Are you looking to create your own website? Perhaps you want to bring your brand to the internet, or you are even looking to start your own blog. Either way, the prospect of creating a website can be scary. Where do you start and how do you get visitors to your site?
Well, a good place to begin is with WordPress. This is a platform that can allow you to build the website you have been dreaming about. But before you can start, you need to learn more about this platform and how to use it correctly. Here are some important tips that are going to help beginners.
Take Your Time with a Theme
A big decision you are going to make when it comes to your new website is the theme you will use. This is going to be the overall design of your site and this means you want to enjoy the theme, as well as it being a good representative of your brand. If you are new to WordPress, it can be too complicated to customise everything. So, the best thing to do is choose a ready-made theme.
Something you should do is take your time. You do not want to rush your decision since this is going to affect everything on your website. Look at the demos so you can gain a better idea of what that theme will look like. You can envision everything before you commit.
Invest in SEO
If you are starting your own website, you want to attract visitors. This is the whole point, whether you are creating a blog and want to share your insights or you are trying to sell products. But, it can be more difficult than you think to attract visitors and you will have to work hard to do this.
Yes, there is an SEO plugin for WordPress. But this alone is not going to get you to the top of the Google search results page. It can be a good starting point. But, if you do not have knowledge on search engine optimisation, you will not see the results you want. Instead, consider using a WordPress SEO service. Check out https://www.clickslice.co.uk/seo-for-wordpress/. This way, you can focus on building and growing your website and have a team dedicated to improving your Google ranking.
Avoid Plugin Overload
There is something that many people are guilty of when they start using WordPress. They use a range of plugins. Of course, there are some that are going to benefit visitors to your site. But, some are unnecessary and are going to do one killer thing. That is, they are going to slow down your website.
Having a slow website is the last thing you want. Visitors do not wait around until it loads. They will leave and this is going to be without interacting with anything on your site. So, make sure you only have essential plugins and you can install more later on when you figure everything out.
Compress Images
As we have just mentioned, website speed is important. It can be the difference between people staying on your site and heading elsewhere. So, you want to make sure it runs efficiently and there is nothing that is going to slow it down.
Well, if you have large images and a lot of them on your site, this has the potential to have a negative effect. So, you are going to need to compress them so that this does not happen. There are tools you can use to do this and it will be optimised. The same should be done with videos.
Always Update WordPress
Every platform is going to go through software updates. This is important for security and to make sure that everyone has a good experience. So, this is something that you want to check for on a regular basis. You can do this through the dashboard. It is going to tell you if there are certain things that need to be updated. This can include plugins and themes.
Make sure that you complete the updates as soon as possible. This way, your website can run smoothly and visitors have a good experience. You will also not have to worry about security threats or other problems occurring. Just ensure that you have a backup of your website. This way, if something goes wrong, you are going to have everything there and a copy of it so you do not have to start again.
