email List
There are dozens of great plugins that allow you to capture emails from multiple locations on your website and automatically add them to your email list. For instance, if you use Mailchimp they have their own plugin that you can install and it passes email addresses via their API. You don’t have to know how to code in order to add new website features.
Use Publishing Calendar
It is vital to provide quality content regularly. The good thing is, some plugins provide the calendar for these purposes automatically.
One should just install them and set the deadlines. It allows for scheduling content and not missing any date. So even if one goes on vacation or happens to have no internet connection, the blog will go on. Here are several amazing plugins:
- Edit Flow;
- PublishPress;
- Editorial Calendar;
- CoSchedule.
Install SEO plugin
One should not be necessary a SEO professional to start working with keywords and relevant content. However, without some basic knowledge, it is impossible to make a productive platform.
Luckily, there are special plugins that benefit SEO performance of the blog. They make sure that you use keywords appropriately and optimize your content. They also help to improve page description. Here are some excellent tools:
- WordPress SEO by Yoast;
- Slim SEO
- SEO Ultimate;
- Platinum SEO;
- HeadSpace 2 SEO.
Make Your Blog Mobile-Friendly
According to the research, in 2018, 52% of website users used mobile devices. It is only natural that this number will grow. That’s why it is crucial to make your blog look amazing from a smaller screen. The easiest and cheapest way is to use a mobile-friendly premade theme for the WordPress blog. It requires no specific design disbursements.
Internal links and Backlinks
One of the crucial SEO practices is interlinking to the previous posts. It increases the conversion of the website and gets more people engaged with other materials on your platform. It is also good for Google website ranking. WordPress has an option “link to existing content” that searches keywords and helps to find previously posted articles to refer to.
Backlinks are references from other creators and websites to yours. The task of getting them is tough, but it is possible. For example, one should write guest posts with links on their blogs. Another way is taking an interview with other creators. Most likely, they will post them on personal platforms.
Social Media
There are so many benefits of social sharing. You can earn links back to your website, you attract referral traffic and you gain free exposure by having your brand introduced to the social audience of those that shared your content.
It’s important that your website has social share options in a very convenient location and they look like they belong with your website design. So many websites have great content but they have ugly social sharing buttons. Make sure they have the same look and feel as your website.
Comments Moderation
It is a function that allows moderating each comment before publishing. Firstly, it is great to keep the spam away from the comments section. Secondly, it is beneficial because you can reply to each comment and engage with the audience. This section is the easiest way to reach out to the readers and get meaningful feedback.
Wrapping Up
Being a blog creator is an amazing yet quite challenging job. The competition is high, and there is a constant demand for fascinating content. However, a lot of things can be automatized thanks to various plugins.
To make your page grow, it is vital to make posts of excellent quality that meet customers’ needs. It is also crucial to manage technical details such as speed, visual optimization, and linking.
