Online blogs are growing exponentially. Many people are choosing WordPress for publishing their blogs. While it can be a terrific platform to use with many plugins, it may also be daunting to understand at the outset. If you’re new to WordPress and need some advice, read on!
Avoid designs that are commonplace. Since it potentially saves you time it can appear like a good idea, but it won’t provide users with a great first impression. Your site should be unique and reflect your personality.
Try to use a landing page when you are using wordpress on your site. This is a great alternative to displaying your current posts as it gives your site flavor and pizzazz. You can even use Premise for WordPress, which is a premium solution that can get you started with the process.
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.
Do not let your theme get stale. The first thing you should do if you notice a decrease in traffic is check and see when you last changed your theme. As your site grows and changes, the theme should as well. Make sure that it accurately reflects your brand, and you should see a rise in traffic.
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.
Unless you change it, posts will appear chronologically. Rearrange your list by changing the date. In order to do that, open one of your posts and you will be able to see the date at the top right hand corner. Change the date by clicking on it, and be sure to save the post in the right order.
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.
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.
Do you posts garner lots of comments? It may have become a challenge to sift through all of them. Try using a plugin that adds page numbers to the comment section. That is going to help your site seem organized, and it will be much easier to navigate.
Incorporate a social sharing plugin for your WordPress blog. Integrating social media with your blog will be a great boon to your traffic. Your users can instantly share your article through Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. Look for a plugin that will allow liking and sharing, since both will be beneficial.
Check that you are using the most up to date WordPress version on your site. Updates often contain security patches which eliminate any vulnerabilities. Using an outdated version opens your page up to all sorts of negative possibilities. Always make sure to install the updates supplied by WordPress to keep your site secure.
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.
Use the Easy Tweet Embed program to create links for readers to tweet the content of your posts to their followers. It does the work of creating the tweet content for you, so you don’t have to manually create it every time you draft a post, saving you a ton of time.
Sticky the posts the you want to stay at the top of your page. If there are posts you want your visitors to see first, sticky them by going to the ‘visibility’ option on the ‘edit posts’ screen. Choose to sticky the selected messages to the first page, and that is it.
You now have, hopefully, a lot more knowledge about WordPress. While many people do use WordPress as a platform, they don’t always understand all of what they should. These helpful hints can get you going, so remember them as you continue using WordPress.