Helpful WordPress Tips For Amateurs

Once you have created a website using WordPress, you may be wondering what your next step is. With a simple user interface, most users are able to easily build a website using the theme of their choice. While site creation is a breeze, there are several areas that are easily overlooked. WordPress has features that will aid you as publish new posts and attempt to reach more visitors. Learn more about these features by checking out the most helpful WordPress tips for beginners.

Change Permalinks
Before you create your first post or page, it is a good idea to change the default settings for permalinks. Permalinks are the URLs of your pages and posts. By default, WordPress will create a permalink for each post or page that contains a variety of special characters. This results in a URL that unreadable to humans and can even be difficult for search engines to understand. Luckily, changing the default setting for permalinks is easy. Head over to the Permalinks Settings page on your dashboard, which is underneath the Settings category. Change the Common Settings from Default to Post Name. Save the changes and now your URLs will contain the post name. For example, if you create a post titled “How to Create a WordPress Site”, the URL would then appear as /how-to-create-a-wordpress-site. This is much easier to read and will help with the search engine optimization of your site.

Publish Posts using a Schedule
If you plan on creating a lot of posts on your WordPress site and want to attract more visitors with good SEO techniques, then consider scheduling your posts to be published at a later date. Instead of publishing several posts on a single day and then having nothing to post for the rest of the week, you could schedule one post to be published each day. Having a regular schedule of new content increases the chances that you will have return visitors. Scheduling posts is also helpful if you plan on going on vacation or want to start a consistent publishing schedule. To schedule a post to be published later, click on the Edit link to the right of Publish Immediately. Select the date and time you wish your post to be published and the click on the Schedule button. Your post is now scheduled for publishing.

Embedding Content in Your Posts
Adding videos and tweets in your posts has been made easier with the most recent updates to WordPress. WordPress allows you to embed content from a variety of media websites and from twitter. The websites that work with this WordPress feature include Flickr, YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo, Viddler, and Twitter. From any of these sites, copy the URL of the content you plan on embedding in your post. Inside the Post Editor, paste the URL where you want the content to appear in your post. That is how simple it is to embed content from any of those sites.

These three WordPress features will help keep your visitors coming back and increase your search engine optimization. This is just the start as there are many other useful features and tips. Keep learning and exploring all that WordPress has to offer.