Are you a new blogger or an already established blogger who have written a 1000+ articles? It doesn’t matter in what situation you are but these five things are a must haves for every WordPress blog. I get asked frequently about what are the top most things that are must haves for a WordPress blog. I thought it is best to write a post about this so it can help anyone who are just starting out, although this can also help out intermediate level bloggers to check their list as well.
For all these 5 topics, I have also included the related plugins wherever applicable that you can install for your WordPress blog.
-
Archives page
This not only provides an easy way for your visitors to navigate your blog better but also provides a motivation for you to write more. Just click on the days to find out how many articles you’ve written. My favorite plugin for this purpose is the Archives Calendar Widget.
-
Commenting and Contacting System
A very logical way to increase more visitors is to have a working comment and contact system for your blogs. Even if you have great content and how-to guides, but doesn’t have a neat commenting or contacting system for your visitors, there will not be any organic traffic on your website. This also stops social interactions happening on your website. Imagine yourself as a visitor in someone’s blog – if you don’t have a way to send a feedback how would you feel? Thus, ensure you have a good commenting system in place. Contact form is also important for a blog, especially if you want your visitors to interact with you directly more on a personal note. This improves blog followership on the whole.
Ponder more: Edit WordPress comments to remove HTML tags
Related plugin: Jetpack is my favorite plugin that provides an excellent way for this.
-
Secure your blog
At least a couple of times, I get an email saying that my blog was under a threat and some random user from a random country tried to login to my WordPress blog. This is a very common situation and it can happen to anyone. If you haven’t already installed a security plugin for your blog and worse, if you don’t have a secured password for your WordPress admin dashboard, please rush to this plugin and install it to secure your blog. This also sends you an email alert whenever somebody tries to login to your blog or make any brute force attacks with WordPress blog login.
These are some of the plugins related to WordPress security. My favorite is Wordfence Security. Pick your choice for securing your blog with these plugins.
-
Change your Permalink structure
This is a no-brainer. If you have started blogging then am sure you are aware of what an SEO is. If not, please get yourself acquainted with this term SEO, because you will find this being used often by almost every blogger you’ll come across.
Eventually, every post written by every blogger will rank somewhere in the Google results page. But there are bright chances for only those to appear on page 1 of the SERP pages that has SEO done. Permalink plays a vital role in doing that exact thing.
Here’s how you can alter your Permalink in WordPress:
By default, WordPress keeps permalinks designed like http://sample.com/?p=123
You can (and should) change it by going to
http://www.YourSampleSite123.com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php
You can either select ‘Post name’ option or choose anything you like. Preferably ensure to have ‘sample-post’ or ‘post-name’ included in your permalink “always”. This can help boost your blog traffic tremendously.
-
About me page
Of course, there is no reason why I included this as #5 in the must haves list. This is a very key ingredient in branding your blog. Ensure a photo is included if you want to personalize and create a brand image for your blog. This will also contain information as to why you blog, who you are, who the founders of the blog are, when was it created, why was it created, how a visitor can reach you, where can they reach you at, etc. This will become your virtual visiting card/business card for all your visitors which you will provide for anyone who visits your blog. My favorite is the Starbox – the Author Box for Humans WordPress plugin.
Related Plugins: https://wordpress.org/plugins/search.php?type=term&q=about
This is not an exhaustive list and I can go on and on about the basic needs for a WordPress blog. However, when I sat out thinking about what tweaks I made when I started my blog, these were the 5 top things that came to my mind. Hope you found these useful. What 5 things you have done when you started first? I will be glad to know more, please do leave it in your comments below.
We hope you like utilizing the Prime Eleven 2015 Hack and suggest us in your mates by
sharing this website.