WordPress has become the go-to platform for content management and currently powers over 27% of all websites. This comes as a no surprise, as it offers useful features, a wide range of available themes and plugins. You can use WordPress for pretty much anything, whether it’s blogging, creating and publishing content or offering products and services without any actual coding skills. But setting aside coding, here are 6 crucial skills every website owner needs to possess in order to run their WordPress blog like a pro.
1. Planning and Strategics
Knowing how to plan and set business goals effectively is a very important skill that every entrepreneur should work on developing before developing a business. Setting up smart goals makes it easy to stay focused, work productively and know whether any real progress is being made or not. This is achieved best using Agile or any similar development strategy, as it allows users to utilize teamwork to complete smaller goals incrementally instead of rushing to deliver the finished product once the deadline approaches.
2. Time Management and Resource Planning
Effective time and resource management are vital for managing a business and increasing productivity, no matter what field of work you find yourself in. This includes adequate work scheduling by prioritizing important tasks instead of blindly following some random business plan and assigning reasonable, easy-to-meet deadlines. The Pareto Principle states that 80% of profits come from 20% of work, which makes identifying and effectively managing that 20 % of work all the more important if you wish to stay above the competition.
3. Sourcing themes and plugins
Setting up your WordPress website is only half of the story. The other half includes finding a theme that matches your brand’s voice and overall theme and deciding which plugins will serve your needs best. The most reputable source for both themes and plugins are the official WordPress repositories, as they are closely monitored and reviewed by other WordPress users. Now whether you pick a free theme or a plugin or choose a premium one is up to you, just make sure that they are regularly updated so you don’t suffer usability and security issues further along the way.
4. Unique content creation
There’s a contestant need for new and original content, no matter what products and services your business may be offering. Whether you’re trying to generate leads using content marketing, convert visitors into clients and customers using a sales page or simply updating your customers with the latest newsletter, your business will require original content sooner or later. Fortunately, even if you’re not adept with writing, there are many freelance copywriters available for work. Alternatively, you can use a different medium to send a message, such as graphics and videos.
5. Search engine optimization
Although WordPress comes equipped with SEO related tools, features, and plugins, you won’t be able to attract traffic and secure a top ranking position in the results page without an in-depth knowledge of search engine optimization. Make sure that every page on your website contains a corresponding title tag, every link has a proper description and every image has a dedicated description and alternative text. This helps Google and other search engines determine what your website is about, which in turn translates to better accessibility. Additionally, go over the standard SEO plugins for WordPress such as All In One SEO and Yoast SEO and get yourself familiarized with Google Analytics.
6. Optimizing lead conversion
Once you have your content and on-page elements optimized, it’s time to focus increasing the conversion rates. This is another extremely useful skill every WordPress website owner should master, as it allows you to test a specific conversion template and, depending on the initial results, tweak it to further improve the conversion. WordPress developer Sydney experts recommend going over the creation of tweaking of landing pages, A/B testing, as well as detailed knowledge of Google Analytics and plugins used for collecting various information about the users, including their location, preferred device, and browser, average time spent on your website, etc.
These are just some of the skills needed to effectively run and maintain your WordPress blog. As you can see, managing a website is far more than simply launching it and waiting for users to come and pay a visit. For a website to become successful, it requires management on a daily basis, including content creation, code and plugin updates, monitoring website performance, search engine optimization, making regular updates, checking for security issues and more. Granted, this kind of work does require some level of skill, however, it’s nothing that can’t be accomplished with hard work and perseverance.
