5 Helpful WordPress Tips for Beginners

5 Helpful WordPress Tips for Beginners WordPress may just be the platform for everyone, but there are definitely things you need to know — like these 5 WordPress tips for beginners.

WordPress is the world’s leading website platform for a reason. Be it personally or professionally; people are reaping in the benefits of this platform extensively. WordPress is a platform that works beautifully for the smallest of sites all the way to handling some of the biggest Enterprise level websites you already recognize and love.

Why WordPress?

I’ll keep it simple… it all boils down to technology. Technology changes quickly and WordPress being the most used and well supported open source website platform means that developers are constantly staying ahead of the curve. What does this mean to you? Well, for starters it means you have to ability to;

• launch at lower start up costs
• scale your website with your business
• integrate nearly limitless functionality
• manage your content with greater ease

All that to be said, if you don’t have a WordPress website — it’s not too late. There could be many reasons why you haven’t experimented with WordPress until now. Migrating your web presence to WordPress is an opportunity, and once you are on it, your focus should be on creating quality content instead of spending hours on your website’s maintenance. You should spend time connecting with your readers. But for this to happen, you will have to strategically design your website as per your specific needs.

Here are five helpful WordPress tips for beginners: 1.     Deciding on a theme for your website

With thousands of amazing looking themes readily available, how do you even get started?

How do you decide which theme would best suit your content type? Does it really even matter what theme you choose? Well, the WordPress theme you select impacts, site speed, user experience, navigation and even security. The speed of your WordPress is critical and you need to make sure that you choose a core theme that’s going to be well supported in the future.

When it comes to WordPress themes, less is always more. Building from the bottom up, the theme you choose should only have the features that will help you accomplish the goals of your site, not unnecessary ones that clutter your theme.

Moving beyond that, the number one thing I would look for in a WordPress theme is it’s reviews. When browsing WordPress themes, you will find the ratings section just below the download button. It will show the number of reviews the theme has. Look for highly reviewed themes.

You can experiment and work on customizing it to your tastes.

2.     You will have to be extremely careful about backing up your WordPress account:

You can choose to be lenient about this point if you do not value your work. Seriously though, you don’t want a stranger to take control of all the hard work you have put in to your site. Imagine the horror of being locked out of your own house by someone. Well, it’s the same feeling when someone hacks into your website and locks you out of your site.

The best way to deal with such unfortunate events is by backing up your WordPress site. This will ensure you get back up to all your content when you are hacked or betrayed by some faulty plugin. Having frequent restore points can come in very handy. The best way to go about is to WordPress hosting provider that offers you backup services. However, there are many backup plugins in the market that one could use.

3.     Ensure that your site is SEO friendly:

Why are you building a website anyway? Duh, you want people to visit your site and ultimately contact you or take some other action. And how do you make sure your website gets seen in the world wide web?

SEO.

If you want your WordPress account to impact your SEO in a positive way, make sure your site is SEO friendly. People won’t be reading your content if they don’t know where it is.

This is exactly why it is so important to ensure that your content is ranked well in search engines. Every time an audience posts a query on a search engine, your post should be in front of him/her to refer to. This will eventually help you to establish yourself as an authority in your industry. You should optimize your website to make it rank higher on searches. Here are two ways to ensure your SEO efforts in WordPress are on point.

Firstly, download an SEO plugin like Yoast.

Second, Create a Google Search console account.

If you want to rank on the search engine results pages quickly, you have to let Google know your website exists.

Google Search Console (GSC) is used by many SEO professionals for indexing pages on the Google SERPs. Rather than waiting around for days (or weeks!) for Google to index your pages automatically, you can submit a sitemap for Google to crawl your pages faster.

Making your website content visible is the first step, but if they like your content, you need to make sure it’s shareable as well.

4.     Be careful about which plug-ins you use:

Do your research before loading any plugin to your WordPress site!

Just like this post, you’ll come across tons of WordPress post making recommendations like “7 best plugins for your WP site” or “Must have plugins for your new WP.” However, you need to understand that not everything that has worked for them will work for you.

In fact many plugins might actually slow your website down or add in new vulnerabilities. Plugins, when not updated frequently, can be hacked or just run faulty. It’s always best to select plugins with a LOT of reviews.

5.     Invest time in learning about your insights with the help of Analytics:

WordPress might be strong in other areas but lacks a little bit on its analytics.

This doesn’t mean that you should ignore analytics. There are many plugins in the market that will help you check your analytics. It’s very important to know your statistics to plan wisely for your website. Be it where your traffic comes from or the gender of your audience. It will help you figure out your future course of action.

Insights would help you plan your content in advance, in a way that is more customized to your specific audience. In this way, the chances of you going targeted marketing successfully becomes a lot easier.

This might seem like a lot of work initially, but it pays off eventually. With practice, you will learn new ways and learn the latest trends on WordPress. There are many websites in the market that work to help their audiences understand these trends and technologies better. And, one fine day you will realize how far you have come in your WordPress journey.

The post 5 Helpful WordPress Tips for Beginners appeared first on Graphic Web Design & Brand Marketing Company Medford OR.

by Chris London of Pixel Productions Inc. The Everything Design Company