It’s estimated that around 576,000 new websites are created every day 400 websites created every minute. Unimaginable, isn’t it? According to SEMRush, out of the 1.7 billion websites globally, 500 million are blogs.
These statistics shouldn’t overwhelm but motivate you to invest time and resources to create outstanding websites – a hyper-effective tool for your business or cause. In this blog, we will discuss the best ways to improve your website on WordPress (the most common web hosting platform).
Quick tips to improve various aspects of your WordPress website and boost your startup or established business.
Design and User Interface
Update or Change Theme
Always be on the lookout for new website design trends to stay ahead of the curve. Most users can tell if you use the same website that you first created in 2010. Your website’s design affects your brand.
Improve Readability
Focus on fonts, line spacing, bulleting, image to text ratio, paragraphing, etc., to ensure enhanced readability. The more readable your website or blog is, the longer your pages per session will be, and the more people will reach your CTAs.
Add Eye-Catching Elements
Using HD photos or infographics, consistent and clear color scheme, crisp and smoothly written content are some ways to make eye-catching websites. Being creative is the key.
Make It Mobile-Friendly
80% of the top-ranked websites are mobile-friendly. The majority of users are on mobile now, making purchases and using the internet through them, making it imperative for businesses to have a mobile-friendly website.
Speed and Performance
Employ WordPress Caching Plugins
A WordPress caching plugin creates a copy of the page after the first load. It then serves that cached version to every subsequent user instead of going through the whole page generation process every time — making your website 2x to 5x faster. WP Rocket or WP Super Cache are good plugin examples.
Find Faster Web Hosting
The type of web hosting affects your website’s speed. Shared or low-quality hosting services aren’t the best WordPress hosting options. Instead, go for managed WordPress hosting options, as this will allow your site to run on a server specially optimized for WordPress; you needn’t take care of any of the technical stuff of running a website. Here are some best hosting for WordPress examples.
Interactivity
Polls and Quizzes
Quizzes are classic. Polls are now trending, with almost all socials offering poll options to their users. Include these elements to make your website interesting, eye-catching, and more stickable. They are also great lead generation gateways as you can ask users to enter their data to submit their answers.
Ratings and Feedback
Enabling trust should be the foundational purpose for every website. Including user-generated, unedited feedback, reviews, and testimonials to websites effectively does that.
Twitter Widgets
Many top websites have Twitter widgets to show what’s being tweeted about their products, services, or business overall. You can also show informative tweets made on your industry.
Reward Programs
Reward programs spur word-of-mouth marketing — the most potent kind of marketing. So offer rewards every time your visitors sign up, purchase, write a review, or refer your business to others.
Games
Gamifying your website increases its stickability since it gives an entertaining element to your website. Also, it can help you increase sales. For instance, you can let users play games on your website and win redeemable points. You can complexify this in many ways.
User Experience
Focus On High-Quality, Informative Content
The best websites nourish visitors with valuable information. You can ensure the same with crisp, relevant, to-the-point and well-transitioned content. Content can also include audio and video elements and not just written words.
Have Multiple Communication Channels
What if the website content doesn’t offer all the information visitors need? Create easy-to-find touchpoints where they connect to your sales or support staff, grievance officers, etc. For example, displaying phone numbers, emails, contact forms, or social media links on your website.
Include A Call To Action
A website is a tool for you to make your users do business with you and not just a place to gain information. So, strategically place CTAs on your website. CTAs depend on your goal. Examples are: Sign Up, Buy Now, Learn More, Watch Video, Download Ebook, etc.
Searchability
URL
A search engine bot scraping through millions of websites will have trouble finding your page with a permalink like this: ‘example.com/?p=123844852231’. Instead, create URLs like this: ‘example.com/10-commandments-of-WordPress-support.’ To fix existing URLs, visit your WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks > Post Name.
Keywords
Without targeted keywords, the chances of your website getting (organically) found by people looking for you online is zero. To find the right keywords for your business and insert them in your web URLs, webpages, and blogs to rank well on SERPS and gain more visitors.
Plugins
Here’s a list of Search Engine Optimization plugins to integrate with your WordPress website to always gain top rankings.
Conclusion
Websites give you digital life and not just an identity. Regardless of your business’s size or type, you need a website. We hope this article helps you create a state-of-the-art website or optimize your existing one for increased customer acquisition and massive growth.
One thought on “Pro Ways to Optimize Your WordPress Website for 2022”
Thanks for the article and for the tips Megan. I find it pretty funny that the default permalinks format for wordpress is still the crappy ‘example.com/?p=123844852231’ style rather than the post name titles.