For some, the maintenance and up-keeping of your WordPress site is a hassle. And for some, learning the ins-and-outs of WordPress hosting has a learning curve but is an overall satisfying experience. Regardless where you stand on WordPress site maintenance and whether you are a starting business owner eager to promote your product/services or a WordPress veteran who wants to learn more in detail about boosting their WordPress site’s performance as well as search engine ranking, this guide breaks down the gritty details in a straightforward manner so even the most basic beginner can understand how to improve the performance, search engine ranking, and security of their WordPress site.
Performance
WordPress performance is more than just loading times and it’s run speed—WordPress performance is a holistic view of how your WordPress site is running in relation to your business goals and the overall impression it creates for visitors. Optimizing your WordPress site’s performance may seem like a challenging task at first glance, but we break down the 4 most important points here:
- Run Performance Tests
While you don’t need to run a performance test every day, we recommend running a performance test especially when you’ve installed a new plug-in, added in a new feature, or adjusted your WordPress site in some fashion.
Running a performance test not only ensures your WordPress site is running a optimal speeds but that the new plug-in or feature doesn’t create any issues with the performance of your website.
- Optimize Your Database
Like any device or software, your WordPress site’s database will accumulate extra data that can be safely disposed. (e.g. spam comments, post revisions, etc). While you only need to do this every-so-often, one way to improve the performance of your WordPress site is to clear out this fluff-data. It is highly recommended to keep up on your WordPress maintenance to ensure that your site runs smoothly. - Comment Moderation
While neglecting comments for a day or two won’t necessarily affect your website’s performance, an accumulated bulk of spam comments could clutter your database table and make comment moderation a hassle.
Actively moderating comments not only clears up your WordPress site’s database table but it also fosters a good impression of your business/blog to visitors—a lively and engaging comment section convinces people to not only become repeat visitors but also to participate as well.
- Check Analytics
The analytics of your WordPress will give you a key glance into the performance of your WordPress site and if there is anything that requires your attention. For example, if you notice your WordPress site’s traffic has seen a drastic drop, then you may have to spare extra time to see what is causing the drop. Though we’re not recommending to check the WordPress site’s analytics every single hour of the day, a quick look will help out in the long run of running your business/blog’s platform.
SEO
Search engine optimization (or SEO for short) is the maximization of the features and utilities of a website, WordPress-hosted or not, in order to bump a website’s listing in search engine results. While the boons of SEO is that it requires no cost on your part, which is great for those on a tight budget, two of its few banes is that SEO is a process that requires time and it also requires the WordPress site owner to learn about SEO strategy. However, even the most amateur website builder can have a solid website build—and SEO-maximized strategy—with these four following easy and simple steps.
- Keep it User-Friendly
User-friendly is a term we hear often, but in the context of WordPress SEO, what does it entail in the realm of search engines and their algorithms?
For Google search engines, a user-friendly website is one that can satisfy search engine user needs and is overall ‘beneficial’ to internet users. The reason you want to tailor your WordPress site to be as user-friendly as possible is because Google algorithms will rank websites in the search results based off how ‘beneficial’ the website is. Particularly when testing how user-friendly your website is, it helps to gain feedback from a third-party perspective. However, in the situation you are testing the website or don’t have access to a third-party tester, here are some essential questions to keep in mind when navigating your WordPress site:
- Were there any frustrating moments when using the WordPress site?
- Was one page loading slower than the other?
- Did something work in a way it wasn’t supposed to?
- Was there a link or button that felt ‘out-of-the-way’ or wasn’t intuitively placed?
By keeping these questions in mind when testing your website and keeping a user-oriented mindset, the parts of your WordPress site that are in need of improvement will become more obvious to you.
- Manage Your Links
Though this isn’t a daily task, we recommend periodically checking the links on your website, and especially checking links that connect to third-party or partner websites as well as your affiliated social media accounts. Linking to business partners is not only a way to build community but is also a way to build credibility for your website. Another important part of SEO strategy as well is linking to affiliate social media accounts; social media accounts with consistent updates not only keep your current customers engaged but also have the potential to bring in new customers as well. That’s why when you see a 404 or a broken link it’s better to handle it right away then let the broken link affect your WordPress site’s search result ranking. - Speed Things Up
Thanks to Google’s newest algorithm update in terms of ranking websites in search engine results, the loading speed of your website now plays a factor into how ‘beneficial’ it can be to users. Thus, since slower websites will now see a drop in the rankings and websites which load faster will receive a boost, it’s important to habitually check the loading speed of your WordPress site. - Mobile Accessibility
In addition to determining a website’s ranking in search results by factoring in a website’s loading speed, Google algorithms will also factor in how accessible your WordPress site is when accessed by a mobile device. In 2016, the percentage of mobile internet browsers rose past 50% in the United States alone, meaning half of the overall number of Internet visitors were also mobile users. To tap into this powerful market, it’s vital to not only make your website user-friendly for those browsing the Internet on a desktop, but also for those on the go as well.
WordPress Security
Basic cybersecurity tips recommend you to update important plug-ins for the web browsers you use on, such as Adobe flash player, and likewise, it is also important for you to update your WordPress software when the time comes. In fact, according to website security company Sucuri, a whopping 36.7% of hacked WordPress sites were running on an outdated version in 2018. Considering this statistic, managing your WordPress site on a frequent basis is not only important for your WordPress’s performance and search engine ranking but also for its livelihood as well. In the four steps below, we outline the most basic but effective measures to maintaining WordPress security.
- Back-Up Your WordPress
While you don’t have to back up your WordPress site every day, just like how you may back up the data of your personal desktop, we recommend you backup your WordPress site on a habitual basis, though the length of time between backups will depend on how often you update the content of your WordPress.
For example, if you only upload new content to your WordPress site once a week, you won’t need to update as much as someone who has new content everyday for their WordPress site.
In terms of organizing your back up, what may help is a plugin such as Updraft Plus, which can not only link your backups to online data storage services such as Google Drive or Dropbox, but also has a scheduled back up function for your convenience.
- Check Plug-Ins
Plug-in updates aren’t only for access to the newest and latest features—they also contain important security and bug fixes as well. That’s why updating your plug-ins promptly and checking for updates on a habitual basis are extremely important.
However, when updating your plug-ins, one essential step to take is to make sure the plug-ins work with your current site set-up. An easy way to do this is to use a staging site to test your website’s performance with the new plug-in update.
- Remove Unused Themes
Removing unused themes not only improves the speed of your WordPress site but it may also remove any security risks, especially for themes that have not been updated in a while or have remained inactive on your WordPress site for an extended period of time.
Given the fact that WordPress’s popularity stems from its accessibility and the endless array of third-party content available to incorporate to your business’s website/blog, one particular caveat to this is that this also means the security of your website is largely up to the security measures included in the provided third-party content. Try to only stick with third-party content that is both in active use and receives frequent security updates.
- Holistic Hardening Measures
In reality, there is no such thing as an unhackable or unbreakable software system. However, instead of the elimination of risk, there are ways to greatly reduce the risk of a security iss, and one of them is to actively include hardening measures to the maintenance of your WordPress.
Broadly speaking, hardening measures include any kind of measure taken to improve your website’s security, but especially for those who see more traffic on their WordPress site or have sensitive data, what helps is a way to organize all your security measures.
This is where plug-ins such as MalCare come in handy; not only do they give an overview of your WordPress site’s security and do active scans, but they provide additional security features such as login protection and web application firewalls.
