After you create a blog on WordPress, your work does not end. You have to do some important settings in your blog.
Default WordPress installation is not SEO friendly but with some configurations, you can make it SEO friendly.
Today in this article, I will tell you about Most Important Things You Need to Do After Installing WordPress.
Essential Settings After Installing WordPress
Default WordPress settings are not SEO friendly and you need to change the settings after installing WordPress. Here, I’m going to tell you some important settings that what to do after installing WordPress.
So let’s get started…
Install SSL Certificate
This is the Most Important Things You Need to Do After Installing WordPress. This is a very important Google Ranking Factor.
SSL Certificate converts your site from HTTP to HTTPS, and when Google ranks a page, it uses https as Ranking factors.
So to rank higher in Google, migrate your site to https. Here’s a guide – How to setup CloudFlare Flexible SSL in WordPress site.
Delete Default Post, Page, and Comment
When we install WordPress, it gives a demo post, page and comment and these content is not useful. Just log in to your WordPress dashboard. Click on Post >> All Post and delete the default “Hello World” post.
Just like the first process, go to Pages >> All Pages and delete the default “Sample Page”.
Finally, click on “Comments” and delete the demo comment.
Set Your Timezone
To set your blog’s time zone, click on Settings >> General. Set your blog’s time zone according to your local time so that when you schedule a post, they will be live according to your schedule.
Change Your WordPress Permalinks
This is also a very important setting after creating a blog on WordPress.
WordPress comes with five kinds of permalink structure. But Default Permalinks structure is not SEO friendly and it looks like this.
http://inhindihelp.com/?p=123
This permalink is small but not SEO friendly. So click on Settings >> Permalinks and select Post Name permalink. Then click on the Save Changes button.
Here’s a guide – Best Permalink Structure for SEO
Setting up WordPress Discussion or Comments
For this, go to the Settings >> Discussion page and set it according to the given screenshot.
You can uncheck the Pingbacks and Trackbacks option if you want. Here’s a guide – How to disable Trackback and Pingback from WordPress Posts
Update Your WordPress Ping List
By default, WordPress comes with popular ping service. But you can add more ping service to this list. Click Settings >> Writing to update the ping service. Then scroll to the update service section and add your ping service. Here’s a guide – WordPress Ping List for Fast Indexing of Blog Posts
Install a Good WordPress Theme
When you install WordPress, it install the default theme (Twenty Nineteen) on your blog. This theme is also good but I would recommend you use Lightweight and Well-coding themes on your blog. Here’s a list – 34 Best SEO Friendly WordPress Themes
I have listed both Free and paid themes in this list. You can install any one according to your needs and budget.
Delete Inactive WordPress Themes/Plugin
Click Appearance >> Themes to see all your installed themes. If there is an Inactive WordPress Themes, then delete it. Similarly, you can delete the Inactive or unused Plugin by going to the plugin page.
These affect your website speed very much. Also, Inactive plugins and themes create security vulnerabilities for your site.
Change Site Title and Tagline
If you have not changed the blog’s title and tagline during WordPress installation, you can also change it later.
Click on Settings >> General page. Here you will see the site title and the tagline. You just need to change it.
Connect Your Blog to CDN
CDN (Content Delivery Networks) improves your site performance and also reduces server load. Here’s a guide – How to Make WordPress Website Faster with Cloudflare
It provides content based on user’s location. When you use the CDN service, it stores a static cache of your site on own server and when a user visits your site, it provides content through the closest server of the user.
There are lots of CDN services available in the market. Currently, I use CloudFlare on my site. This is a very popular CDN service.
Install SEO Plugin
SEO plugin improves your blog SEO. I’ll recommend you to install the Yoast SEO plugin.
Yoast SEO is a very popular and best SEO plugin available in the market. It comes with lots of features (content analysis, meta keywords and description, XML sitemaps, social features, rich snippets and more).
Yoast SEO plugin is the best choice to properly optimize content and improve website ranking. Here’s a guide – How to Configure Yoast SEO settings
Install Cache Plugin
Cache plugins improve your website loading speed and user experience. It generates Static HTML files of your WordPress site and when a visitor visits your site, it serves Static HTML files to visitors instead of heavier WordPress PHP scripts. Here is a list – 6 Best WordPress Cache Plugins to Boost Your Website Speed
Enable Spam Protection for Comment
Spam comments take unnecessary space on your WordPress hosting, which increases the size of your database and also affects your website loading speed. There are several ways to moderate spam comments. You can manually moderate it. But it will take a lot of time.
Alternatively, you can deal with spam comment using Antispam WordPress Plugins. These WordPress Antispam Plugins automatically block spam comments on your site.
You can allow visitors to quickly share your blog post on social networking sites by adding social sharing buttons to your site. A lot of Social share plugins are available in the market. Here’s a guide – How to Add Social Media Share Buttons to WordPress Posts (4 Easy Ways)
Change ‘admin’ Username
If you are using ‘admin’ username, then changing it can be a good idea from the security perspective. But WordPress does not allow this by default.
There are several ways to change WordPress Username. Here’s a guide – How to Change WordPress Username.
Connect Your Blog to Google Search Console
After creating your WordPress blog, connect your blog to Google Search Console.
Google Search Console is a great tool developed by Google. This helps track your website performance (how your site is performing in Google). It gives valuable insights of your website such as Crawl errors, Ranking Keyword, impressions and much more. Here’s a guide – Google Search Console Overview- Complete Beginner’s Guide
Submit Sitemap
First, create a Sitemap for your site. To create a Sitemap, you can read this guide – How to Create XML Sitemap for WordPress (4 Ways)
After creating a Sitemap, click on the ‘Sitemaps’ option in the left column of the Google Search Console dashboard, then paste the last part of the URL (sitemap_index.xml) and click on Submit button.
Create Important Page
Create Important Page (About Page, Contact Page, Privacy Policy Page, Terms and Conditions, etc.) on your blog. These pages make your blog professional.
For any blog, the contact page is a very important page because visitors or advertisers contact you using the contact page.
Set Favicon
Favicon is a small icon that appears in the address bar of the visitor’s browser. It makes your brand professional and credible.
In addition, when a visitor bookmarks your site, your site favicon is reflected. Here’s a list – 13 Best Free Favicon Generator Online
These are the most important things you need to do after installing WordPress.
We’re done, and it’s now your turn! Find this article helpful? Don’t forget to share!
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