21 Tips For Building WordPress Websites

WordPress has been a popular platform with many, many vertical markets – and I’ve read somewhere that it powers as much as 20% of the internet.  Why isn’t your business using WordPress?  If you are using WordPress, read on to learn some of the most important ideas to help boost your site to the stratosphere.  We use these tips on our site as well as the sites of our clients.  Following them can help your organic search engine optimization efforts and make better use of your WordPress powered website.  And without further to do — here are 21 tips for building WordPress websites from the professionals at 314media.

  1. Make sure you have a unique or custom theme; instead of the same one everyone else has. While it is tempting to save time, it doesn’t make a good first impression. You need to spend the time to create a site that showcases your organization’s creativity – not that your team can set something up in 20 minutes.
  2. Clean up long post titles in the permalink field. For instance, “Ten Ways To Be More Amazing With 314media” would appear as a long, long URL. You can change the actual link URL to include only the most relevant keywords.
  3. The Title and Alt tags should be used. text when you are uploading images for your posts. This will allow you add some phrases for SEO phrases.
  4. WordPress makes video blogging into their site. Although this may take you some extra preparation, you will get rewarded for your effort in the end. The majority of web surfers are extremely visual. Videos can sometimes convey information more quickly and effectively than words can.  Kickstart your youtube channel with a video or motion graphic from 314media.
  5. Make sure that you learn all you can about WordPress before even installing WordPress. Learn all you can about SEO, creating unique content, using plugins, adding pages and posts…
  6. Eliminate any comments and content that detracts from your site. This will help ensure that your website is more user-friendly. One great plugin to filter spam from your site is Akismet.  Disable the comments completely if necessary.
  7. Sometimes you might think some changes have been saved. This most often not true. Clear you cache to get rid of this issue. Your changes should come up if you simply pressing and holding the Shift key and refreshing the browser (CTRL-F5).
  8. Create the best greeting for the top of your website – and make sure it’s a Heading. This makes your site look more aesthetically pleasing. This also makes you appear less robotic …  Everyone likes to be greeted!
  9. Ensure that your site allows the user to email and share easily and at will. This will also allow them to share your content and contact informtion with others. You can do all of this this with a simple plugin…
  10. Do not use something generic like “admin” when it comes to your own username. Bots WILL attack your blog that has “administrator” or ADMIN. This is a huge security risk for your website. Go to your account page and delete usernames that contain “administrator” or “admin”.
  11. Use titles and descriptions that are lazer targeted. These are the first words your audience will see when they find your posts in the search engines.
  12. Make sure that you update those plugins! These are very important for your site. They will need to get updated at all times to ensure that you don’t have any security issues or anything else that would be very, very bad.
  13. Only install WordPress plugins you really need. Plugins are cool and all, but each additional one ups your blog’s load time. A slow site can negatively impact how your site ranks on some search engine rankings. Slow websites do not to rank very well in the search engines when compared to sites that have been optimized for performance.  Remove plugins and themes you are not using to increase your security.You can’t be sure when security flaws in these neglected items since you might even forget they are there due to not being used. That would leave you open to code injections which ruin your site crash.  These are really great and important tips for building WordPress websites when requiring a lot of plugins.
  14. Connect your posts together using an internal linking plugin to easily provide visitors with more of your content. These plugins create lists of a few links beneath the posts based on your tag’s relevancy to each post by using tag relevance.
  15. Schedule your new content in advance of when you want to publish them. You can be sure that they will be posted on a regular schedule even if you are away. You can easily do this by tapping into the Publish box on your Edit screen. Input your times using military time, day, month, and year that you want your post to be published. Check the “Schedule For” page and press “Schedule.”
  16. Read user reviews and feedback of plugins. Keep in mind that any programmer can be developed by virtually anyone able to write programs. You shouldn’t use it if it has a lot of reported flaws or bugs. A plugin that has numerous downloads and a high rating is usually a safe one to use.
  17. Try a wide variety of tools to author blogs. Are you not fond of that dashboard on WordPress? Try blog authoring program like Windows Live Writer.There are a variety of tools outside of WordPress that work well with the platform and are very efficient. Try out a bunch of these and then decide on the best for you.  Getting content from your computer into WordPress should be an extension of yourself.  Let us make it easy for you!
  18. Think about highlighting comments left by a blog post’s author.People express concerns or ask questions in blog comment sections. It can be easy to lose track of important information. Highlight an author’s comments using a different color. This makes them easier to find.
  19. Make sure to place images on your site. The adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is still resonates today. Your site will have even more drama and SEO-ness with photos. Use different tags for the pictures so that readers and search engine can easily understand them.
  20. Regularly backup your site by using WordPress’s Export function available in the WordPress dashboard.  Getting those posts and pages imported into a blank install is always better than nothing at all.
  21. Keep in mind that your published works become a permanent part of the Internet. If you choose to criticize someone in your blog, everyone who reads your site as well as people searching on Google will be able to find it forever.

WordPress has a reputation for being  easy to use and is is straightforward enough for anyone to use. WordPress should be easier to understand by simply following these tips for building WordPress websites as outlined above.  Don’t hesitate to start using WordPress today and contact 314media if you need WordPress help, WordPress support, or WordPress consulting.  We’re always around…