How to Optimize Your Blog

Learn how to optimize your WordPress blog to look and perform it’s best.

How to optimize a blog is a question that should be resolved immediately after completing the initial signup process so that you will have a well-functioning blog and a complete user-friendly experience as soon as your readers visit your blog. Well then, it is time to move on to the next step which is getting your WordPress blog completely installed and fully optimized which might seem a bit daunting process for you.

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and are at no additional cost to you. I get compensated when you buy hosting using my affiliate links, which helps make this guide free for you. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I have personally used, and found to be worth it.

How to Optimise a Blog?

From choosing a suitable theme to designing your layout before creating any content for your blog, everything you do is called optimizing your blog. It makes your blog look great to your users and helps the search engines to rank well in organic searches.

As far as the SEO point of view is concerned, optimizing your blog properly is a good practice as it helps to make your blog easily searchable by search engines. But, how to optimize a blog seems really daunting, especially if you are doing it for the first time. Only you need to follow a few steps without getting bored and once you are well-versed with all the technicalities, it will free you from a lot of burdens.

Choosing the Best (Free) WordPress Theme

Generally, when you are about to start your blog, I do not recommend buying a paid WordPress theme right away. Once you have some traffic and you can justify the investment, then only you can choose a premium theme with more features and options, by then you will be familiar with some basic theme customization.

WordPress comes with several free themes to choose from, so without spending too much time on it, go to Appearance > Themes > Add New Theme > Start with one of the popular ones (recommended – Hello Elementor or Astra Theme). You can come back anytime and change it later. I recommend choosing Hello Elementor or Astra for WordPress themes, all of which are 100% free, fast and can be upgraded later.

How to choose a WordPress theme for your new blog

I like these two WordPress themes the most because they are user-friendly, simple, clean and fast to load. I can bet that you will be fond of using these free themes once you are familiar with them. If you want to experiment with different WordPress themes to start a blog, be sure to use these criteria to guide your decision.

Ease of use: Too many fancy themes compromise usability

Responsive: Responsiveness refers to themes that ensure that your blog looks good on laptops or smartphones. More people use their phones to read blogs and Google supports mobile-friendly websites as well. If you’re not sure whether a theme is mobile-friendly, copy and paste the URL of the theme’s demo page into Google’s mobile-friendly test page and verify it.

Supports Plugins: The real power of your WordPress blog comes from plugins. Make sure your theme supports all popular WordPress plugins.

SEO Friendliness: SEO, or search engine optimization, refers to how well Google and other search engines can find your information when people search for it. Some themes contain heavy code which makes it difficult for search engines to find your blog.

Support: Some free theme developers will not offer support for their products, so keep that in mind before installing.

Ratings and Reviews: Look for topics with a good track record and a history of positive ratings.

You can view all our favorite blog themes here.

Why is design so important when starting a blog?

Well, even if you don’t care about the design itself, your readers will change their behaviour dramatically depending on the characteristics of your blog layout. In fact, during a 2012 study by Google and the University of Basel, researchers found that users rate a website’s aesthetic beauty and perceived functionality in 1/20th – to 1/50 second. Plus, thanks to a small psychological bias called the halo effect, people will extend that judgment to all aspects of your blog.

Good blog design builds trust.

Design matters because in the short amount of time it takes to snap your fingers, readers can judge the effectiveness of your blog and decide whether or not to trust your blog. It tells people that you care enough about your blog to make it look good. That doesn’t mean you need crazy animations or lots of fonts and colours. The best designs are simple, clear and easy to read.

Once you have found the right theme for your WordPress blog, it is time to dive into the world of WordPress plugins so that you can unlock even more customization to help you grow your blog into a real business.

Install the best WordPress plugins

Whether you need to optimize your site or need to improve the user experience for your readers, WordPress plugins play a vital role in growing your online business. If you don’t want to spend money right away, free plugins can be a great option to start with, and most of them are good enough to cover the basics.

I recommend you install Yoast SEO, UpdraftPlus, Wordfence Security, Wp-forms Lite, WP Rocket and Monsterinsights before taking any steps or creating content for your blog or website. Later, as your blog grows, you can also add other plugins based on your needs.

Elementor Website Builder is an essential plugin that you must install before you can create pages for your blog or website. It will take a lot of time and energy if you do all the required work manually and it creates a huge hole in your wallet if you hire a web developer.

Plugins make these complex tasks easy and with little or no cost, so you don’t have to make a choice.

These native plugins can pave the way for success if you use them as needed. It is always recommended to start with the free basic plugins in the beginning as most of them are enough to do the basics and you will decide later whether to go with the premium-based plan or not.

Basic WordPress Blog Settings

It doesn’t matter whether you’re building a blog to share your ideas with the world or a website to promote your already established business, you need to have a basic understanding of the broader aspects of how WordPress works so that you can easily control the visual appearance of your blog. Let’s dig into some of the bigger-picture settings you can find in your WordPress dashboard.

If you set up your WordPress blog using Bluehost, the permalink settings will already be optimized by default and the URL of your new blog post will be in the format domain.com/post-name/.

If your permalink settings are not already set to this format, it is important to change them now. This will help you rank better in search engines like Google. In your WordPress dashboard, hover over “Settings” and navigate to Settings > Permalinks, to edit it as you can see in the screenshot below (the image is borrowed from our old blog):

You will still be able to optimize the URL if you think you can make it more SEO-friendly and lean towards your target keywords before clicking the publish button. For more information please refer to my guide on ‘How to Create SEO-Friendly Permalinks’.

Step#2: Edit your default site URL

After installing the Hello theme and customizing your permalinks, you’ll need to set your blog’s default URL to include “www” before your blog’s URL. This will take you from a URL that looks like https://yourblogname.com to a more secure https://www.yourblogname.com.

You can quickly change this by going to Settings > General and following the action as shown in the picture below:

All the pages on your blog will now automatically redirect to the www version of your blog’s URL, which seems cleaner and more trustworthy to the readers.

Step#3: Setting up your homepage

Your landing page is set to ‘Your latest posts’ by default and you can skip it if you haven’t finished your first blog post. I suggest you set your homepage where your blog posts will be displayed for now because you are just starting your blog and you don’t have a bunch of content. You have the option to set your homepage as static or custom-designed which can serve you multiple purposes. But, for now, stick with your list of blog posts.

If you set your homepage as a blog, one thing you can consider is changing the settings so that the full text of your blog posts appears directly on the homepage, not a list containing excerpts from your posts. Later, you can change the setting back to list view after your first 5 or 10 posts have been published.
To change these settings, simply go to Settings > Reading as shown in the screenshot above.

Step#4: Setting up a menu in your WordPress blog

When you first start your blog, you probably won’t need a menu unless you publish enough posts and create main pages like About, Contact, Products or Services etc. When you’re ready to create a menu, just go to Appearance > Menus. And here you can create your own menu in just a few clicks. So far, we’ve covered the basic foundations of dialling in your blog’s WordPress settings. Now we are going to create some main pages on your blog.

Step#5: Creating the main page of your blog

As I mentioned earlier when you have enough content like posts, articles or offers on your blog, you will need to categorize them to help your readers find the content easily. Thus you have to create different pages like ‘About Page’, ‘Contact Page’, ‘Product Page’ or ‘Service Page’ etc. These pages are not only pretty benchmarks but also give a lot of clues about what you are offering to your readers. So be selective in deciding about the name and meta description of your major pages.

You can start creating pages directly in your WordPress dashboard by clicking ‘Pages’ and then clicking ‘Add New’. Yes. It’s that easy. Or you can go to Bluehost’s ‘Menu’, just click on the ‘Content tab’, then ‘Pages’ and then ‘Add New Page’.

Creating an About Page

To win the trust of your readers, you’ll want to display some basic information about yourself such as who you are, why people should listen to you, and how they can contact you if they have questions. This requires a separate page like ‘About Page’ which allows your readers to know you well and understand what you are going to offer them. In fact, you can use an about page to not only describe who you are and tell your story but also to explain your value proposition and showcase your achievements.

You may not think much about its importance, but your About page can become one of the most popular pages on your blog. But the million-dollar question is how to create a page that can be a bridge of trust between you and your readers. So, let’s dive into the subject matter and try to figure out the ways that will help you create your own impressive intro or ‘about page’ for your blog.

How to create an About page for your blog?

Writing about yourself is not as easy as it seems. It is not writing your biography and forcing everyone to go through it. Whereas, you really have to win the trust of your readers and make them believe that you are the right choice for them. So let’s start with some basic questions that every page should answer.

What value are you going to create for your readers?

It may be called an about page, but you don’t want to make the mistake of just talking about yourself. Yes, you have to talk about who you are, but it should equally be about your readers and the value you are creating for them. You need to be clear about who your audience is, what value you are going to create for them and answer why you decided to help them.

For example, my blog is about helping people how to start their own blog and make it a reliable source of income. So, that’s exactly what I use to explain at the top of my About page. This helps my readers to choose whether this is the right platform for them.

Q#1: Who is your blog for?

Your value statement can establish a strong connection with your ideal readers and you will want to make sure that when the right person visits your blog, they know they are in the right place. There are a few ways you can consider accomplishing this.

Q#2: How to convince your audience?

Nothing is more basic than saying who you are. For example, if you are starting a blog to build a community around travel tips for people wanting to explore the beauty of nature, you can simply write a catchy statement like- ‘A blog for nature lovers’. or ‘Started a blog for the travellers’. You can show real-time photos or videos to make them believe you are a true nature lover.

Q#3: Do you have anything to show them credibility?

Show proof that you are part of their community. There are several ways to do this such as adding comments, testimonials or social posts from someone in the same category who reads and likes your blog. If you have the ability to show your contribution to the broader community in which you are working (as a freelancer) or blogging (as a content creator), this is your chance to highlight it.

Q#4: How can you show your own Credibility?

Not only do you let your readers know who you are, but you can also show social proof that other people have recognized you as a thought leader. Now, imagine if someone reads your About page and says “Okay, that’s a good one but it’s not what I’m looking for.” That’s exactly the purpose of a short description ‘about page’. That way only those readers will be committed to the blog you were expecting. The more you know your ideal reader, the better your blog will serve that person.

Q#5: Why should they listen to you?

If you are successful in convincing your readers in the first few sections, your reader should have a pretty good idea of ​​who you are and should be able to decide whether or not they want to continue reading you. It doesn’t hurt to talk a little more about yourself to explain why they should be listening and following you. Here are some more ideas you can incorporate:

What Kind of Blog Posts You Write: If you love something, you will never be short of content to write. So, just elaborate on the content of your blog that you are going to offer.

What will they get from reading your post: You can share your thoughts on how to start a business from scratch and grow it.

Where they should start: You can guide complete beginners on where they should start. For this, if you have any related post, article or eBook, then you can refer to it.

Why your blog has credibility: You can share some of your past experiences that are relevant to your current affairs.

How you got started:

You can describe the incident that inspired you to start a blog and help others.
Be smart enough to convince them: People usually connect more to stories and vulnerability than to carefully crafted prose and narration. You just need to take care of how you can establish a cordial relationship with your readers so that they would love to see you again. In my case, people come here to seek information on how to start a blog and make it a reliable source of income.

Call to action for your readers:

The last and possibly most important part of your brief is telling your readers what to do next! Do you want them to wait for your latest post? Watch your videos on YouTube? Sign up for your newsletter? Follow you on social media? If someone made it to the bottom of your page, they’re likely to be convinced by you on some scale. Why should we let them do nothing?

In my case, if someone has made it to the end of the intro page of my blog, they probably just met me. So, I don’t want them to sign up for newsletters or follow me on social media. Instead, I want them to know me even more so that they can make better decisions. That’s why my call-to-action (CTA) is only to read my best content and not to sell my services directly.

Use your about page to show the value you’re creating for your readers—and work hard to capture their attention instead. Don’t try to be a mentor and just help those who are in need at the moment. Time will tell you what to give them otherwise.

How to make a contact page?

Another often overlooked important page that you need to include early on when starting a blog is the ‘contact page’, an easy way for people to contact you whenever they need it. Creating a contact form in WordPress is very easy today. Wp-forms makes it as easy as creating an email ID with the help of dragging and dropping elements. One thing you should keep in mind while creating a contact form for your blog is that simply entering the form is not enough.

Always think about why someone should contact you. Are they interested in the products or services you are offering or are they deeply convinced by your ideas? These are some basic points that cannot be ignored. I think the best approach is to answer some basic questions with the FAQ on your contact page. This will help them make a better decision about whether they should contact you or not. When creating your contact page, focus on your core purpose as a blogger.

In my case, people will want to hire me to help them with their content marketing strategies. Thus, I had to create my contact page explaining everything in detail. This page clearly states what I do, and who I want to work with and thus allows people to contact me. Just think about your business and the type of people you want to work with and use your contact page as a FAQ to quickly implement those expectations.

In addition, you will need to create some pages that will save you from a lot of liability in case the information provided in your blog is misused. These are the Terms and Conditions page and the Privacy Policy page. You can easily create these legal contracts online for free as a beginner and pay later when needed.

At a glance

No matter whether you feel like doing it or not, these initial settings are very much needed to optimize your WordPress blog optimally. Sooner or later you will come to know about its importance, so why not start doing it before creating any content for your blog.