Hello! Welcome you all to the brand new series of ours entitled WordPress Tutorial! Since this is the very first article in the series, I will actually start from scratch, that is, guiding you WordPress newbies through a short course about WordPress blogging. If you are not sure how essential it is, let me put it in a simply way: Whatever you do with WordPress will involve blogging. For example, are you a WordPress content writer? If so, this article will provide you with some tips to come up with great topics that will attract more attention and engagement. Now, let’s say you are a WordPress developer, I bet you need to read WordPress blogs for new trends coming up, right? And even if you are a WordPress website owner having a whole team of content writers who help you create the meat for your site, you do still need blogging knowledge in order to become a good leader of your website. How on Earth can you run a website without knowing anything regarding its content?
Therefore, my dearies, whether you are a WordPress content-writer, a developer, a designer, or simply someone who is going to own a WordPress website in the future, I suggest you should sit down, get yourself together and start reading my article! I promise it will not be a waste of time!
Enough chit-chat, let’s get the party started!
Since headlines are the first things people see of your articles, they should be interesting and provocative enough to get attention and clicks! It is a sad fact that no matter how good or informative the content is, no one would bother to read your article if they did not get hooked into it by the headline.
Therefore, remember to follow the tips below when it comes to headlines:
The simple idea to apply here is that when you write about something you have a good grasp of or are passionate about, your love for it will shine through your writing. I do not know about you, but for me, loving the job I am doing is certainly something that makes my career more enjoyable. I believe it will work well in your case, too. In case you need to have articles about something that you are not very knowledgeable about, adding some authors to your team is an ideal solution. At the moment, there are many WordPress themes that support multiple authors or custom author pages.
Anyway, if you do not want to grant those authors the control over your blog, try this plugin called User Role Editor for WordPress to limit their access.
Bear in mind that a successful article is one that makes readers want to share with others once they finished reading. Solve their problems! Give them useful information! That is what a good article is all about if you are planning to become an excellent blogger. In order to get great subscription, you need to give great content, simple as that. Moreover, you should write with words and sentences that are easy to understand while limiting the use of technical and specialized words. Why? Because not everyone is a WordPress advanced users, too much specialized words will make your articles incomprehensible.
Quality is everything! Write with your heart, do not ever create content just to fill up the blank space of your website!
So as to make your blog more eye-catching, images (or infographics as we call them in WordPress) is a good option, if and only if you know how to use them wisely. How to be considered as “wisely”? Well, only use them if they are relevant! Do not just add images because they look good or to fill up the space in your articles. Remember that their purpose is to make it easier for readers to understand your content. What is more, do not forget to check whether it is copyrighted or not. In case it is, you have to mention its source.
One last thing, before uploading an image onto your website, you should compress it to make it more lightweight, hence decreasing loading time.
In this WordPress Tutorial, I feel like mentioning that many people make the mistake of underestimating website design. Therefore, make sure you will not become one of them. Just so you know, in fact, website design plays a big role in building your website’s readership. Furthermore, it also helps a lot in drawing a great amount traffic to the website while enhancing user satisfaction. Why is that? Because a clear design is not only favored by customers, but also by search engines! Their robots like something that is easy to crawl, just as much as we like something that is easy to read. Moreover, navigation is also very important when talking about website design.
Oh, navigation is also very important when talking about website design. Thus, having a clean and neat navigation system is literally a must.
Out of the 200 ranking factors defined by Google, site speed is also one, which means in order to get high ranking for your blog in search results, you need to make it load as fast as possible. Ask yourself the question of what to do when you come to a website that takes too long to load. You will leave and never come back, right? That is indeed the very same thing visitors will do to your website. Now as you have understood the agony, how to solve it? Well, purchase the right hosting and everything will be just fine. BlueHost and HostGator are two of the most highly recommended brand names, you should take a look.
As many experts advise that the first 3 seconds of total loading time will decide whether customers stay or leave, so, make it count!
You must know that any website or blog’s targets include user satisfaction. Because blogs feed on the attention from readers, what matters is to get them interacting with your website. If you are clueless about how to do it, here are some suggestions that some respectable WordPress figures have for you:
This is what I have just said above, and this method should be maximized by WordPress website owners. Giving away freebies will actually boost your traffic. By offering no-fee tutorials into solving popular problems and such free stuff as wallpapers, plugins or resources can enhance readership to the level you would never have expected.
If generous enough, you can try giving away premium stuff like themes and plugins. With those types of freebies given, users will definitely love and come to your website much more frequently.
Now as you have great posts with grabbing headlines in your website, what to do next? Get them go viral, of course! Using social networks properly will bring you more traffic, that is more blog clicks, page views and finally more visitors. Hopefully, it will also lead to a decrease in bounce rate! So how to get it started? Let’s take Twitter as an example, you can begin by following several active people and ask for a follow back. Not everyone you ask will agree, but it is worth trying. With each new follower you earn, every post you share on Twitter will get another post impression. That is how Twitter, and nearly any other social network, works. And with these post impressions, you will subsequently get more traffic!
See the advantage of using social networks yet? If yes, now good luck with getting as many followers as possible!
I know that a lot of WordPress users are more or less afraid of learning “WordPress Blogging”. It’s always believed to be complicated, difficult, and even time-consuming to some extent. However, don’t worry that much! Since there are several websites providing users with simple guide such as First Site Guide, now you can empower yourself with proper knowledge and preparation before getting online. This trustful resource is an educational website aimed at people who are looking to learn more about the online world. Firstsiteguide.com created in-depth online and PDF guides, WordPress video tutorials and other helpful web development tools and resources in order to help everyone with their online journey, and they have also covered content creation.
So, we have reached the end of the first WordPress Tutorial article! With the 9 tips above, I hope that I can help you WordPress newbies in digging your way through the whole big ocean of WordPress. Remember that this is just the tip of the iceberg, we have so many more to learn in the future. Worry not! Just keep on coming back to our website, and I will always be here in the very same series to be your companion on your way of learning WordPress.
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