Wordpress is known for it’s 1000’s of free theme templates and some of the best WordPress plugins are often free of charge too. Once you have your site online, you need to keep it up to date and work on ways to improve SEO and performance. Fortunately, WordPress has all of this covered.
Improving your WordPress SEO for free
By utilizing Wordpress plugins, we can add a wealth of additional functionality to your site. Most WordPress plugins are free, and so it is no surprise that there is a free plugin for boosting your SEO. WIth millions of active users, Yoast SEO has been the best SEO plugin for years now. The free version alerts you to keyword optimization opportunities, updates Google, and other search engines with your sitemap automatically and performs automated health checks of your overall SEO status. If you are looking for more advanced functionality such as intelligent content insights or internal linking and redirection management, then you will need to upgrade to a paid version. It’s safe to say that the free version is all you need to improve your site’s SEO and content with just a few clicks!
Improving your website’s design
Whether you are using a free or paid theme template for your website, you might want to refresh the look and feel of your site’s content. This is achievable for little or no cost by installing a WordPress page builder. There are many WordPress page builders available for free on the WordPress plugin page. One that stands out is Elementor which is a drag and drop page builder. If your pages need a refresh with additional components such as buttons, forms, and headlines, then this free plugin is for you. As with most of WordPress, there is no coding required as you simply install the plugin and then you can drag and drop over 90 pre-built widgets onto your page. Elementor is also great for website customization because it includes over 300-page templates to bring your old pages to life with no hassle.
Take website security seriously
As your WordPress website grows, you will need to consider your exposure to security threats. Once again, utilizing the power of WordPress plugins, we can deal with security threats with ease. The popular Wordfence plugin with over 3 million downloads is a must-have to help protect your website.
With features such as a built-in Firewall and Security Scanner, it is an obvious choice to keep your site safe. Peace of mind for both your readers and yourself is an essential factor, security solutions such as Wordfence also include a malware scanner, 2FA login, Live Traffic monitor, and IP & Country blocking features. If you upgrade from the free version, you also get access to the real-time malware database to further protect your website from threats.
Take marketing seriously
We all know that managing website content and engaging readers is a time-consuming activity. When a reader hits your site, you want them to keep coming back so that your effort in acquiring them is not lost. One way to achieve this is to have them subscribe to your site by opting into a mailing list. While this might feel like an old way of ensuring readers come back to you, if you offer an incentive like sending out relevant weekly emails to subscribers, or a discount if you run a shop then that can be a better way to boost subscriber levels. Plugins such as MailChimp can help with this by placing a customizable sign-up button anywhere on your site. MailChimp is one of the leading email subscription providers, and integration is seamless. You can use their email templates or create your own. Sending out your newsletter is a breeze and will guarantee that readers come back to you. Finally, the basic package doesn’t cost anything, so it’s certainly worth consideration.
Improve Site Performance with a few clicks
One of the reasons why websites get slow is that they host large images that take additional seconds to download to the reader’s web browser. Instead of spending hours or days going through your site and re-optimizing images, you can achieve automatically this with plugins. One great plugin designed precisely for this purpose is reSmush.it. After install of the plugin, it will scan your entire site for large images and adjust them as it sees fit. (Don’t worry, you can revert them back if you need to) After your images are all optimized, it will then ensure any newly uploaded image is adjusted accordingly without impacting quality.
Summary
As we have demonstrated, improving your WordPress website doesn’t have to be costly or time-consuming. Modernizing your website with a fresh page design or simply optimizing your site for a speed performance required no specialist knowledge or coding, and that’s how it should be!
