Beyond WordPress Basics

Beyond WordPress Basics

People everywhere use the self hosted version of WordPress to assist them with their professional websites and blogs. You don’t have to be a professional designer to be able to use it. Novices are always welcome. Below you’ll find some great WordPress tips that will help you breeze right through setting up your own website.

WordPress Tips:

• Start with choosing a unique design or theme for your WordPress blog. Don’t be tempted to use the same one everyone else is using. You want to stand out from the crowd. Visitors should be able to get a sense of who you are and your personality when they visit your site. Free themes are available and may work for you. More complex websites will want to purchase a theme or have a developer customize a personalized, branded theme. Two premium, visual page builder themes we use and recommend allow great creative and individual development. Both are relatively easy to learn: DIVI from Elegant Themes and Elementor. There are many free themes as well that we have used.
  
• There are many specialized plugins to accomplish the tasks in front of you. This link will take you to a 7 min video that we created that introduces you to finding and uploading plugins to your site.

• When you start adding images to your posts it’s important to fill in both the title and alt text tags to increase the benefits of SEO. This allows you to add additional keywords to your page which will boost your page ranking. For more information on how to add the title and alt text fields see the post from Yoast, Image SEO Alt and Title Tag Optimization.

• WordPress makes it easy to add videos to your blogs using a variety of plugins. Since the majority of web surfers are highly visually influenced, video is a great way to enhance your site. Videos are a powerful tool that allows your message to go beyond words.
  YouTube Video Lightbox | YouTube embed plus

• You want to keep your content clean by removing excessive comments that don’t add any value to your post. This makes it easier to read and gives your site a more clutter-free look. Use the free version of the Askimet plugin to help filter spam on your site. There are also plugins that will help keep your comments organized and assign page numbers to them. Again, your goal is visual appeal and keeping it reader-friendly. View how to find and add a new plug in this video: YouTube video on plugins.
  
• Set your titles to “permalinks”. Leave out any special characters from your blog posts URLs. The spiders that search engines send out to crawl your site do not like them and will throw off your ranking. Also, keep your URLs short.  You can use only the keywords in them to keep them reader-friendly.

WordPress Security Tips:

• For security reasons, do not use common terms such as “admin” for your username. Go through your site and any users that are using “admin” or “administrator” need to be deleted and new names should be chosen.

• Be sure that use plugins from reputable sites only. You also want to check the reviews and read them before you install the plugin. Take recognized security precautions to prevent your site from being infected with malware or hacked. Do not give your password to anyone. If your site gets attacked you can lose all your information.

• Always keep your WordPress updated to the most recent version. These updates contain new security patches that prevent Hackers from gaining access. Hackers are always seeking out who has older WordPress versions that they can penetrate.  Install updates as soon as possible.

Your site can be polished and professional when you are able to use all that WordPress has to offer. WordPress Website Management offers resources that offer WordPress instructions, help, and information. When you learn all you can about this powerful tool you will bring your site to another level.

I’ve shared several great tips here that will enable you to get started with a professional looking site for your business. If you need more help, do not hesitate to set an appointment to chat with me. WordPress Website Management would love to help you! schedule an appointment

To your success!
Terry
Do check these posts that assist you with SEO and Keywords to help you rank your business higher in the searches.

I have a series of trainings soon to be released that will walk you through 4 courses. Google My Business, Google Analytics, Search Engine Optimization, and Keywords. Watch for the announcement coming the first of March! It will be offered for NO Charge!