Did you know that about 40% of all online websites are built using WordPress? In fact, over 500 new websites are created every day on the free WordPress platform, WordPress.org.
WordPress, as a CMS platform, provides a wide selection of tools. It's ideal for those with little to no coding experience. The platform is incredibly popular because of how versatile it is to use. And it has evolved way beyond its origins as a blogging platform. Today, you can build amazing-looking websites using your own self-learned skills in a few hours.
What sets WordPress apart is that it offers a whole arsenal of features while being free and simple to use. Most hosting providers offer one-click installation so that you never have to go through pesky FTP if you don't want to.
The Top 5 Tips to Building a Website on WordPress
If you're looking at building a website with WordPress, you first need to know a little bit about the platform.
1. Hosting your website
The WordPress hosting provider you choose will affect the speed and security of your site. If you don't have the proper hosting, your website may be slow. Additionally, you are leaving your website open to hacking and malicious attacks. These things can seriously harm your website and its reputation.
2. Working with themes
While lots of free themes are available, this is probably one of the places you'll want to spend a little money if you're serious about your website. By choosing a premium theme, you can cut down the time you would have otherwise spent building and designing the layout of your site. Thirty dollars now can save you a lot of time and money in the long run.
However, editing the website after selecting a theme has a bit of a learning curve. So, you must make sure to learn how to use the platform before you attempt to edit it.
3. Using Plugins
Anyone who knows anything about WordPress will be familiar with plugins. Plugins are pieces of software that add functionality to your site. There are over 50,000 plugins to choose from, and they perform a variety of different tasks.
For instance, you can use plugins to create pop-ups, contact forms, and eCommerce shops. You can also use them to improve SEO, reduce CSS clutter, and add footer options. However, not all plugins are created equal. Therefore, you must read the reviews for each plugin before installing it to ensure that there aren't any code issues.
Furthermore, it's important to remember that adding too many plugins will slow down your site. A slow website affects user experience and can result in a high bounce rate. This will ultimately damage the success of your business.
4. Search Engine Optimization
To ensure your site is found by search engines and therefore discoverable by web users, it's important that you optimize the content of your site for search engines (SEO). The first thing you need to do for SEO is to ensure your site is visible to search engines.
To do this, you need to adjust your site's visibility settings by going to Settings > Readings in your admin dashboard. You will see a box and the text “Search Engine Visibility.” Next to this text, there will be a box with the caption “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.” To ensure search engines can index your site, the tiny white box next to this caption must remain empty.
The next step for SEO is to enable SEO-friendly permalinks. The default URL settings for WordPress look like this: https://domain.com/?p=567. Unfortunately, this is not a search engine-friendly URL. Fortunately, you can create a custom URL structure in Settings > Permalinks.
Lastly, you'll want to add an SEO plugin. SEO plugins offer guidance on creating content that's optimized for search engines. Essentially, they make it easy to ensure your site is search engine friendly.
5. Site Analytics
It's crucial that you keep track of your site's traffic and how people interact with your site. This information will give you valuable insight that you can use to optimize your site to achieve your goals better.
The most popular site analytics tool is Google Analytics. To sync your site with Google Analytics, you can either add your Tracking ID to the WordPress backend or use a plugin like Google Analytics by Yoast.
Conclusion
WordPress is a great platform for website building. It offers a number of different features and is easy for anyone, regardless of their technical expertise, to learn.
