5 Important Things Non-Tech Savvy People Need To Do When Setting Up Their Site

I’ve looked at a few things people must do when they’re setting up their WordPress site because it will stop anything from coming back to bite them.

Starting a blog can be overwhelming if you’re not tech savvy, but paying someone to set everything up can turn into a very expensive game of chance. Will you be able to make your money back before you have to throw in the towel? It’s easier if you try to do as many things on your own as possible, so we’re going to look at a few basics you should first do when you’re setting up a WordPress site. Once you’ve done everything we speak about today you can pat yourself on the back.

Sort out your permalinks

When you open up your WordPress dashboard for the first time you need to make sure you sort your permalinks before anything else. It’s easy to forget about this unless you get it out of the way. You want your permalinks to look like ‘.com/sample-post’ because it’s clean and your readers will know what each post is about. It can also help with your SEO efforts, but if you don’t set your permalink structure before you publish your first post you’ll end up with a mess on your hands.

Add a privacy policy

All websites should have a privacy policy telling users what they can expect when they land on your site. If you don’t have one you might run into trouble in the future. It’s a good idea to add an affiliate disclaimer page too if you’re selling affiliate products. You don’t want these pages in your navigation bar because you don’t want your readers to find them unless they are specifically looking for them. You will need to find a way to add links to those pages in the footer.

Install an SEO plugin

WordPress makes things easy for you because adding a special feature is as easy as installing a plugin. There are a few plugins you’ll need when starting out, but an SEO plugin should be top of your list. This will let you set title tags when you publish posts, which is important because your headlines might be completely different to what you want to rank for. Add a plugin that will automatically create a sitemap for your site because that will help with SEO too.

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Increase site speed

If you want to please your readers you should ensure your site doesn’t take too long to load because nobody wants to sit around waiting for content. The easiest solution is to spend a little extra on a good hosting company. There is only so much you can expect from a cheap shared hosting solution. One of the other easiest things you can do is reduce the size of your image files before you upload them. Once you’ve got lots of pictures on your site it can really throw the brakes on.

Make a backup of site

Once you’ve done the basics we’ve spoken about you will need to backup your site. It’s unlikely anything will happen to it, but do you really want to take that chance? It will mean doing everything again when you lose it due to an unseen error. You can make a backup of your site manually inside your hosting account, but there are plugins should you wish to make your job easier. Don’t forget to keep making backups every few days to safeguard your business.

Get to work

Are you surprised by how easy everything sounds? Setting up the foundation of your WordPress site isn’t difficult, but turning it into a successful business is the tricky part. It’s now time to get to work because you’ve got a long road ahead of you.