Having a WordPress site is great. With it you can quickly design a great looking site, add new features with a few clicks of your mouse, and manage all your content in one place. However, doing all this doesn’t guarantee that your site will get any attention. This is because there are millions of other websites out there, all competing for the same audience. If you want to gain their attention, you have to find ways to get your WordPress site to stand out from the crowd. Here are just a few ways you can do this.
Choose the Right Theme
One of the first things you’ll need to do is choose the right theme. The theme you choose controls essentially every aspect of how your site looks. If you choose a boring theme, you’ll have a hard time standing out from the crowd. On the other hand, if you choose a theme that’s too much to look at, you’ll likely drive people away. Try to find a theme that’s not only exciting, but that fits into modern design concepts. If you can, find something that uses images or video to attract attention, and something that doesn’t use too many colors.
Add Unique Features
Even if you find a great Theme, chances are the same Theme has been downloaded thousands of times by other users. You’ll need to use some other methods to stand out from the crowd, and for that you’ll need to add some unique features. What can you add to your site that your competitors don’t have? A live-chat app? The ability to book appointments right through your site? A virtual tour of your location? If you can come up with at least one unique thing to add to your site, you’ll give yourself a leg-up on the competition.
Focus on Speed
The speed of your website plays an important role in making your site noticeable. Studies have shown that websites that take more than a few seconds to load have significantly higher bounce rates. This means you’re losing people before they even get a chance to look at your site. To fix this, you’ll want to speed up your site.
There are a few ways you can do this. For starters, look into WordPress hosting plans that provide the best speed. If you’re on a shared plan, there’s a good chance your website will slow down as you start to receive more traffic. You should also look into optimizing the images on your site, as large file sizes will slow down load times. Finally, disable any plugins you’re not using, as each one will add a little bit to load times.
Provide High Quality Content
No matter how flashy you make your site’s design, or how quickly it loads, if the content of your site is lacking, you won’t stand out. It’s essential that you provide your visitors with high quality content that they can’t find elsewhere. Anyone can set up a great looking website, but not anyone can provide useful and valuable content to their visitors. All too often site owners focus on the quantity of their content rather than the quality – if you want to stand out, you’ll do the opposite.
Use Social Media
Finally, to get some attention you’ll have to start the conversation yourself. The best way to do this is through social media. Social media is one of the most popular ways that people learn about new sites, so you won’t want to miss out on all this potential traffic. Establish a presence on all the major social platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc – and start forming connections. Then once you’ve joined these online communities, start promoting your website. If you’ve taken the time to create a great looking website that provides high quality content, you should have other people sharing it to their connections in no time.
Don’t Settle for Being in the Crowd
There’s not much point in having a WordPress site if no one visits it. To get more people to check out your site, you need to find ways to stand out from all their other options. Failing to do so means you’ll just be another face in the crowd, and people will likely forget about you.
It will take some time to brainstorm ideas and implement them, but the payoff will likely be worth it. Hopefully the above suggestions will give you a place to start, and before long your competitors will be looking at you for ways that they can improve their own site.