WordPress is a great platform to build a website. The use of this platform is rapidly growing and there are over 75 million websites that run on this CMS. For every first time WordPress user, there are many common mistakes that might take place. We have compiled a list of the most common ones so that you can learn from them and avoid them when you start with a WordPress site.
THEMES
There are thousands of themes you can choose from for your website. So, how do you know which one will be the best for you? There may be very beautiful themes but, it isn’t necessary that these themes might be useful. You must use a theme from the approved list of developers. It is recommended that you use a premium theme and not a free one. There is no doubt that a premium theme will cost you some money but, you will be receiving many upgraded features and great support that you won’t receive with free themes. There are over 2600 free WordPress themes available but, you must not use these free themes unless its developers are well-known. If you use a free theme without knowledge of the developer, it might be possible that the theme might be faulty or embedded with malicious codes so that hackers can easily get access to your site.
SEO PLUGINS
Driving traffic from search engines is one of the biggest profits you can make. You can get this traffic driven to your site if you rank well and appear on the top few listings in search engines, and this can happen only if you have your site well-optimized. Thus, it is recommended that you use a SEO plugin with your website. There are hundreds of SEO plugins available in WordPress plugin directory. Just choose any from the list, ranging from free plugins to premium ones.
PERMALINKS
Change the permalink of your website, which is the link structure of your URL. The default link structure given to your site will be a coded one, which the audience will not be able to connect with. You must change it to one so that the users see and immediately understand what the site would be about. Try having keywords in your permalink so that it is easy for users to remember.
UPDATES
You must update your old blogs to bring in more traffic and let new users read your older blogs. But, remember not to change your URL while updating the post. This will only lead to a broken link and will show a 404 error when users try to land on your page, which will affect your ranking on SERPs.
NEW FEATURES
Never make the mistake of trying a new feature on your live site because if something goes wrong while doing so, you will have no option but to put your site offline until you fix up the issue. This will only lead to loss in terms of traffic from search engines, advertisement clicks, conversions and sales. The major loss might be losing your rank on Google! Why? Because if Google redirects a user there and finds you offline, you will start losing SEO points. Thus, it is advised that you create an experimental copy of your site and experiment there to keep your live site safe. Once the experiment is successful, you can simply merge it with your live site.
BACKUPS
What would you do if your website is hacked and the hacker modifies all your files? Isn’t it worth thinking? Well, you will not have to worry if you regularly take a backup of your site. This will help you restore all your files without losing any data. There are many tools available that can help you backup your files, databases, pages, posts and comments. Some of the tools are BackupBuddy, VaultPress, Dropbox, SkyDrive and BackWPUp. Make it a point to have your backups scheduled and secured.
These are only some of the most common mistakes that are made by WordPress beginners. There is a whole long list of such mistakes. Make sure to avoid these mistakes so that you don’t lose traffic, SEO points and in turn, money and business. It is advisable to hire WordPress experts to create and update websites for you. It is best to let professionals do their job. You can hire WordPress experts from Jain Technosoft who have great experience and have been creating WordPress sites for local as well as international clients.
