How to Port Your Website into a WordPress Site

It’s fairly well-established that WordPress powers 27% of the web. And, while we wait for the next big data-driven story to emerge, that share appears to be rising.

Websites built on WordPress are very accessible. They tend to be user-friendly and, perhaps more importantly, mobile-friendly.

If you’re looking to expand your reach beyond your current audience, consider moving your site into WordPress. This could help you attract a larger audience, gain more visibility, and ultimately grow your business.

Here’s how you can bring your existing website into a fully functioning WordPress site—everything from the ground up.

Get A Domain Name

It’s important to get a.com,.org, or.net domain name for your WordPress site. If you don’t own the domain name, you don’t own the website. And, if you don’t own the website, you can’t update it or make any changes to it. Your best bet is to choose a.com or.org domain because they’re more likely to be available.

If your current host provides you with a free domain, grab it! Otherwise, you’ll have to pay for it.

Install WordPress

Once you’ve got your domain name, it’s time to install WordPress. This is the platform that hundreds of thousands of websites are built on, and it’s widely available across all major web hosting providers. If you’re looking for a free option, you can sign up for a WordPress.com account. This will give you access to the popular CMS (Content Management System), as well as cost-free backups, security certificates, and personalized domain names.

If you want to run the popular CMS yourself, you can choose between the open-source WordPress and the proprietary WordPress Premium. The open-source WordPress is completely free, and it’s maintained by a global group of volunteers. If you’re looking for a reliable, free option, go with WordPress.

Set Up Your Blog

Once you’ve got WordPress installed, it’s time to set up your blog. This is where you’ll post new content and allow people to subscribe to your site via email. Choose a Blogger platform for your blog, or use WordPress’ built-in default blogging platform.

You could also use a free blogging platform like Medium.com or Blogger.com. If you go this route, it’s important to check out the rules and guidelines for bloggers on these platforms. These will ensure that you don’t violate any copyright law or privacy policies while blogging.

Customize Your Blog’s Design

Now that you’ve got your blog set up, it’s time to customize its design. The look and feel of your blog will largely depend on your own personal tastes. However, there are some basic guidelines that you should follow.

Always start by making your blog mobile-friendly. This means making sure that the text on your pages is large and easy to read, and that images are of a high enough resolution to be displayed clearly on a mobile phone screen.

Next, you should consider enabling responsive design for your blog’s pages. When a visitor lands on a page with this feature enabled, their browser will load content at a mobile-friendly size, regardless of what size they’re viewing the page on.

Also, don’t be afraid to experiment with different colors for your blog. As long as you keep the darker tones closer to blue shades and lighter ones closer to yellow, you’ll rarely go wrong. Finally, don’t hesitate to add some personality to your blog. If you feel that the stock photos used within WordPress are a bit boring, you could always replace them with some of your own photography.

Set Up Your Social Media Accounts

If you’ve got a social media account for your business, you should now set up your accounts on the various platforms.

This will allow you to connect with and engage with your audience on social media. It’s important to note that social media sites like Twitter and Instagram are focused on user engagement, so you’ll have to find a way to stand out among the noise.

One option is to use the same photos that you use for your blog on your social media accounts. However, you should only use photos that you’ve actually taken. If you find that your pictures aren’t suitable for other platforms, you could always use a service like Canva.com to create a branded image for your Twitter or Facebook account.

As with your blog, you can use the same color palettes as you do on social media for your website’s design. Additionally, you can use the same photography for both your blog and social media accounts. Just remember that on social media, your posts will appear in chronological order, while on your blog, they will appear in order of publication.

Set Up Your Email Marketing Campaign

If you’ve got an email marketing platform like MailChimp or HubSpot, you should now set up your automated email marketing campaign. These services can be a bit tedious to set up, but they’ll save you time and effort down the line.

You can use your email marketing service to create personalized campaigns that will encourage your existing audience to revisit your site. You can also use email marketing to drive traffic to your blog from other platforms. When you send an email newsletter to your contacts, you’ll usually find a link to a specific blog post. When they click on that link and visit the blog, you’ll know that they’ve landed on a page where they’ll probably spend some time.

Additionally, you can use email marketing to introduce people to your products or services, or to simply remind them of your existence. To drive traffic to your site, you’ll need to determine the best time to send your email newsletter.

Create Keywords & Keyphrase Lists

You should now create a list of keywords for your blog. When someone reads an article on your site and enters the URL onto a search engine, keywords are what the search engine looks for to identify and sort the content it returns.

If you’ve got a marketing analytics tool like Google Analytics, you can easily find out which keywords your audience is using to find content related to your blog. Simply enter your keywords into the traffic source section of the tool, and you’ll see a list of the keywords and their associated metrics.

These metrics will indicate how frequently your keyword has been searched for and how competitive the keyword is. The more frequently someone searches for a keyword and the more competitive the keyword is, the more worth it will be to you as a writer to include that keyword in your content. Don’t worry — it won’t hurt your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to include commonly used keywords in your content either.

As we mentioned before, people use keywords when they search the web. Your job as a content creator is to provide content that is relevant to your audience’s needs. So if you can figure out what those needs are, you can craft content that will satisfy those needs. In other words, if you want to write about fashion, but your audience is searching for information about careers, you’ll want to write about fashion careers.

Curate Content For International Readers

If you’ve ever published content on the web, you’ll know that one of the biggest challenges is catering to non-English speaking readers. If someone lands on your site from a different country, they’ll probably see content in their language rather than in English. This is usually the case with content published on international blogs.

To solve this problem, you can either translate the content yourself, or use a service like Crowdin to have professional translators translate your content into different languages. If you go the manual route, be sure to find a way to track the content you’ve translated so that you can monitor and verify its accuracy. Otherwise, you’ll never know if someone else has done your work for you.

Final Takeaway

If your existing website was built using a content management system like WordPress, it’s fairly straightforward to port it to a fully functioning blog. With a little bit of time and effort, you’ll be able to connect with and engage with an audience via social media, email, and search engines. Plus, you can use your blog to gain credibility with future customers.

Ultimately, a blog can help you establish yourself as an expert in your industry—especially if you write regularly and include helpful resources and valuable information. Additionally, as a business owner, you can use a blog to highlight your accomplishments, showcase your expertise, and keep your audience informed about the state of your company.