10 Tips: Beginners Guide to Promoting Your WordPress Website
When you launch a WordPress website, typically your goal is to get as many people to read your content as possible. There is more to this than simply creating a website that is informative and visually appealing. To get the best results you need to be serious about promoting your website on a variety of online platforms. Marketing is integral to driving traffic to your site just as it is for brand and product awareness. Marketing will allow you to get your message across to a large audience in an effective manner. This is why we have compiled 10 tried and true marketing techniques for promoting your WordPress website or blog.
Before We Begin
It is important to realize that bloggers and webmasters need to optimize their posts to best represent their site or organization for each web platform to help draw traffic from that platform to the website. There is a lot of competition though which means that there is a lot of work that will go into making a website a success. Also keep in mind that website marketing never stays the same due to Google updates as well as shifts in online usage. While this list is important, you need to keep up with the latest trends to ensure you get the best results from your marketing tactics.
1. Craft High Quality Content that Engages Readers
This is the first step of any online content. No matter what your niche and how great your WordPress development skill are, there are other content writers out there writing on the topic. So if you want to stand out from the rest and create a larger audience then you need to craft a reading experience that is rich and fulfilling to the reader. Along with this it needs to meet the expectations your target demographic expects.
2. Take Advantage of Social Media
Don’t forget about social media for marketing your blog posts. There are many options you can use such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and so many more to drive traffic to your site. You should also consider creating social media pages where you can add your target demographic. This will make it easier to build an audience as they will see your posts and can share links from your posts on their own feeds. Along with this, it is a good idea to have icons for sharing on each post you create.
3. Put Blog Posts on Social Bookmarking Sites
Putting your blogs on social bookmarking sites, like Pinterest is just one more way to drive traffic to your site. The key to this though is using the right sites. You want to use popular sites people actually use to ensure you get the best results. Otherwise you will spend a bunch of time adding blogs without seeing any real return on this time investment. In some cases it can even harm your blog and website.
4. Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines
You can rank higher on search engines in a number of ways. Sometimes this is as simple as optimizing your title and description so they have the keywords in them and meet character counts. When it comes to SEO for WordPress there are several plugins you can use such as Yoast SEO and All in On SEO. These will help you get better SEO optimization from your posts.
5. Utilize the Best Theme for Your WordPress Website
The theme of the WordPress website controls and without any custom development, decides the look and feel. While content is important, the theme can make or break the site. People are very visual so this creates the first and last impression people have when they come to your website. This is why the WordPress website design needs to be carefully thought out with your site. Choose a theme that not only looks great but is also user friendly for your website. User experience is one of the main factors people consider when deciding the websites they will invest their time in. You may want to consult with a WordPress Developer, like Surfaced Media, to ensure you have the best layout for your demographic.
6. Customize Your Permalinks
Another way to optimize your content for search engines is to ensure the URL for each website post contains the keywords. While WordPress automatically creates a permalink, you can edit this before publishing to ensure your content is better optimized for SEO.
7. Guest Posting is Beneficial
If you are not familiar with guest posting, it means writing and posting blogs or articles on another’s blog or website. While this may not seem like a great tactic at first, it is a useful strategy bloggers have been using for years. When you use a guest blogger on your site, you are encouraging their audience to come to your blog and chances are you will gain more viewership this way. In the same way, guest posting on other sites will also promote your blog. In addition to promotion, you will also gain the benefit of external links to and from other established sites which will help improve your search engine rankings.
8. Create YouTube Videos
The great thing about YouTube is that it is a social media platform that allows you to get your message across in video. It can be a very engaging experience for your viewers which is why many marketing experts use this platform. To get the results you want, you need to be creative with your videos. To start with, watch videos from those in your niche, see what the popular channels are doing and then start with something simple. Gauge the feedback and get a better understanding of crafting successful videos for your later posts. You can incorporate this into your website as well. Over time you will find that your content will become more creative and engaging.
9. Email Marketing is Not Dead
Despite what some people may believe email marketing is still a popular way to market your website. You can easily start a mailing list on your site. The great thing about this is that the subscribers for this mailing list are the best quality leads you can get. The idea with this is that not only will you tell them about your new posts and news about your site, they will also help to share your content online. This is why you want to create as large a mailing list as possible, as this will directly relate to the web traffic you receive.
10. Post Content Regularly
You need to make sure you are posting new blogs or content on a regular basis. This helps improve your SEO by telling search engines you are serious about your site. More than that, it gives readers new content. If you put all this effort into marketing your website, you don’t want to lose readers simply because you are not giving them new content.