To no one’s surprise, WordPress powers more than 43% of the internet. The platform’s community support, flexible & adaptable nature, and choice of multiple themes & plugins make it one of the leading choices for business owners & bloggers across the world.
Have you been using WordPress too, or looking forward to using WordPress development services to build a website? If yes, this write-up is just for you! We’ve highlighted some of the best tips & tricks that can help you make the most out of WordPress development and enhance your website performance.
Let’s dive in straight to the top 10 WordPress tips to take your site to the next level.
1. Go With a Fast WordPress Web Hosting
Web hosting plays a critical role in ensuring your success. Before selecting your hosting provider, make sure that it provides you with a good number of resources to handle your site traffic and avoid website crashes and downtime. And most importantly- it should give you fast site speeds.
Ideally, your website should load within two-to-three seconds. Anything beyond that could lead to soaring bounce rates. If your website does not have the capacity to load quickly, it can lose out on valuable customers. In a nutshell, the faster your website, the better your conversions. Some of the fastest and most powerful WordPress hosting providers are SiteGround, Bluehost, and DreamHost, among others.
2. Use/Install an SEO Plugin
WordPress is known for its SEO-friendly nature. So, it’s possible to think that you don’t need an add-on to improve SEO anymore. However, installing an SEO plugin is an added advantage to your website, plus a great option to optimize your website for SEO and make it rank higher on search engine SERPs.
When it comes to SEO plugins, there are plenty of options to choose from. Using them can help you analyze your content and keywords, and suggest improvements & manage all the technical aspects like sitemaps and robots.txt for better SEO performance. You can go to find your ideal SEO plugin in WordPress Plugin Directory.
Some of the most widely used SEO plugins include HubSpot, Yoast SEO, and All in One SEO.
3. Measure Your Site’s Success With Google Analytics
While running a WordPress website, installing Google Analytics is an effective way to track your performance, document data, and provide rich insights into how users communicate with your site. And do you know what the best part is? That it is absolutely free to use!
You can directly add Google analytics code to your site by simply going to the ‘Admin panel,’ choosing the ‘settings’ option, and selecting ‘Google Analytics’. Here, you can paste the code. Note that you may need to verify ownership of your site to get this working. Alternatively, you can also use plugins & widgets to use the tool.
By having Google Analytics installed on your site, you can better understand your traffic & users’ behavior & have all the important information at your fingertips. Additionally, you will be in a better position to make data-driven decisions to improve your website’s performance.
4. Make the Best Use of Customizations
With millions of websites out there, the best way to stand out is to customize your website. The good part is- WordPress gives you multiple plugins and other customization options.
However, developing a customized theme can be difficult unless you’re skilled in coding. The best option is to hire WordPress developer from a reputable WordPress development company, discuss your custom requirements and customize your website to deliver an excellent customer experience. All you need to do is convey your unique business requirements, and they’ll create a customized WordPress website that matches your brand’s persona. Right from customizing your WordPress theme to headers, sidebars, checkout pages, etc., you can have endless customization possibilities.
5. Be Careful While Picking Up Your WordPress Theme
With so many free and premium themes available out there, don’t rush to choose your perfect theme. Since every business is different, so should be its theme. You must pick a theme that matches your business needs and have the following features-
- SEO-friendly
- Responsive theme
- Secure
- Fast & lightweight
- Support for plugins & extensions
- Attractive look
You may find some themes that are loaded with features & functionalities and are attractive. But remember, these themes can slow down your website speed. Rather, you must test the theme, make a list of features you want ahead of time, and consider buying a premium theme.
6. Optimize Your Website Images
To speed up your website and ensure better performance, don’t forget to compress your images & videos. Compressing your images & reducing their size will further help you save storage space. To do so, you have plenty of tools available that allow you to compress your images for free, like Kraken.io, ImageResize, and Optimizilla.
Other tips to optimize your images on WordPress are:
- Use common image formats, i.e., jpg, png, or gif.
- Resize your images following your layout
- Use optimization plugins. E.g., EWWW Image Optimizer, WP Smush, ShortPixel Image Optimizer, etc.
- Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
- Insert title tags & alt tags to your images
7. Outsource WordPress Maintenance Services
WordPress is highly user-friendly and easy to use. However, some issues cannot be solved or taken care of by site owners themselves. These issues can be related to website updates, maintenance, hosting issues, coding failures, downtime, etc. This is where professional WordPress maintenance services help.
Outsourcing WordPress services to countries like India can help you save time, cost, and effort and further ensure that your WordPress-based website runs smoothly at all times.
Here’s what to expect from your WordPress maintenance service provider:
- Website protection from bugs, malware, and hacking
- Managing & moderating spam
- Maintain backups
- Updating plugins
- Ensure maximum website speed
- Update WordPress Core
- Address downtime issues
8. Obtain an SSL Certificate
Getting an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is a great way to improve your site’s trustworthiness and instill trust among site visitors. SSL is a kind of
encryption that protects users by encrypting the connection between browsers and web pages. If you use an SSL certificate, your URL will change from HTTP to HTTPS.
This certificate indicates to the visitors that their connection to your site is safe, strengthening your brand trust, increasing page views, and lowering your site’s bounce rates.
Besides this, even Google has prioritized site security for consumers and has adjusted its algorithm accordingly. The search engine gives preference to sites that have a HTTPS URL over those that do not. Additionally, it may display a red warning sign for websites that do not have an SSL certificate, informing customers that they are using an unsafe website.
9. Set Up an Easy Site Navigation
Your users can easily get frustrated with complex site navigation and can exit your website immediately if they struggle to find what they are looking for. Hence, ensuring seamless site navigation is critical for an excellent user experience. Especially if your website has too much content, having simple navigation becomes even more important. Site navigation directly impacts your bounce rate, time on site, SEO, and user engagement.
Wondering how you can improve your overall site navigation? Here’s how:
- List your categories & subcategories clearly
- Add a sitemap
- Optimize your site for mobile
- Use breadcrumbs
- Optimize your website Navbar
- Fix your broken links
- Create a footer menu & carefully choose widgets
- Use consistent design
- Give striking & actionable buttons
Does it look overwhelming? Yes, it can be. Well, to get easy navigation & consistent design, the best solution lies in leveraging professional WordPress design & development services & getting professionals who can best design your site’s structure & follow best practices to ensure seamless navigation.
10. Devise a Comprehensive Linking Strategy
Internal website linking helps search engines to understand & analyze your website better, add more authority to web pages, and help them rank higher. However, when linking your web pages, you must ensure that other pages or blogs must fit naturally within the content. Furthermore, your internal links should lead the site visitor to the next logical piece of content, like a glossary of terms or pages that describe a process.
Other than building an internal linking strategy, you must also focus on developing a solid strategy for earning backlinks. Having a good number of quality backlinks play an important role in boosting online search rankings. To earn quality backlinks, you must focus on adding citable content to your website, add resource pages, and publish updated guides.
Conclusion
Besides following the tips mentioned above, don’t forget to frequently add fresh content to your site. As Google favors the most active sites, keep a note to add three to four blog content weekly.
Following these tips & tricks can definitely pave your way to greater success & bring your higher conversions. If you already have a WordPress website running, you can implement these changes for better performance, while if you are looking forward to developing a website, make sure to discuss all these points with your WordPress development company.
Executing these practices can help you reach your goals, make higher conversions, and enable you to make the best out of ‘WordPress Development’.
