The underlying motive for a blog site is to have as many visitors as possible. Creating such a blog is more like a challenge. Alongside having quality contents, there are some features that add values to a blog site. No matter how engrossing your articles are, visitors won’t bother taking a look if they are not well presented. So, looks and functionalities of your blog ultimately get you the volume of visitors you want to have. For that particular reason, we will talk about some of the must-have features of a WordPress blog site.
Emerging from a popular blogging platform, WordPress is now the most used CMS powering a huge number of the websites live today. WordPress is truly synonymous to blog. However, WordPress is largely being used for developing website of all categories. Thanks to its versatility.
N.B. : If you are a beginner and don’t know how to create a blog site on WordPress, read our detailed guideline on how to start your dream blog site from the scratch.
Must-have features of a WordPress blog site
You may have features of your choice. But there are some must-have features that you can’t afford to miss. Let’s take a quick look at some of them.
- Modern design with better content presentation
- Typography that pleases readers’ eyes
- Highly navigable menus
- Email subscription system
- Social media presence
- Versatile post formats (text, images, videos etc.)
- Multiple comment options
- Website security
- Anti-spamming system
- Search engine optimization
Let’s shed light on some of the must have features of a WordPress blog site.
A modern design with personal touch
What you have on your homepage, how easily visitors find what they need on your site will define how well presented your WordPress blog site is. A modern WordPress blog should have a smart display of the website content all across the pages. A design that shows most number of articles at a look will increase the chances of having more visitors on the site.
Reader-friendly typography
Choosing the right fonts for the website content is another important criterion for a blog site. Since blog is mostly about written contents, fonts play a great role in bringing a look that pleases readers’ eyes. So, there’s lot to think before you pick a font for your blog site. You can take inspiration from the sites like Medium, The Next Web, Envato blog and some other popular sites. Remember, the typography is what your website visitors will mostly stick with.
Easy-to-navigate menu
Making blog articles and other resources available for the visitors is the key to have visitors stay on your site for a long time. So, having highly navigable menus on a WordPress blog is a must. Alongside putting blog articles on the homepage, linking important categories, special articles, and glossaries to the menu items will reduce the bounce rate and bring more traffic in the long run.
Versatile post formats
Let your blog resources not be limited to just articles. Have various types of posts. Having video content linked to a menu item and an image gallery will add more value to your site. In case of long articles, you can have videos and images to adorn them for nicer look. Articles with just plain text might be boring to most of the visitors.
Social media & email subscription
Most blogs have their presence on social media with pages and accounts in their names. Having those links on the site will help your visitors get all the latest updates by revisiting the site following the links shared on social media. An email subscription system will have all interested visitors listed in the system so that you can send emails about new blog posts, announcements, or any other offering you have.
Multiple comment options
Any WordPress site will have the default comment system. But multiple comment options will bring more user engagements and make commenting easier for visitors. Having Disqus, Facebook and other commenting systems will relieve them from opening account and enable comment quickly on the site.
Advertising facility (Good to have)
A decent advertisement on particular areas of the site will add value to your blog. Most importantly, they will earn you a good some of money in the long run. But having excessive ads and misleading links will backfire. Once your links redirect visitors to something unusual they will no longer trust your site. Be wise with the advertisement policy.
Security and spam protection
Make your WordPress blog site secure. There are some plugins like Sucuri and Wordfence that safeguard your website from potential threats. Also, have spam protection systems so that there’s no unwanted activities on your site. You can use Akismet anti spam plugin for this. It checks comments and contact form submissions against listed global database of spam to prevent site from publishing malicious content.
Search engine optimization
Optimizing WordPress blog site for search engines is one of the key things you must do to get more traffic. An SEO friendly website will most likely to appear at the top of the search engine result pages. It’s your chance to be available to most number of people who look for information you have on your site. Since you run blog on WordPress, you have many plugins like Yoast and All in one SEO to optimize your web pages, blog posts, and products for search engines.
Taking all the above features into account, one might think making a WordPress blog is a lot harder. But the good news is there are some WordPress themes like Personal Blog can help you build a WordPress blog site easily ensuring most of the necessary functionalities mentioned above. And if you need a WordPress maintenance service, you can contact WP Buffs in this regard.
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