How to Create a Professional WordPress Website
Are you looking to create a professional website but don’t know where to start? Are you looking to create a professional looking wordpress website but don’t know how? Don’t worry, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about creating a professional looking wordpress website from scratch. It will cover everything from how to pick the right theme, to what sort of content to include, all the way up to setting up the website itself so that you can truly make it your own! Let’s get started.
The Basics
When it comes to building a website, whether it’s a professional or personal one, you’ll always need some sort of hosting service to make it live. There are several hosting providers out there, such as Bluehost and Wix, that provide you with everything you need to create a professional looking site. These providers also offer you a free domain name so you can create your own email address for your site (e.g. myname@mydomain.com).
As for the platform you’ll use to build your website, that is completely up to you. You can use any modern platform and build your site up using any available plug-ins or tools.
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) out there, and for good reason. It’s incredibly powerful, easily customizable, and has a huge community supporting it. Let’s take a quick look at how to create a professional looking website using WordPress.
Step 1: Choose The Right Theme
If you followed the previous step correctly and are now viewing this article from a WordPress website, then you’ve already taken the first step to creating a professional looking site. You’ve chosen the most appropriate hosting service for your needs (in most cases, that will be Bluehost), and now you’re looking for a WordPress theme that suits your needs and the look you wish to achieve.
There are several highly-rated themes available for WordPress, including Avada, Coachella, and Divi, but if you’re looking for something more unique and sophisticated, then you might have to look outside of the box.
Step 2: Install The Theme
Once you’ve located a theme that suits your needs, you’ll need to install it on your hosting service. Although you can do this through the WordPress dashboard, a better (and often times more convenient) way is to use a one-click installer from the theme’s designer. This will make the process of setting up your site much quicker and easier. You’ll simply need to connect your domain to the web server and click the install button to have the theme uploaded and ready to go.
Step 3: Activate The Theme
Once the theme is installed and activated, you’ll need to visit your site’s dashboard to complete the process. From there, you can configure your site’s look and feel to your liking (including adding more themes if you so desire). If you’re looking for a one-stop-shop for all your web design needs, then WordPress offers several highly-rated theme shops where you can purchase and install themes in a matter of minutes.
Once you’re satisfied with the look of your site, you can take a few moments to configure the various elements of the theme (e.g. backgrounds, headers, etc.). For best results, you should follow the theme’s instructions (usually found in the help file) or ask a member of the community for help if you run into any problems. This will ensure that your site looks as close to the sample images as possible (more on that later).
Step 4: Create Your Website’s URL
Now that you’ve got your basic website set up, you’ll need to create a unique URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for your site. This is the address that will be used in place of a traditional web address (e.g. mysite.com) in a variety of locations including social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
In order to create a unique URL, you’ll need to go to your website’s dashboard and click on the gear icon (upper right hand corner). From here, you can activate the domain’s custom tools which will in turn allow you to create a fully-functional URL, using a combination of letters and numbers, as you see fit.
Step 5: Optimize Your Website
Once you’ve created a unique URL for your site, it’s time to get serious about optimiziation. This step is crucial if you want to have a successful site. Without a solid foundation, all the other steps are just words on paper.
When it comes to optimiziation, there are multiple tools at your disposal including the famous All-in-One SEO Tool from Google. This tool allows you to perform all the necessary tasks (e.g. keyword research, meta tag config, etc.) from one spot. Don’t worry, there is no cost associated with this tool and it’s quite affordable (especially in comparison to the fees you’d pay a professional SEO company).
Another important step to take is to create valuable content. Don’t worry, we’re not talking about stuffing your site with tons of useless information. Instead, you want to create content that is either:
- Valuable and useful to your visitors
- Scenes, photos, or videos that are interesting and visually pleasing
- Are newsworthy stories that will engage and entertain your audience
- Product reviews that are valuable to your readers
- Or any combination of the above
Whatever you decide to create, make sure that it is valuable and useful to your visitors. Chasing down large quantities of traffic through expensive ads is great if you’re able to do so, but if you want to create a sustainable business, then you need to focus on establishing useful and valuable content.
Step 6: Distribute Your Website
Once you’ve established yourself as a go-to source for information on your topic, it’s time to start thinking about distribution. The best way to do this is to become an affiliate for a variety of companies who sell and promote products related to your topic. For example, if you are an expert in fitness, then you might want to consider becoming an affiliate for a company that offers nutritional supplements.
If you already have a sizable audience on your own blog or channel, then this step is super easy. All you need to do is create a few posts promoting a variety of products (related or unrelated to your blog’s topic) and you’re good to go.
Step 7: Measure The Results
In the last step, we discussed how important it is to measure the results of your efforts. At this point, you’ve spent a good amount of time creating a professional looking site, so it’s only natural that you’d want to see the results of your work. Luckily, you’ve also taken the time to track the results of your efforts, using the invaluable Google Analytics tool. This tool can track all the important metrics including:
- Visitors to your site
- Pageviews on your site
- Traffic sources (i.e. how people found your site)
- User engagement (e.g. bounce rates, time on site, and pages per visit)
From here, you can determine the success of your site, and what needs to be changed or improved upon. Just remember, everything takes time and effort, so don’t expect to see miraculous results overnight. Be patient and persistent, and in no time, you’ll be reaping the rewards of all your hard work.