Have you heard about WordPress? This popular blogging tool is used by thousands of bloggers around the world. If you would like to start your own blog, WordPress can offer you all of the features that you need to get going right away. Keep reading for more information about this program.
Make your theme current on your website to draw more traffic. Switch to a new theme that accentuates your colors and logos. Also, you may want to opt for a more professioanl theme if you are planning on showing your site off to a high volume of potential customers each day.
Remember to make your sidebar as concise and clean as possible. You don’t want it to be full of 100 links, ads and buttons. Instead, only put what is important in your sidebar and, if you need more links, put them into submenus which appear when the user mouses over your main menu.
Keep your permalinks clean and understandable. That means you should look at the permalink box every time you put up a new post. Does the title in the URL make sense? Does it help from an SEO standpoint? If not, click on it and alter it until it is perfect.
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.
At the very top of your WordPress page, create a catchy greeting for your visitors. This can make things more personal with your visitors, as you can create a message that relates to how the user found your blog. This will allow you to have a page that isn’t too “robotic” so that things can be accessed using the WordPress Greet Box plugin.
Keep close track of visitors to your blog. This is the only way you will be able to improve it to please your reader more. Free WordPress bloggers can use Jetpack stats to do this. Both free and paid bloggers can use Google Analytics. Be sure to make good use of both services if you can because they offer slightly different advantages.
Know that you can write posts and send them in the future via WordPress. All you need to do is change the post from “Publish Immediately” to a specific date and time in the future. This way you can write posts and have them set up to go out even while you are on vacation!
If you want a post to stay at the top of the page, there is no need to set it’s date way in the future any longer. Instead, go to the post and click on Edit under Visibility. Choose the option which allows you to make the post sticky and enjoy!
Use descriptions that are very targeted. This is what users see when they search for information. For this reason, they are very important. Use Scribe (a form of SEO software) to control these items even more. You can use this to make edits on your pages in order to bring more visitors.
Use a plugin to connect related posts and give your readers other options. This shows related posts on your website near the bottom of every post.
Remember that social media is integral to the success of both blogs and websites today, so you should install social networking plugins which allow you to share your content through your accounts. Facebook Connect is one example of an excellent tool to use to repost your content to your Facebook account.
Use a security plugin. Keeping your blog secure is important, and there are plenty of plugins out there that promise to do just that. Try a plugin you feel you can trust. Wordfence is a good choice. It offers a firewall, does virus scans, blocks any malicious networks, and is free.
You no longer have to manually accept comments. Rather, Akismet can do it on your behalf. You can set up notifications for comments, but manual approval usually deters commenters. If you don’t, you’re just wasting time.
Read user reviews of plugins. Lots of people know how to create plugins. You shouldn’t use plugins with a lot of reported flaws or bugs. Plugins that have been downloaded in great volumes are generally safe.
If you want to improve traffic to your own domain, you should host your WordPress blog in your web account instead of using WordPress.com as the host. When you install WordPress yourself, you have more control over what features you can install and customize. Any visitor will be counted as traffic in your domain and not in WordPress.com’s domain.
Make a plan for your WordPress site before you make it. Write down everything you’d like your website to do and what visitors would enjoy finding. This allows you to shape your website around your plans.
Remember that you can add a “Read More” button. Nobody wants to see a page full of text that can be hard to read. Visitors can click “Read More” if they choose. Avoid over cluttering your blog and making navigation difficult.
Make use of your footer area. In WordPress, this section near the bottom of the page can keep your visitors engaged. You can add ownership and copyright information or links to other pages. In some premium themes, you can extend these sections to provide items like biographies and other relevant information to your cause or site.
Looking to embed a YouTube video to add a little multimedia to your WordPress site? You can do it really easily. All you need to do is paste the YouTube video share link right into your post’s body. Place it exactly where you want it to appear on the page. The YouTube video will magically appear in your post!
Now that you have finished this article, you should have learned some great tips for getting more out of WordPress. No matter how experienced you are with blogging, this advice can be very helpful to you. Start putting it to use right away so that your blog can be the best it can be.