How to set up a WordPress website in 10 steps
Over the years, we’ve seen people set up WordPress websites for countless reasons. Perhaps they wanted to share their ideas, take a small service-based business online, or run an eCommerce store. Whatever the reason, a common experience was clear. All these things are entirely achievable thanks to easy-to-use website builders like WordPress.com.
Gone are the days when you needed coding or HTML know-how to set up a WordPress website. Instead, with WordPress.com’s intuitive drag and drop web page builder and its hundreds of themes and apps to choose from, WordPress.com is undoubtedly one of the most versatile website builders available. Plus, unlike setting up your site using a self-hosted WordPress.org installation, WordPress.com takes care of web hosting services and security for you.
If setting up a WordPress site sounds like a lot to take in, don’t worry. In this tutorial, we’re outlining how to set up a WordPress website in ten simple steps…
Would you prefer video to text? Just click to scroll down to watch the setup process.
1. Sign up for WordPress.com
First off, you’ll need to sign up for a WordPress.com account by heading over to WordPress.com and clicking the ‘Get Started’ button. This is located on the top right-hand side of the homepage.
From there, you’ll have to provide your email and create a password and username. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be redirected to a page where you can select your preferred WordPress.com hosting plan.
It’s as simple as that. WordPress.com is a fully hosted service, so you don’t have to worry about installing WordPress yourself or paying for WordPress hosting providers like Bluehost or Siteground.
If you’re unsure which package to opt for, why not get started with the free plan? This is great for familiarizing yourself with WordPress.com’s interface and for creating a personal site and blog. Then, if you need more features later on, you can upgrade your package to benefit from extra functionality and customizability.
That said, the best WordPress plan to use from the get-go is the Business package. This provides all the tools needed to create a professional-looking website from scratch.
2. Establish a Brand Identity
Creating an identity for your brand isn’t an easy process, but it’s imperative to give this some consideration before delving into web design. This is crucial for creating consistency and ensuring every aspect of your website appeals to your target demographic. With that in mind, be sure to give these two elements due care and attention:
Your Website’s Name
Your website’s name is an important decision. It immediately informs visitors what your site’s about and goes hand in hand with your web domain name – the online ‘address’ to your site that displays in the browser’s search bar.
Of course, your website’s name will hinge on the kind of site you’re creating. For instance, if you’re launching an online portfolio, you might be considering using your own name or the name of your brand. Alternatively, if you’re thinking of selling services or products, you might want to foreground the types of services you provide in your domain name.
No matter the kind of website you’re creating, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Choose a name that’s memorable and easy to spell. That way, visitors can easily navigate back to your website from memory alone.
- Double-check that your name isn’t too similar to an existing site. You might otherwise lose traffic to your competitor and frustrate your audience if they can’t find you.
- Check if your domain name is available. You can do this by typing your ideas into https://instantdomainsearch.com/.
- If your website’s title is doubling as a potential name for a new business, brainstorm some ideas and pick your favorites. Then, poll these with friends, family, and your professional network to get their input.
Choosing or Changing Your Website Name
After you’ve selected your WordPress.com plan, you’ll be prompted to enter your website’s name. Then, you’ll be asked to select a domain name. If you’re using the free plan, you’ll be given a WordPress subdomain, which looks like this:
www.[yourNameHere].wordpress.com
As your site grows, you’ll likely want to purchase your own domain name to appear more credible and professional. With WordPress.com’s Pro plans, you’ll get a free domain name for a year. To register your custom domain, make sure you’re logged into your WordPress.com account. Then, head to ‘My Site’ and from the left-hand sidebar select ‘Manage,’ followed by ‘Domains.’
Then select ‘Change primary domain.’
If you already have a website up and running and want to change your website’s name, head over to:
My Site → Manage → Settings
Here you can change your site’s title (which is the heading for your homepage content), tagline, and the site icon.
Note: Your website’s name and domain name don’t have to be the same. However, we recommend keeping them the same or at least similar. This helps keep branding consistent and aids visitors with remembering your brand’s name.
Choosing The Right Tagline
In addition to your website’s name, your tagline is another way to help define your brand identity to curious visitors. Your tagline should be short, snappy, and summarize what you do and what visitors gain from your site. From an SEO (search engine optimization) perspective, it’s also wise to include any keywords you’re trying to rank for.
3. Choosing a WordPress Theme
Your chosen WordPress theme is your website’s blueprint that determines its basic style and organization. There are over 100 free WordPress themes to choose from and even more premium themes to peruse. Search for templates on the theme market by website type, layout, or features to narrow down your options.
Although picking a WordPress theme is an important decision, don’t worry if you’re not 100% sure. You can switch templates at any time. To do this, just head to ‘My Sites,’ then from the left-hand sidebar click ‘Design,’ followed by ‘Themes.’
Once you’ve selected a theme, you can start customizing your WordPress website’s design using the drag and drop builder.
4. Design Your Homepage
There’s a good chance your homepage will be the first web page visitors land on when they click through to your site. So, it’s crucial this makes a good impression, exudes your brand identity, and communicates the value you offer customers.
As many as 38% of visitors will stop engaging with a site if its design is unattractive.
The moral of the story is? Design matters.
Just like picking your website’s name, your homepage’s design will vary depending on the type of site you’re creating. For instance, in the case of an online portfolio, you’ll want your prior work front and center. Or, if you’re running an online store, you might want to showcase your best-selling products. Conversely, if you’re offering a service, make sure your value statement is the first thing prospects see.
Thanks to WordPress.com’s easy-to-customize themes, you can start modifying your homepage using a pre-built page layout. Or, if you have a specific vision for your homepage, you could start from scratch with a blank page and allow your imagination to run free!
Either way, WordPress.com makes it simple to add, change or remove website elements to make your homepage your own. You can drag and drop WordPress.com’s ‘Blocks’ onto your web page to modify the layout of your content.
Popular blocks include:
- Images
- Galleries
- Columns
- Videos
- Payment buttons
…To name a few.
Once you’re happy with your homepage, hit the publish button. Then you can set it as your site’s static homepage. Here’s how:
- Go to My Site → Design→ and Customize
- Now, click ‘Homepage Settings‘ → ‘A static page option.’
- From there, select the homepage you’ve just designed from the Homepage dropdown.
- Now, a preview window will show your selected page.
- Click ‘Save Changes’
5. Create More Pages
Once you’re happy with your homepage, it’s time to create more web pages for your site:
Typically, most websites need the following:
- An about section
- A blog page
- A contact page
- Service pages (These only apply if you’re a service provider)
- Product pages (These are only relevant if you’re running an eCommerce store)
- FAQs: Create a space where visitors can get answers to common queries
To add new pages, go to:
My Site → Site → Pages →Add New Page
From there, you can pick from a variety of layouts depending on the type of page you’re creating – ‘About, ‘Blog,’ ‘Contact,’ etc.
Like the homepage you just created, you can use ‘blocks’ to quickly shift your web page’s layout and functionality.
Note: Any page you ‘publish’ on your website will remain private until you launch your whole site. If you’re concerned, head over to My Site → Manage → Settings. Then scroll down to Privacy to ensure your project is visible only to you while you’re working on it.
6. Set up Your Menu
Your website’s navigation menu is what visitors will use to work their way around your site. With a few web pages under your belt, you can now create a menu for your homepage. With as many as 94% of consumers saying websites must be easy to navigate, your menu must boast an intuitive structure. That way, visitors can quickly get to whatever page they desire.
Get started by heading to My Site → Design → Customize
Now, select Menus → Primary. From there, you can ‘Add items’ and reorder the pages.
Here are a few tips on creating an easy-to-use menu:
- Make sure visitors can find crucial info in as few clicks as possible.
- Don’t hide important information away under several dropdown submenus.
- The header links in your menu should represent the most significant sections of your site.
Note: Content has to exist before you can add it to the menu, so ensure you do this tutorial in order!
7. Add Extra Functionality with WordPress Plugins and Widgets
The easiest way to vastly expand the functionality of your WordPress.com website is to use widgets. Widgets enable you to extend your site’s functionality without writing a single line of code or downloading any plugins. These are content blocks you can add to your website’s sidebars, footers, menus, etc. Where you can position your widgets largely depends on your WordPress theme.
Here are some examples of popular WordPress widgets:
- Audio
- Facebook page
- Custom HTML
- Products
- Contact info and map
- Video
- Categories
- Twitter timeline
- Calendar
This moves us nicely onto our next point, plugins. The plugins listed on the WordPress app marketplace integrate seamlessly with WordPress sites and are easily managed from your WordPress Dashboard. These apps enable you to add all sorts of features to your site. However, to access these add-ons you’ll need to opt for WordPress.com’s Pro plan (or higher), which gives you the power to take your site to the next level.
To give you a feel for the kinds of features plugins could add to your site, we’ve compiled a quick list:
- Signup forms for growing your email list (WPForms)
- Contact forms that encourage visitors to get in touch with you (Contact Form 7)
- A calendar for appointment scheduling (Bookly)
- A forum where visitors can communicate with you and each other (wpForo Forum)
- The ability to take online payments and donations (GiveWP)
- Help desk functionality – like a chatbot (JS Help Desk)
- Email marketing automation (HubSpot)
- Help with more granular SEO optimization (Yoast SEO)
- Social sharing functionality (Jetpack)
- In-depth website analytics (MonsterInsights)
…and much more!
When first embarking on your WordPress journey, it’s essential to consider the functionality you’ll need later down the line.
Remember: To install plugins, you’ll have to opt for WordPress.com’s Pro plan (or higher).
7.5 Optionally: Add eCommerce functionality
If you want to sell products from your website (physical and/or digital), continue reading. If not, skip stepping eight.
To start building an online store, install the WooCommerce plugin. This is hands down the most popular eCommerce plugin. It’s installed by more than five million websites, which equates to powering roughly 14% of all online stores.
This plugin provides everything you need to:
- Create and customize an online storefront
- Set up a digital checkout.
- Set product prices
- Manage your inventory
- Integrate your store with lots of other plugins to access a full suite of marketing and sales tools
Note: Building a fully-fledged eCommerce store isn’t the only way to monetize your WordPress.com site. Instead, there is a range of ‘Premium blocks’ built into WordPress.com that enable you to take online payments (providing you’re a Premium account holder or higher). These make it easy to process both one-off and recurring payments and donations.
8. Start Driving Traffic to Your Site
It’s not enough to create and launch a website. For your site to bear fruit, you’ll need to drive traffic and grow an audience. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is worth its weight in gold. SEO is the practice of enhancing the quantity and quality of your website traffic by boosting your ranking in organic search engine results.
So, how can WordPress.com help with that?
WordPress.com was developed for online publishing, so its coding is entirely search-engine-friendly. Plus, it comes with several built-in SEO tools and plugins that you can harness to improve your site’s searchability.
Here are a few things you can do to improve your SEO with WordPress.com:
- Add keywords you want to rank for to your title and tagline. You can do this by clicking the Appearance Tab from your WordPress Dashboard.
- Add keywords to permalinks. You can edit your permalinks via the Settings tab of your WordPress.com dashboard. Instead of random numbers, each blog post/web page should display its title (which, of course, should also contain keywords).
- Optimize your content for keywords. Similar to the previous steps, add relevant keywords and phrases to your website content and blog posts.
- Add alt tags to your images. This is another chance to include keywords, but it also improves your site’s usability.
- Create a network of internal and external links. Have you got other blog posts ready to go? Within their content, link them to each other (where appropriate). You’ll also want to link out to other authoritative sources, as this tells Google your site is packed full of valuable information.
- Utilize an SEO plugin. Search engine optimization requires a careful long-term strategy. A plugin, like Yoast, makes the process much easier by telling you exactly what to do.
But, above all else, search engines prioritize the user experience. So, the longer people spend on your website and how regularly they come back has a considerable bearing on your rankings. This means you’ll want an accurate feel for how your website’s performing. You can do this via several statistics plugins, or like 83.5% of other WordPress sites, use Google Analytics.
9. Establish a Social Media Presence
Another way to drive traffic to your WordPress.com site is to establish a social media presence. Your socials are the perfect place to promote your website. In fact, social media now drives 31% of all referral traffic to websites. That’s just one of the many reasons why 92% of small business owners think social media is essential.
You’ll have to take some time to carefully create a social media strategy that engages your target audience. To harness the full power of social media, you must publish tailored content that meets your customers’ needs. Over time, this is a surefire way of building a loyal following as well as an online community surrounding your products, services, or interests.
WordPress.com makes it easy to add social media icons to your site’s menu using its ‘Social Links’ feature. The same goes for your web page content. Just drag and drop the ‘Social Links’ block to hit the ground running.
10. Frequently Add Content to Your Site by Blogging
Your website should now be ready to launch, but as your site grows, so should your content. Not only is this great for your SEO, but it also encourages visitors to keep coming back for more.
Here are some stats to back this up:
- On average, websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages.
- Brands with blogs enjoy up to 97% more links back to their websites.
- As many as 72% of digital marketers say content creation is their most fruitful SEO tactic.
WordPress users benefit from a professional blogging engine and content management system. This platform empowers you to create high-quality content and provides all the features you need to create a successful blog. For instance, you can embed media in your posts and categorize them as you see fit. You can also add tags and meta descriptions to your posts to help organize and SEO optimize them.
Pro Tip: Remember to add relevant keywords to your blog copy and allow your posts to be inspired by whatever your audience is already searching for. Head to Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends to get a feel for the kind of content your audience wants to see. When you start tailoring your content strategy to meet your audience’s needs (whether answering their questions, solving their pain points, entertaining them, etc.), you’ll provide value. Consequently, you’ll begin nurturing a loyal audience and establish yourself as an authority in your niche.
Are You Ready to Set Up a WordPress Website with These Simple Steps?
Now you know everything there is about setting up a WordPress site. As we’ve seen, you can register for a WordPress.com account within minutes, so you can focus on populating your site with high-quality content.
With the WordPress.com Pro plan, you can install plugins to adapt your website to suit any purpose. Whether you want to create a profitable blog, a non-profit site, an online store, or an e-learning platform – WordPress.com can make your website dreams a reality.
But, once you’re ready to launch, don’t forget to continuously optimize your site for SEO and drive traffic using a thoughtful content and social media marketing strategy.
So, having read this blog post, are you ready to create your own website? If so, sign up to WordPress.com for free today to get started!
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