Until now, you have almost completed learning “How to start a blog on WordPress” as your blog is ALREADY live on the internet.
In this section, we’ll learn how to make your blog site look appealing attract users/readers’ attention and set up an SEO-friendly structure. So, that you can grow your blog traffic fast.
The visual appearance of your blog is controlled by WordPress themes. When you first visit your blog, it will look something like this:
I understand this is not attractive to most people. Don’t worry, we’ll fix it very soon.
First, let’s get started with essential blog settings.
General Settings
Go through the following steps, which are considered the important things to do after installing WordPress software.
Change Blog Title & Tagline: You can change or update your “Site Title” & “Tagline” anytime by going under the Settings » General page. This step is very important because this is what shows up in Google Search.
Set Time Zone: Make sure to set your time zone to your local time. So that when you schedule posts, they will go live according to your time. This option is right inside the Settings » General section.
As I’ve steps to start a blog from India religion, I should select UTC+5:30.
Update WordPress Ping List: Let search engines know about your site by notifying you of many more services by extending the ping list.
Go to Settings » Writing and add more services to the ping list (I have covered a complete ping list over here: WordPress ping list.
Disable Pingbacks & Trackbacks: Trackbacks and pingbacks allow blogs to notify each other that they have linked to a post. This is an unnecessary feature and you should keep it turned off.
You can do that by going to the Settings » Discussion page and then unchecking the box next to the “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new articles” option.
These are some important settings to do after WordPress installation is completed.
Here are some more to make changes.
Setup Www or Non-www Site URL
Setting up www or non-www version is like cleaning up your default site URL.
Once you started a blog on WordPress, it’s important for you to decide, if you want to display your domain URL with www or without it, before your site URL.
For example:
- Www version:
- Non-www version:
Note: It’s important that you stay consistent with the one you chose when starting your website. In other words, DO NOT switch between www or non-www once saved.
You can change this quickly by going to Settings » General and following this action displayed in the screenshot below:
If you have no idea about choosing between www vs non-www version, then non-www site URL is my recommendation.
This will bring you a URL that looks like and that is what I have chosen for my all blogging websites.
Once you save the settings, all of the blog posts and pages will be redirected automatically to the non-www version, which looks much cleaner and easy to type on web browsers.
WordPress Permalink SEO Structure Setup
By default WordPress permalink is – http://yourdomain.com/p=123.
This permalink is short but not SEO-friendly. You need to make it friendly for search engines to earn maximum SEO advantages.
To choose how your page and post URLs are generated, go to Settings » Permalinks, and choose the URLs the way you like to look.
If you’re not sure what to go with, I’d recommend choosing Post Name. Here is an example from the “How To Start A Blog” post permalink structure:
This way your URLs are easy to understand for visitors and search engines, and they aren’t too long. This will help you rank higher and get more traffic.
Delete Default Content, Comments & Plugins
Default WordPress software comes with unusual pre-added content like Sample Posts, Pages, Plugins etc.
These things are just examples for beginners. But have no benefit to being there for blogging success. So, It’s always better to delete these useless things.
Go to the Posts » All Posts page. Head over to the ‘Hello World’ post and then click on the ‘Trash’ link.
Next, click on Pages » All Pages » Select Page » Move To Trash » and Apply.
Next up, visit the Comments section and delete the default comment. Somehow, it deletes automatically, when you remove your default post.
Lastly, go to Plugins » Installed Plugins » Select All Plugins » Deactivate » Apply.
Now repeat the same process by selecting the ‘Delete‘ option.
Update/Change Your WordPress Theme
This section has two steps:
- First, delete pre-installed WordPress themes.
- Second, install an SEO-friendly WordPress theme that matches your blog niche.
Get started with the number #1 step, first remove pre-installed WordPress themes from your blog.
Go to the Appearance » Themes page and click on an unused blog theme that you want to delete.
This will open up a popup showing theme details. In the bottom-right corner there, you will see the link to delete the theme.
Follow up on the steps again to remove all pre-installed themes from your blog.
Moving to the 2nd step, let’s choose a perfect WordPress theme for your blog.
There are thousands of pre-made WordPress themes that you can install on your site. Some of them are free and others are paid.
You can also visit the official WordPress theme directory, where tons of free templates are available for blog designing. Here you have the option to sort the list by popular, latest, featured, as well as other feature filters (i.e industry, layout, etc).
Alternatively, you can either get a free theme for now with limited options or go with a paid theme (if you have a good budget).
If you ask me, I recommend Kadence Theme – the most popular freemium WordPress theme, and I use it on WP Blogging 101 » read my honest Kadence review.
Click here to download Kadence Theme for free and then head over to Appearance » Themes » Add New button.
Next, upload and activate the downloaded theme’s zip file.
Remember, getting your blog design with a free theme has some limitations. So, if you have some budget, don’t forget to get a Kadence Pro Addon license.
It’s a paid addon for Kadence Theme that comes with unlimited features. Check out my guide on Kadence Theme free vs pro to see the real difference.
Below are some other best premium WordPress themes & templates (just in case Kadence is not your first choice):
Once you are happy with the theme you want to use on your blog, our next move is to install important WordPress plugins.
Install Must-have WordPress Plugins
Plugins are tools to make full control of your WordPress blog functions and extend its features.
Like themes, there are thousands of free and paid plugins available depending on needs. But it’s important to choose the best ones for the best WordPress SEO and speed.
As a beginner, you can start with free plugins, and then later upgrade to paid ones.
Here, I have listed some most important plugins. Without these plugins, your WordPress blog can’t survive in 2023 – 2024. So, must install:
- Rank Math (free + paid): Do you need an SEO plugin that helps your blog reach for the stars? Rank Math SEO is the one and only plugin with 6+ million active installations. I am also using it for on-page SEO by adding XML Sitemaps, Indexation rules, Title Tags and more. Read Rank Math review
- WP Rocket (paid): On behalf of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) website speed matters a lot. WP Rocket plugin helps your website to load faster and to put less stress on your web hosting account. Because, if your website doesn’t load quickly for users, then they are more likely to move on to another website.
- ShortPixel (free + paid): There’s a positive effect on SEO by improving image loading speed and ShortPixel is the best plugin for this need. No matter what plugins you use to better manage your WordPress media library, ShortPixel will cover everything.
- MonsterInsights (free + paid): The easiest way to install Google Analytics is by using MonsterInsights. Google Analytics is a report detail that shows you how many people visit your website, where they came from, what they did on your website and so on.
- Social Snap (free + paid): Social Snap is a WordPress social sharing plugin that comes with over 30 social networks and apps. It lets you place beautiful sharing buttons anywhere on your site.
- iThemes Security (free + paid): This plugin will keep your site secure from hackers (such attempts are more common than you may think) and malware.
- Akismet Anti-Spam (free + paid): There are millions of bots that lift spam comments on your WordPress blog and Akismet is the best tool to stop them silently.
- UpdraftPlus (free + paid): Creating backups is the only way to make sure that you can easily recover your blog files in case of a disaster. In this scenario, UpdraftPlus plugin is the best solution.
- Contact Form 7 (free + paid): This plugin is used to create contact Forms. It allows your site readers to quickly contact you by simply filling out a form.
There are some more plugins that you may need later for taking your blog design customization to the next level, listed below:
- Kadence Blocks: A super amazing Gutenberg plugin for Kadence Theme users.
- Elementor: The #1 WordPress page builder plugin for bloggers and entrepreneurs.
- Thrive Architect: Exclusive landing page builder for Thrive Themes users.
- Divi Builder: A powerful theme builder plugin by Elegant Themes.
Next, let’s learn how to install a WordPress plugin (quickly) on your new blog.
A simple and fastest way to install a WordPress plugin is via the plugin directory. To do that, follow these simple steps:
1st Step: Navigate to Plugins » Add New.
2nd Step: Search for the WordPress plugin that you want to install. For example, I search for Rank Math (see screenshot below):
3rd Step: Click Install Now button.
4th Step: Lastly, tap on the ‘Activate‘ button.
See, how easy to install a new plugin on your WordPress site.
Well, congratulations! You just learned how to customize your blog and make web design changes.
The next step is to learn how to write content for your blog.
