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WordPress tips: How to improve your website with WordPress?

by SW Team

WordPress is one of the world's most popular content management systems (CMS) that allows you to easily create and manage a website. It is used to create all kinds of websites, from blogs to online shops, although for these shops it is more recommended to use PrestaShop, which is another popular CMS.

In addition, this CMS is easy to use, customisable and offers a wide range of features so that you can create a minimal solid online presence. If you have a WordPress website, it is important that you keep it updated and optimised to get the maximum performance. In this blog, we provide you with practical tips on how to improve your WordPress website. These include everything from how to optimise the speed of your website to how to keep it secure.

Tips for WordPress

1. Optimising website loading speed

The loading speed of a website is a critical factor for user experience and search engine ranking. If your website takes too long to load, visitors will leave quickly, which will increase the bounce rate and negatively affect ranking.

To optimise the loading speed of your WordPress website, here are some tips:

  • Use a quality hosting that offers a good "bandwidth", as this will make the website go faster. If you have a very large website, the limited bandwidth will negatively affect the website, no matter if you have news, blogs, videos, etc.
  • Update WordPress and plugins regularly. Also, remove unnecessary plugins or those that slow down the loading of the site. It is better to install a cache plugin to reduce page load time.
  • Use a lightweight and optimised theme, as a theme with a lot of unnecessary graphics and features can slow down the performance of your site.
  • Use a cache plugin, as mentioned above. This can help optimise loading speed by temporarily storing your site files in the server's cache.
  • Compress your images, as high resolution images can be one of the main causes of slow loading times. Use tools to compress them without losing quality, such as TinyPNG or ShortPixel.

2. Use a quality theme and plugins

Choosing a quality theme and plugins can make a big difference to the appearance and functionality of your website. You should look for quality themes and plugins that are continually being updated and optimised in order to ensure speed and security. Also, you should be careful with free themes and plugins, as they can be vulnerable to security attacks and contain bugs.

Do not skimp on quality, as this can affect the user experience and, consequently, the popularity of your website. So here are a few tips:

  • Look for themes and plugins from developers with a good rating and reputation in the WordPress community. This ensures that you are using quality products and that you will have support and updates in the future.
  • Avoid using pirated themes and plugins or those from untrusted sources, as they may contain viruses or malware that can compromise the security of your website.
  • When you choose a theme, make sure that it is compatible with the version of WordPress you are using, that it is easy to customise, and that it includes the functionality you need for your website to function properly.
  • Opt for plugins that are well designed and do not overload the website. It is important that they do not add too many scripts or requests to the server, as this also can negatively affect the loading speed.

3. Customise the website as much as possible

One of the great advantages of WordPress is the ability to fully customise your website. You can choose from thousands of themes and plugins to give your site a unique look and feel and add specific functionality to your business. In addition, you can customise the CSS and HTML code to make more advanced changes to the design of your website.

Customisation is important, especially if you want to stand out from the competition and attract your target audience. That's why we leave you with a few tips about this:

  • Choose a colour palette that is consistent with the visual identity of your brand. If you already have a logo or some branding material, use the same colours, or from the same chromatic range.
  • Sort and select fonts, as with colours, choosing fonts that are easy to read and consistent with your brand's visual identity is essential. In addition, these fonts must have their specific function; title, subtitle, credits, etc.
  • Customise your navigation menu. Create a navigation menu that is easy to use and shows the most important aspects of your website. Make sure that links to the important pages of your website are included in the menu.
  • Use quality images and videos, as they can make your website more attractive and visually interesting. Make sure that the images and videos you use are of high quality and fit the theme of your website.
  • Don't forget to personalise your home page. As it is the first impression that visitors have of your website, you need to customise it so that it is visually interesting and shows the most important aspects of the website.
  • Use widgets, which are tools that allow you to add additional functionality to your website. For example, a contact form, a call-to-action button or a list of recent blog posts.
  • It is essential that you optimise your website for mobile devices. Many people access the Internet from their mobile devices, so it is important that your website looks and functions well on a variety of devices.

4. Keeping the website secure

Keeping your WordPress website secure is crucial to protect your content, prevent malicious attacks and ensure the privacy of your visitors. So, here are some tips on how to keep your website secure with this CMS:

  • Keep your WordPress, themes and plugins that you have downloaded, always updated, as these updates usually contain security patches that protect your website from possible vulnerabilities.
  • Use strong passwords and change them regularly. Avoid using common or easy-to-guess passwords, and use a combination of letters, numbers and special characters.
  • It is very important that, among the plugins, there is one for security in order to detect and prevent attacks. For example, in SW Hosting we install one automatically, the All in One WP Security.
  • Don't forget to make regular backups of your website. That's why, at SW Hosting we offer you a multi-site backup service, if you want to know it in depth, we have a blog about it, click here to read it.
  • You need to limit login attempts, by doing this you can prevent hackers from trying to guess your password and gain access to your account.
  • Use SSL certificates (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates, because it is essential if your website collects sensitive information from visitors. For example, payment information or personal data.
  • Remove plugins and themes that you no longer use, as they often contain security vulnerabilities. These can be a potential gateway for hackers. Therefore, it is important to remove them if you do not use them regularly to keep your website secure.

5. Use SEO best practices

SEO is fundamental to the success of any website, and WordPress offers many options to optimise your website for search engines. Here are some tips to improve your WordPress SEO:

  • Optimise keywords in the title and description of the page.
  • Use permalinks that are keyword friendly.
  • Optimise images to include relevant keywords in the alternative text and title tag.
  • Use SEO plugins to optimise your meta-tags and analyse keywords.

We have a blog that deals specifically, and in depth, with how to improve the SEO of any website, click here to read it. 

6. Monitor website performance

To know if your efforts are giving results, it is important to monitor the performance of your website. You can do this using tools such as Google Analytics or PageSpeed Insights. These tools will help you understand how users interact with your website and give you an idea of how to improve loading speed and user experience. Here are some tips about performance monitoring:

  • Use specialised monitoring tools such as Google Analytics. These will give you detailed information about the loading time of your website, the number of visits and much more.
  • Analyse the use of the resources your website uses, such as images and plugins, to ensure that they are not slowing down its performance. Use tools such as P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) to analyse the use of resources and disable those that are affecting performance.
  • Monitor the availability of the website, as it is essential to verify that your website is available all the time. Use tools that specialise in monitoring availability and send alerts if there is any problem. 

Some useful plugins for WordPress

Plugins are tools that serve to improve the functionality of your WordPress website. It is important to mention that you can also improve the user experience of your WordPress website by using plugins. These small programs can help you add additional features to your website and improve its functionality. Some of the most popular plugins are:

  • Yoast SEO: This plugin helps you to optimise your website for search engines. You can easily configure meta tags, generate sitemaps and analyse the content of your pages.
  • WPForms: This plugin allows you to create custom and easily editable contact forms for your website. You can also create surveys and registration forms with this tool.
  • W3 Total Cache: This is a speed optimization tool that helps your website load faster. It creates cached copies of your content and optimises images to reduce loading time.
  • WP Mail SMTP: It is used to fix problems with the website's email. With this plugin, you can change the way WordPress sends emails. Instead of using the default method, it uses a third party email server like Gmail to send emails from your website. This plugin is automatically installed in SW Hosting, when you contract any web hosting with WordPress. In addition, it is the one that is already configured to, for example, send you the password changes to your email.
  • All in One WP Security: It offers a wide range of functions to protect your website from possible cyber attacks. By installing this plugin, you can have more control over the security of your website and keep it protected against possible attacks. This is another of the plugins that SW Hosting gives you automatically installed when you contract any website hosting with WordPress.
  • All in One Migration: It allows you to easily migrate your website from one server to another. This plugin is very useful for those who need to change hosting or who want to create a backup of their website, because all files and databases can be exported and then imported to a new server with just a few clicks. This is another of the plugins that SW Hosting gives you automatically installed when you contract any website hosting with WordPress.
 




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