As a blogger, artist, or business owner, you want your website to attract visitors, right? To do that, you’re constantly adding quality content, responding to comments, and promoting your site on social media.
But something is missing. When was the last time you checked your WordPress website’s user experience? How easy (or difficult) is it for someone to find, read, and use your website?
Many people forget about this very important aspect of a website. Fortunately, there are many WordPress hacks to boost your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) and usability.
These WordPress hacks won’t only get more people to your site but they’ll stay longer. You’ll get more conversions or followers getting you a greater ROI.
Are you ready to improve your website’s user experience? Check out these 9 WordPress hacks and plugins that are sure to improve your site!
1. Pick a User-Friendly WordPress Theme
Every great WordPress starts with a great theme. WordPress offers thousands of wonderful-looking themes, many of which offer excellent SEO. The caveat is not all themes are right for your business or user-friendly.
Many WordPress themes come with extra plugins and scripts you won’t use. This can cause your site to have slow loading times and fill it with unnecessary features. You want a theme that’s easy to navigate and read while boosting SEO.
Before you pick a theme, run the demo through the Google web.dev tool. This tool rates the site’s performance, SEO, accessibility, and best-practices.
2. Use a Free SEO Plugin
SEO is all about making your site discoverable. Websites with outstanding SEO will rise to the top of a search engine’s result page. Sites with terrible SEO will be much more challenging to find.
Give your site an SEO boost by adding a free WordPress SEO plugin. There are many to choose from but Yoast SEO and All In One SEO Pack are 2 highly rated options.
An SEO plugin doesn’t automatically improve SEO. It works as a guide to help you improve SEO and best-practices.
If you want to learn more about SEO, this company offers great SEO services and advice to help you improve your site.
3. Keep Your WordPress Site Clean
One of the best ways to improve readability, SEO, and usability is to create a clean well-maintained website. Large Blocks of text and unnecessary features make your website difficult to use. Keep your website simple.
You also need to keep your WordPress site clean on the backend. This involves cleaning your dashboard by updating plugins, updating the theme, removing unused themes, and deleting unused plugins. Cleaner sites perform better and are less susceptible to hacking.
4. Improve Security
WordPress sites, like any website, are at risk for cyber attacks. A hacked site leads to poor SEO and usability. In some cases, you may lose access to your site entirely.
One of the most important WordPress hacks is to install a highly-rated security plugin. Other good practices include:
- Backing up the website
- Removing old WordPress installations
- Choose a strong password
- Create a new admin user
There is more you can do but this list is a good start. A clean site with quality security plugins is less vulnerable to attacks.
5. Use Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free marketing tool designed to give you an insight into your website’s performance. It shows you the number of site visitors, how they found your website, and how long they stay on your site. It’s a quick and easy way to know what’s going on with your website without having to log in to your WordPress dashboard.
These insights can show you what areas are doing well and what areas of your site need improvement. You can improve your site’s SEO and user experience.
6. Enable SEO Permalinks
Did you know the structure of URLs in your site can impact your SEO? WordPress formats URLs like https://domain.com/?p=123 which isn’t search engine-friendly. This URL setup doesn’t share what the site is about.
Change the appearance of your URLs by navigating to the Settings panel and selecting Permalinks. Choose “Post name” to make URLs easier to read and improve your site’s SEO.
7. Offer Useful Content
No matter how user-friendly or great your site’s SEO is, a website with useless content is a waste of time and space. Make your visitor’s time worth the visit by posting only quality useful content.
You can improve the quality of your content with these simple WordPress hacks:
- Offer solutions to customers’ common problems
- Set a content creation goal
- Edit blogs and content
- Analyze what content does well
Follow these tips and your website traffic will grow.
8. Optimize Your Site for Speed
You have less than 15 seconds to impress your site visitors. A slow-loading and poorly designed site will cause visitors to leave in less time.
Optimize your site’s speed by reducing image sizes and installing an image optimizing plugin. There are also many speed-optimizing and caching plugins designed to make your website load faster. The goal is to have your site load in 1-2 seconds to prevent visitors from leaving.
9. Make Your Site Responsive
Mobile smartphones and tablets are becoming the most common way people view websites. They’re also more likely to leave a site that doesn’t fit their screen. Optimizing your website for use on a phone or tablet is a necessity.
WordPress offers several plugins that allow you to make your site responsive with ease, especially if you’re new to creating websites. Look for plugins that automatically format your site for mobile view. Some plugins will allow you to convert your site into a mobile app for increased ease-of-use.
Another option is to manually make your site responsive. In your WordPress site editor, there’s an option at the bottom to view your site as a desktop, tablet, or smartphone. You can directly edit your site to fit both tablets and phones.
Follow These WordPress Hacks Today
If you want to improve the readability, usability, and overall SEO score of your website, you need to follow these WordPress hacks. More people will have access to your site leading to greater traffic and a better ROI.
Check out our latest Business articles to learn more great ways you can optimize your business!
