WordPress

Avoid The Common Mistakes Of WordPress Blog

In the WordPress world of blogging, there are so many aspects to consider to succeed, if you don’t want to keep running with the common mistakes of WordPress blog. When you reach the point where you find yourself not ranking well, you get also frustrated by the analysis of all the tasks you need to do, and it paralyzes you.

Thus, we got you a list of common mistakes of WordPress in three categories to make you a boss at WordPress blog!

Common Mistakes of WordPress blog while setting up your blog

1. Picking up a Wrong Platform:

Did you know about the general difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org?WordPress.com: It is used when you are unsure if blogging is for you.WordPress.org: It is used when you are serious about blogging.If you’ve already selected a WordPress.com, don’t worry, it is possible to change with a little effort.

2. Installing WordPress Incorrectly:

Sometimes, users have to install WordPress themselves in some instances where they go wrong! After they finish downloading the WordPress zip file from WordPress.org. They need to extract and upload it to the host. There, some bloggers make the mistake of uploading the extracted folder called ‘wordpress’ rather than the files and folders within this folder.

3. Buying More than What You Need:

The challenge is when there is a lot of domain registrars trying to upsell other services, which confuses the small business owners who just started blogging.

The add-on services may include privacy protection, extra email accounts, security services, and more, which requires money. Want they don’t understand is that they can skip all of these things and save money to spend on growing their business!

4. Not Using a WordPress Host:

Certain hosts do not support WordPress, and those that do aren’t always optimized for it, this might cause some technical issues and make your blog run much slower. Your blog speed is essential to get more traffic. So, to avoid this, you want to opt for a WordPress optimized host.

Some popular WordPress hosts are WP Engine, A2 Hosting, WPX Hosting, Bluehost, Hostgator, DreamHost, and so on, but we would like to recommend you to use WP Engine, WPX hosting or A2 Hosting for a better experience.

5. Paying For Extras from Your Web Host:

To start your own WordPress blog, you only need web hosting and a domain.

The only other important aspect you need these days is an SSL certificate, which allows you to run your website in HTTPS. These days not having one is highly frowned upon, and this will hurt your traffic in the long run.

You should stick to smaller packages until you find one. If you are a brand new blogger, then it may take a while for you to build a momentum, since traffic tactics like SEO can take months before kickstarting.

It means if you start with a top-end hosting plan, hosting is likely to be a waste! It also means that if you sign up for 3 years of Bluehost at a reduced price also might not be worth it.

6. Not Using a Maintenance or a Coming Soon Page:

Even when you’re an amateur at blogging, you can show your professional touch using this technique. Surprisingly, this works even if your website is not ready yet. This is a professional way of letting your visitors know that you’re developing your website and pages.

A Special 7-day trial option

7. Leaving the Default Tagline:

At the starting of a WordPress blog, the default tagline is set automatically as ‘Just another WordPress blog.’ Many WordPress bloggers don’t realize this, it is a sign that your blog is new, and people might not take your hard work seriously.

To fix this, go to Settings > General. There you can change the text, which is next to the Tagline box.

8. Forgetting to delete the Sample Content:

It is similar to the tagline mistake above.

It looks utterly unprofessional to see the sample post saying ‘Hello World’ and page as a
‘Sample Page.’ By not deleting these, you only hurt your SEO score or worse, it gets marked as spam. It also has the issue of being a duplicate content when it comes to SEO.

To fix this, go to Posts > All Posts and delete the “Hello World” post. Next, go to Pages > All Pages and also delete the Sample Page.

9. Not Creating Your Own Favicon:

Favicon is the little icon that shows the open tabs or bookmarks in the browser. Don’t you want your blog to get lost in the sea of tabs?

The favicon should ideally be a 512x512px image saved as either .ico or .png. Once your favicon is ready, in the WordPress admin dashboard, go to Appearance > Customize > Site Identity and upload your favicon to solve the problem.

10. Ignoring Legal Requirements:

We cannot put enough emphasis on how important it is for you to include disclosures, privacy, and copyright policies to your blog. We prefer to use Termsfeed and PrivacyPolicies. Termsfeed will write all the privacy policies, terms, and conditions along with disclaimers, cookie policies, and other services for you.

PrivacyPolicies also hold the 7 services to help in legalizing your blog.

11. Not Having Cookies & Consent Banner:

You always need permission for storing cookies and collecting data as part of the legal side of running a website.

For adding a banner to the WordPress blog, get the Jetpack plugin, which includes a widget for one. Some other popular plugins are Cookie Notice and Cookie Law Info.

12. Using Images without Permission:

You might want to use any images you find on the internet, but, legally, this is not allowed, and doing so could get you in trouble.

Let’s tell you about a super shortcut! Did you hear about pixabay.com and unsplash.com? Sure, you have; after all, they provide copyright-free images for you to use on your blog.

13. Making life difficult for mobile users:

As people are rapidly adopting multi-screen devices, it has become a must to make your website either fully responsive or mobile-friendly.

WordPress Blog Security Mistakes

14. Ignoring Security:

Do you ever wish to get hacked?

Get in mind that now WordPress is widely popular; it is often under a target for hackers.

Solution:

Limit your logins with this Jetpack plugin install guide
Use two-factor authentication, which needs a plugin such as Jetpackor Two Factor Authentication.

Quick Tip: When given a choice, go for an authenticator app rather than SMS as cell numbers can be spoofed.

Use extra layers of security with CloudFlare

This critical step requires a lot researching to be safe before you lose it all, hence we have already provided a guide for you to go through it.

15. Using Admin as Username & Using A Weak Password:

If you use Admin as your username, you need to change it now! As it increases the chance for you to be hacked.

So, make sure to set the new user as an administrator.

To change it, go to Users > Add New.

Quick Tip: Create a new user making sure the username is not easy to guess; it should not be similar to your email, name, or admin.

Passwords should be hard to remember. You could use a tool to generate a strong password using: the password manager LastPass.

16. Installing Themes That Aren’t Secure:

Themes from unknown sources usually contain malicious code that can be used to hijack your site.

Referring some super amazing themes for your WordPress blog to stand out of the crowd. Try out Studiopress, Astra, Divi, Generatepress, and Themeforest themes.

17. Not Backing Up Before You Make Some Major Changes:

Backups can help to rescue you from troubles, like:

Broken sites all by yourself, updates, or plugins
Hijacks, malicious code, malware, viruses or maybe
data losses.

There are several free WordPress backup plugins like UpdraftPlus to restore WordPress from backup.

Daily backup is an excellent start to protect you from losing masses of work. But, sadly, many people forget about this step.

To fix this, use UpdraftPlus to restore WordPress from backup, then you’ll be glad to know you can do quick manual backups whenever you need to.

18. Not Updating WordPress Core, Themes or Plugins:

Updating is vital for WordPress security. There are benefits of using the latest features that updates introduce. They fix bugs as well. It’s scary to imagine that it might break your site, but it is significant!

19. Listing Your Emails on Your Contact Page:

If you put your email onto your contact page, the bad bots can use it to send spam! Use a contact form instead of your email. It will be quicker and simpler for your visitors and cuts back on spam.

20. Not Reviewing Comments:

You need to review comments before they appear on your blog. Well, it depends on the setting of your blog.

Sometimes you might not get any comments for a while as your blog is still new. Then when comments do start to come in, they get missed out as they remain stuck in the review queue.

21. Leaving Directory Browsing On:

Do you want to give people the ability to snoop on your blog structure and files?

To fix this, you need to have access to your FTP and the .htaccess file under public_html. You need to add the code to a new line in your .htaccess file:

# Directory Browsing OFF
Options All -Indexes

If you’re scared to do this technical part, you can follow the tutorials available for this.

22. Not Getting An SSL Certificate:

Using an SSL certificate to get HTTPS won’t help you to secure visitors to perceive it and boost your SEO. In fact, it will make your website more secure by encrypting data.

Common Mistakes of WordPress Blog at Backend

23. Making Changes to the Parent Theme Instead Of the Child Theme:

A parent theme is like the core of your blog set up. If you make some changes to a parent theme, it then gets updated, and you will lose all your changes!

Try to use a plugin to create a child theme for your site, for instance: Child Themify or Orbisius Child Theme Creator, Childify Me.

24. Not Knowing How to Access Your FTP:

An FTP gives you access to the files and folders of your server. Having access to FTP can be a lifesaver if you come across trouble where you are unable to get into your WordPress dashboard if something breaks down.

25. Not Setting Up Google Search Console:

Google Search Console is a tool provided for free by Google for you to not miss out on the important search data that could help you grow your website. It allows your website to see how your website appears in search results and fix any search indexing problems.

26. Ignoring Gravatar & include Google Authorship Markup:

A Gravatar is a small image that represents you throughout the World Wide Web. It appears next to your name when you comment on a blog post or in a discussion on a forum.

We highly recommend you to start using it right away to get identified and build a brand around the web.

Just like Gravatar, Google Authorship Markup lends credibility and maximizes exposure.

27. Making Updates on a Live Site:

It is considered the best practice to avoid making changes and updates to the live version of your blog. It is because you don’t want visitors seeing your work in progress or interrupt their experience. Also, as you could come across a snag that breaks something resulting in a breakdown of your site.

Mistakes That Impact on Performance

28. Changing Website URL and Losing All Traffic:

You will be able to change the website URL or domain name if you hate it, but you need to set up proper redirects, inform Google about the change, and add the new domain to Google Search Console. It does have a significant SEO impact!

29. Not Using a Cache Plugin:

A cache plugin is a great way to boost WordPress blog speed. It works when a visitor visits again, they do not have to download the whole page again, they can reuse assets instead of downloading them, and this lowers the size of the page making it load faster.

It will improve the speed and ranking in Google as well!

A few popular ones are:

WP Rocket
W3 Total Cache
WP Fastest Cache

30. Not Using A CDN:

CDN is another tool to boost website speed. It takes website images and distributes them among servers all over the world.

Please note that CDNs that are free are not fast enough! If you want a quicker service from CDN, then you’ll have to take a paid CDN like StackPath.

WordPress SEO Mistakes to Avoid

31. Not Creating an XML Sitemap:

An XML sitemap will improve your SEO, as it makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your site. Also, if you submit an XML sitemap, search engines will see your content sooner!

WordPress Blog Usability Mistakes

32. Cluttering Your Sidebar:

Do you want to distract visitors with images or badges?

As this is a useful place to put sign up forms for your email list, everything in your sidebar should have a purpose — buttons for leading people to other posts on your site.

An example of it would be using it for your most popular posts.

33. Going Overboard With Plugins:

To avoid making a mistake, follow the tips below:

Choose your plugins wisely

– Try to pick well-coded plugins.

– Make sure they install them if they really need them.

– Install a plugin one at a time as some plugins don’t always work well together and create conflicts.

-Avoid plugins that aren’t tested with your version.

34. Not Having a Search Bar:

How do you expect people to find what they want from your WordPress blog quickly? Visitors would like to search your website instead of going through your archives.

To add a search bar, go to Appearance > Customize > Widgets. Select where you want to set your search bar. Then click Add a Widget and find the Search widget.

35. Not Changing Permalink Structure:

No one would like to click on a link that looks like:

https://www.individualobligation.com/?p=123

Take Note: Changing this setting will break old links that link to your content!

So, only change your permalink if you’ve just started your blog.

To change permalinks, go to the WordPress admin dashboard. Then click on Settings > Permalinks. Change it to use Post name.

36. Writing Your Content Outside Of a WordPress Editor:

Formatting generally doesn’t carry well and can cause weird symbols to appear in your writing. Making it time-consuming to reformat later.

37. Confusing categories with tags:

Categories are a general way to group content on your WordPress site. Tags are a bit more specific.

A blog post can fall into one category with several tags to attach. You can organize your posts on WordPress with categories and tags. But, mixing them up will look uncool.

Conclusion

By avoiding these common mistakes of WordPress blog and taking advantage of the resources made available to you by us, you can rest easy knowing that your blog is appropriately set up and optimized for maximum performance.

We hope this article on common mistakes on WordPress blog has helped you to learn about common WordPress mistakes and how to overcome them.

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Yousuf Hossain

I am an entrepreneur who always invests time closely with people to successfully bring their business online. My main mission with this blog is to help people with offering them free guides and tutorials related to website design and marketing so that people can grow their online businesses following my guidance and path!