This is a guest post by Catherrine Garcia. If you’d like to contribute to our blog, feel free to get in touch with us.
The WordPress platform is so huge that everybody seems to be fascinated by the way it functions and delivers online results. The popularity is such that almost 74.6 Million websites are built on WordPress. This also means that the competition is mammoth and you, as a site owner or administrator, need to be on your toes for the upkeep and maintenance of the site.
If you need that extra edge to stand above your competition, you should be all set to make improvements that take your WordPress site to the next level.
These few tips would help give your site a fresh look, or that competitive advantage that’ll keep your visitors engaged.
Read on.
#1 Create Visually Powerful Content
When you decide to publish any content on your website, try and include high-quality images and videos along with it. You could even try and include a detailed infographic in order to explain complicated things. This would not only help readers understand things in a better way, but would also add that little extra flair to your blog posts.
Videos and Images make things interesting by providing visual stimulation and hence, engage the readers in a much better way.
#2 Make Audience your Priority
To ensure that you have a constant group of visitors who like to read your content, you need to become more interactive. You can do this by replying to their comments on your content, or by engaging with them on social media or via email.
By doing so, you’ll be able to create a positive impression by valuing their opinions and appreciating their inputs. You, of course, do not need to reply as soon as a comment is posted but do make an effort and reply to them within a day or two. Sending out the occasional email and personalized messages to a set of the audience will work wonders for you if you have a medium-scale or a large-scale website.
#3 Invest in SEO
Most people don’t really understand the importance of Search Engine Optimization for their site. Best SEO practices would definitely work to take your website to the next level.
By optimizing your content and your site for search engines, you can rest assured that your site wouldn’t only get noticed but would also be a huge success. The first best SEO practice is to indulge in thorough keyword research and use the most relevant ones for your content.
The other ones would be to link externally to the authoritative sources, link internally to other relevant and quality content present on your site and much more. Your focus should be on producing quality content that would be of use to your readers and include best SEO practices when doing the same.
#4 Choose an Apt Theme
At times, all that your website will need is a fresh look. With web design evolving so quickly, your site can begin to look out-dated before you even realize it.
You can consider some free themes if you want but, you need to remember that a premium theme can offer you more options and a better chance to manage your site. Choose a theme that goes with your business idea and compatible with the latest WordPress version.
#5 Follow Email Marketing Best Practices
An email is considered as the best and the most effective way of establishing a personal relationship with your readers as part of your marketing activity.
Apart from this, it also helps in capture leads in case you have any plans for monetizing your blog. Services like MailChimp are quite popular and are being used are several people all around the world to manage email campaigns. If you are just getting started, this can serve as a great tool that would help you in creating your own email list by collecting email addresses of potential customers.
#6 Place Hard-Hitting CTAs
It is quite evident that if you have a website, you must also have certain goals in mind. It could be anything from establishing yourself as a blogger to growing your mailing list of followers.
It is essential that you make the audience aware of your goals. This can be done with a ‘Call to Action’ button. You can place it in several places on your site to make it more effective.
#7 Set Up Google Analytics
In case you are worried about your site’s traffic, Google Analytics might just be the answer to all your worries.
It not only helps monitor a website’s traffic but also helps in identifying the most popular and visited content and the devices that the visitors most commonly use to access your site. This would help you in making the necessary changes if required.
#8 Create an Engaging ‘About’ Page
The About Page of your site is what lets the audience know more about you and our site. Therefore, it is essential that you focus on your About Page and make it more about the audience than yourself.
Make sure that the readers, by reading your ‘About’ Page can set their expectations. This means that they would be able to analyze what all they can expect from your site. Your ‘About’ page should be able to convey as to how your content can prove to be valuable for your reader and how it can help them in solving their issues.
#9 Enable Social Sharing
One of the easiest ways to increase the reach of your website is to include a sharing button on your site. The social media sharing buttons make it easy for the readers to share the content of their choice on their social media profiles. This would not only help more and more people aware of your offering but would also work towards increasing your followers.
Bonus Tips:
- Secure your site; get an SSL certificate for your website so that users who interact with your site can build their trust
- Prepare your social media channels well and keep posting regularly so that users can engage with you.
- Most importantly, manage and maintain your WordPress site to keep it functioning well.
- Use a great web hosting service so that your website loads quickly and experiences least instances of downtime.
Summing Up
Let’s say you have a WordPress site which has some great quality content that’s enough to draw potential readers and engage them. You, of course, have an excellent collection of blog posts and regular visitors who love your content. You might feel like that the things are going well.
But somewhere or the other, there’s some room for improvement to make your content even better than what it already is. Follow the above tips to amplify your numerous efforts to emerge as a total website leader and provide an extra edge to your amazing WordPress site.
About the Author
Catherrine Garcia is a passionate blogger and a freelance Web Developer currently working for WPCodingDev. She along with her
group of freelance developers are experts of creating Websites on WordPress.
