The background color is set to a green shade and there is a border all the way around the header which changes colors creating a recessed, shadow effect. The Times font is set with a size of 230% with a wider than normal letter spacing. The padding on the left side indents the text in from the left.
WordPress tip
They say you can not judge a book by its cover, and yet every day people do. They pick up a book, look at the cover, and then are moved to either put it down, turn it over, or open it up just because of how the cover looks. Websites are also judged by their covers and the first impression often comes from the header.
The header of your site is typically the first thing people see. From this masthead or header art across the top of your page, people make sweeping judgements about what they are about to see and read. The same people who say you can not judge a book by its cover, also say that you only have 30 seconds to make a good impression. In the world of the Internet where the next web page is a click away, you have much less than that.
We are going to take you inside the architecture of a WordPress header and offer tips on how to customize it to become your own book cover, enticing people into your site with a good first impression. Then we will offer some tips from some experts on what makes a good website header.
Video Tutorial
To add a new category, fill in the Name, Slug, and Description fields. If it’s a subcategory, assign a parent category for a better website structure. Save the changes by selecting Add New Category.
Step 7. Enable Breadcrumbs
Enabling breadcrumbs is another method to improve a website’s user experience and navigation. Breadcrumbs are links that show visitors their location on a website. They are useful on content-heavy websites with many posts and pages.
Breadcrumb trailing is an excellent internal linking tactic. It helps search engines understand the relationship between pages and encourages visitors to explore more pages on a website, reducing bounce rates.
Pro Tip
Step 8. Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines
There are two types of WordPress sitemaps – XML and HTML. XML sitemaps are submitted to search engines. They help crawlers find content and information easier.
An XML sitemap also shows each page’s importance and its relationship to the other web pages, showcasing the site’s structure. XML sitemaps can also improve SERP rankings by notifying search engines that a website does not have duplicate content.
Step 9. Enable Manual Approval for Comments
To enable manual comment approval, head to Dashboard -> Settings -> Discussions from the WordPress dashboard. Check the Comment must be manually approved box and scroll down to Save Changes.
Step 10. Enable “Last Updated” Date
Lastly, enabling the Last Updated date on WordPress posts can generate more clicks. Even though the publishing date of a blog post does not affect a website’s search engine rank, it is still visible on search results.
Google search results feature the date under the post’s meta title. It is one of the deciding factors of whether a visitor chooses to click on a page. Users tend to look for the latest content with the most recent information.
Once you’ve installed it, activate the last updated date settings by heading to Settings -> WP Last Modified Info -> Post Options. Then, toggle the button next to Enable for Posts/Pages on Frontend to turn on the last updated date feature. Change the rest of the settings accordingly and click Save Settings.
Next, head to your posts and pages and check if your WordPress site shows the last updated date. To change the date using the block editor, click on the Settings icon and scroll down to Discussion. Adjust the date and settings on the Last Updated and Modified Info sections.
Encourage Reader Engagement
We’ve covered this topic before but that’s only because it’s so important. Your audience is the focus of your blog so getting them actively involved is especially important. Here are a few simple ways to do just that.
Improve Your Comments Section
Your comments are the easiest way to get your readers involved. While WordPress comments are pretty great on their own, there are a ton of awesome WordPress plugins available to help you make your comments even better. Here are just a few of the best WordPress comments plugins (in our opinion) to level up your commenting section.
Start A Newsletter
Another simple way to reach out to your readers is with a newsletter. Newsletters go right to your audience’s inbox so no matter where they are they can see you’ve got something new to checkout. Newsletters are also an awesome way to share exclusive content with your readers, like a freebie or special contest just for them. Here are some awesome tips from our authors for newsletters and WordPress:
Consider A Freebie or Contest
Whether you offer a freebie/giveaway for subscribers only or for your entire audience, it’s always nice to be able to give back to your readers. They are the ones supporting you and making your blogging lifestyle possible after all! Lucky you, with WordPress it’s super easy to host your own competition or giveaway with the help of a plugin. You could also consider creating free downloadable goodies (like free wordpress themes, free ebooks, free psds etc) or securing exclusive discounts for products that you recommend.
Sources:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Designing_Headers
https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/wordpress-seo-tips
https://www.wpexplorer.com/wordpress-blogging-tips/
Wordpress tip
Before uploading an image to the WordPress media library, make sure you are using optimized file names — this helps to give further context to a page. Rather than /image123.jpg for an image of a large dog bed, use /large-dog-bed.jpg. It is simple; make sure that the file name of the image reflects what it shows.
5 Optimization Tips to Make a WordPress Site Mobile Ready
More and more people are using smartphones and tablets every day all over the world. In fact, it’s estimated that by the end of this year, more people will be using their mobile devices to search the web as opposed to desktop internet. All the more reason to make sure your WordPress site is mobile-ready, right? Fail to recognize the strength of the mobile market, and you certainly will miss out on opportunities big and small to reach a larger market of consumers.
Luckily for you, it’s not as technically challenging as you might first think to optimize your site for mobile use. Take a look at the following tips to get your WordPress website up to par with the rest of the mobile-ready web.
Why Does Your WordPress Site Need to be Mobile Ready?
Look around. Just about everyone is carrying around some brand of mobile device. Even kids have them nowadays. Since most people own a mobile phone, chances are they’re reading someone’s blog or website on it. Why not yours? You’ve probably already done your due diligence when it comes to driving traffic to your website, like building up your SEO efforts, for instance. Well, wouldn’t you know it that mobile device optimization falls under that category?
You’ve got to use every channel to get as much traffic as you can. Considering the fact that about 2.7 hours is spent perusing social networks on mobile phones every day by Americans, chances are they’ll be coming across a bunch of different blogs and sites that their friends share.
You always have to be on your toes when it comes to the world of technology and marketing. With scores of people using mobile devices, it’s important for website owners to identify a new avenue for marketing their websites to generate new traffic. And the best way to do that? Mobile optimization, of course! Are you sensing a trend here?
If your site is not optimized to be viewed on a mobile device, it will be tough for your viewers to read your content and view your images. A website needs to be properly optimized specifically for use on the screen sizes that mobile devices have. The screen size and resolution need to be just right. If not, your visitors will find a different website to go to. Over time, this can cost you potential customers.
You want your site to generate traffic. But once they’re there, you want their experience to be a positive one. Having a site that’s ready for mobile use will improve your visitors’ experience and increase your chances of turning them into repeat customers.
WordPress SEO Tips: Optimizing Pages & Posts
8. Carry Out Keyword Research
Without keyword research, you are not going to know which search terms you should be optimizing your site’s content for. In fact, keyword research should come at the start of any SEO project and be used to plan your site content and on-page optimization.
9. Install the SEO Writing Assistant by SEMrush Plugin & Create Great Content
Before you start creating or optimizing the content across your site, install our SEO Writing Assistant plugin (also available as a Google Docs add-on). As you write (or review) content, the plugin will help you to ensure that it is written in an SEO-friendly way, and will give recommendations and an analysis based on your Google top 10 rivals for a given keyword.
Perhaps it goes without saying, but if you want to rank at the top of Google with your WordPress site, you need to make sure that you are creating great content. The SEO Writing Assistant will help ensure that your content is optimized and structured in a search-engine-friendly way, while also recommending additional keywords you might consider working into your copy.
It is important that you spend some time analyzing the content which already ranks for the terms you are trying to target. Without understanding what is already ranking, you will start creating content blindly — why create content that won’t work?
10. Set Custom URLs for Pages & Posts
Let’s say you have launched a piece of content which is titled ‘The Best Dogs Beds to Buy In 2020.’ Dependent on how you set your permalinks, you are likely going to end up with a URL of https://domain.com/the-best-dog-beds-to-buy-in-2020.
However, you know that the main keyword which you are targeting with the content is "best dog beds". The good news is that you can choose to overwrite the default URL and choose a custom permalink for the page.
11. Use Optimized Page Headings
Best practices typically call for using one H1 heading (the page’s title), but you should also use H2 – H6 headings; they t give structure to your content, also to break up the text and make it easier to read.
If your H1 is the book’s title, the H2s are chapters, with subsequent tags acting as sub-headings. Page headings are a great place to include your page’s main keyword and variants but don’t over-do this and never force the inclusion of a keyword somewhere that it doesn’t naturally fit.
12. Craft Unique Optimized Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
Yoast automatically sets your page’s title tag using your page heading, but you also have the ability to overwrite this to improve on it and work in variations of keywords that you might not include in your page’s heading:
And while meta descriptions are no longer a direct ranking factor, they do indirectly impact your site’s organic performance due to CTR (click-through rate). It is worth spending time to write enticing descriptions (these can be any length but typically truncate after around 160 characters). You can add meta descriptions within the same section as title tags:
13. Use Internal Linking
You need to use internal linking within your content to help establish topical relevancy between different pages on your site, to pass authority earned from external links, and to help users efficiently navigate.
Adding in internal links to other pages in WordPress is really simple. All you need to do is highlight the text which you want to link (this will be your link’s anchor text) and click the ‘link’ button on the toolbar, which will then allow you to either paste a URL or search for pages within your site.
Advanced WordPress SEO Tips: Take Your Site Performance To The Next Level
If you follow the above tips and advice, you will find that you can master the basics of WordPress SEO pretty quickly. Think of these steps as a checklist for every page and post you create, and you will struggle to go wrong.
16. Install a Cache Plugin to Improve Site Speed
You can get very technical on improving your site’s speed, but one of the most effective ways to increase this is by using a caching plugin to cache your posts and pages as static files. These static files are served to your users, rather than being dynamically generated each time and can significantly improve performance.
17. Optimize Images
If you are using lots of images and rich media within your content, the size of the page can increase noticeably, but this is often because images not being properly optimized. A common image issue is using one that is much larger than the size than the image will actually display at — this is a sign that the image was not optimized.
18. Noindex Tag Pages & Other Low-value Content
Tags are rarely useful to users that aren’t already on your site. From an SEO perspective, these pages rarely offer anything of value, and you typically don’t want these pages to be indexed and send traffic from Google (traffic quality is low).
As another note here, head to the ‘Media’ tab and make sure that the ‘Redirect attachment URLs to the attachment itself?’ option is selected as yes, as this helps to prevent an issue which occurred in Yoast back in 2018 where individual attachment URLs were being indexed.
19. Mark Up Your Pages with Schema
Schema markup can help to enhance your SEO efforts by adding context to your content and data. It helps Google to understand your content, present it in different and useful ways, which enhances a searcher’s experience.
Thankfully, since Yoast 11.0, a full structured data graph is built for every post or page on your site, but there are instances where you will want to mark up specific blocks within WordPress. You can do this when you create a new block by choosing a ‘Yoast Structured Data Block’, which you can read more about here.
20. Use ‘Last Updated’ Dates
You should regularly be updating your evergreen content to ensure it is always current and relevant, but a question that is often asked is whether you should be changing the original publishing date of your pages and posts, removing dates all together or something else.
One suggestion is to use ‘last modified’ or ‘updated on’ to show users and search engines when your content was last updated, giving them the confidence that the information is current and relevant right now. Thankfully, you can easily add last modified/updated info on your WordPress pages and posts using the WP Last Modified Info plugin.
Sources:
https://www.wpexplorer.com/mobile-optimization-tips-wordpress/
https://www.wpexplorer.com/mobile-optimization-tips-wordpress/
https://www.semrush.com/blog/wordpress-seo-checklist-20-tips/
Wordpress tip
Blogging is one of the most effective ways of growing your business. Without content, Google will see little value in your website. Many WordPress beginners create sites that look great but lack the kind of content that helps people. After all, driving organic (search engine) traffic to your website comes down to your ability to write content that engages users, answer their questions, and provide value to the reader.
WordPress Tips And Tricks For Beginners
WordPress is an excellent tool for newbie bloggers. It’s simple to install and straight out of the box offers an easy path to publishing content. The most popular blogging platform in the world became the most popular Content Management System (CMS) through more than 10 years of development.
The benefits of WordPress for beginners are many. The ability to create properly formatted-for-web content and publish it with a single click is empowering. This functionality is available to beginners and experts. The lower barrier to entry means that beginners, armed with this comprehensive web publishing platform, make common WordPress beginner errors on their blog.
Not understanding how to customize and optimize WordPress can lead to a poorly performing, and low ranking site. Hackers target WordPress because they know that many have been set up by inexperienced WordPress users.
Buy a Premium WordPress Theme
This is one of the most important WordPress tips I can give you. Free themes often look great and many of them function perfectly well. But what exactly are you getting when you put a free theme on your WordPress blog? You’re getting a theme that might not have the proper security standards implemented. The developers have no incentive to maintain the theme so you might be left with a broken website the next time WordPress gets an update.
Of course, no theme is optimized straight out the box. Expect to spend a few hours or even days (weeks on a bigger site) to get your website looking the way you want it. Themes (or templates as non-techies call them) are merely starting points for getting online faster. Building a theme from scratch can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The best themes have teams of people working full-time on the code. Most business owners don’t have the funds to splash out on a bespoke WordPress theme.
One of the most important things to check with a theme is how it looks on mobile devices. Most of the traffic to your website will likely come from users on mobile. Many people prefer to browse the internet on their phones or tablet. You need to make sure that your site works well on the small screen.
WordPress Themes For Beginners
Looks aren’t everything, and many beautiful looking themes are slow to load and cumbersome to use. Some have security flaws, such as certain themes on ThemeForest, as reported by WPtavern . In many cases, the issues are with plugins and are not caused by negligence on the part of the web marketplace. Not all WordPress templates are created equal. And many people believe that it’s easy to just use a plugin that optimizes their site in order to fix problems with themes. This is definitely not the case.
I’ve seen hundreds of themes that Look amazing in the demo but perform really badly. Themes that depend on hundreds of javascript scripts, external style sheets, image sliders, and other fancy stuff will always struggle to load on slow connections. Even users with fast connections will experience long loading times with these themes. If you don’t think this is important then read this (internal link 40% of sites slow, etc). Site speed is a ranking factor for Google. A slow site corresponds to lower rankings. If you don’t mind being on page 400 of Google’s search results then, by all means, use a ‘beast’ of a theme.
To get an idea of how a theme performs, check the reviews. It’s worth remembering that reviews by bloggers that include affiliate links may not be 100% honest with their review. Many websites, including this one, promote affiliate links only for products they use and really like. But you can’t count on everyone to be so honest.
If there’s a demo version or a lite version of the theme for download then try this out to see how it works. Run speed tests on the demo theme on the developer or marketplace site to see if anything unusual pops up. This isn’t a perfect method however as the demo site may be on a super fast server and the theme may even be modified to appear faster.
Many themes come with preinstalled plugins such as sliders, forums, galleries. Check to see if these plugins are third-party products. If they are, it’s worth doing more research on that theme. Imagine buying a car with hundreds of extra customisation parts made by hundreds of different manufacturers, none of whom you can trust. Each of these parts could have potential security and performance issues. Would you want to drive that car?
Not all speed issues and performance issues are the result of the theme. Caching software is one of the must-have WordPress plugins and can help improve the download speed of your site. However, a caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket is not the answer to a bad WordPress theme. It will help a bit but having a solid foundation will give you a better place to start from.
Simply installing a good theme does not guarantee a good website. You need to understand the WordPress ecosystem and correct implementation of themes. There are many sites out there utilizing the best themes and frameworks but they still perform poorly and look terrible.
Buy a Premium WordPress Theme
This is one of the most important WordPress tips I can give you. Free themes often look great and many of them function perfectly well. But what exactly are you getting when you put a free theme on your WordPress blog? You’re getting a theme that might not have the proper security standards implemented. The developers have no incentive to maintain the theme so you might be left with a broken website the next time WordPress gets an update.
Of course, no theme is optimized straight out the box. Expect to spend a few hours or even days (weeks on a bigger site) to get your website looking the way you want it. Themes (or templates as non-techies call them) are merely starting points for getting online faster. Building a theme from scratch can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The best themes have teams of people working full-time on the code. Most business owners don’t have the funds to splash out on a bespoke WordPress theme.
One of the most important things to check with a theme is how it looks on mobile devices. Most of the traffic to your website will likely come from users on mobile. Many people prefer to browse the internet on their phones or tablet. You need to make sure that your site works well on the small screen.
WordPress Themes For Beginners
Looks aren’t everything, and many beautiful looking themes are slow to load and cumbersome to use. Some have security flaws, such as certain themes on ThemeForest, as reported by WPtavern . In many cases, the issues are with plugins and are not caused by negligence on the part of the web marketplace. Not all WordPress templates are created equal. And many people believe that it’s easy to just use a plugin that optimizes their site in order to fix problems with themes. This is definitely not the case.
I’ve seen hundreds of themes that Look amazing in the demo but perform really badly. Themes that depend on hundreds of javascript scripts, external style sheets, image sliders, and other fancy stuff will always struggle to load on slow connections. Even users with fast connections will experience long loading times with these themes. If you don’t think this is important then read this (internal link 40% of sites slow, etc). Site speed is a ranking factor for Google. A slow site corresponds to lower rankings. If you don’t mind being on page 400 of Google’s search results then, by all means, use a ‘beast’ of a theme.
To get an idea of how a theme performs, check the reviews. It’s worth remembering that reviews by bloggers that include affiliate links may not be 100% honest with their review. Many websites, including this one, promote affiliate links only for products they use and really like. But you can’t count on everyone to be so honest.
If there’s a demo version or a lite version of the theme for download then try this out to see how it works. Run speed tests on the demo theme on the developer or marketplace site to see if anything unusual pops up. This isn’t a perfect method however as the demo site may be on a super fast server and the theme may even be modified to appear faster.
Many themes come with preinstalled plugins such as sliders, forums, galleries. Check to see if these plugins are third-party products. If they are, it’s worth doing more research on that theme. Imagine buying a car with hundreds of extra customisation parts made by hundreds of different manufacturers, none of whom you can trust. Each of these parts could have potential security and performance issues. Would you want to drive that car?
Not all speed issues and performance issues are the result of the theme. Caching software is one of the must-have WordPress plugins and can help improve the download speed of your site. However, a caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket is not the answer to a bad WordPress theme. It will help a bit but having a solid foundation will give you a better place to start from.
Simply installing a good theme does not guarantee a good website. You need to understand the WordPress ecosystem and correct implementation of themes. There are many sites out there utilizing the best themes and frameworks but they still perform poorly and look terrible.
Sources:
https://fatfrogmedia.com/wordpress-beginner-tips/
https://fatfrogmedia.com/wordpress-beginner-tips/
https://accesspressthemes.com/blog/wordpress-seo-tips-and-techniques/