6 Essential Tips for WordPress Websites

WordPress is great because it makes it simple to create and run a website in a matter of minutes. However, if you’ve ever created a WordPress site, you know the initial setup isn’t much to look at. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to modify WordPress and turn it into a powerhouse website. With that in mind, here are 6 tips you can use to get the most out of your WordPress website.

Choose the Right Hosting

If you haven’t set up your WordPress site yet, the first thing you’ll want to think about is your WordPress hosting. The hosting provider you choose will play a large role in determining how big of a site you can have, how fast it loads, and how secure it is. Before you make a decision, you should take the time to explore all your options then choose the one that works best for you and your budget.

It’s annoying to change hosting providers later on, so if you can make a good decision early on, you’ll start your website off on the right foot.

Explore Theme Options

Once you have WordPress installed, the first thing you’ll want to play with is likely your Theme. WordPress Themes are templates you can use to quickly change the entire look and format of your website. There are literally thousands of Themes out there to choose from, and each one is unique from the others.

The best thing you can do is take some time to explore Theme options and try a few out. With WordPress it’s easy to download a Theme, activate it, and see what your site would look like with it. This way you can try out a few and decide which one you want to go with. Then, if somewhere down the line you decide you want something different, it’s always easy to change to another.

Add Security Plugins

The next thing you should look at is ensuring that your WordPress site is safe. There are unfortunately bad actors out there, and one day one of them might try to infiltrate your website. By taking some precautions now, you can ensure that your website continues to run untouched. All it takes is downloading a WordPress security plugin or two and getting them active on your site.

A quick search through the WordPress plugin directory will yield you plenty of options, so choose one of the more popular or highly rated ones and you should be good to go.

Optimize Your Site for Search Engines

These days, the primary way people find new websites is through search engines. Search engines like Google have their own algorithm that determines where sites will rank within search results. By optimizing your site to fit what search engines are looking for, you give yourself a better chance of ranking highly.

There’s a lot that goes into search engine optimization (SEO), but there are a few easy things you can do now. For starters, download a good SEO plugin for WordPress. This will allow you to quickly make changes to your website for better optimization. After that, you should take some time to learn about keyword research and find some ways to speed up your website.

Perform Regular Updates

One of the best things about WordPress is that it isn’t static. The developers are frequently releasing new updates designed to improve user experience and increase security. To get these updates, all you need to do is download the latest version through your WordPress installation. It only takes a couple of minutes, so be sure to do this every time a new update is released.

Back Up Your Data

Finally, after spending so much time building your site, it would be a shame if you suddenly lost it all. That’s why it’s important that you regularly make a backup of all your data and files. There are WordPress plugins for backing up data, or your hosting provider may have some tools available to you.

Make sure you back up your data every time you make a significant change to your website, or before you’re about to update WordPress. That way, if something does go wrong, you can always revert back to a copy of your site without missing a beat.

Make the Most of WordPress

And there you have it – six easy tips to help you get the most out of WordPress. Using the above tips won’t take you too long, but the rewards will be great. So, set aside some time to look into each of the tips above and start turning your WordPress site into some fantastic.