Are you curious about WordPress? Many people are using WordPress to make websites and blogs. Learning it is not all that difficult. Both professionals and novices use it. Keep reading into the following paragraphs for some great ideas you can use to get better at WordPress.
Make sure your sidebar is not too cluttered. The sidebars on most WordPress blogs are a chaotic mess, full of social media icons and ads and links. Prioritize what goes in your sidebar. Make sure visitors to your blog don’t have to search for anything they might be looking for.
Remember to make your sidebar as concise and clean as possible. You don’t want it to be full of 100 links, ads and buttons. Instead, only put what is important in your sidebar and, if you need more links, put them into submenus which appear when the user mouses over your main menu.
The posts that you make appear in the order you make them, unless you specify. To change it, modify the date. First, open a post and locate the date in the upper right hand corner. Changing the date and saving it will re-position it.
Download Akismet immediately with a fresh WordPress install. Akismet is a plugin for WordPress that basically blocks spam comments as they come in. If you don’t have it installed, you may be inundated with tons of spam. You’ll need to get a free key from the Akismet website to finalize the install.
Images make your blog look beautiful; however, the images can also help your site rank higher among search engines. One of the easiest ways to do this is to add keywords to your title tag and alternate tags. Both of these tags should contain precise keywords in order to rank your site appropriately.
Regularly check your site and content. All your plugins and everything else you work with needs to be current. This will help ensure that your visitors have a seamless experience on your site. If you have trouble remembering to do this, consider setting your phone to alert you once a month to perform this task.
Write a personalized greeting near the top of your blog. This will make visitors feel like your blog is more personal. It will also make things look more human and less robotic.
Want to change authors on a post? Just edit the post and click on “Screen Options”. Next, choose Author and then choose whomever you want to become the author of the post. Next, click “update” or “publish” to finish the change and have it go live on your website and you’re done.
Constantly work on improving your permalinks. As WordPress becomes more popular, your traffic may decline. Change the URLs of your WordPress articles and incorporate higher quality keywords. You can minimize the amount of keywords as long as their value increases. This can be a nice boost to the traffic you see.
Maintain organization with your media from the start. Uploading images without thinking of organization can cause havoc to your site. Instead, make folders and organize your pictures that way. You can then find pictures you wish to use later much easier.
Only install the necessary plugins that you need. Of course plugins are cool and fun, but each one that is added increases the time it takes your website to load. This can impact how your site ranks on search engines. Slower sites don’t usually rank as well as those that are faster.
Differentiate the look of your WordPress blog. It may be tempting to just roll with the standard WordPress themes, but you’ll look like many other blogs out there. Consider a few other themes. Even install them so that you can preview them with your current crop of content. It can make all the difference to audience engagement.
Most visitors to your WordPress site will have some type of social media account, whether it is Facebook or Twitter. If they see something and want to share it on their accounts, you want to make that process as easy as possible. Therefore, download a plugin that allows for social sharing.
Schedule blog posts beforehand with WordPress. You can have a post added to your blog at any time, and you don’t even need to be near your computer. Visit the “Edit” screen, and find the box for “Publish.” Underneath, there should be something that says Publish Immediately. Change that so that it will change it to the time and date you want to publish it. When the correct time and date are on your screen, select ‘ok’. Read through your “Schedule For” screen, then select “Schedule” if everything is right.
If you just want to dabble in WordPress without installing it on your web hosting account, consider opening an account with WordPress.com. You will get a subdomain to the WordPress domain, and your blog is hosting by WordPress for free. This is a good way to get your feet wet into blogging.
Use the Evergreen Post Tweeter plugin to promote your posts automatically. It can be a chore to choose which posts to retweet daily, so let the software do it for you instead. Once you have it in place, you can literally set it and forget it and then enjoy the visitors it brings in.
Learn how to make your WordPress blog posts more SEO-friendly. There is a free plugin called Yoast that can do this for you. It does auto checks of your pages’ SEO, canonical, breadcrumbs, sitemaps, permalink, and more. Using the data that it provides, it teaches you how to optimize your blog posts properly.
Use images on your sites. The cliche that a picture has the value of a thousand words still resonates today. Your site will be 10 times more attractive. Search Engines and readers alike will appreciate your use of alternate text tags and titles.
It is possible for you to create websites and blogs that appear professional once you have become proficient in using WordPress. It takes little to start. There are loads of resources available that can help you create a winning website or blog. Be sure to take advantage of that.