WordPress is great, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be better. With the right knowledge how you can really make your site everything you want it to be and so much more. Honestly, the more effort you put into your WordPress page, the better it can work for you. In order to see the results you want, you have to do some tweaking. This means that you should utilize these essential tips for WordPress beginners. Simply because they can make a huge difference on your site.
WordPress beginners who use these techniques early on will set themselves up for success, and see results faster. Which is a wonderful thing when you have ideas and goals for your site. Therefore, starting with the best means that things can only get better, sooner. Let’s get started, shall we?
A CLEAN SIDEBAR THAT WORKS FOR YOU
A clean, organized website is pleasing to the eye. Most sidebars are chock full of clutter. Such as ads, social media icons, links to tweets, etc. Amongst all that information might be a link you really want your visitor to click on. Which seems silly if there is so much clutter that they can’t even find it. Or let alone, know that it’s there.
The solution? Get rid of the clutter and make sure your sidebar contains the links you really want your visitor to see.
Go into Appearance & Widgets and remove everything except the widget that actually does something for you and your end goal. For example, if a widget doesn’t add people to your list, or get someone to take an action – you should probably remove it. Let your sidebar work for you, not the other way around.
YOUR LIBRARY MADE EASY
Your Media Library in WordPress shouldn’t be kept it two different places. You’re just creating unnecessary work for yourself. Therefore it makes more sense to create ONE folder where you put all of your media. This way it’s easier to search for. Just type in a keyword and you’ll have all the files that you’re looking for in no time.
It’s easy to setup your WordPress site so all your media files are in one searchable folder. Here’s how:
This way all your uploads will be placed in the same folder – which makes searching for something a lot easier.
CLEAN UP YOUR PERMALINKS
We all know that it takes hard work to create awesome content for your site. That’s why it’s so important that search engines actually find it! So why not make it easy and start using short “road signs” that point to your content and information?
How do you do that? Just create a built-in WordPress permalink field at the top of the editing page so you can revise your links before you publish them. Get rid of unnecessary words and be sure to use keywords in your description. The main goal is to make sure that they are still pleasant to read. You don’t want it to seems as though you stuffed it with useless keywords.
For example: yoursite.com/7-ways-to-choose-the-best-tires-for-your-vehicle
becomes, yoursite.com/choosing-tires-tips.
The idea here is to create a condensed permalink that tells search engines what your post contains at a glance. While at the same time, helps you rank for a keyword you’d like to be known for.
TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS WITH TARGETED IMPACT
When you share your posts on social media, the title and description is listed with the shared link. The same goes for search engines. Find out how to streamline your social media here. When your page is listed in results, people use the title and description to decide whether or not to read it. Page titles are also an important element in terms of search engines. Therefore it’s the titles and descriptions that become the most important text on your page!
SEO is important. To gain better control over what appears in these results, use SEO optimization software like Scribe in order to edit the page title and description.
Just remember, the descriptions are mainly for readers. Don’t try to cater to Google robots with these — instead, make them enticing, elaborate on the promise made in your headline, and use a strong call to action to encourage more clicks.
IMAGES MATTER
It should come as no surprise that images add to the experience of a webpage. What you might not know is that images also have a job in terms of SEO. For some search engine optimization tricks and tips, head over here.
Every time you upload an image to your website, you have the opportunity to add a keyword in your image title and an alternate text field.
The title tag for your image generates text whenever a visitor hovers over the image. And if for some reason the image is unavailable, the alternative text tag is what they’ll see in it’s place.
Keep in mind that these need to make sense in terms of what your post is about. This isn’t a place to stuff random keywords. It simply helps you make clear what your site is about.
FOOTERS ARE IMPORTANT TOO
At the bottom of your WordPress site, you’ll see the sometimes-forgotten footer area. This is where you can include a copyright message, a link to an important page, or a small amount of information about your website. Many premium themes let you expand this area into another content section for a short bio, opt-in email list, etc. This can be a great place for internal linking.
It doesn’t really matter what you use this section for. Just that you use it.
Why? Because people scroll down to the footer to see who’s behind a site. Therefore it makes sense to give them what they are looking for. As a bonus, it encourages them to continue to engage on your site.
We hope these WordPress tips have been helpful – even if you aren’t a beginner! If you have any questions or comments, let us know so we can discuss!
