No matter what kind of business you run, a fantastic way to bring in traffic is by creating regular content that will hold your audience’s attention and get your visitors to engage with your brand. Content creation is typically done through blogs that are situated on a separate page on your website. The reason that content creation helps bring in new traffic is because of search engine optimization.
If you make sure to implement SEO into your content, your website will begin to appear towards the top of search results that are related to the product or service that your company offers. Since most online customers only click on the top three results on a search engine like Google, improving your SEO efforts will invariably result in you bringing in more traffic to your website.
While SEO can be integrated into a website in a variety of different ways, the best method is through content creation. Once you create a blog, you’ll need to make sure that the blog performs well, has an appealing design, and is responsive, the latter of which means that the website is able to work properly on mobile devices. If your blog doesn’t perform well, you won’t get the traffic that you’re looking for even if you put out regular content.
Here at Bryt Designs, we recommend using a customized theme design for the best performance and highest traffic growth. However, free designs are also usable for beginners and businesses that are just starting out with their initial web presence. As long as you’re using a theme that’s optimized, fast, and mobile-friendly, the results should meet or even exceed your expectations.
1. OceanWP WordPress Blog Theme
The OceanWP WordPress blog theme is considered to be among the best WordPress themes for blogging websites. With over 400,000 active installations and more than 2,600 reviews, this WordPress theme has a perfect rating of 5.0. This is a lightweight theme that’s designed to be modified in a variety of ways to ensure that your blog appears relatively unique.
The theme itself is designed to be used for blogs, business websites, portfolios, and even WooCommerce storefronts, which makes it highly versatile. Another great aspect of this WordPress blog theme is that it can be used with many different page builders, which includes such popular options as Elementor, Brizy, SiteOrigin, Beaver Builder, and Visual Composer. The extensible codebase of this theme allows for deep customization.
2. Hueman Blog Theme by Nicolas GUILLAUME
The Hueman blog theme by Nicolas GUILLAUME is another well-rated blog theme for WordPress that currently has more than 60,000 active installations and comes with a perfect 5.0 rating based on more than 625 reviews and ratings. While the Hueman theme is designed first and foremost to accommodate blog sites, it’s also designed for the purpose of increasing site traffic and engaging visitors who enter your website.
No matter how you customize this template, the finished design will always load fast, which ensures that visitors and customers who enter your website will be provided with a great user experience. Among the top benefits of using this WordPress theme for your blog is that it’s 100 percent mobile-friendly and responsive according to Google, which means that mobile visitors will be just as satisfied with the user experience as desktop users. This template is compatible with a variety of different layouts, which include one-column, two-column, and three-column layouts.
3. Hestia Modern Material Design Theme
The Hestia Modern Material Design Theme is a stylish theme that’s designed to be used for a single page on a website, which makes this the perfect solution for a blog page. This is a feature-rich design theme that’s compatible with WooCommerce, which allows you to get your online storefront up and running in a matter of minutes. The initial setup of this theme is very easy and requires no knowledge of coding.
This theme includes its own customizer that allows you to quickly change certain aspects of the design without needing to use an entirely different platform. From the customizer, you can alter your homepage as you see fit or choose from one of the many ready-made designs that they offer. Because of the large number of available features, you can create both simple and complex sites, which means that the theme is great for any type of business. Some additional features that are provided with this theme include seamless integration with popular page builders, the inclusion of SEO, video tutorials, and speed optimization for very fast loading times.
4. Astra WordPress Blog Theme
The Astra WordPress blog theme is a fast and customizable theme for WordPress blogs that has been implemented by more than 400,000 users. While this is a free WordPress theme that comes with many fantastic features, you can also purchase premium add-ons whenever you want to extend the functionality of your website. Some of these premium add-ons include page headers, a navigation menu, blog layouts, enhanced topography, spacing control, and additional color controls.
A top benefit of using this theme is that it’s very easy to use for beginners who have no prior experience with coding. They provide a visual theme customizer that allows users to easily set colors and topography, manage every aspect of the layout in a single area, and add headers with the click of a button.
Some additional features that might come in handy include:
- The largest library of pre-built websites
- Seamless integration with WooCommerce
- Multilingual compatibility
- SEO-friendly architecture
5. Cenote WordPress Blog Theme
The Cenote WordPress blog theme is a beautiful and modern WordPress theme that’s perfect for personal blogs. While this website can be used for the creation of a travel blog or tech blog, demo content is provided for standard blogs and fashion blogs. Among the more compelling features of this theme compared to some of the others on this list is that it accommodates more than four widget areas such as the header and footer. A couple types of widgets that this theme has are recent post widgets and popular post widgets.
Some other features that you might be interested in extend to primary color options for a bolder look, the inclusion of SEO, many different post formats and templates, social icons, and a variety of general layouts. This theme has also been tested with all major web browsers, which include Google Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. While many features are available with the free option, Cenote Pro includes many additional features that will help you grow your blog when the time comes to do so.
Important WordPress Blogging Tips
When you create a WordPress blog, your work isn’t done. If you want to attract customers to your website and keep them engaged with your content, you need to consistently maintain and update the blog for the best performance and to make sure that you’re able to hold the attention of your customers, which is important for any kind of website. The following are a few tips and guidelines that should help you maximize the benefits of running a blog for your company.
The Essence of Responsive Blog Theme
Creating a blog for modern audiences means that the blog must be responsive, which is a kind of design that’s mobile-friendly. To better understand what a responsive website is, you should understand what it’s like to access a website that isn’t responsive. When a mobile user enters a website that isn’t responsive, they will be met with very large words and images on a small screen, which makes for extensive scrolling and a very poor user experience during their time on the website. When a site design utilize responsive functionality, the site will automatically change the screen resolution of the device it’s being accessed on, which means that mobile visitors to your site will see the exact same thing that desktop users do.
The importance of a responsive design can’t be understated. First of all, no mobile user is going to stay on a website that requires them to scroll extensively to reach their destination. Instead, they’ll choose to exit out of your blog and go to a similar blog that offers them what they’re looking for. A responsive design also allows for higher conversion rates, quicker webpages, and enhanced SEO. If you want all of your customers to be satisfied with the content you offer, you need to first provide them with a website that’s easy to navigate.
How to Increase Traffic to My WordPress Blog?
Once your WordPress blog is fully up and running, your next focus should be on increasing the traffic to your blog, which can be accomplished in a variety of ways. The most important aspect of running a blog is to continuously create content that appeals to your readers. Updating and maintaining your blog constantly will invariably cause the traffic to your website to increase. This content should be paired with intriguing titles that will draw the reader in.
To enhance your efforts, the content that you put out should be paired with ample amounts of SEO. By including keywords, internal links, and other SEO techniques, your website will begin to appear towards the top of relevant search results, which should bring in more traffic than previously. Make sure that you have a good idea what the readers want from your blog. Once you’ve determined which topics are appealing to your target audience, you can begin to write in earnest about these topics. If you aim to provide value to the reader, the traffic will come.
When to Move On to a Custom WordPress Theme
While free WordPress themes are great for your blog when you’re just starting out, a premade template comes with some significant limitations. For one, the design elements in a premade template are going to remain similar no matter what you change within the template, which means that other blogs that are using the same theme as you may appear similar. By customizing your WordPress blog, you can build your website to match the exact specifications of a project. Every element of a customized design is built from scratch, which allows for a more targeted and unique design.
Instead of reverse-engineering an existing blog template, it’s much better to create your own from the ground up with only the features and usability that your business requires. Every element of the customized design will be centered around your business goals, which should allow for a more effective design. You can maximize online effectiveness by using custom integration of third-party business software. The integration of third-party business software gives you the opportunity to create custom features for your blog that facilitate important business processes and make website management easier.
Conclusion
Similar to how maintaining a website is essential for a good user experience, maintaining and updating a WordPress blog is equally important for your audience. If you want to fulfill the expectations that your audience has, customizing your WordPress blog is a great way to keep things fresh.
If you’re interested in customizing your WordPress blog to better your SEO efforts and increase customer traffic to your website, contact our team of experienced WordPress, web development, and marketing professionals at Bryt Designs!
Thanks for your great post. I like the Cenote WordPress blog theme best. I intend to create a personal blog and I think it would be a good fit. I think I will try the free version to see how it looks first, before making an upgrade.