8 Useful WordPress Tricks Worth Checking Out

This curated overview of 8 useful WordPress tricks worth checking out focuses on useful options, standout features, and details worth checking before making a choice.

1. Pick the Right Theme 

You always want to start off any site with a good theme. The right theme can make or break your site, and premade plugins and themes help make for a better site through the functionality. Great themes are both aesthetically appealing and they are able to prioritize site speed, so keep an eye out on premade themes.

2. Create Internal Links

Linking throughout your site is obviously a major need, but what you want to do is make sure you have plenty of internal links as well. Internal linking allows viewers to hop around your site without having to scroll back up to menus or taskbars. These links provide a much more user-friendly experience that keeps people on your page for longer.

3. Prioritize SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is something you have probably heard thousands of times by now and it's about time you implement it into your site. Focusing on keywords, and the right keywords at that will help prioritize your sites listing on search engines. You need people to be able to find your content with just a few short clicks instead of having to scour the internet for your URL so make sure to include SEO-friendly keywords and content on your WordPress site.

4. Drag and Drop Editing

The hardest part that most people find for making a site is actually making the site's user interface. You might not know how to code, but you don't have to anymore when drag and drop editing tools allow you to simply plunk in the menus, boxes, and content that you need people to use. It takes all of the hassles out and it can be a lot more fun and time-efficient for you.

5. Manage Image Compression

Images are necessary for a good site because it needs to be visually appealing, but as stated prior, you need to make sure that there is a fine balance between site performance and aesthetic quality. Images can take time to load, so you need to compress them to make sure they aren't soaking up the amount of data needed to load the page. Image compression is a trick that isn't even that complicated as there are tools to do it for you.

6. Adding Tags to Images

On the topic of site images, you want to make them work for you in the same way that keywords in SEO function. Adding tags to your images makes them much more easily searched and appear in search engine queries. The best sites utilize the alt tag function so that they are higher ranked which makes them a lot easier to find, which is great news for anyone who runs a business on WordPress.

7. Create a Site Backup

You do it for your file folders, you do it for your hard drives, you can even do it for your OS, but you need to start doing it for your WordPress site as well. Creating a site backup or backup point for your work on the site helps keep you from losing all of your information and hard work. Some hosting services will provide these, but there are also third-party services/programs to help make a site backup. Don't lose all of your time and work because of something as silly as not backing it up.

8. SSL Certificates

No one wants to go to a site that is unsecured, and no one wants to spend money on one either. While people aren't super versed in internet security protocols, an SSL certificate for your site helps protect logins, payments, and other functional aspects of your user interactions so there is some trust there when they need to access you for whatever it is that your site is for. Don't forget the security plugins to help track connections and other features.

Building a website has never been easier thanks to WordPress, but that doesn't mean the work is over just yet. This list helps you take advantage of some pretty nifty tricks to make your site worth visiting for a long time.