WordPress is an incredibly valuable platform, largely because of the amazing accessibility it provides to a wide range of potential bloggers. Its ease of use is truly remarkable, but that is not to say that some amount of education is unnecessary before putting it to work. Use the information below to get a good grounding in WordPress so that you can get started blogging today.
If you plan to use WordPress for your site, you should only do so if you plan to have a responsive design. People access websites from all types of devices, and you want to make sure that any person who wants to view your site will be able to without any issues.
Make sure that all of the information on your site is current. This is very important as viewers will tend to veer away from your site if it is outdated or pointing out very old information. Spend time each week getting rid of the antiquated material on your website to improve how it looks.
If you have a long title on a post, be sure to clean up your permalink. For instance, a title such as “Top Ten Way To Tame Unruly Children” can create a long URL. Instead, try making the permalink “tips-parents-uncontrollable-children” or something comparable based on the SEO 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.
Teach yourself everything you can prior to using WordPress. Plan in advance so that you can be ready for anything. Familiarize yourself with search engine optimization, learn how to create content that’s effective and to maximize WordPress’s usage to ensure everything runs smoothly when you start working.
You want no special characters visible within your URLs. They give search engines difficulty when they are spidering your site, so try to eliminate them altogether. Use short URLs that don’t baffle and confuse your readers.
Remember to make good use of the footer area at the bottom of your WordPress blog pages. In this area you can include additional information about yourself and/or your copyright. You can also add a link to another page if you wish. Different themes give you more use of this area, so choose your themes carefully to maximize the value of your page footers.
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.
Many people are responding to video blogs, so consider this option. Video blogging is not only becoming more popular, it is also becoming much easier to use. WordPress, in its current version, makes the use of video blogging easy. This can really increase traffic by drawing those who are less inclined to read.
Never forget to properly setup your WordPress page’s timezone. Under the General Settings page, take a moment and make sure that your timezone properly represents where you reside. This can be very important as the times and dates are published along with your posts. Not having the proper date stamp can leave you in a time warp.
So, what is the difference between tags and categories and why should I care? Categories are broad and house many posts which fall into the same genre, such as “cleaning tips”. Tags are more targeted, detailed words which describe what is in the content of a post, such as “removing blood stains” or “getting out grass stains”.
Use a security plugin. Keeping your blog secure is important, and there are plenty of plugins out there that promise to do just that. Try a plugin you feel you can trust. Wordfence is a good choice. It offers a firewall, does virus scans, blocks any malicious networks, and is free.
If you need to work on your site, be sure to turn on a maintenance mode so that visitors aren’t surprised with the current state of your website. There are lots of maintenance mode plugins out there. And best of all, they are typically free. It’s a quick button push to toggle maintenance mode on and off.
Manually approving comments is the way of the past. Install Akismet or something similar to do this for you. Don’t bother with manual approval. If you don’t, you’re wasting time.
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.
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!
Make use of your footer area. In WordPress, this section near the bottom of the page can keep your visitors engaged. You can add ownership and copyright information or links to other pages. In some premium themes, you can extend these sections to provide items like biographies and other relevant information to your cause or site.
There is little debate about the tremendous appeal of WordPress among bloggers of all types. It is terrific way for beginners to get their foot in the door, but it can also be used by more advanced bloggers as well, to great result. Keep the tips found above handy, and WordPress can become a versatile tool that will be employed for years to come.