Tips to make the most of your WordPress blog
Now you have a beautiful WordPress site created by WPTeam, its over to you to make it a successful blog. We look at a few tricks that could help you get it right first time.
Keep it tidy
Use your Sidebar to highlight things you really need the reader to notice. Don’t get carried away and add everything that ever passes your fancy. People won’t read it because it’s on your sidebar – everything there needs to justify itself or you’re just presenting the casual visitor with an off-putting muddle.
In Appearance & Widgets, remove everything that doesn’t actually achieve anything, so what’s important really stands out. If it’s not a successful call to action, it has to go. If you do want to offer the reader a lot of supplementary information, consider using the footer.
Make your media easier to find by storing it in one easy-to-search folder in the Media Library. At Settings & Media, uncheck the box that says “Organise my uploads into month- and year-based folders.”
Target your titles, page descriptions and image tags
Along with your page title, the description is displayed when you share on social media or your post shows up in a search. Use important keywords elegantly in your titles to help search robots find it. The description is for humans only, so make it pithy and readable with a strong call to action.
WordPress will offer you the chance to add “alternate text” when you upload or edit your image. Designed to replace images when not downloaded or for visually-impaired users, they should describe the subject of the picture in a helpful way, but are also used by search engines to confirm the subject of the page, so, as with headings, keep your keywords in mind when writing them.
Shorten your links
WordPress automatically bases each page url on your headline, but you can to edit this down to a short, manageable link that neatly conveys your subject to both search engines and users. This post, for example, would be rendered as “yourblog.com/tips-to-make-the-most-of-your-Wordpress-blog”, but using the permalink field at the top of the WordPress editing page, you could rewrite it as “yourblog.com/Wordpress-blog-tips”.
Don’t forget to make your content interesting and appealing too.