Knowing how to create a successful blog isn’t learned overnight. Fortunately, WordPress is a great blogging platform that makes being successful much easier. The key is understanding some of the tricks and tips that make it work for you, not against you. Keep reading this article for valuable tips for WordPress Blogging.
If you are doing a WordPress blog for professional or search engine optimization purporses, don’t let WordPress actually host your blog. Put your blog on a different host and then just use the WordPress application there. Blogs at WordPress’ website are sometimes deleted for being too commercial or deemed spammy in content.
Allow all of the users that visit your site the ability to comment using Facebook. This is a very important tool that will get your name across to hundreds of thousands of people. The Simple Facebook Connect plugin can be used if you want to install this feature on your site.
Make sure to use both alt text and title tags. when uploading post images. Both allow you to add more keywords to your page, which effectively increases your page rank.
Eliminate comments and content that fail to add value to your site. That will help you to keep the site friendly to people who are looking at it. One great plugin to filter spam is Akismet.
You are unable to change the images sizes yourself if your site has its own gallery plugin. The gallery plugin automatically sets the sizes of the images, and you don’t actually have any control over this. If you really need the image sizes changed, ask your developer to help you change the settings.
Keep close track of visitors to your blog. This is the only way you will be able to improve it to please your reader more. Free WordPress bloggers can use Jetpack stats to do this. Both free and paid bloggers can use Google Analytics. Be sure to make good use of both services if you can because they offer slightly different advantages.
Know that you can write posts and send them in the future via WordPress. All you need to do is change the post from “Publish Immediately” to a specific date and time in the future. This way you can write posts and have them set up to go out even while you are on vacation!
If you want a post to stay at the top of the page, there is no need to set it’s date way in the future any longer. Instead, go to the post and click on Edit under Visibility. Choose the option which allows you to make the post sticky and enjoy!
Security on your WordPress site is very important, so make your password strong and keep it secure. Also, only download reputable plugins and check the reviews before installing them. If you have a site that has malware or one that gets hacked, you may lose all of your data.
To keep tabs on comments, you don’t need to visit each post separately. Instead, use your dashboard’s comments section to see what has been posted recently. You should check this page daily so that you know what people are saying and can reply if anyone requests more information or asks a question.
In WordPress, you can schedule blog posts in advance. Have the articles posted at times when you are unable to post them. You can do this by tapping into the Publish box on your edit screen. Under the Publish box is a radio button that says Publish Immediately. Put the time you want the blogs to post in military time. Choose the OK option. You will see SCHEDULE FOR. If the schedule presented is correct, check it and click SCHEDULE.
If you need to work on your site, be sure to turn on a maintenance mode so that visitors aren’t surprised with the current state of your website. There are lots of maintenance mode plugins out there. And best of all, they are typically free. It’s a quick button push to toggle maintenance mode on and off.
Does your WordPress dashboard look like a cluttered mess? Want to clean it up? Use the Screen Options link on that page to choose which boxes you want to appear and remove those which aren’t helpful to you. This will ensure that your dashboard experience is streamlined in the future.
When linking internally, you don’t have to enter your domain name into the URL field. Instead, just include the information which comes after the first /, such as /index.html. Don’t forget to also insert an SEO keyword-rich title so that you can get even more bang for your search rank.
The Relevanssi plugin allows you to search your logs to find out what your users are interested in reading. Why does this matter? When you have writer’s block, you can check out the results it provides to know what you should be researching and posting about on your site.
Learn how to make your WordPress blog posts more SEO-friendly. There is a free plugin called Yoast that can do this for you. It does auto checks of your pages’ SEO, canonical, breadcrumbs, sitemaps, permalink, and more. Using the data that it provides, it teaches you how to optimize your blog posts properly.
Incorporate a “read more” link if you want to save space. A wall of text on the front page of your blog looks unprofessional. Let visitors read more by clicking if they want to. You run the risk of having your blog appear busy and unappealing if you fail to do this.
Plugins do not have to be free to be valuable. Think about whether the plugin is a good value given the time it may save you. It is affordable and provides you with an unparalleled amount of features.
Now that you have some great suggestions about WordPress, you can better see how it can improve your blogging efforts. Take what you have learned here and build upon that knowledge. As you gain information, you will gain confidence. Soon you will be seeing more traffic and increased popularity on your blog.
