7 Essential WordPress Tips You Need to Know This Year

Every month, WordPress users publish over 70 million new posts. As an internet user, you’ve likely visited thousands of sites running on the WordPress content management system. It’s a popular option as it allows you to run a website with minimal HTML experience.

Although WordPress is easy to use, it’s difficult to master. New plugins and SEO updates constantly change the game. If you want to find success with your WordPress site, you’ll have to stay up to date.

Whether you’re a WordPress beginner or an expert, we’ve compiled all the latest WordPress tips you need to know. Enhance your WordPress site with these 7 transformative strategies.

1. Curate the WordPress Media Library

By default, WordPress organizes your library according to upload date. Over time, you will fill your library with countless month-based folders. While this may not bother you at first, you will eventually have difficulty navigating your library for old content.

Here’s the solution: Since you can search your library by keyword, there is no reason to organize your library into multiple parts. In fact, it’s far more efficient to keep your content all in one place so long as you know the relevant keywords.

Disable the default media library organization by navigating to your Settings and Media tab and unchecking the Organize My Uploads option.

2. Control the File Size

Detailed images are both professional and captivating. Oh, and they have some massive file sizes, too. Bulky images on any page can increase the time it takes to load.

One detailed image is enough to impact your website’s performance. But visual content is an important component to any WordPress website. So what do you do?

The secret is to compress these images before publishing your blog post. Why does website performance matter?

Your website’s loading time can impact your overall search engine optimization. If it takes more than a few seconds on desktop or mobile, Google won’t be happy with you.

3. Pull the Plug(ins)

Every WordPress website should take advantage of plugins. Plugins offer additional functionality that may not be available in the default WordPress Suite.

But plugins do come with a few problems. First of all, they can slow down your website just like images with massive files sizes.

A more serious issue is plugins can introduce security vulnerabilities. This may not seem like a problem when you only use a few popular plugins. But when you have hundreds at any time, it only takes one malicious plug-in or security flaw to open you up to a serious breach.

Only use essential plug-ins. And the rest? Get rid of them.

4. Enable Maintenance Mode

Sometimes you might have to make significant changes to your WordPress site. Maybe you are trying out new themes or playing with potential plug-ins. Whatever the case may be, your WordPress site will be down until you are done mucking around.

Keep your visitors in the know by taking advantage of WordPress maintenance mode. This will lead viewers to a static informative page. It’s here you might include the estimated downtime or emergency contact information.

Technically, maintenance mode is a built-in feature. However, it’s a headache to use unless you are an experienced user. I would suggest using a maintenance mode plugin to keep things simple.

5. Put Keywords in Images

If you’re into WordPress blogging, this is one of our top tips. You should know that images are not just eye-candy. They are also an opportunity to improve your blog’s SEO.

What do I mean by that? Well, you can append title tags on WordPress images. Basically, you can inject relevant keywords into images, and search engines will value them.

Of course, you should not just stuff them into an image because you can. Keep it fluid. Your readers — and evaluating search engines — can detect keyword stuffing a mile away.

To add title tags, click the edit button after uploading the image, then add the tag in the title attribute section. Search engines value title tags highly, so this practice can be a game-changer.

6. Get Analytical

Want to know what else is a game-changer? Google Analytics. This tool gives you a remarkable amount of data that can inform your future SEO strategies.

For instance, you can discover the bounce rate of every page on your domain and pinpoint traffic origins. In some ways, Google Analytics can give you tips for blog content or targeted outreach.

Best of all, Google Analytics is completely free. The only problem is the program itself is robust and difficult to use to its full potential. When you set up Google Analytics on your website, you should also attend the Google Academy classes to better understand the software.

Still not sold? By incorporating Google Analytics now, you will have plenty of data to harness If you change your mind in the future.

7. Revise Permalinks

Permalinks are powerful. But what’s a permalink, again? A permalink is a link that leads to a specific page on your website.

Maybe you wrote an article about the top 10 SEO tips. The permalink might look like the-top-ten-tips-for-SEO-professionals.

Sort of a tongue twister, isn’t it? Well, search engines don’t like it either. Why don’t we simplify it to something like top-ten-seo-tips. This might seem like a small change, but it contains better keywords and less fluff.

WordPress Tips Make a Difference

If you want to take your WordPress site to the next level, these WordPress tips are your next step. They’re more than simple organization changes. Adopting even a few of these suggestions can dramatically improve your site’s SEO and traffic.

In short, these WordPress tips can open doors for you, no matter what type of website you run.

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