From beginners to experts, everyone can do with some handy tips while working on Wordpress. Here is a list of such WordPress hacks that can help you do much more with your content.

1. Choosing a Nice Theme

You need to set a nice theme for your website in order to intrigue your site visitors and hold their attention. You can use various platforms to buy templates and themes according to your choice and necessity.

ThemeForest is a popular option to buy themes for your WordPress blog. They come with page builders that are very simple to use. Some themes also provide demo sites for various types of industries. You can easily import these demos and change the color, background, font according to your taste. Once your theme is set, you’re good to start your site. You can save a good amount on web designing costs as you won’t have to get a WordPress expert for hire

2. Download a Search Optimization Plug-in

If you’re a beginner on WordPress, the initial step would be to download a search optimization plug-in that will help you every step of the way by inspecting posts, photos, products, and surveys to improve your rank in search results. Plug-ins are available for free and are very easy to install. Yoast, SEMrush, and Google Keyword Planner are few names to achieve the best SEO results. They also help improve your performance and rank based on your chosen keywords and meta tags. Readability scores help you tweak the content according to the age of your readers and their comprehension level. To go further and achieve new heights, you can always go selecting the best SEO service provider.

3. Keep it Mobile-Friendly

According to studies, in recent years mobile usage has increased manifold and more than 60% of online searches are via mobile devices. You have to ensure that your WordPress site is mobile-friendly. Most of the latest WordPress themes support mobile usage; you can avail them easily. For example, a Woocommerce development company has to have a site that works on a mobile platform since a majority of their consumers shop using smartphones.

4. Create Internal Links Though Keywords

Use a keyword on your page that is linked to another page containing the same keyword in its content, through an internal link. How to do this trick? Select the text/word that you want to link, click on the link tool and type in the selected text/word in the empty pop-up box. WordPress automatically finds that word from every blog post on the site has that keyword. Select the one you want, click on the return option and your link to that page will be created. This is a great technique to increase audience engagement through search engine optimization.

5. Get rid of Spam

Spam comments can lead to reduced traffic and have a negative impact on the performance of the website. You can adjust the settings so that every comment requires to be manually approved. But it can be pretty time consuming and irksome. The better and more efficient option here is to install anti-spam plug-ins on your WordPress site to obliterate the thousands of irrelevant spam comments. Anti-spam plug-ins are available for free and they are pretty easy to install and work very efficiently.

6. Be Acquainted with Regular Updates

The statistics are constantly changing and if you want to be at the top of the game, you have to keep yourself constantly updated about what new upgrade is there in the market. You can check the updates from the icon at the top of your dashboard. Updates are available regularly and they usually focus on fixing technical glitches and security susceptibilities. Security of a WordPress site is of utmost importance. If you do not update your site, you will be prone to attacks by illegal hackers. Installing updates is not at all a hassle, although keep backups ready just in case, and check your website once after updating to see if it is working correctly.

7. Alter the Permalink

Change the previously assigned permalink by WordPress. This structure contains the date in it. SEO experts advise altering the structure to remove the date for better optimization. The steps to change the structure are, first go the settings option on the dashboard of your site and click on permalink from the drop-down menu. Then select ‘post name’ followed by ‘save changes’ and your work is done. This imparts a refined look to your website in front of visitors/customers and optimizes the blog post URLs.

8. Effectuate your Images by Adding Tags

If you are a WordPress beginner, first you have to learn how to make the best of the images that you’ve uploaded on your site. Pictures are the visuals that your site visitors will see and play a great role in their judgment of the content. Add keywords as title tags to your images. These keywords will help improve search engine optimization and boost your ranking in search results. You have to make your pictures and web content yield the best results. If you associate your pictures with your content or permalink, it will prove even more beneficial to you.

9. Compress Your Images

A great tip to keep in mind while creating your WordPress blog is to compress the images. You can use a plug-in to do so. They automatically compress the image that you upload, hence eliminating the need for additional work. It also permits you to bulk compress a whole lot of images at a time with just one click. The advantage of compressing images is that the smaller file sizes will make your site loading speed faster. As you know, it is mainly the images and videos on a website that causes it to buffer slowly. Google rankings are done according to many factors, page speed being an important one. According to research, the ideal time of web page loading is under three seconds.

10. Make Use of Google Analytics

Once you have set up the theme, permalink, URL, etc. i.e. your site is ready to be up, about and running, the next step for you is to install Google Analytics. It is a web analytics service provided by Google and one of the integral tools for WordPress users according to experts. Google Analytics tracks the traffic to your website. It also lets you track their activities on your website. You can use these reports and insights to improve your website and its performance.

Google Analytics provides you the essential tool that you need to understand your site visitors and their behavior better. Setting up Google Analytics is super easy. You can watch online videos for further help on this matter.

11. Too many Plug-ins spoil the Site

Just like the very accurate popular saying, ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’, too much of anything has, indeed, a counter effect. If you are a WordPress user, you will find that there are thousands of plug-ins available for you to install for free. They might all seem very useful too. They are useful, but you do not need all of them. Choose a selected few according to your requirements and preferences and download those only. Always keep the few basic ones for SEO, security, and cache. Avoid too many unnecessary plug-ins that will hinder your site’s speed and make it slow.

12. Set up a new Site URL

As WordPress users, your site is always exposed to online threats from unknown sources. You can amp up the security procedures by changing the URL of your website’s home page or login page. This process is super easy and effective. A well-defined, unconventional URL will be difficult to locate and hence keep the hackers away.

Surveys have shown that sites with shorter URLs get more visitors than sites with lengthy ones. You can set the individual URL from the control panel on WordPress. Keep it short and simple so that consumers can see the URL and make out what the subject of the post is. Nowadays, it is mandatory for a WordPress development company to take up this alternative and shorter website URLs to follow the trend.

You can combine these strategies with some others to enhance security, for example, limited login attempts. In WordPress, the default setting is that a user to make unlimited login attempts. This makes your site prone to hacking. You can use the Login LockDown plugin to set a definitive number for failed login attempts and put a check on it.

13. Choose Categories over post Tags

Most people use tags at the bottom of their posts to create links through keywords. But too many tags can affect the overall outlook of your site and make it cluttered. Instead, you can go for a different option: dividing the content into categories. Incorporate something to draw the attention of your site visitors that allures them to click on the button. All your posts will appear under categories related to their content. Your site visitors will be able to view all posts under the same category when they click on it. Do not put one post under more than four categories. Maintain the minimum common ground, that’s all.

14. Safeguarding your Website

It is very important to protect your site from hackers. They are always on the lookout for websites with poor security. Not taking. Ways to safeguard your site include keeping your themes, plug-ins, and site up to date consistently. Use strong passwords, preferably a mix of alphanumeric and symbols. Get a good quality security plug-in. Even if it costs a little extra, make that investment as it will benefit you in the long run. Create a backup of your side. In case things ever go wrong, you will not lose everything It is better to be safe than sorry.

Wordfence, BulletProof, Sucuri and All In One WP Security & Firewall etc. are some of the best security plugins for WordPress.

15. Keep an eye on the Website Speed

You can use the PageSpeed Insights tool from Google to check the speed of your website. The majority of internet users prefer Google as a search engine. A slow-loading website means declining business. PageSpeed Insights analyzes your webpage speed, gives you a score, and provides recommendations to make your page faster, like proper web practices and performance web optimizations for your website. They also show you the particular files that are hampering the speed. Work on the factors causing major lags first and then move onto getting rid of the smaller hurdles.

Use these handy tips and power your content to get business results.

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