WordPress is by far the most popular content management system that powers most websites today. Thus, to become a good web admin, WordPress knowledge is essential. If you are interested in improving your WordPress website even further, take a look at our list.
SEO-friendly themes
We all know how important SEO is for a website’s success. Most people think that content is mostly determined by the content of the website, however, the theme you have chosen is also very important. First of all, responsive themes can help you with SEO. Responsive means that the website will look normal on different resolutions, smartphones, and tablets. An SEO-friendly theme should also be lightweight, lowering the loading time of your website. Some themes are coming with pre-installed plugins to lower increase the loading time.
Custom 404 page
There are various reasons for getting a 404 error. It can be caused by a changed link or a simple copy-paste error made by your visitors. If there is one thing certain about the 404 page, no one likes seeing that page. If you also don’t like that page, you can change it with a 404 plugin to create a custom 404 error page. It doesn’t solve the problem but it makes the page look less annoying.
Permalinks
WordPress creates a link for every post according to your directives. However, these links may not be SEO friendly always. Thus, you can edit the links for your posts from the Permalinks settings under Dashboard, Settings. From this menu, you can restructure the links for your posts, which is crucial for SEO.
Login attempts
WordPress’ popularity also attracts hackers of all sizes. In case some malicious third party finds your login page link and if you haven’t changed the admin username, there is nothing more than the password that protects your website. You can avoid this possibility by limiting login attempts. With a simple plugin, you can protect your website from brute force attacks.
Unused plugins
Although plugins are essential for WordPress, you may end up adding too many plugins. There are some plugins that are outdated or no longer necessary. Those plugins may seem harmless until they cause errors, but they are slowing the website’s loading speed. Thus, take a look at all the installed plugins, and remove the ones that are no longer used or unnecessary. Also, it would be wise to think twice before adding a new plugin.
Monitor the traffic
If you are interested in increasing your traffic, as most website owners do, search engines are your most important allies. Search engines not only redirect traffic to your website but also show you where are your visitors are coming from, with various tools. For example, Google Analytics can show where are your visitors are coming from, how long did they stay on the website, which links did they click, etc. So to increase your traffic, you can analyze those data to improve your traffic.
Content caching
Caching is a method that temporarily stores copies of site files in visitors’ browsers and can improve your loading speed drastically. The next time a visitor opens the page, instead of completing the whole loading process, the browser can load the cached files. You can enable caching by simply adding one of the popular caching plugins to your website. But also keep in mind that those cached files should be cleared after making changes.