Starting a new website or blog can be an extremely exciting time for anyone who is doing it for the first time. It’s also straightforward and fast to set up, thanks to the power of WordPress–which is now powering more than 30% of sites on the internet today.
However, just because you are using WordPress to run your site, don’t think it’s as easy as click, install, post, and then you are ready to go! Well, it kind of is that easy… but if you leave it at just that, then you are going to be left with a site that looks like millions of other sites and probably don’t get much search traffic, social shares and may even die off in a few weeks.
We are going to walk through this simple process in seven easy steps. Should you already have some of them in place, no worries, just skip it and move onto the next one.
Choose a High-Quality WordPress Theme
Right out of the box, WordPress is an amazing CMS platform to work with, and it also comes with a very nice and simplistic theme as well. As great as the built-in WP themes are, if you leave it in place, you will then have the same default theme as millions of other sites.
However, the good news is that there are literally hundreds of thousands of other free, premium, and custom themes for you to choose from. If you don’t have any money to invest in a new theme, all you need to do is look around for a free one… and there are plenty of them.
If you need a premium or custom theme, these will often cost less than $100, and if you need some custom work done, you can hire a freelancer through sites like Fiverr to get the job done quickly and cheaply.
Add Top Rated and Most Recommended Plugins
Just like how WordPress makes the process of going live with a website or blog extremely simple, it also provides the ability to add custom plugins as well. The great thing about plugins is that again, there are no custom programming or design skills required. Just like selecting a theme for your site, you can do the same with the available plugins.
With thousands of plugins available, there is no limit to what you can do with your site. Best of all, most plugins are free, and you won’t need to spend any money unless you decide to invest in a premium plugin.
Focus on Quality of Content and Not Quantity
When creating a site on the WordPress platform, you are exceptionally using it as the foundation for your site. It will provide you with everything you need to create content, but in itself, it won’t make your site a success.
This is where the content of your site is really going to make a big difference.
With more than a billion active websites and blogs on the internet today, there is a ton of information and content already out there for you to compete against. With this in mind, you are going to want to make sure your site content isn’t just amazing and valuable, but also that it stands out from the competition.
Here are some quick tips on how to best accomplish this:
- Try to publish content with at least 1,200+ words of text
- Post better and longer content versus shorter content often
- Cover a wide range of niche topics within one master article
- Include visuals to break apart your content and use H1, H2, H3 tags
One of the most common mistakes that WordPress bloggers learn later on is that it’s not about pushing out as much content as possible. In fact, this actually results in more work and fewer results. Instead, it’s a much better idea to release one or two articles per month, and make sure they have at least 1,200+ words or more in content. Case study after case study has shown that longer blog content ranks better, and if you want to outrank the competition, these are the simple steps you should follow.
By having longer articles and fewer individual articles to promote, this can drastically improve the ROI from your content creation and marketing efforts.
These are just a few of the simple steps you should be following when creating content for your site. It will take some time to learn and master in the beginning, but as you start to push out new content, it will become second nature.
Promote Your Social Profiles and Make Social Sharing Easy
With your WordPress themes and plugins now in place, it’s important to start thinking about the many different ways to improve the user experience when they are on your site.
The cleanliness of the design and having proper navigation are two excellent places to start. You will also want to make sure your content looks nice and is shareworthy. If this is something you already have an interest in, I highly recommend you read through these social media marketing tips for bloggers and content creators.
Speaking of shareworthy, if you want your site visitors to start sharing your content with others and through social media, you are going to need to make this process as easy as possible. The best way to accomplish this is through the use of a social sharing plugin that will add buttons right to the top and bottom of your posts.
Some of the most popular plugins out there for this are Social Snap, Social Warfare Plugin, Easy Social Share, and Sassy Social. As mentioned in the previous plugin section, many of these plugins will be available for free download and use, but will also have premium upgrades for improved tracking and customization.
Understand the Importance of SEO and Backlink Building
Now that we have most of the basics covered about launching your site, now we should quickly cover the basics of how to get your site ranked in Google. It’s also important to understand what makes some site content rank in Google most often and higher than other articles.
It’s also important to note that there are plenty of WordPress SEO plugins to help with the optimization of your content as well. Just like WordPress has plugins and themes to help with the content and user experience on your site, they have built-in options for improved SEO as well. These are perfect for anyone just starting out, but also want to improve their titles, descriptions, and keywords but not having to jump into SEO research full time.
Without getting too technical, sites rank in Google because of the content they create and the number of backlinks they get from other websites.
When you have longer articles on your site, this also helps you rank higher and more often, because Google sees a wider variety of words, information, and keywords in relation to your article.
At the same time, backlinks (when another site links back to your site) are also extremely important. This is how Google measures the authority and quality of your site.
The more high-quality backlinks you have from other authority and trusted sites, the more likely you are to see improvement in your search rankings.
This whole concept is a learning process that you will better understand over time. And as you start to create new content on your site or start guest posting and get more backlinks and social promotion, you will also start to see new rankings appear in Google as well.
There is also nothing special that needs to be done in order to rank your site on Google. Once their algorithm starts to see any motion with your site in reference to content, social media, or backlinks, they will automatically index your site.
WordPress Tips for Every New and Successful Blogger
No matter if you are just starting your first website or blog, or you already have one in place with thousands of visitors per day, it’s a long journey and one that you will continue to get better at day after day.
The best content creators and bloggers in the world today understand what their audience wants, and focus on a tiny niche market. Do the same, and there is no reason why you shouldn’t be on your way to having a successful site of your own.
