I have 3 specialties in my bag: Social Media Marketing, WordPress Websites and Consulting. I want to share a few WordPress Best Practices that I highly suggest for people who are trying to manage their own website.
First, let me say that a WordPress website is not like a text document, you will need professional help. Always add a website budget item in your marketing plan, and hire a professional, at least twice a year, to look under the hood and make sure everything is working properly.
My Best Practice Tips:
1. Back Up Your Website: Back it up once a month and make sure that the backup will restore your entire site.
2. Plugins Don’t Play Nice Together: It doesn’t matter that everything is ok today, tomorrow various updates (or lack of updates) may make your site look strange or crash. Be careful with plugins.
3.“Call to Action”: Place a call-to-action or contact info on all the pages of your website. Don’t make it hard for people to find you or purchase your products and services.
4. Look At Your Mobile View: Check out what your site looks like on various mobile devices. If you don’t have a mobile ready website, it might be time to make a change.
5. Date on Blog Posts: If you aren’t a consistent blogger, you might want to contact an experienced and trusted tech to remove the dates on your posts. This will keep your site “evergreen”. Be sure your site is backed up before the tech goes into your theme code to make any changes.
6. Sign Your Blog Posts: Seems simple, but I can’t tell you have many people write a blog post and never put their name or company name at the end of the post. Spice it up and add a link to your website or key pages within your post.
7. Sidebars – Rethink The Sidebars: You don’t have to load “everything and the kitchen sink” in your sidebar. Put only what is important for your visitors to know in connection with “closing a sale” on your site.
8. Design: It’s easy to change layout of a page to display a full page look without the sidebar. Just scroll down on any “page” or “post page” and look at the “Layout Settings” and you’ll see all of the options.
9. Contact Box: Check your contact page and any opt-in boxes you might have your site to make sure they are working properly responding properly to your audience.
10. Never Use A Free Theme: Spend the money to get a good quality premium WordPress theme.
What are some of your best website practices?
Make An Impression.
Sabrina Espinal
Sabrina&Company Marketing
917 623-7870
Image Credit: © ouh_desire, Bigstock.com