Have you had trouble driving traffic to your WordPress blog? Are you unsure that you can do it correctly? You need to be diligent and also know what you’re doing to run a good blog. This article has some great ideas to help you begin.
Use different designs than other blogs on WordPress. You may be tempted to choose from the first couple of pages, but if you do, your blog will be very commonplace. Make sure your blog emphasizes your individuality.
Make sure you learn everything you can prior to installing WordPress. Adequate planning will save you time in the long run. Find out how to use SEO, how to make interesting content, and how you can use all that WordPress has to offer.
If your post has a long title, clean up its permalink. For instance: “Ways Parent Can Control Their kids” is too long. Rather, seek out keywords in the long URL and create a shorter permalink for it.
Make a posting schedule for yourself. With a schedule you’ll be motivated to keep posting. The fact is, you will be able to write several posts all at once, and then have WordPress upload them on a set schedule.
Use Title and Alt when you are uploading pictures. This allows you to add words to your images. This will let you add more SEO phrases and will let users that block images know what they are missing.
You can improve your search engine rank by spending a few extra minutes with your pictures as you upload them. Use the title tags and alternate tags to include keywords. When visitors “pin” something on Pinterest, the title you used is exactly what will show on their screen.
When using WordPress, you can even add videos to your site. It may take more effort, but it’s worth it. Most users on the web will love this. This can be a great tool to clarify what you want to say.
At the very top of your WordPress page, create a catchy greeting for your visitors. This will make visitors feel like your blog is more personal. This males you appear less robotic and you can use the Great Box plugin for this.
Teach yourself everything you can prior to using WordPress. The greater the amount of advance planning done, the more comfortable you will be. You need to know how to produce great content and about SEO or search engine optimization prior to your blog launch.
Be careful when setting up usernames. When you are showing as “admin”, your site has a higher chance of being targeted by bots. This puts your site at risk. Take a look at the users page to get rid of any names such as “admin” or even “administrator.” Choose a different username.
Make a schedule for posting to your blog. You will increase your motivation if you know exactly how long it’s been since your last post. In fact, to save even more time, you can create a week’s worth of posts at once, then schedule WordPress to upload them for you automatically.
Organize your media library. Sure you can just throw images in there, but it may become overwhelming pretty quickly. Set up your folders from the beginning, even if you do not have content for all of them yet. This will make searching for a particular image much easier.
Take out any special characters in the URLs of your blog entries. They give search engines difficulty when they are spidering your site, so try to eliminate them altogether. It is also a good idea to shorten URLs to keywords.
Make sure you’re always using the most recent WordPress version you can. With each update, new security patches are rolled out. If you don’t update, you could be leaving your website open to malware issues. Therefore, make sure to always install new WordPress updates to guarantee your site remains tight and secure.
Posts are always shown chronologically, until you say otherwise. To change it, modify the date. Open a post and look at the upper right hand corner. There you will find the date. Change the date after clicking on it to get it moved from the original position.
Use linking plugins to help connect your posts. These plugins add a list of three to five links at the bottom of each post based on the relevance of the tags on all of the posts on your site.
Create a suitable greeting and heading at the very top of your home page on your site. This helps your visitors feel more welcome and interested, and the messages can be personalized depending on how the visitor got there. A possible plugin to use is WP Greet Box; using this will make the things feel less robotic.
Approving comments manually is very outdated. Aksimet will take care of it all for you. Make sure that “manual approval” does not have a check mark beside it so that the comments go up automatically. If you do not do this, you will waste lots of time.
Don’t use “admin” for your username. This can make you more susceptible to bots. This is an unnecessary security risk to take. Eliminate admin type user names altogether. Choose a unique username to increase the security level of your site.
Are you having a hard time keeping to a schedule of posting regularly? You could write your content in advance and just specify the day and time of posting. When you click to start a new post, you should have the ability to schedule it some time in the future. You can write with this and get it done in advance.
Always use targeted titles and descriptions. When prospective visitors use search engines to find your pages, these are among the first things they see. That also makes them the most important. Scribe, which is SEO software, allows you additional control over such WordPress issues. This lets you edit pages to gain more readers.
Read user reviews and feedback of plugins while searching for them. Keep in mind that anyone with coding ability, good or bad, can make a plugin. Avoid using plugins that are widely reported to have flaws and bugs. Highly rated plugins with lots of downloads are generally safe.
Make sure you have the most current WordPress on your website. Updates are necessary because they patch security vulnerabilities. You are more likely to be attacked by malware if you have an old version of WordPress. Install all updates WordPress offers in order to ensure the best security.
Is WordPress clutter bothering you? Eliminate a few of the boxes appearing on the page. To do this, utilize the button called “Screen Options” located atop the WordPress window. You will see a menu to click that gives you the ability to turn off/on what you need and don’t need.
Back up your blog. Do it regularly. Try using a WordPress plugin like Xcloner. Utilize any plugin or site you wish for the purpose of backing up your blog. Just be certain to have a back up in multiple locations. It would be pretty depressing to lose your blog.
If you are searching for a WordPress host, select one that has a user-friendly control panel with a one-click install of WordPress. You won’t have to make up a separate database. The host will also be able to make you a blog domain.
Schedule your postings in advance of when you want to publish them. You can set it up so that they will be posted at very specific times. Visit the “edit” screen and find the “publish” box. Underneath, there should be something that says Publish Immediately. Use military time to input the times, days, months and years you want your content published. Click OK. Click on the ‘schedule’ button on the ‘schedule for’ screen to plan schedule your blog posts.
Allow visitors to comment on your posts. Comments provide a community for your visitors and will allow you to see who is visiting your site. You can install a plug-in that allows you to review comments before posting. This discourages spammers and such.
Do you hate how disorganized WordPress can be? You can get rid of a few of those boxes that are present. Do this from ‘Screen Options’ near the top of your window. Click on this and a drop-down menu will give you the option to turn boxes off.
Give various website posting tools a shot. Are you not pleased with WordPress’s dashboard? You can also use Windows Live Writer. In fact, there are quite a few tools out there that can help you post in a more efficient manner. Give them a test run, and feel out which one works for you.
Look for different tools that are available to blog authors. Do you dislike WordPress’s dashboard? Consider using a blog writing program such as Windows Live Writer. There are a number of tools that work well with WordPress while working much more efficiently. Give some a try, and see what you like the most.
You may want to highlight comments from the blog author. The comment section is where many readers will leave comments or questions. The author’s response to these comments can easily be missed, especially if there are many comments. You should use a different font color for the author’s comments. This allows you to find and recognize them easily.
Incorporate a “read more” link if you want to save space. Visitors aren’t going to want to dive into lengthy text right off the bat. Let visitors click and read more. If you don’t do this, they might be turned off by your blog.
Before building a site on WordPress, put a plan together. List the goals of your website and what you hope your readers will gain from your site. This will let you build your site to meet the needs you have instead of you attempting to add things later on.
Make sure that you include images in your site. The old saying that pictures are worth a thousand words holds true today. It will give your site much more drama. Be certain to utilize title as well as alternate text tags in order to make pictures and their context clear to search engines and readers alike.
Don’t forget to make use of the “read more” button. This allows your visitors to view a few lines of a blog post before deciding whether or not to read the entire post. Permit visitors who want to read more to do so by clicking a link. You don’t want your landing page to appear cluttered and messy.
Make sure that you copy your blog into an alternate folder. This keeps those changes from potentially damaging your entire site causing lost sales.
Hold your post that are not ready in unpublished mode. This way, you can still edit it, but it won’t be visible to the public. Only publish the post when it is completely satisfactory to you.
It’s not necessary for you to do all your site work alone. If possible, consider doing all you can to spread out the work.
Since reading the piece above, you know more about WordPress. Apply these suggestions to your blog. You will get more traffic on your site. Plus, users will love it more. Be sure to bookmark this page to refer to it in the future. You will have a better site when you use these tips.
If you are working on a post not ready for publication, you can save it as a draft or in unpublished mode. That way, you can change it as you please and it stays out of view. Don’t post it until you are completely happy with it.