Mistakes are an inherent part of our human journey. We stumble, learn, and grow.
When embarking on your WordPress website adventure, your eagerness to set everything up and start sharing content is palpable. But hold on! There are crucial aspects of WordPress that often elude newcomers.
As a WordPress novice, there’s more to discover beyond the basics. Whether it’s choosing the right plugins, optimizing your site for speed, or understanding SEO, these essential elements can make or break your online presence. Fear not! We’ve got you covered. Let’s dive into the intricacies of WordPress and ensure you’re on the right track.
In this article, we’ll explore the top 10 common mistakes that every WordPress newbie should steer clear of.
Common WordPress Mistakes to Avoid
1. WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com
Most novice WordPress bloggers are confused when they have to choose between WordPress.com & self-hosted WordPress.org.
You need to know the difference between these two and decide to choose the right one for your new WordPress blog. WordPress.com is suitable for almost everyone who wants to create a free personal website.
But, if you are one of those, who want to control your website fully, then go for WordPress.org, but you need first to buy WordPress Hosting to install WordPress on it. It’s up to you to determine your needs first and choose your options carefully.
WordPress Made Easy team published a detailed guide on the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org that includes the differences between the two, the Pros & Cons of each version, and which one to choose based on your needs.
- Read also: WordPress vs Blogger (Pros and Cons)
2. Making use of the default favicon
Favicons are small icons that are displayed before your page title in the browser window. It acts as your site’s identity card. But, the majority of new WordPress bloggers neglect it completely. You must change it as soon as possible.
3. Using the default username (admin)
When you start using WordPress, it automatically generates a default username. Default usernames are predictable to hackers, using which hackers can perform a brute force attack easily on your site and can steal your login details to control your site.
As WordPress allows you to change the username during installation, you need to create a random username with a combination of numbers, letters, and special characters accompanied by a strong password. This will boost your blog’s overall protection.
Although WordPress has no option to change the username after you set it, you still can change your WordPress Admin Username manually after installing WordPress.
4. Several complex categories and tags
WordPress allows users to create several categories and tags. Making use of this facility, novice WordPress bloggers create several categories that create problems for users to navigate from one post to another on your site.
Ultimately, it affects your site loading time and users abandon your site immediately. Always try to limit tags and categories for your posts and hold your visitors for a long period on your site.
5. Using the default URL structure
Most of the new WordPress users use the default URL structure which is bad for SEO and your users, both. Many times, default URLs become excessively long and they don’t work properly.
Whenever you update your blog, edit the permalinks structure by going under Settings -> Permalinks for better performance of your site.
6. Ignoring WordPress updates
WordPress versions keep on rolling from time to time. As to run a WordPress site, operators need to take care of many aspects, novice bloggers tend to ignore WordPress updates primarily because of their inability to deal with technical issues.
This is a dangerous trend that makes their site open to various security vulnerabilities and hackers can hack their site easily. Newly launched versions of WordPress have more features and better protection against security threats than the previous ones.
Always update WordPress regularly and make sure you are using the latest version to run your blog smoothly and keep it as secure as possible.
7. Not backing up your website regularly
Several WordPress bloggers make a huge blunder of not creating a backup of their website. For expert hackers, it takes just a few minutes to hack your site and when it happens, you lose several years of your hard work (which you invested to make your site popular) in just a few seconds.
Sometimes, your site crashes because of excess traffic, server problems, or other technical glitches.
As nothing is 100% secured in the world of technology, just take the backup of your site to avoid the painful situation of losing your valuable data.
If your blog is hosted on WordPress.com, go to Tools -> Export in the dashboard to download a backup of your blog’s data.
In case, you have a self-hosted WordPress blog, go to phpMyAdmin tool, or a backup plugin to protect your data.
8. Your Blog is not Mobile Friendly
These days, a large number of people browse the internet through mobile devices and their numbers are growing swiftly compared to PC/laptop users. If your blog is not mobile-friendly, then you are likely to lose a big slot of traffic to your website and Google degrade its ranking in its search results.
To capitalize on the trend of mobile browsing fully, you need to use a responsive WordPress theme that adjusts itself automatically regardless of the type of device and screen size. You can also use a mobile plugin to make your blog mobile-compatible.
9. Neglecting SEO settings
When you install WordPress, it allows you to stop search engine bots from indexing your site. Many newcomer WordPress bloggers don’t check this development. That is why, their site never gets indexed by search engines.
There are several other bloggers whose entire site get de-indexed when they try to redesign themes. SEO settings for WordPress blog posts and pages are largely ignored by novice bloggers. Just make use of a good WordPress SEO Plugin and this will take care of issues related to SEO.
You need to draft a good quality Meta description for your site so that Google and other search engines read it and may rank your site in its index.
10. No use of Google Analytics
WordPress dashboard is insufficient to get detailed insights about your site. You can’t monitor various activities on your site until and unless you use Google Analytics. When you use this tool, you can easily monitor your site’s traffic, observe visitor’s behavior on your site, and can design keywords accordingly to grab more traffic to your website. Additionally, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to check the performance of your website.
SUMMARY
When you start WordPress blogging, you are bound to make several mistakes mentioned above primarily because of the lack of the basics of WordPress. Just take note of all the points detailed here above and be a star WordPress blogger easily by growing your site traffic, fans & followers.