Using WordPress Effectively

WordPress is one of the best content management systems (CMS) out there for you to use to build your website. You can easily implement any design you would like because of the thousands of templates available and there are tons of plugins out there for you to choose from. However, when first building your WordPress site, you need to make sure you use it effectively. Here are some tips and guidelines to follow.

First things first, you need to make sure that your template looks aesthetically pleasing to your visitors and that it suites what you are trying to accomplish with your site. No one should go with a blog style interface if they are selling real estate. Pick a theme that fits with your goal. As far as themes go, they can be purchased for decent amounts but there are also many free themes available on the internet to use. After you have your theme picked out and installed, you need to make sure that all of the elements work correctly and that your website’s interface is clean and easy to navigate. “Clean” means is that your site doesn’t have too many elements packed into one place. So many times, new WordPress users make the mistake of adding two thousand different items to their sidebar, making the text Comic Sans and a size 24. Does this sound pleasing to you or would you rather leave the site immediately? You need to factor in the design of your site first before starting on anything else.

After your design has been installed and is working correctly, you need to worry about content. Content can easily be added within your WordPress admin area where you can add a new post, some text, or maybe an image. It’s important to always keep this content fresh and updated weekly. WordPress sites are loved by Google and by providing excellent content for your visitors, you can be sure that you’ll slowly gain organic traffic over time.

Next up, you need to worry about plugins. Plugins should be installed and utilized very carefully for two reasons. The first reason is that too many plugins can almost cancel each other out, causing them to not work correctly with each other. This causes a huge mess for everything. What’s the point of having an SEO plugin installed if it cannot work correctly because of another plugin? Install a few and see how they work with each other. The next reason why you need to worry about WordPress plugins is because they can drastically affect your site’s performance and speed. Speed can cause a brand new visitor to close out of your page immediately if your site is way too slow. You should generally keep your site’s loading time under 3 seconds. If too many plugins are installed on your site, they can have huge effects on the loading time of your page. Each time you install a new plugin, be sure to test your site’s speed to see if it has been changed by a new plugin.

Once plugins have been installed, you should be worrying about SEO purposes within your WordPress site. One of the best ways to work on SEO for your site if you have no clue what you’re doing is to install an SEO plugin. There are hundreds of them out there so make sure to read the reviews! Another tip you can utilize within WordPress besides adding on a plugin is to change your URL structure. Instead of having a URL structure that says mysite.com/38495, change it within WordPress to automatically change to your content’s headline, such as mysite.com/dogtrainingtips. This can help your site’s SEO for certain keywords of your choosing.

After you have taken part in this process and implemented all of these steps, your WordPress site should look and run efficiently. Keep a nice design, add fresh content, don’t use too many plugins, implement some SEO, and you will have an awesome WordPress site!

Author Bio:- This article was written by Karl Stockton for the team at rolo. Be sure to click to learn more about their DVD burning software, and click here to learn even more.