How to Get the Most Out of Your WordPress Site

If you’ve just set up a WP site, you’d like to start making money fast.

There are loads of free themes and plugins, but you may easily get lost in this ocean of information.

Get ready for a hassle-free WordPress experience

Here’s how to make your WordPress experience more pleasant in a few easy steps.

Pick a hosting provider

This is a topic of an entirely new post, but the essence is this: go local.

Here, the question is not about the best WP hosting provider in the world at the moment.

Instead, check out the hosting providers in your area and pick up the one that provides the best WP-compatible plan.

Managed or unmanaged hosting?

If you don’t know how a Cpanel works, your hosting provider can manage your WP site for you.

The important thing here is to pick up a hosting type that provides enough space and resources for your WP-based business website.

You can pick up a shared hosting plan if you need only limited space and an average connection speed.

Once your website grows in size and popularity, you opt for a VPS hosting plan.

Add custom fields to your WP posts

Have you ever wondered how to manage custom fields in WordPress? It’s not rocket science, but let’s first see what those are.

Custom fields let you add metadata or extra strings of code to WP posts. With the correct code sequence attached to the WP theme file, you can use custom fields to indicate sponsored posts.

 Don’t underestimate theme demos

Themes for WP sites are like foundations for houses.

You must know how themes work to best use the custom fields. When you find a theme you like, remember to click on Live Demo.

Theme demos will not only help you choose the best theme for your WordPress site but will also let you know how to modify it as per your specific preferences.

Choose the right theme

WordPress’s marketplace provides thousands of business themes to choose from.

For best results, try to find a niche-specific theme that best represents the nature of your online business. The marketplace’s search box can help you narrow down your search.

If you know what you want but need help finding it among the cornucopia of free and paid themes, you can order a custom-built one.

Explore the platform’s SEO superpowers

One of WordPress’s greatest advantages is that every post you create automatically gets optimized for search engines.

In other words, as soon as you post something, your publication will be endorsed by Google.

If you want your site to appear on the first page in web searches, you must hire SEO experts to take care of its content or become one yourself. Without a doubt, the second option is much cheaper.

For a start, you can install Yoast SEO and check out its latest capabilities.

Take advantage of Google Analytics

Google Analytics will track your WP site’s performance and give you important feedback about the overall visitor experience.

You can begin with the service’s free version to learn the basics.

The most effective way to integrate Google Analytics on your WordPress site is through a plugin called MonsterInsight.

You will thus be able to monitor the site’s performance from the dashboard.

Compress videos and images

Compressing videos and images embedded in your WP posts will boost page loading speed.

The best media compressing plugins like EWWW Image Optimizer and Optimole can reduce those files in size without sacrificing much of their quality.

Install only necessary plugins

There are hundreds of free plugins on the marketplace. Because of the platform’s open source, some can do more harm than good.

Your WP theme may offer some inbuilt functionalities, others you can get through plugins.

Before installing a new plugin, always check its publisher and feedback.

If you have little or no previous WP experience, ask a more experienced user about the plugins you’ll need.

Choose a gravatar

Gravatar is a relatively new term that means global avatar. Gravatars are essential if there are multiple writers on your WP site.

The service automatically attaches the profile picture from your WordPress account to all your publications.

Keep your site updated

The WordPress team will only update the core of the platform, but updating the themes and plugins you use is your responsibility.

Check for updates regularly and execute any push notifications on time. An outdated plugin can cause an entire section of your website to become inaccessible.

Promoting Your WordPress Site

Promoting your WordPress site can be a daunting task, especially if you’re just starting out. You may want to find ways to grow your readership or ways to optimize your content for search engines. There are many tactics you can use, and the great thing about WordPress is that there are plugins that can help you with these tasks. Here are some of the most effective strategies for promoting your WordPress site:

1) SEO (Search Engine Optimization): SEO is an essential step in promoting any website and it’s especially important when working with WordPress sites due to the sheer number of pages available on the platform. Use plugins like Yoast to optimize each page or post for keywords and achieve higher rankings in search engine results pages.

2) Social media integration: As much as 80% of internet users have active accounts on a social network, making social media a crucial part of online promotion. Plugins such as Jetpack allow you to quickly connect all your social media accounts and add sharing buttons for easy promotion across all channels.

3) Networking: Building relationships with other bloggers is essential for promoting your content. Firstly, search for bloggers who write about similar topics and try providing meaningful comments and feedback on their posts as well as doing guest blogging exchanges from time to time. Additionally, joining communities such as WordPress forums will provide additional avenues for growing an audience and gaining valuable connections within the industry.

4) Targeted advertising: Using targeted ads such as those found on Google Ads is another way of raising awareness about your site while generating targeted leads at the same time. Advertising services like Google Ads allow you to target specific keywords related to your content in order to locate relevant audiences that may be interested in reading it.