Are you wondering what to add in the footer of your WordPress site?

Footer is the area at the bottom of your website. It is often overlooked by website owners but can be used in significant ways to improve the user experience on your website.

In this checklist, we will share the top things that you should add to the footer of your WordPress website.

What is Footer in WordPress?

Footer is generally the area that appears below the content part of your website. It is a common website design feature used by millions of websites.

Footer may also refer to the footer code area. As you manage your website, third-party services like Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and others may ask you to add code to the footer of your website.

This footer code is not visible on the screen but is used to add code snippets needed for website functionality and features.

Many beginners often find it difficult to choose what to add to the footer of their WordPress website. This is a missed opportunity that can help improve your website.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the things to add to the footer of your WordPress site, and how to make it more useful.

Here are the things we will add. Feel free to jump to the items that interest you:

• Adding Links to The Footer of Your WordPress Site
• Adding Code in WordPress Footer
• Adding Privacy Policy Link in WordPress Footer
• Adding Copyright Date in WordPress Footer
• Remove Powered by Links from Footer in WordPress
• How to Add Instagram Feed in WordPress Footer
• Add a Sticky Footer Bar in WordPress
• Add Social Buttons in WordPress Footer
• Add a Phone Number in WordPress Footer
• Add a Contact Form in WordPress Footer

1. Adding Links to The Footer of Your WordPress Site

The first thing you would notice is that most websites add links to the important pages for their website in the footer area. This usually includes links to their about, contact, team members, press, and other pages.

All popular WordPress themes come with a footer widget area. This is what we will be using to add different widgets and elements to the footer of your website.

To add a set of links, you first need to go to the Appearance » Menus page and click on the ‘create new menu’ link.

After that, enter a name for your menu and then click on the ‘Create Menu’ button.

After that, select the items you want to add to the menu from the left column and click on the ‘Add to Menu’ button.

Once you are finished, click on the ‘Save Menu’ button to store your changes. For more help, see our article on how to create navigation menus in WordPress.

Now that you have created the menu, let’s display it in the footer area of your website. Simply go to the Appearance » Widgets page and add the Navigation Menu widget to your footer sidebar.

After that, select the footer menu you created earlier from the drop-down menu and click on the Save button.

You can now visit your website, and you will see the links displayed in the footer widget area of your website.

You can also easily add links to the footer of your website using a drag and drop page builder plugin like SeedProd. You can even create different footers that suit your individual WordPress pages.

For step by step instructions, check out our guide on how to edit the footer in WordPress.

2. Adding Code in WordPress Footer

As you manage your WordPress website, you may sometime need to add some code snippets to your WordPress website’s footer area.

One way to add them is by editing your theme files directly and pasting the code in the footer.php template. However, this is a bad approach as your code will disappear when you change the theme or update it.

The best way to add code in the WordPress footer is by using a code snippets plugin.

First, you need to install and activate the WPCode plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to go to Code Snippets » Header & Footer from your WordPress dashboard. From here you can paste your code snippet into the ‘Footer’ box.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your changes. For more details see our article on how to add header and footer code in WordPress.

3. Adding Privacy Policy Link in WordPress Footer

In order to comply with the GDPR and privacy-related laws in different countries, website owners are required to add a privacy policy page to their website and link to it from all other pages.

WordPress makes it super easy to create a privacy policy page and then you can add a link to it in your website footer.

First, you need to visit the Settings » Privacy page. You’ll notice that WordPress has already created a Privacy Policy page draft for you.

You can click on the ‘Use This Page’ button to use the default Privacy Policy template or create a new page.

Next, you need to edit that page like you would edit any other page in WordPress. You can add more information about your privacy policy as per your own requirements and publish that page.

Once you are finished, you can add the privacy policy page to your footer navigation menu (see above).

For more details, see our article on how to add a privacy policy page in WordPress.

4. Adding Copyright Date in WordPress Footer

You may also want to add a copyright date in the WordPress footer area. Now one way to do this is to simply add the text in your theme settings.

Many top WordPress themes allow you to easily add text in the footer area of your website. You can find the option by visiting the Appearance » Customize page and looking for footer settings in the left panel.

You can make the copyright symbol by adding your text in this format:

© Copyright 2016-2021. All rights reserved.

Don’t forget to publish your theme changes.

However, you will have to change the copyright notice each year to update the date. See our article on how to add dynamic copyright date in WordPress footer for a more elegant solution.

5. Remove Powered by Links from Footer in WordPress

Some free WordPress themes add a link back to the WordPress website or their own websites in the footer area of your site.

You are not required to keep these links on your website. As they are outgoing links and affect your website’s SEO score if you have them on every page of your website.

Now many WordPress themes make it super easy to remove those links. You can find the option in the Appearance » Customize page. Usually, it is located under the ‘Footer Options’ panel.

However, some themes may choose to hard-code the links in the theme files with no option to remove them manually. In that case, you can edit the footer.php file in your theme to remove those links.

6. How to Add Instagram Feed in WordPress Footer

If you run a fashion blog or want to promote your Instagram content then the footer of your website could be a nice place to display your recent Instagram photos.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the Smash Balloon Instagram Feed plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After that, you need to visit Instagram Feed » Settings page and click on the ‘Connect an Instagram account’ button.

Follow the on-screen instructions to connect your Instagram account to your WordPress website. Once finished, you can go to the Appearance » Widgets page and add the Instagram Feed widget to your footer sidebar.

After that, you can visit your website to see your Instagram feed in the footer.

To learn more, see this guide on how to easily embed Instagram in WordPress.

Smash Balloon also has plugins to easily embed Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter feeds anywhere on your website.

7. Add a Sticky Footer Bar in WordPress

Want to display special offers or notifications in the footer area? A sticky floating footer bar allows you to display a banner that remains on the footer of the screen as users scroll your website.

For this, you’ll need OptinMonster. It is the best conversion optimization software in the market and allows you to convert abandoning website visitors into customers.

It also comes with powerful display rules which means you can show personalized custom messages to users in the footer of your website.

First, you need to sign up for an OptinMonster account.

After that, install and activate the OptinMonster plugin on your WordPress website.

Upon activation, you need to visit OptinMonster » Settings page and click on the ‘Connect an Existing Account’ button.

Once connected, you need to go to the OptinMonster » Campaigns page and click on the ‘Add New’ or ‘Create your first campaign’ button.

On the next screen, you need to choose ‘Floating Bar’ as your campaign type and then choose a template.

This will take you to OptinMonster’s drag and drop campaign builder. From here you can design your footer bar. Simply point and click on any element to edit it or drag and drop new blocks from the left column.

Once you are finished editing your campaign, simply switch to the Publish tab and make it live.

After that click on the close button to exit the campaign builder and return to your WordPress website. From here you need to set the campaign’s output status to ‘Published’.

You can now visit your website to see your floating footer bar campaign live in action.

OptinMonster can also be used to create a slide-in footer popup, add countdown timers, and targetted footer notifications to recover abandoned cart sales.

8. Add Social Buttons in WordPress Footer

Another good way to utilize the footer space in your WordPress theme is by adding social media icons there.

Simply, install and activate the Social Icons Widget plugin. Upon activation, go to the Appearance » Widgets page and add the Social Icons widget to your footer widget area.

The plugin offers a bunch of options to choose colors, icon styles, button types, and more. You can just add the social media icons and replace the URLs with your own social media profiles.

Don’t forget to click on the save button and visit your website to see it in action.

Bonus: Need more social engagement for your brand? Take a look at these best social media plugins for WordPress to grow your audience.

9. Add a Phone Number in WordPress Footer

If you offer customer support and sales via phone, then adding your phone number in the WordPress footer area would help users easily contact you.

For this, you’ll need a business phone number. We recommend using Nextiva, which is the best business phone service for small businesses.

This allows you to make cheaper calls and use advanced features like call forwarding, using the same number on multiple devices and handsets, and managing calls from any device with an internet connection.

Once you got your phone number, there are multiple ways to add it to your website. The easiest one is to install and activate the WP Call Button plugin. Upon activation, go to Settings » WP Call Button page to configure plugin settings.

First, set the ‘Call Now Button Status’ to active. After that, add your phone number and choose where you want to display the button. Once finished, don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

Don’t want to add the button? See our guide on how to add clickable phone numbers in WordPress for more methods.

10. Add a Contact Form in WordPress Footer

The footer of your WordPress website doesn’t have to be a dead-end. Give your customers a chance to continue the conversation by filling out a contact form.

Simply install and activate the WPForms plugin. It is the best WordPress contact form plugin and allows you to easily add a contact form anywhere on your website including the footer.

Upon activation, go to WPForms » Add New page to create your contact form. Enter a name for your form and select the Simple Contact Form template.

Next, WPForms will load the form builder with the usual contact form fields. You can click on any field to edit, move or delete it. You can also add new fields from the left column.

Once you are done editing, click on the Save button to publish your form and exit the form builder.

Next, you need to visit the Appearance » Widgets page and add the WPForms widget to your footer area. After that, select the form you created earlier from the drop-down menu and click on the Save button.

You can now visit your website and see the contact form in your website footer area.

We hope this article helped you learn which things to add to your WordPress footer and make it more useful. You may also want to see our guide on how to improve your WordPress website speed and performance, and our expert pick of the best WordPress plugins to use on your site.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Are you wondering what you should do before you change WordPress themes?

When switching your WordPress theme, there are few very important steps that you must take to ensure the process is smooth, and you don’t lose any important data. 

In this WordPress checklist, we’ll share the top things you must do before you change WordPress themes.

Switching a theme is an important decision that every website owner makes at least once every few years.

Of course you have to decide your reasoning of why you’re switching, and pick a theme that suits all your needs.

We have a list of best WordPress multi-purpose themes and best WordPress blog themes that you can check out if you’re looking for recommendations.

Once you have chosen the theme that you want to switch to, it’s important that you follow the checklist below to ensure that you don’t lose any content or data during the process.

1. Make Note of Any WordPress Theme Customizations

Some WordPress website owners will customize their WordPress themes by adding code snippets directly to their theme files. Code snippets can be a great way to add new features to your website that aren’t part of the stock theme.

But, if you’re adding those snippets directly to your theme files, it can be easy to lose track of them.

If you or a web developer made these changes, then make sure you go through your current theme files and note all of the additional code that’s been added. 

For adding code snippets in the future, we always recommend to use a site-specific plugin or a code snippets plugin. This way, you can keep those snippets even if you change themes later. For more details, see our beginner’s guide on pasting snippets from the web into WordPress.

2. Get Current WordPress Theme Performance Metrics 

Before changing your theme, you should check your current website’s loading speed and performance. This lets you compare any differences in the page load time after you switch themes.

Since WordPress speed and performance plays an important role in user experience and WordPress SEO, you need to ensure the new theme is faster than what you’re using now. 

You can easily check your current website speed metrics using a WordPress speed testing tool such as IsItWP’s free website speed testing tool.

For more details, see our guide on how to run a website speed test.

3. Make Note of Current Theme Sidebars and Widget Areas

Sidebars are used for adding different widgets to your website, like email newsletter subscription forms, social media buttons, popular posts, and more.

Since every theme has different widget areas, your widgets may unexpectedly move or disappear from your site if you switch themes.

That’s why it’s important to make a note of what widgets you’re using in your WordPress sidebars and any other widget areas of your website before you change themes. Then you can easily replicate them after switching.

If you’ve added any custom code or shortcodes, then make sure to copy this code and save it somewhere safe so that you can use it with your new theme. 

4. Copy Existing WordPress Tracking Codes

Many users will add analytics tracking code directly to their theme files. Some WordPress themes also allow you to add tracking codes directly into your theme options panel.

It’s a common mistake to overlook these important tracking codes. 

You need to make sure you copy all of your website tracking codes you’re using for analytics, advertising, and more, so you can add them to your new website. 

If you want to make it easy on yourself, then we recommend using a plugin like MonsterInsights to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

By using MonsterInsights, you can rest assured there will be no interruptions to your analytics or lost data. You’ll also unlock bonus tracking like link clicks and button click tracking, WordPress category and tag analytics, author tracking, and much more.

For all other tracking codes, you can use the Insert Headers and Footers plugin. For more details, see our guide on how to add header and footer code in WordPress.

5. Back Up Your Current WordPress Website

It’s always a good idea to back up your website on a regular basis. Before changing your theme, you should completely back up your posts, pages, plugins, media, and databases.

The easiest way to do this is by using a WordPress backup plugin to create a backup of your entire site. For more details, see our guide on how to backup your WordPress site with UpdraftPlus.

This will help ensure you can easily recover your website if anything goes wrong when switching themes. 

6. Put Your WordPress Site Into Maintenance Mode

When making changes to your site, it’s always a good practice to put your website into maintenance mode. Maintenance mode lets you display a user friendly notice to your visitors.

This helps prevent your visitors from seeing your website when it’s half-finished or under construction.

To do this, we recommend using the SeedProd plugin. It’s the best drag and drop WordPress page builder used by over 1 million websites.

It lets you easily create custom maintenance mode pages, landing pages, coming soon pages, 404 pages, and more. 

For more details, see our guide on how to put your WordPress site in maintenance mode.

7. Test All Functionality and Installed WordPress Plugins

Once you have a new WordPress theme activated, you need to ensure you have the same functionality as before and that all of your old plugins work with your new theme.

You can start by adding back the code snippets that you copied from your old WordPress theme files. For more details, see our beginner’s guide to pasting code snippets into WordPress.

Then, spend some time using the features of your site that are powered by WordPress plugins. If you’re experiencing any errors at this time, see our beginner’s guide to troubleshooting WordPress errors.

8. Test New WordPress Theme Across Browsers and Devices

Cross-browser testing will help you make sure your new website looks good on different browsers, screen sizes, operating systems, and mobile devices.

Most of your visitors will probably use Google Chrome to visit your WordPress blog. However, other web browsers like Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari, and more are still used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

If your new website doesn’t work right on one of those browsers, then you’re missing out on visitors and traffic. 

Luckily, you can use all kinds of cross-browser testing tools to see how your website looks across different browsers and devices.

For more details, see our guide on how to test a WordPress site in different browsers.

9. Delete WordPress Plugins You No Longer Need

Some WordPress themes will pre-install plugins when you install the theme. Some of these may be useful, but other times you won’t need them.

Simply go to Plugins » Installed Plugins to see if your theme has added any new plugins.

Now is also a good time to go through your entire plugin list to see if any plugins are worth deleting. 

If you’re looking for high quality plugins to use with your new theme, then see our picks of the must have WordPress plugins. 

10. Let Your Users Know Your New Website is Live

Once you’re ready to make your new WordPress theme live, you can turn off maintenance mode.

You should also get in touch with your readers to tell them about your new website. This will prepare your audience so that they’re not confused by any big design changes, and it will also help to keep your subscribers engaged and returning to your site to see the new design.

Here’s an example post we shared on Facebook about our new website redesign.

We recommend notifying your audience via your email newsletter, social media, and push notifications.

If you’re looking for more ways to promote your site, then see our guide on how to share your blog posts with readers.

11. Test Loading Speeds for Your New WordPress Theme

Once your new theme is live and you’ve gone through the steps above, it’s time to do another speed test. Ideally, your new website will be faster and get better scores in your speed test.

To do this, simply use the same website speed tool you used earlier and compare the results. 

If the new theme is slower than your old theme, then make sure you run multiple tests, test from different areas, and check to see if you have any caching or firewall settings that could be causing the dip. 

12. Monitor Your WordPress Website Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who land on your website and leave without continuing to a second page. A high bounce rate means that you didn’t convince your visitor to stay on your site long enough to take action.

After you switch themes, it’s important to monitor your bounce rate. Some themes are simply friendlier at helping visitors navigate around your site.

If your bounce rate has gone up since switching theme, then you’ll want to work to lower it. You can do this by improving your navigation menus, adding more internal links, adding a popular posts widget, and more.

For more details, see our guide on how to increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate in WordPress. 

13. Listen to Reader Feedback to Improve Your WordPress Website

Finally, it’s important you listen to reader feedback after you switch to a new theme. Some readers may love or hate certain parts of your design. 

You don’t have to listen to every reader and make the changes they suggest. But, if there’s a group of readers who are experiencing the same issue, then it’s probably worth looking into.

You can collect visitor feedback by adding a contact form to your website, or running a survey asking for reader feedback on your new design.

The easiest way to do this is by using WPForms. It’s the best WordPress survey plugin in the market used by over 5 million websites. 

It lets you easily create engaging survey forms with the drag and drop builder.

Plus, the reporting section automatically creates beautiful reports to help analyze your results. 

For more details, see our guide on how to create a survey in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn exactly what you should do before switching WordPress themes. You may also want to see our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting and our expert picks of the best AI chatbot software for your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Are you ready to launch your WordPress site?

Each day thousands of new sites appear on the web. That’s why you want to make sure that your website stands out and shines from the very beginning.

In this article, we have prepared a handy checklist of things you should do before launching a WordPress website.

Getting Started

Before you start, it’s crucial to select the right hosting for your WordPress website.

While most sites are fine with basic WordPress hosting, in some cases you may need managed WordPress hosting.

How can you tell what type of hosting you need? We recommend you read these guides:

• How to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting
• When Do You Really Need Managed WordPress Hosting?

For the sake of this article, we will assume that you have already installed WordPress and everything is ready.

Having said that, let’s take a look at the things you should do before you launch your WordPress site.

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1. Install a WordPress Backup Solution

You should always set up a WordPress backup solution on your website. Backups are like an insurance policy. Should anything go wrong, you can always recover your site.

There are plenty of good free and paid WordPress backup plugins that you can set up on your website within minutes.

You want to make sure that the backups are automatically scheduled and are saved on a cloud storage service like Dropbox, Amazon S3, or Google Drive.

UpdratPlus is a good choice because it allows you to create unlimited cloud backups of your WordPress site on a schedule you choose. While the free version has a lot of features, we recommend upgrading to UpdraftPlus Premium.

2. Secure the WordPress Admin Area

As the most popular content management system in the world, WordPress is a big target for hackers. Many WordPress sites run without having to face any of these threats for years, but it is always better to be prepared than to be sorry.

You can block many common security threats by protecting your admin area from unauthorized access. Take a look at our list of tips to protect your WordPress admin area.

For all of our sites, we set up a Sucuri firewall. This works well, and we discovered it helped us block 450,000 WordPress attacks in three months.

Sucuri is like having a private security system and guards at your physical business location. It is definitely the way to go if your site is a business.

3. Check Your Site for 404 Errors

On a brand new website, you need to make sure all pages on your website are loading properly, and there are no missing links. Otherwise, your visitors will see 404 errors, which creates a bad user experience.

If you have already added your site to the Google Search Console, then you can use it to find pages giving a ‘404 not found’ error in your crawl report.

Otherwise, you will have to manually browse your site and make sure everything is working as expected. If you have a lot of content, then you can first check that your most important pages are loading, such as your about, contact, registration, and login pages.

You should also set up email alerts for 404 errors on your WordPress site. This way you can easily monitor and fix bad links as you discover them.

4. Make Email for Your WordPress Site Reliable

Failed email is one of the most common WordPress errors. Some of your email notifications may deliver, but some of them may not. That’s a problem because you rely on email to keep your website running smoothly.

This is because many email service providers identify email sent by WordPress as spam. Also, your hosting server may not be properly configured to use the PHP mail() function.

Both these problems can be fixed by switching to SMTP, the industry standard for sending email. Simply follow our guide on how to fix the WordPress not sending email issue.

5. Check All Forms on Your Site

The next thing you need to do is to make sure that all forms on your site are working. You’ll have to test your contact forms, comment forms, email subscription forms, and so on. Make sure every form on your site works properly.

You should also check your email list and send test emails to confirm that they are delivered to the right mailing list.

By the way, if you haven’t already started building an email list, then you should read our article on why you should start building your email list right away.

If you run a multi-author blog, membership site, or online store, then you’ll also need to check your login and registration forms.

You should also log in to your website with different user roles to check if you need to remove unnecessary items from the WordPress admin area for user accounts.

6. Make User Experience Flawless on eCommerce Websites

If you are running an eCommerce store, then you need to check the user experience aspects of your website more thoroughly.

You should put yourself in your user’s shoes and try to browse your products, add them to the cart, and even do a test transaction. Make sure everything works smoothly and flawlessly.

If you are selling digital goods, then make sure they are delivered promptly. For physical goods, you will need to check your systems for the smooth completion of orders.

Make sure you also check that receipts, invoices, shipping cost calculations, and taxes are all working correctly.

7. Check Images, Videos, and Sliders

Images and videos are an important part of your website and make the modern web more interactive. However, you’ll leave a bad impression if you haven’t added them correctly.

Check that all images on your website are loading properly. You should also make sure they load quickly by following our guide on how to optimize images for the web, or your site’s performance may be affected.

You should play the videos embedded on your website using different devices and browsers to make sure that they work as intended.

If you are using a WordPress slider plugin, then make sure that the slider is working on all browsers and devices just as you intended it to be.

8. Test Social Integrations

Social media plays a very important role in the successful launch of any product. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to interact with your users.

Make sure that users can find ways to connect with your website on social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

You should confirm that social sharing plugins on your website are working properly.

It’s also good to enable Twitter Cards and Facebook Open Graph meta data, and add social share buttons to your WordPress website.

9. Test Your Website’s Performance

Performance issues are usually the main concern during the development phase of a website. Now that you are about to launch your website, it’s time to test your website one more time.

Check your website for speed using tools like Pingdom and Google Pagespeed tool. Speed is not only important for user experience, it is also an important SEO factor.

One of the best ways to speed up your WordPress site is to install a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache and use a CDN like MaxCDN.

Most managed WordPress hosting companies like WPEngine come with built-in caching and include CDN and backups as part of their plan.

Finally, check our ultimate guide to boosting WordPress speed and performance. In this guide, we share the most useful WordPress speed optimization tips to speed up your website.

10. Install Google Analytics

You cannot improve without knowing how your readers interact with your website.

Google Analytics is the easiest way to track this. It tells you where your visitors are coming from, what they see on your site, when they leave, and how well your site is doing.

It is important that you install Google Analytics before the launch, so you can track how your launch efforts performed. It will also help you keep a historical record of the day when you launched and how much your site has grown since then.

If you find Google Analytics a bit overwhelming, we’ve got you covered. Take a look at our Google Analytics beginner’s guide. In this article, we explain why Google Analytics is important, how to install it, and how to make sense of your traffic reports.

11. Check Your SEO Settings

Search engines are among the top source of free traffic for most websites. Optimizing your website for search engines can help you grow your traffic steadily after the launch.

We use the Yoast SEO plugin on all our websites. It is comprehensive site optimization software for WordPress. Take a look at our tutorial on how to install and set up the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast to maximize your site’s SEO potential.

Finally, take a look at our ultimate WordPress SEO guide for beginners. And if you are about to launch an online store, then we have a WooCommerce SEO guide as well.

We hope this article helped you prepare your checklist of things to do before launching your WordPress site. You may also want to learn some proven ways to increase your blog traffic, or see our list of 40 useful tools to manage and grow your WordPress blog.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Do you want to learn how to optimize your blog posts for SEO?

By optimizing your posts for SEO, you can improve your search engine rankings and get more traffic to your WordPress site. 

In this article, we will share our best SEO tips to help you optimize your blog posts for SEO like a pro. These are the tips we use on our own blogs, which get millions of visitors from search engines.

Why Optimize Your WordPress Blog Posts for SEO?

Optimizing your blog posts for SEO helps you consistently get more traffic to your WordPress website from the search engines.

Since search engines are often the largest source of website traffic, this can be very valuable to your blog, online store, or small business website.

If you’re simply publishing your blog posts and not optimizing for WordPress SEO, then you’re limiting the amount of traffic you can get and money you can make. 

With that said, here is our blog post optimization checklist to optimize your blog for SEO like a pro.

1. Plan Your Content with Proper Keyword Research

Many beginners just use their best guesses to write about topics they feel their users would be interested in.

You don’t need to rely on blind guesses, especially when you can do keyword research to find out exactly what your users are looking for.

Keyword research is a technique used by content creators and SEO experts. It helps you discover topics your users are interested in based on the search engine data.

Then, you can use these keywords to plan your content strategy. This will ensure that you write about topics that people are actually looking for, and it’s a great way to build an engaged audience.

We recommend using keyword research tools like Semrush. They offer in-depth keyword data, competition analysis, keyword position tracking, and tons of other useful features.

If you are using Semrush, then you would want to check out their SEO Writing Assistant tool. It helps you discover LSI and related keywords, readability, language tone, and average article length.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to do keyword research for your blog posts.

2. Find Semantic Keywords for Your Focus Keyword

After you have done your keyword research and discovered keyword ideas, it is time to pick one that has the highest search volume and low competition.

This will be your focus keyword. It’s the search phrase that your users are most likely to use to search for your article.

If you are using All in One SEO, one of the best WordPress SEO plugins, then you can set the focus keyword in your article’s SEO settings. This allows you to see how effectively you have used it in your article.

Next, you need to find the Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords. These are the searches related to your focus keyword.

The easiest way to find them is to simply enter your focus keyword in Google Search and scroll down to the bottom of the results where they’ll be listed.

You need to incorporate as many of these keywords in your content, so you can have the most complete content for your readers.

It’s very important that you don’t try to stuff them in your content. This would look odd to your users, and search engines are pretty good at detecting keyword stuffing.

For more details, you can see our complete guide on how to properly use a focus keyphrase.

3. Write an Effective Blog Post Title

The title of your blog post is extremely important for search rankings.

A good blog post title makes your article more relevant to the search query. More importantly, it motivates users to click on your article when they see it in the search results.

You can make your blog post title more SEO-friendly by using your focus keyword in the title.

Aside from adding your focus keyword, we also recommend making your headline catchy and click-worthy. That’s because your organic click-through rate (CTR) plays an important role in SEO.

The best way to do this is to use a headline analyzer tool. This will evaluate your headline and offers tips to improve your headlines to make them more engaging and click-worthy.

AIOSEO has a built-in headline analyzer tool that will give your headline a score and offer tips to make your headline even better.

For more details, see our guide on how to use a headline analyzer in WordPress to improve SEO titles.

4. Make Internal Linking a Habit

Once you have blogged for a while, you will have enough content that you want users to read. With internal linking, you can send new readers to check out your older relevant posts.

Internal linking is a great way to develop a contextual relationship between your new and old posts. It also allows you to pass relevant link juice to your older articles.

WordPress makes it easy to search for your old posts right inside the post editor. Simply select the text you want to link and click on the link button.

A text pop-up will appear below your highlighted words. Then, you can start typing to search for the older articles you want to link to.

To learn more, see our beginner’s guide on how to add a link in WordPress.

Making internal linking a habit will make sure that your on-page SEO is good and that your older articles continue to get new links.

If you want an even easier way to manage your internal links over time and easily add new links to old posts, then we recommend using AIOSEO.

It includes a unique link management feature that lets you add links to your old and new content without having to open up the post. Plus, it provides link recommendations, detailed link reports, and much more.

To set up the plugin, see our guide on how to setup All in One SEO for WordPress correctly.

After that, navigate to All in One SEO » Link Assistant in your WordPress dashboard.

This brings up the link assistant dashboard. It offers suggestions for relevant posts you can link to and the anchor text to use. Simply click the ‘Add Link’ button, and the link will automatically be added to your post. 

Essentially, you can do the same thing manually, but if you’re looking to save time and get a big picture perspective on your internal and external links, then using AIOSEO is a great choice. 

5. Add Images and Videos to Your Blog Posts

Adding images and videos to your blog posts makes them more engaging and interesting for your readers. Content that readers love also tends to rank higher in the search results. 

You can add fun images, image galleries, tutorial images, and more.

For example, SeedProd adds all kinds of engaging screenshots and images to break up longer blog posts.

When adding images, you want to be careful about image copyrights. Often beginners copy images from other sites to use, which can get you in legal trouble if you do so without proper permissions.

Don’t worry, there are plenty of places to find royalty free images to use in your blog posts. 

You can also use your original photographs or use other web design software like Adobe Photoshop or Canva to create your own.

Once you’re finished creating your images, you need to make sure to optimize your images for SEO. For more details, see our guide on how to optimize images for search engines.

Videos are even more engaging than images. You can convert your blog posts into videos by creating slideshows, vlogs, and more.

MonsterInsights embeds tutorial videos directly into their posts, for users who prefer to watch, instead of read.

If you want to create professional videos, then see our picks of the best video editing software.

However, you should never directly upload videos to your blog posts. WordPress is not optimized to serve videos, and your WordPress hosting service can’t handle them.

Instead, we recommend uploading your videos to a video hosting site like YouTube or Vimeo. These sites are built to host your videos and can even be an additional traffic source. 

To learn more, see our guide on how to easily embed videos in WordPress blog posts.

6. Add a Meta Description to Your Blog Post

The meta description is an HTML meta tag that you can add to any page. Its purpose is to provide a short description of your article for search engines and other crawlers.

Some SEO experts believe that the meta description tag has become irrelevant. However, many others would disagree. At WPBeginner, we recommend using the meta description for all of your posts.

A good meta description can explain a lot more about an article. Social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn also display it when your articles are shared on those platforms.

You can even add Facebook Open Graph Meta Data to control your description when your post is shared on Facebook.

Since now you know that people will be reading your meta descriptions, you want to make sure that it’s helpful.

You also want to mention your focus keyword at least once in the meta description for search purposes. The character limit for meta description is 155 characters.

Try to stay within that limit, or your meta description will be cut short after 155 characters. You also want to make sure to use your focus keyword earlier in the meta description rather than later.

Luckily, AIOSEO makes it super easy to add your meta description. Directly below the post editor, you’ll see a box where your description can be added.

To learn more, see our guide on how to add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress.

7. Make Your Articles Easier to Read

Readability is an important factor considered by search engines. Articles that are easier to read often rank higher than articles that don’t offer a good user experience.

Computer and mobile screens are still not an optimal platform for reading.

This is why most users just scan through articles. In fact, studies found that users spend less than a second to decide whether they want to stay on a page or leave.

That’s a very short time for you to convince the user to stay and scroll through. By improving readability, you can make it possible for your users to scan an article quickly.

You can improve readability by using shorter sentences, smaller paragraphs, punctuation, headings, and bulleted lists. We recommend adding white space around text and using images to make your text read easier on the eyes.

If you are using the All in One SEO plugin, then it will automatically analyze readability issues and make suggestions for you in the analysis section.

You can also use online grammar checker tools like Grammarly to check for grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes on the fly.

To learn more, see our guide on how to add and improve the readability score in WordPress posts.

8. Use Categories and Tags to Organize Content

Categories and tags help you sort your content not only for yourself, but for the readers and search engines.

The problem is that many WordPress beginners often end up using them incorrectly.

If you think about your website as a book, then categories would be the table of contents and tags will be the index part of the book.

Categories are used to divide your content into major topics discussed on your WordPress blog. Tags, on the other hand, are the topics discussed in an individual blog post.

To learn more, see our beginner’s guide on using categories and tags for maximum SEO benefit.

9. Aim to Be The Featured Snippet in The Search Result

Google tries to helps people searching answer their questions as quick as possible. As part of this effort, they have introduced the featured result or answer box.

This is the highlighted search result that appears on the top. Google generates a custom snippet from the article’s content highlighting the part that their algorithms believe to be the answer of user’s query.

According to research conducted by Advanced Web Ranking, Answer boxes secure almost 32.3% CTR. This makes them immensely important for your SEO strategy.

There is no specific set of instructions provided by Google on how to get the featured snippet. Their recommendation is to improve your content and make sure that it offers the information users are seeking.

To learn more, see our guide on how to appear in Google answer boxes with your WordPress site.

10. Make Your Blog Posts Comprehensive

Search engines love articles that cover a topic with great detail. This is why we asked you to gather the semantically related keywords (LSI Keywords) as part of your content planning step.

These related keywords give you an idea of different variations of user searches regarding that particular topic. By covering those keywords in your article, you would be able to make it more comprehensive, informative, and useful.

You should use headings and subheadings to include those keywords and try to cover as much ground as you could.

Aside from LSI keywords, another tip to create complete content is to type your desired keyword into Google and then switch to the ‘Image’. You will see topic bubbles with a variety of keywords.

We recommend including these when creating your content, so you can have the most comprehensive content possible.

11. Optimize Older Blog Posts

Many beginners tend to forget about a blog post after they have published it. In fact, you are not done optimizing your blog post for SEO once it is published. 

Here are some things that you need to do after publishing your blog post:

• Share it with readers – Share your new and old content with readers and subscribers. To learn more, see our guide on how to share your blog posts with readers.
• Add internal links – Once you have published a post, you can go back to relevant old articles and add a link to your new blog post. This gives your new articles link juice while also allowing users to discover it more easily.
• Track search rankings – You have optimized a post for SEO, but how do you keep track of its search rankings? See our recommendations of the best SEO rank tracker tools for keyword tracking.

We recommend optimizing old posts on a regular basis, so you can continue to improve your rankings.

We hope this article helped you learn how to optimize your blog posts for SEO like a pro. You may also want to see our guide on how to register a domain name and our expert picks of the best live chat software for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Are you looking for website ideas to launch a side business in the new year?

There are tons of opportunities online with profitable website ideas that you can easily transform into a sustainable side income.

In this article, we’ll share the best website ideas to launch this year. We’ll also show you how to easily get started without a big investment.

What You Need to Put Website Ideas into Action

It is a common myth that you need to be tech-savvy or a programmer to start a website. This was probably true in the 90s, but these days you don’t need any special skills to build a website.

Here is what you actually need to make a website:

• A domain name. This will be your website’s address on the internet, e.g. wpbeginner.com).
• Web hosting account. This will be your website’s home and where you’ll store all your website files
• A website builder. We recommend using WordPress.org which is the best website builder powering more than 43% of all websites on the internet.

We recommend using Bluehost to make your website. They are one of the biggest hosting companies in the world and are officially recommended by WordPress.

They are offering WPBeginner users a generous 60% off discount on hosting with a free domain name and free SSL certificate. Basically, you can launch a website for $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

They automatically install WordPress for you, and you can quickly start working on your website idea with in minutes. If you need more help, then follow the steps in our WordPress installation guide to set up your website.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the most profitable website ideas to launch this year and turn them into a viable business.

Here is a quick list of website ideas that we’ll talk about. You can jump to the one that you find interesting or read as you scroll along.

• Start a Personal Blog Website
• Build an Online Store
• Make a Membership Website
• Sell Online Courses
• Create a Dropshipping Website
• Make an Affiliate Website
• Launch a Fashion Blog
• Start a Travel Website
• Make a Food / Recipes Website
• Start a Podcast Website
• Start a Job Hunt Website
• Make a Coupons Website
• Create an Online Marketplace
• Start a Restaurant Website
• Build a Reviews Website
• Make a Photography Website
• Launch a Portfolio Website
• Start an Online Food Delivery Website
• Sell Handicrafts Online
• Start a Pet Owners Community
• Start a News Website

1. Start a Personal Website / Blog

Blogs are a popular website idea that has been around for some time and still going strong. Entrepreneurs like Darren Rowse, John Lee Dumas, and Pat Flynn all started as bloggers and are now making six-figure incomes.

Our company’s CEO, Syed Balkhi, started this blog that led him to build an eight-figure business (see: WPBeginner income).

Launching a blog is pretty easy, and it can be on any topic that you are passionate about. The benefit of starting a blog is that you can later use it as a platform to launch many other website ideas.

There are also a ton of monetization options that make blogging a profitable website idea. You can use programs like Google AdSense to display ads, promote affiliate products, sell direct advertisements, or you can even sell your own products to your readers such as online courses, eBooks, etc.

Need help? See our step by step how to start a blog tutorial where we walk you through every step of the way.

If you need expert help, then we also offer a free WordPress website setup service where one of our WordPress experts will set up your blog for you.

2. Build an Online Store

Another booming website idea is to build an eCommerce store. A lot of folks think that it is probably too technical to get started, which is not exactly true.

You can easily start an eCommerce website with WooCommerce. It is the world’s most popular eCommerce platform that runs on top of WordPress.

It is super easy to use and allows you to sell any type of digital, virtual, or physical products that need shipping. You can easily accept online payments using PayPal, Stripe, or many other payment services.

For step by step instructions, you can follow our beginner’s guide on how to start an online store.

Need ideas on what to sell on your store? See our tutorial on how to source products to sell online.

3. Make a Membership Website

Another popular website idea that is getting a lot of momentum is to create a membership-based website.

Basically, you restrict access to some content on your website that is only available for paid members. This could be an online course, members-only forums, audio or video content, or anything else.

The easiest way to do this is by using MemberPress. It is a WordPress membership plugin that helps you create subscriptions, restrict access, and sell membership plans on your website.

For details, follow our tutorial on how to make a membership website with step by step instructions.

4. Sell Online Courses

Creating and selling online courses is another popular website idea that is growing really fast.

This growing website niche is fueled by the modern gig economy where people need to learn new skills to find new jobs, improve existing skillsets, or just learn something new as a hobby.

MemberPress is the best WordPress LMS plugin that allows you to easily create and sell online courses on your website.

5. Create a Dropshipping Website

Dropshipping is another growing website idea that you can launch without much investment. A dropshipping store is an online store where you sell products, but they are shipped directly by the vendor.

This saves you from the hassle of managing and storing stuff, keeping up inventory, and shipping things. It also allows you to sell a wide-variety of products.

For more details, see our step by step guide on how to create a dropshipping business for beginners.

6. Make an Affiliate Website

One of the most popular website ideas is to start an affiliate website.

Affiliate marketing is a referral arrangement in which an online retailer (advertiser) pays you a commission when users purchase their product from your referral link.

This is a massive industry which means you can make a niche affiliate website and start building upon it. You can find affiliate programs in nearly every industry, especially if you sign up for an affiliate program like Amazon Associates or ShareASale.

For example: you can create a website that’s focused entirely on reviewing all the newest women’s handbags, new internet routers, new smartphones, etc.

When users make a purchase based on your recommendation, you get a referral fee.

For a more in-depth discussion, see our beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing which has step by step instructions for new affiliate marketers.

7. Launch a Fashion Blog

Fashion and lifestyle is another profitable website idea that has a ton of potential. There are a lot of fashion bloggers and influencers making six-figure incomes.

It’s better to have your own website instead of just being on social media, because there are more opportunities for monetization.

You can make money through display ads, affiliate marketing, Instagram partnerships with brands, and more.

With WordPress, you can add all the tools you need to grow your brand. You can connect your Instagram feed and other social media, Youtube videos, find fashion website themes, use advertising plugins, and more.

For details, see our tutorial on how to start a fashion blog and promote it the right way.

8. Start a Travel Website

Making a travel blog is another great website idea that is easy to implement and build upon.

You can be an experienced traveler, vlogger, or marketer promoting different tourist destinations. You can monetize using display ads, travel partnerships, earning perks, and more.

Influential travel bloggers are using their travel blogs to launch different products and making significant passive income.

For more on this, don’t forget to check out our article on how to make a travel website using WordPress.

9. Make a Food / Recipes Website

Food and recipe websites are already a popular website idea with plenty of room for new websites.

You can easily start a blog or website, share recipes, discuss food, weight loss, health, or other related topics. Most recipe websites make money through ads, affiliate marketing, and by selling membership subscriptions.

WordPress comes with plugins that allow you to easily write recipes in SEO friendly format. For details, you can follow our tutorial on how to create a food website and make money online.

10. Start a Podcast Website

Podcasting is another popular website idea that you can launch. It is a fast-growing niche with tons of monetization options.

A podcast is an episodic series of audio files that users can subscribe to download and listen to.

Successful podcasters are making significant money online through sponsorships, advertisements, selling products, and more. It does require a little bit of hardware and some practice with recording and uploading files.

We have a comprehensive guide on starting a podcast website with step by step instructions.

We also have a list of the best podcast hosting platforms to help you succeed.

11. Start a Job Hunt Website

Another popular website idea is to create a job hunt website. It is easy to monetize, and you make money based on user-generated content.

Basically, a job board website allows companies to post job listings and facilitate job seekers by browsing and searching for jobs.

There are WordPress plugins that help you quickly create a job search engine. You can even accept online payments from employers to post listings.

For details, see our guide on how to create a job board in WordPress.

12. Make a Coupons Website

A coupons website helps customers find coupons and deals for their favorite products.

It connects businesses to the customers and provides them tools to locate deals and discounts. It is monetized by affiliate links, partnerships, and display ads.

You can totally automate your website and allow businesses to submit deals directly. This allows you to make money online with user-generated content.

For more details, see our guide on how to create a coupon site in WordPress.

13. Create an Online Marketplace

Many successful marketers use ideas that involve user-generated content to make money. Creating an online marketplace website is one such website idea that you can easily replicate.

A marketplace website is where you provide an eCommerce platform for others to sell their products. You get a cut on each transaction made on your website while the sellers manage the shipping and fulfillment.

For more details, see our article on creating an online marketplace website with detailed instructions.

14. Start a Restaurant Website

Making a restaurant website is an idea specific to people in the restaurant and food industry. Making a restaurant website allows you to accept table reservations and even accept online orders for food delivery.

With WordPress, you can use tools like WPForms to accept bookings and food delivery orders. It also gives you access to many professionally designed restaurant templates that you can customize to your own needs.

Making a restaurant website also helps you easily promote your business, reach new customers, and strengthen your brand image.

15. Build a Reviews Website

Most users look at online reviews before making a buying decision. This makes a reviews website a really lucrative website idea.

Your review website can be on any specific niche or topic you’re interested in, from digital cameras to video games or other products.

A reviews website could rely on both user-generated and original content. You can make money using display ads, affiliate marketing, sponsorships, and more.

We have an article on how to create a niche reviews website with step by step instructions.

16. Make a Photography Website

Another exciting website idea is to launch a photography website. This could be a blog about photography itself, or it could be a place to showcase and sell your own photos.

You can also create a marketplace like Shutterstock where users can sell or buy photographs, illustrations, and other graphic design items.

For more information, take a look at our article on how to make a photography website in WordPress.

17. Launch a Portfolio Website

A great website idea is to make a portfolio website. If you are an artist, photographer, musician, or videographer, then a portfolio website helps you showcase your work and find new opportunities.

However, you don’t need to be an artist to make a portfolio website. The same idea can be used by any kind of professional like writers, web designers, developers, fashion models, and more.

You can use portfolio plugins to showcase your work or choose from these beautiful portfolio themes to get started.

18. Start an Online Food Delivery Website

The online food delivery business is booming and it could be a profitable website idea with a little bit of investment.

You can find local restaurants and create a website that showcases these restaurants and allows customers to order food online. You can then pass the order to the restaurant and they deliver the food.

You can use WPForms to collect food delivery orders. Upon form submission, you can show users a page with estimated delivery time and a phone number to the restaurant.

19. Sell Handicrafts Online

Want to sell your homemade items on the internet? It is really easy to do and could be the beginning of a successful business idea.

You can start an online store using WooCommerce, which is super-easy to set up. Unlike other platforms, WooCommerce doesn’t take a cut out of each transaction you make which is really important for home-based business.

For details, see our guide on how to make an Etsy like store in WordPress.

20. Start a Pets Store / Community

Making an online pets store is another easy to start website idea. It is such a massive industry that you can find many untapped niche ideas catering to specific customers.

You can sell anything on your pet store using WooCommerce. You can also use MemberPress to build a members-only community that generates even more revenue for your business.

21. Start a News Website

If you are into current affairs and politics, then creating a news website could be the money making idea you are looking for.

You can start a news website and monetize it using display ads and by selling membership subscriptions. Many traditional newspapers are already putting their content behind paywalls and monetizing.

You can start small with few articles per week and then build upon that. You can even invite guest authors, start a podcast, and sell merchandise to make a sustainable business.

With local newspapers struggling, there’s a high demand for hyper-local niche news website, and we believe this will be a huge trend going into 2021 and beyond.

We hope this article helped you find the best website idea to launch in the new year. Once you have launched your website, you can see our tips on how to increase your website traffic, and our guide on the best WordPress plugins to grow your online business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.