7 Little Changes That'll Make a Big Difference in Your WordPress Site

 

7 Little Changes That'll Make a Big Difference in Your WordPress Site

Like most bloggers, you've used WordPress to create your site or improve an existing one, with some help from WordPress themes or plugins, of course. But you can do plenty of things to tweak your WordPress site and make it work better for you and your readers. So here are seven little changes that will make a big difference on your WordPress site today!

 

1) Update your WordPress installation

The latest versions of WordPress are usually very secure, and most themes and plugins come with automatic security updates. If you're not sure whether your install is up to date, check out their documentation on how to upgrade your site. The update process will often involve reinstalling files or asking you to change a file's permissions, so it's best to do it when no one is visiting your site (e.g., on early Sunday morning). Once complete, update all of your plugins and themes as well. Also, keep WordPress, third-party apps, and themes updated for security reasons.

 

2) Optimize your images

While images are one of your best tools for catching and keeping your reader's attention, they can also be among your biggest performance hogs. An image-heavy site can screech halt even on high-end servers without proper optimization. There are numerous tricks you can employ to keep things running smoothly. If you have time for only one improvement, try optimizing all of your images by reducing their file size with image editing software.

 

3) Get some help from a local developer

No one knows your site better than you do, but the chances are that you don't know everything there is to know about WordPress. If you want to make sure that your site is running as efficiently as possible and doing everything it can for your business, get some help from a local developer specializing in optimizing sites for speed, usability, and search engine optimization. Even if you don't plan on hiring them full-time, their knowledge will make all of their services more valuable to you. And if they make any recommendations that improve your website? Then the chances are good that those tips will be ones you won't find elsewhere on Google—or at least not until someone else does what they did first!

 

4) Switch your theme

If you're launching or maintaining a website, you've already got some understanding of WordPress and its many features. One of those features is Themes, which lets you customize your site's aesthetics with an easy-to-use interface. Unfortunately, while themes can be immensely helpful for making your site look good, they can also slow down your performance and make it hard to manage multiple users—especially if you choose one that isn't well-optimized. But don't worry: there are plenty of high-performance options out there. If you're serious about running a business on WordPress, switching your theme could be one of several steps toward improving site performance and usability.

 

5) Host with a good host like Bluehost

A good host can make or break your site's load times. If your business hinges on having a speedy, responsive site, you can't afford to skimp on web hosting. Luckily, plenty of great hosts offers high-speed servers and 24/7 customer support at affordable prices. When shopping around for a good host, be sure to look at reviews, read up on their performance history, and compare them head-to-head—this will help you find one that fits your specific needs.

 

6) Update plugins

Plugins are great tools that add new features and capabilities to your site. But sometimes, they can slow things down. For example, suppose you're experiencing issues with your site. In that case, it might be time to update some of those plugins (and if you have them installed, you should be notified when there is an update available). Check out our guide on updating plugins for more info.

 

7) Finally, add content

By content, we don't just mean blogs. In addition to regularly-updated content that brings traffic to your site, it is equally important to have great content on every single page of your website. After all, search engines are trying to answer one question—what's relevant?—and they can only determine how much text you provide in response to their queries. The more relevant your content is, and (crucially) the more frequently you update it, the higher you move up those rankings. If Google doesn't think your page matches what someone is searching for, what's the point of even being there? Content rules and nothing illustrates that more than a long-term SEO strategy. Now go out there and make some awesome pages!

7 Little Changes That'll Make a Big Difference in Your WordPress Site