WordPress is the most popular content management system, with 43.7% of all websites using it, and it’s the first choice for many businesses and individuals. However, websites are far from complete once you add content.
You need to put in a lot of work to make the website engaging and optimized for search engines, and you can do this on your own or hire SEO specialists and developers. But you’ll need to do your due diligence if you want to do it on your own.
This article explores the key concepts you need to understand before you start optimizing your website, as well as some of the best methods to do so.
Reasons to use WordPress
One of the main reasons to use WordPress is that it’s approachable. There are hundreds of tutorials on creating and optimizing such websites. Furthermore, there’s extensive community and support if you find yourself in front of a barrier.
The fact that there’s a vast community also means that there are a lot of developers. You can find tens of thousands of different themes that allow you to personalize your website for your niche.
Although there are a lot of free themes, the best ones can be costly. There are also website builders, such as Elementor and Pro, that allow you to customize your front end even if you aren’t experienced in web development.
Similarly to website builders, there’s also software in the form of plugins that can help you with a number of different processes. There are plugins for SEO, marketing, integrations with CRMs, cybersecurity, and much more.
Although you’ll have to invest time, and even money, in SEO, WordPress is by itself SEO-friendly, making it easy for you to optimize your website.
User engagement explained
The term user engagement is used to describe how visitors interact with your website. User engagement is a metric that can be measured, allowing you to understand how well is your website performing.
For example, you can measure metrics such as:
- Website visits,
- Bounce rate,
- Time spent on each page,
- Number of shares
These numbers allow you to understand whether your SEO strategy is good, how attractive your website is, and how good is your content. Good user engagement leads to more conversions, sales, and other actions that lead to the success of your business.
You can improve your user engagement through a better and more functional design, SEO strategies, and a better reputation.
Best methods for optimizing WordPress websites
Website development has been around almost since the early days of the internet. With more people having websites now than ever, the bare minimum you have to do is becoming increasingly demanding.
Take a look at the methods below in order to understand some of the key problems you should tackle for your WordPress website.
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Good hosting provider
One of the foundations of a good website is having a hosting provider that’s reliable and fast. If you lack good hosting services, there’s a high likelihood that your website will be inaccessible at times or slow in times of high traffic.Hosting providers often offer customer support that can help you solve certain problems immediately. This includes problems regarding WordPress and performance.
Many hosting providers offer servers that are optimized for WordPress websites, allowing you to make a better choice. If you plan on scaling in the future, you shouldn’t choose subpar hosting providers to reduce your expenses.
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Optimized themes
After you choose the best hosting service, one of the most important steps is to pick a theme that resonates with your audience. It’s also important that the theme of your choice is lightweight so that your website doesn’t have performance problems in the future.
When it comes to interactions with the page and time spent, a good theme is one of the most important aspects of your website. In short, if your theme looks good, you can expect a higher user engagement.
There are a number of websites on which you can find themes tailored to your taste and goals. Grace Themes has hundreds of responsive options that you can customize using website builders of your choice.
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Light-weight plugins
As mentioned earlier, plugins can enhance your website with dozens of different functionalities, starting from marketing to cybersecurity. However, too many plugins can cause tech sprawl which can lead to unnecessary costs and performance issues.Although a good hosting plan will likely be able to run resource-heavy plugins without too many problems, it’s still best to go lightweight. You should aim to install only plugins that are necessary for your operations and fit your hosting plan.
You can also find plugins that optimize your website’s performance without you having to do everything manually. For example, you can use:
- WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache for caching
- Smush for image compression
- Yoast SEO for search engine optimization
Too many, or poorly coded plugins can lead to performance issues on your user’s side, ultimately leading to lowered user engagement.
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Image optimization
Anyone who’s dabbled in marketing knows how good images are important for user engagement. Thumbnails, for example, attract visitors, funneling them to your content. On the other hand, images throughout the text can be used for instructions.
Regardless, images can also significantly affect a website’s performance. Large, unoptimized images can slow down a page’s loading speed and the overall website. If users need to wait a longer time to access their desired destination, they can give up.
You should explore tools that allow you to compress images without a significant loss in quality. Choosing images of the proper file format is also important for performance purposes. Enabling lazy loading also helps with engagement as it defers the loading of offscreen images.
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Accessibility features
Improving the accessibility of your website can have a number of advantages for user engagement and your overall business. This is very important, as there are individuals who aren’t able to hear or see, and having features that help them navigate the website is important.
You’ll be able to tap into the audience that was previously unable to interact with content such as yours. Furthermore, having an accessible website will allow you to improve your reputation, stand out, and build loyalty with customers.
In terms of accessibility, it’s also important that you make a website in simple language and have easy-to-use navigation. For this part, it’s also helpful if you use sufficient color contrasts and visible fonts.
Another aspect you need to take care of is the possibility of using the website on multiple devices. A responsive theme will allow users to visit the website from a phone without your website lacking any features that a desktop version has.
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Interactive elements
Walls of content can be good enough for user engagement and value, yet there’s no need to rely on that. In the current landscape, there are a number of different features and interactive elements that could help you stand out.
Instead of quoting statistics, you should create infographics that the users can interact with, and that fit the identity of your website. Add interesting features such as surveys or quizzes at the end of each article.
With AI software and modern programming languages, adding these features has never been easier.
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Optimized stored documents on the website
Depending on the niche and type of your website, you can have documents, applications, or other files that the visitors would want to download. This can sometimes impact your website’s performance poorly.
You should compress these files just like we’ve explained with images. Naturally, the pages with these files should look and feel legitimate. You can use tools like SmallPDF Editor to optimize PDF documents.
It’s also important to take care of potential setbacks and problems the users might experience once they start downloading a certain file. Make a step-by-step instruction and leave warnings on phishing attempts.
Optimizing your WordPress website is crucial for your success
Even if you’ve given it all in order to make your website as optimized as possible, there’s always an X factor that could impact your ranking and user engagement. The next steps could be building backlinks and making the website more interactive.
However, if you don’t do the basic methods outlined here, user engagement will certainly be low. Don’t forget to explore your niche and competitors in order to understand some of the aspects that your website lacks.
Explore the industry you’re in and do an extensive analysis of your website in order to attract new customers, retain your current ones, and stand out among the competitors.