The WordPress community is growing day by day; over 40% of all websites run on the content management system. If you're a WordPress user who just started with the platform, you will make a few dumbest WordPress mistakes, and that's quite natural.
The great thing is, you can avoid these common WordPress mistakes. Let's get familiar with a few basic blunders that most WordPress beginners make and learn how to avoid them.
#Not Using Any SEO Plugin
Search engine traffic is an essential key for any profitable online business. Without organic traffic, you can't make more sales. Search engine traffic is free, and it is one of the quality traffic sources where you can convert most visitors into customers as they search for solutions to their problems.
If you're a WordPress beginner and not using an SEO plugin such as All in One SEO, Yoast SEO, Rank Math, etc., you are making a big mistake. There are hundreds of SEO plugins available in the WordPress plugin directory, ranging from free to premium.
#Using Free or Faulty Themes or Plugins
Most WordPress themes are free. There are over 8,000 free WordPress themes, and 58,000 free plugins are available for its users.
If the theme developers are not very well known, using their themes for free on your WordPress sites is not advisable, even if they look good. It's strongly recommended that a newbie hire a WordPress professional to design their website to give it a unique look or buy a premium theme and get it customized through WordPress theme customization experts.
Keep in mind that most free themes are either faulty or embedded with malicious code that can be dangerous, and hackers can easily break into your sites. Invest a little money on buying a premium theme, and make sure it is fully responsive and SEO-friendly before making a purchase decision.
#Checking Website Traffic Stats Every Minute
Using Google Analytics to find your traffic and analyzing your best keywords will surely help you. However, if you are addicted to checking your website traffic stats every other minute, it will only kill your productive time.
Instead of checking stats often, limit it once a day or twice a week, and analyze your top keywords using tools like Google Analytics or Jetpack traffic stats. Spend more time on creating and promoting your content, and your website traffic will automatically grow.
#Ignoring Regular Backups
You can't do anything when a hacker attacks your site and modifies all of your files. If you regularly take full backups of your sites, you can restore your files without losing any data, even if someone attacks.
There are so many plugins and tools available to backup your whole site files, including BackupBuddy, BackWPup, etc. At least use a free backup plugin to regularly backup your sites. You can also use your hosting server cPanel to manually backup your site files, including databases, pages, posts, comments, etc.
Also, make sure to change your primary user name from Admin to any other to ensure you are safe from login attacks.
#Not Building an Email List
Most professional bloggers say that money is on the list. Whether you agree to it or not, it's true. Without having an email list, you can't make sales. The reason is that you need to build trust online to make sales. If no one knows you, no one buys from you. This is where an email list comes in handy to building trust and making more sales. So start building an email list and grow it by offering any freebie to your visitors while subscribing to your newsletters.
#Changing URLs While Reviving Old Posts
Updating your old blog posts is one of the easiest ways to boost your traffic from search engines. But most WordPress users make the simple mistake of changing their URLs while updating their old posts or pages. What happens when you alter your URLs?
It will show you broken links, and whenever you interlinked to the same URLs that are altered will also return you dead links (also known as 404 error pages). Avoid this WordPress mistake at all costs. Never change the URLs of already existed web pages on your sites. You can change the headlines and copy of your posts or pages if you want to give your visitors a fresh feel.
#Ignoring Basic Pages
By not having essential pages like contact, about, etc., how can anyone know about your site and contact you? If you don't give your visitors any sources or email addresses to get in touch with you, how can you build relationships, take feedback, or even increase your sales?
Immediately after launching your WordPress sites, create a contact page and include your email address. You can also use free plugins like Contact Form 7 to easily embed contact forms on your web pages using a simple shortcode.
Also, create an about page and write all the details of how your site can help visitors grow their businesses. Include images to make an instant connection with your visitors.
