WordPress is a platform a lion’s share of websites is built on. It is on the top website builders’ list nowadays and isn’t going to lose its position. Do you operate a website on WordPress? Then you must be really lucky because this platform is considered to be one of the most appropriate systems for SEO.
It is still necessary to know not only the basics of WordPress but know the best WordPress tips and tricks for beginners. Of course, if you want to get the most out of your website. Everyone knows how important it is to keep your site on the top of rankings.
Only in this case, potential and your current users will trust you and utilize your site. If you are just developing your website and want to get some WordPress help for beginners, get ready to read until the very end and receive top-notch tips on how to develop your website so it would bring the desired results.
If you are a proficient WordPress user but struggle with bringing your website to the top of rankings and cannot get the desired effect from your resource, this post will be also extremely helpful for you. Keep reading and get the best assistance with your WordPress website totally for free right now!
- Compress your images
The first and one of the most helpful WordPress tips is to compress the images and boost the load times. Don’t underestimate the role of the images on your website. They are heavy components and play a significant role in the SEO Services and performance of your website.
Therefore, if you don’t put effort into optimizing them, your webpage suffers. It isn’t only slow but also causes a negative user experience.
The images must be optimized. Compressing them is one of the most effective ways to do it. Make them smaller by removing EXIF data or using other formats. No worries, the quality of your images won’t suffer if you do everything right. Use specific tools that allow you to compress without damaging the quality. Sometimes, quality loss is too little and you won’t even notice it.
After all, there are tons of online tools that can help you reduce the size of your pictures without sacrificing their quality.
One of the best programs is Adobe Photoshop. However, it is paid and this is its disadvantage. One of the best apps to use is called GIMP. This software (both of the tools) allow you to save the image for the web and have settings to optimize the image.
Once you make the size of your image smaller, it has a much faster load time. Here are some other great tools for optimizing your images:
- JPEG Mini;
- TinyPNG;
- EWWW Image Optimizer.
The good thing is that you can use them both as a web tool or as a WordPress plugin. Before uploading images to your WordPress website, just optimize them using one of these apps.
There are both fans and opponents of these tools and programs. However, it is better to have at least something to work with your images than nothing at all.
It’s up to you whether to use those tools or not but it’s necessary to improve the performance of your website and boost your SEO. This is one of the best and last but not least, free ways to do it.
- Make clean permalinks
Creating clean permalinks is the next one out of the top WordPress blog tips. When someone accesses a web page, her or she can see permanent links. You definitely create posts and pages on WordPress, otherwise, why would you need your blog or website at all. In the top section of your editing page, there is a box where you can input the permalink for your new page or post.
You should not neglect to create these links. For the best results, they have to be simple and clean. Users are confused when looking at long links that are too complicated, contain numbers, etc. Therefore, it is better to make them more user-friendly.
For example:
“https://whatispermli/epsode87604/a88/gff”- not a user-friendly link
“https://yourhelp/how-to-create-a-code” – a user-friendly link
Users always perceive information much easier when it’s understandable to them. Therefore, when using simple permalinks, you get much more trust from your users/customers. When the link is long, the website seems to be suspicious.
If you do not want people to think that your website contains malware or is a scam or spam, better work well on your permalinks.
- Be selective about plugins
Even beginners know that plugins are necessary for your WordPress website. They make your website or blog operate and function well. You need to add them constantly unless you have in-built features. For example, some in-built themes include live chats, contact forms, or newsletters.
Do not hurry to install all available plugins though. Too many of them make your website operate slower. Some of them even put the security of a website at risk. Install only those plugins you really need. Of course, you can find lots of them cool and exciting. However, use only those that will be useful for your users and your website.
WordPress will offer you new plugins constantly. Do not follow that temptation and choose them wisely. The more you install, the slower your site will operate. Plugins can be really created by anyone. Therefore, there is a huge variety of them, you will never suffer from the lack of choice.
The quality of plugins varies as well, so be selective about what you install. They are secure but their quality is not verified by anyone. It is only up to you which ones you will use.
- Receive an SSL certificate
Getting an SSL certificate is one more great way to increase the reputation of your website. In front of the page URL, you can often see a green padlock. It means the only thing — this website has an SSL certificate. This is a coding layer encrypting the connection between web pages and web browsers.
It protects users, so any user seeing this in front of your URL will automatically trust you. HTTP and HTTPS protocols are different and lots of people pay attention to which one is yours. If you want to reduce bounce rates and make your website more reputable and trustworthy, getting an SSL certificate is a must.
Did you know that Google gives higher priority to websites that have the certificate? Therefore, Google just takes care of the websites to be secure for users. If yours is not, it will be somewhere at the bottom of Google rankings.
Moreover, Google might warn users that your website is not safe to use. It will be marked with a red warning sign. It means only that users will avoid your site or will leave it promptly after opening it. If you do not want it to happen and would like to prolong the experience of users on your website, better get your SSL certificate.
Let’s say, you have a blog or a website that provides paper writing services to students or just gives helpful tips for them. Students who need to buy research papers will rather choose a trustworthy website (the one having an SSL certificate) rather than the service that has a warning from Google.
- Backlinks and website speed
If you need more WordPress blogging tips, here you go — pay attention to backlinks and if to be more precise — don’t brush them off. They play a lot of roles in your SEO. Backlinks are extremely crucial for your high ranking and they will still be really essential in 2022.
The authority of your page is built by backlinks. Google knows how valuable your page is if some authoritative sites are linked to you. Thus, it shows your website to users. It is not easy to build top-notch backlinks. It is a time- and effort-consuming process.
Do not forget about guest posting, email outreach, blog comments, or infographics though. If you keep doing it constantly, you will reach backlinks of top quality soon. Building internal links is crucial for your WordPress SEO as well. Visitors can roam your website when each of the articles is connected with another one. It is very convenient and efficient. Such internal links keep your users interacting and entertaining.
One more thing to keep in mind is the speed of your website. Google says that both mobile and desktop users leave the page if it takes over three seconds to load it. If the speed of your page is too low, you are losing followers, users, and potential customers.
Optimizing the speed of your WordPress website is crucial. You can do it in several ways:
- Pick a responsive theme;
- Increase the response time of your server;
- Minimize redirects;
- Pick a lightweight theme;
- Optimize your images;
- Use caching.
- Pick Web Hosting and Consider Voice Search
As was already mentioned, no one is waiting for the site that takes forever to load. You would not do it either. All people do not wait and simply leave the web page if it is loading too long. You should not only optimize your speed and work on the fast load of your website but also pick a really fast hosting provider.
How to choose a fast hosting provider? Opt for the one that has enough capacity to load your website quickly enough. Each page contains different data that affect load speed. A good hosting provider is the one that allows your site to load pages quickly taking into account all data they contain.
Thus, the same hosting service can load one website quicker than another one if, for example, one of them is a graphics-heavy site while another is a stripped-down one. The latter will always load a little bit faster.
Some hosting providers offer fast response times when you need to fix some issues with your site, such as when it goes down. Some providers have specific WordPress optimized service options for great performance, for example, BigScoots and some others.
It’s not a secret that users keep using voice assistants such as Siri or Alexa and their popularity is growing every day. Typing their inquiries in web browsers is not so much fun and moreover, not always convenient because people often are on the go. Therefore, voice search is a great way to save time and do several things at a time.
You should definitely optimize your WordPress website for voice search. There are several ways to do that:
- use colloquial language in your website content;
- optimize your website to load extremely quickly;
- update your local Google My Business listing, to name a few.
In the current situation in the market, voice search SEO is crucial, so don’t underestimate it and catch up with the users’ needs. If your product or content is in high demand in voice search right now, it will only increase in the future. 20% of Google inquiries are done through voice search currently.
Many people prefer using voice search even to buy goods on Amazon. It is crucial to be able to search for information or goods not only while sitting at your desktop but while driving, being at work, in the gym, jogging, etc. People are mobile and they want mobile websites.
When optimizing for voice search, it is necessary to think like your customer. Think of what kind of words people should use to find your business or blog. Use those keywords so people could find you in a matter of an eye blink thanks to Siri or Cortana:
- Siri, I need help with my assignment;
- Cortana, where is the closest mall;
- Alexa, I need a 24/7 auto service.
Check whether your business is suggested by someone’s voice search service.
If you’re new to WordPress or just want to ensure everything is being run properly, it could be worth looking into using a managed wordpress provider. They can keep your website up to date and secured, so you can focus on running your blog or business.
Having a WordPress blog or website is not enough to make people use it and increase its demand. It is necessary to constantly work on your SEO and optimize it for users’ needs. Remember that your competitors never sleep and improve their websites to lead Google rankings. You have to catch up, otherwise, your WordPress site won’t bring the desired results.
It is not difficult to do it when having at least basic knowledge. If you have none, you can always ask professionals to help.