Everything in this world be it machines or humans need maintenance to keep running and performing to their best of the ability. WordPress is one of the most popular CMS as around 40% websites in the web are made in WordPress which makes the websites designed through this technology prime target for all spammers, hackers etc.
Besides security, there are host of issues that affect the functioning of WordPress in short run as well long run. For a WordPress website owner, these factors are critical as they have the tendency to derail the websites and divert the web traffic to the competitors posing an existential threat to the survival of the company.
So if you are one of those guys who hates to keep abreast with times, its right time to change for the good by following these practices
Security Management
The virtual world in which we are operating is uncertain and possess a lot of risks from hackers and spammers. The first step which you can take to eliminate these threats is continuously change and update the admin password of the WordPress website. The password set should not be an easy guess for every pedestrian. To generate a difficult one, you can use free password generators available online.
Besides this setting a logging limit for a particular IP may prove helpful again brute force attacks in which a hacker try to break your password by logging multiple times. To increase the security of the site, one can install a WordPress scanner which alerts the admin about any malicious code and infected plugins on the site. Sucuri Site check, Code Guard & Theme Authenticity Checker may prove helpful in this regard.
Back up your critical Data
People often ask me why the need to backup when strong security measures have already been taken. Agreed that you have installed the most sophisticated firewall and set a strong password but still, you cannot take a risk when the survival of your business is at stake. We are living in a virtual world and every big or small business is having an online presence in the form of a website, most of which are made in WordPress due to its user-friendly nature.
In this dynamic world, virtual eyes either of hackers or your competitors are monitoring your website closely and working tirelessly to steal the data, increase downtime or may pose any other harm which may suit their interests. This is where a properly scheduled backup plan comes to your rescue. It lets you retrieve all your data that might be lost during a website crash. Tools like Backup buddy and Blog Vault can prove very handy in setting an automated backup for your WordPress website.
Keep your website updated
WordPress most often than not releases a number of updates necessary to keep website running as smooth as silk. Most of these updates which are free to install protect our websites and customers who frequently access our websites from malicious intrusion. These updates come with different functionality from speed to security and you can update only what is relevant to your website.
Clean the Muck
Honestly saying, without plugins your word press website will look like an ugly and worthless piece on the internet. WordPress plugins let you customize your website thereby helping you to increase your revenue by engaging the clients for longer duration of time. Having said that, we should use plugins judiciously and always desist from installing free premium plugins from suspicious and unknown sites. These Premium plugins may act as a bait to penetrate into your website and steal your data.
As soon as particular plugin becomes redundant or a theme is not in use, it is better to clean them from your site. Doing this will help you in a great way in boosting the speed of the website. You and your visitors will also be protected from an imminent threat from these unused infected plugins.
Be visible
In today’s virtual world, success is mostly the consequence of your online presence and that is not a cakewalk for a novice. As per latest findings, 75 % of users never scroll past the first page and only 8.5% of all the traffic on the web make it past the first page.
Shocking revelations! Aren’t they but consequence may be more terrible for your business in the long run, if you don’t find a place on first-page of search engine result page. This is where Yoast SEO and All in One SEO comes to your rescue. Besides taking the help of these plugins you can always write fresh, engaging & SEO friendly content. Do in-depth keyword research to target your customers and solve all the technical issues and remove barriers that might have crept due to Bad URL scheme, unstable site architecture, duplicate content etc. These issues might be hampering search engine ability to crawl, interpret, and index the pages of your website.
Sometimes these steps too fail to grab the eyeballs of the target audience and fail to bring the traffic. In that case, you can make a blog with unique content and keep sharing the link to the blog on social media channels quite often to attract the traffic from these sources.
Loading time
Speed has taken center stage in our lives because it reduces the time of a process and increases efficiency According to the latest finding customers hardly wait for more than 5 seconds for a website to open. They swiftly switch to the competitor making it worse for the website owner even if former is offering a better deal than latter. So if your website is rich in multimedia and takes too much to load, better upgrade your space on a Web Server. You can switch to a new host if increasing the space on a Web server doesn’t work.
In a nutshell, if you want your business to take a lead & outperform the competitors then don’t neglect to conduct the above-mentioned crucial WordPress tasks of your websites. The websites enforcing these tasks religiously are bound to succeed and attract more visitors and potentials leads over the long run.