WordPress is one of the most popular CMS for bloggers and other website owners. And it goes without saying that starting your WordPress site is wonderful, challenging, exhilarating, and at the same time a tricky process. Aside from facing the challenge of attempting to start an awesome WordPress site, complex problems arise. Many new WordPress sites succeed, but few of them fail. Trust me, as a website owner’, you may find it unpredictable, tiring, and sometimes nerve-wracking.

Few people succeed because they hire professionals from top WordPress development companies to add more features on their website. That said, many WordPress site owners  endure the misfortune of failure if  they commit the following mistakes.

Wondering  what are major WordPress CMS mistakes, and why your WordPress site is unable to perform well? Here we dive into some of the most common WordPress CMS mistakes to avoid in 2022.

1.   Unnecessary Spending On Hosting

You need a domain name and hosting service when you start a WordPress website.

While purchasing a hosting service, you may get some attractive offers from domain registrars for some needless features like advanced security, enhanced privacy, and an extra email account for some extra bucks. Initially, it doesn’t sound like a big amount, but if you look at the total, you will find that you have been charged for features that were not required at all in the first place.

For instance, if you are starting a blog, you don’t require the features of an ecommerce website. The bottom line:  Be wise when spending your money because you might need it in the future for other elements.

2.   Choosing The Wrong WordPress Platform

Now you have done all the research, it’s time to choose your WordPress platform. Most WordPress website owners make a mistake by picking the wrong platform when setting up a WordPress website.

For the unversed there are two types of WordPress, and even though they have the same name, there are some remarkable differences. One is the blog hosting service that is WordPress.com, which is a free platform and excellent for beginners.

Another is a self-hosted open-source platform with more advanced features and hundreds of themes and customizable plugins. You can gather more information about the later on WordPress.org. You will not get any of the advanced features in the free version, and hence you will have to pay for certain upgrades.

3.   Choosing Wrong Themes

There are several WordPress themes available for free. However, some of them are poorly coded and built. To get a mobile-friendly or responsive website, choose the best WordPress responsive themes. These responsive themes make it possible for visitors to experience the website as best they can.

Some of the best responsive themes for WordPress are ColorMag, Magazine, Ampersand, Prologue, Gravida, Blog Zone, and Roxima. It’s worth the time to select the best theme to deliver a fantastic appearance.

4.   Not Properly Securing Your WordPress Site

WordPress is open-source software that is accessible for anyone to modify quickly. And this can cause some severe damage to your work. Some of the primary security attacks on WordPress are Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Backdoors, phishing, etc. The essential thing to secure your account is to use strong passwords, enable two-factor authentication, add a captcha, etc. you should also use secure Web Hosting, update to the latest version of WordPress and PHP, and also use WordPress monitoring.

5.    Not Performing Regular Backups

A website backup is a vital task for a website owner or administrator. If you tried something on WordPress like configuring plugins or modifying themes and your website crashes, then chances are there that you will lose your data.

The backup of your website is the main surety that your WordPress site will be completely restored after any unrecoverable incidents. However, manually keeping up with updates can be a time-consuming process.

If you are one of those who think that WordPress automatically backs up your data, you are wrong; WordPress doesn’t take automatic backups by itself. You need to install a WordPress backup plugin for that purpose. And also, make sure to take a complete backup (not partial or one-time backup) and keep it in your hard drive.

6.    Using Unnecessary Plugins

Learning about plugins is the best thing if you want to enjoy the best features related to your website. In WordPress CMS, plugin usage is an essential part. However, using too many plugins may slow down your website and may increase the problems within the website itself. Consider your requirement and the need for WordPress plugins before you install them.

7.   Not Using the Right Permalink Structure

Permalink structure is essential for your site, as these are permanent URLs to your site, pages, categories, and blog posts. It will also help your site in better indexing. To make your permalinks more professional, you must create custom permalinks.

8.   Not Embracing Google Analytics

The biggest WordPress CMS mistake that you could commit  in 2022, is not using Google analytics. Google Analytics is an important tool to track your website’s overall performance and traffic. It provides a plethora of information from its data reports, like real-time activity, visiting hours, users’ engagement, demography, tech, customer retention, etc. These data help you to optimize your website and also, to determine your highly engageable pages. On your WordPress website, you need to install Google analytic plugin right away.

9.    Overuse Of Categories And Tags

There should be the top two categories and up to five tags for your blog post. Categories let you know the group of that topic, and tags are generally related to a particular topic that you want to use to associate related content. But thoughtlessly adding a massive number of tags on a blog may lead to poor value subpage or duplicate content and even confuse the hierarchy.

10.                      Not Performing Website SEO

SEO of a website includes many important tasks such as using proper keywords, website loading speed, technical structure, metatags, high-quality content, etc. A frequent WordPress CMS mistake that can cause a low rank on SERP is not performing Website SEO. Practicing SEO for your website increases its visibility, which helps to get more quality traffic at no cost.

11.                      Ignoring WordPress Or Plugins Updates

It’s common for website owners to ignore WordPress or plugins updates. Updating your site and plugins improves the site’s performance and security. If you don’t perform this task, you are keeping your outdated site open to attacks.

12.                      Poor Image Optimization

Image optimization has many advantages in WordPress website SEO. You can optimize your image by selecting the correct format, compressing it, customizing your image file name, and writing SEO-friendly Alt Text. An optimized image helps to ensure a better user experience and faster page load times and ranks higher in the google image search tab.

13.                      Not Removing Default Favicon

A tiny icon that appears near the website name in the browser is a favicon. This is also an essential part of website SEO. Because it helps visitors to find your site easily if several tabs are open in their browser and also on a mobile device, you can use your brand logo as a favicon if you have a brand. WordPress allows you to change the default favicon from the admin area.

14.                      Not Being Mobile Friendly

For the past few years, most people have spent most of their time on mobile. And this generates the need to make your site mobile-friendly. This means that your site should perform well on all devices. Be sure to add the plugin in your WordPress CMS to make your site mobile-friendly.

15.                      Not Moderating Comments

This in-built WordPress feature allows you to prevent unnecessary comments from appearing on your site. Content moderation will enable you to give approval or reject a comment. You can even turn comments off for a particular page or post.

Final thought 

As you start your website on WordPress CMS, learn from your prior missteps and use them to guide your final success. Your website success might take longer than you thought, but don’t get disappointed; your goal should be to create engaging content that catches users’ attention and meets their expectations. This way, you will be able to create an excellent website for your customers. You can even hire an expert from the best WordPress Developers as they have the expertise one needs to create a website that is completely suitable for business.