When it comes to WordPress, there can seem to be a ton you need to learn to become successful. The truth is that a few good tips can get you well on your way. This article has some of the best advice available, so read on to find out all you can.
If you plan to start a WordPress blog, make sure that you offer readers more than just content. Even if you say many useful things, it may be quite difficult to engage readers with text. It would be a great idea to implement videos and pictures since this is a great attention grabber.
Create smart URLs! Don’t use a lot of keywords in the URL, and keep the whole thing simple and straightforward. Avoid excessive verbiage. You want to create smart permalinks that are easy to look at and easy to understand. This helps make your blog more user friendly and comprehensible.
Make the most of your titles and your descriptions. Any time you share posts on social media sites a description and title may be required. These are important in terms of good search engine optimization, so don’t just toss out titles and descriptions in a random fashion. Give it some thought and optimize with good keywords.
When you use different tags for the topics on your blog, keep in mind that these are strictly for searching the content on your blog. These can’t be used by search engines. If you want your pages to be searchable on Google, you have to install an SEO type plug-in such as Headspace.
If you haven’t customized your WordPress sidebar, it could be cluttered with useless items that are doing nothing but confusing your readers. Your sidebar should only contain things you actually want visitors to click on. Navigate to Appearance & Widgets to edit the appearance of your sidebar and remove anything there that doesn’t actually benefit you or your visitors directly.
Allow your users to access your articles easily by email. This is essential so that they can easily share your content with others. WordPress has a plugin for email sharing.
Include useful links at your footer. The footer is located at the bottom of your site. Most sites include contact information, copyright information and links to other sites in the footer. By including useful information in your footer, you can increase the sales, referrals and traffic to your site.
Keep the plugins at a minimum. Although plugins can be a lot of fun, the reality is that web sites load slower with more plugins. This can slow things greatly and affect your search engine ranking. Websites that load slowly do not fare as well in the ranks as those that are optimized efficiently.
Use images properly on your WordPress site. They can add everything from beauty to interest to your pages. Use their alternative text tags and title tags properly. Don’t settle for generic descriptions. You need to make them specific so that your visitors know exactly what they are. This also helps them figure out what your site is about.
Make sure that you keep any plugins or themes you are using on your blog up to date. Exploits and general weaknesses in the security of a plugin or theme are almost always found eventually. Updates will keep them running smoothly and securely, but it’s important that you remember to keep them updated.
Make your choice for host when it comes to your WordPress blog simple, meaning you can install the platform with a simple click. This way, you won’t have to create a separate database. Pushing just one button will allow you to get both your domain and database set up.
If your imagery on your WordPress website is rather bulky and slowing your site down, try using WP Smush.It. It basically compresses all of those images down to much easier sizes for browsers to deal with. It can speed up your website quite a bit. The best part is, it can run in the background once you have it installed. So new images are always smushed!
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.
Create a plan before starting a WordPress website. List all the things you’re wanting to accomplish with your website and think about what people will want to get from it. This gives you some direction on what type of content to include.
As you are learning how to customize a WordPress template, choose a template that is highly flexible and which is updated constantly. Current updates means that the developers are active in improving the template. If you choose a high-quality template for your foundation, you will practically have unlimited choices in how you can customize this into your own unique design.
WordPress.com has limited functionality for its users, yet it does have advantages. When your blog is hosted on WordPress.com, WordPress will take care of spam filtering, backups and restores, and address any security issues on your site. However, if you are hosting WordPress yourself, you will have to deal with these issues yourself.
If you desire to test certain elements in your blog without making the changes live, you can make a copy of your blog with a duplicate database. This can keep mistakes you could make from harming your site.
If you aren’t using a plugin anymore, deactivate it, but also consider deleting it. Even in a deactivated state, your WordPress website checks on that plugin upon page load which actually slows down your site. Instead, delete those unused plugins completely. If you’ve got a lot of them, you may see a nice uptick to your site’s speed.
With this advice in hand, you are sure to be able to turn your new WordPress site into something impressive. Just be sure to continue learning about this software so you stay on top of its changes. The more effort you put into reading about it, the better your site or blog will be.