Giving You the Keys to Drive
5 of the top WordPress website tips and tricks you’ve wanted to know
Having a website for your business is a necessary element to being found in today’s online world. It becomes the hub of your business’ online presence, with social media and e-newsletters sending traffic to your website for information. Since technology and online strategies are quickly evolving, your website should have the flexibility to adjust with these changes. That’s where WordPress comes in.
WordPress is an excellent website platform that gives you the keys to drive your own website. Instead of always having to wait for a programmer to make even the simplest changes, you have the ability to make those updates yourself. It’s why WordPress is our favorite website platform to use.
Whether you already have a WordPress website or if you’re looking to upgrade your current website to something easier to use, here are some of our top WordPress website tips:
1: Editing and updating content
Your WordPress website makes blogging incredibly easy. But it also makes adding content easy, too. Within the pages section, you have the ability to rearrange, add, and delete the main pages of your website. Editing text is incredibly simple. Adding new pictures isn’t hard, either. If you can use Microsoft Word, then you can definitely use WordPress. This flexibility means your website can be a valuable resource for your clients, giving them current and relevant information. How do you accomplish all these changes? By clicking on the “pages” tab in the left sidebar and then clicking on the page you want to edit. Once you’ve made changes, you just need to remember to click the “Update” button before moving on!
2: Managing Media
In today’s visual online world, having dynamic images on your website is vital. Within WordPress, it’s very easy to upload everything from pictures to graphics to PDF’s and then link to them on your website. Uploading couldn’t be simpler, either: you go to the “Media” tab found on the left sidebar, and then drag-and-drop anything from your computer you want to upload.
3: Get the most out of SEO
We’ve written about what SEO is and what SEO best practices are quite extensively in the past, but a WordPress specific tip is to install a good SEO plugin. Yoast has a great one, as does All-in-one SEO pack. Both of these are extremely easy to use but are powerful and give your site a real boost when it comes to SEO. Not only should each of your pages be optimized with these plugins, but each blog post you write should as well. The SEO plugins have forms underneath the content editor for blog posts and pages.
4: Forms
For some businesses, being able to have forms on your website and blog is incredibly helpful. They can be used for everything from simple contact forms to customer surveys to event registrations. Our favorite form builder is Gravity Forms. The form builder itself is very easy to use: simply clicking on sections adds them to your form. There are options you to integrate these forms with your PayPal account to accept payments, and even with an e-news system to effortlessly add emails to your lists. While this sounds very involved, once it’s set up it’s actually incredibly easy to use and manage.
5: Stay up-to-date
One of the best ways to keep your WordPress website running smoothly is to keep everything updated. Periodically, the plugins you use and WordPress itself will release software updates. These typically take a matter of minutes (or even just seconds) to download and install. Updates can be managed in the “plugins” section of your left sidebar.
These are 5 of the ways we get the most out of WordPress for our website. Learning these things didn’t happen overnight, and it won’t for you. Getting additional training on how to use WordPress is an excellent investment. Making the switch to a WordPress website is one of the smartest things you can do to make sure your website stays current and relevant.
If you’d like to learn more about WordPress websites or WordPress training, contact us and we’ll get in touch to answer your questions.
