In the previous part, you saw how to create a new post and a new page with WordPress. You probably asked yourself:
Where are the options to change the style or the size of the fonts? How can you insert a table in your post ? Where are the options that I have when I edit a text using MS Office Word ?
Since, these questions are very common, we decided to add in the 4th part of our WordPress guide the method that you will add these features to your WordPress website. Since you just started learning WordPress, you need to discover the power of WordPress that is the ability to install WordPress plugins !
WordPress Plugins: The Power Of WordPress
So, what is a WordPress Plugin ?
WordPress Plugin is a small program you can install in your WordPress website and add more features to your website. There are thousands of plugins that can help you add thousands of features in your website. You can even add a Forum to your website just by installing a WordPress Plugin ! The process to unstall a plugin lasts usually about 5 minutes !
So, let’s get started : How to add more features while editing your post or page ? Just by installing a plugin named “CKeditor for WordPress”
The process of installing a plugin
Visit your WordPress Dashboard and you will see the Plugins section and the option ” Add New” Click there as shown in the screenshot below:
Then you will be redirected to this screenshot:
So, you have many options to add a plugin to your website.
1. You can upload it from your computer
If you have already the plugin file somewhere in your computer, just click upload, locate the file and then click ” Install now” and “Activate” The plugin file is usually a file in a .zip format
2. You can put your search terms in the search box and choose the plugin you want based on the plugins that will be displayed.
Since, probably, you may not have already the plugins in your computer, you can search through the search box as shown in the screenshot above. You can put the terms you want. For example if you want a plugin for SEO, you put the terms “SEO” there etc.
In this part, we will focus on Ckeditor plugin since we want to add options while we edit a post or a page. So, in searche terms, you will put “Ckeditor for WordPress” This is the name of the WordPress plugin you need to install.
After putting these search terms, you will be redirected to this screenshot:
As you see, WordPress located the plugins that are relevant to our search terms. You can see here that there are two plugins with the same name. How to choose the best ? Just see the ratings ! Most of the times , better ratings mean better quality. Beside the ratings you can also see a description of each plugin.
[The plugins are usually created by freelancers or by companies and most of them are provided for free. You can donate if you want to help people to continue creating powerful plugins. The paid ones usually offer much more powerful features to your WordPress website. ]
After locating the plugin you want to install just click “Install Now”
Then click ” Activate Plugin”
Then go to post section and click ” add a new post“. You will see directly the difference in your menu.
As you see. lots of features have been added ! Now you can change your fonts, you can add a table, you can highlight your text using the color of your choice etc. Most of youe new options are already known from Microsoft Word application. Here we just want to focus on 5 elements. Most of them are important for SEO reasons.
1. Here you set the style of your text.
” Heading 1″ is a very important option when talking about SEO. For example, when you create a new post and you want to have it 100% SEO friendly, you need to take care of this. You need to select ONE TIME your targeted keywords and then click ” Heading 1″ By doing this you inform search engines that your post is strongly related to the keywords that are included in H1 tag. For example when creating a post related to ” puppy shot schedule” you need to select these three words and then click “Heading 1″ Then you can change ofcourse the way that these words will appear. You can change the font style, the size, the color etc. . .
Tips:
Don’t put H1 to more than 8 words!
Don’t put H1 more than one time in each page or post.
Put H1 in every page or post you create !
You can also put H2 or H3 tags using keywords related to your main targeted keyword.
2. Editing Pictures
After selecting your picture, you can edit picture details using this icon. You can set: alignement, borders width, Image title and Image Alt. It is very important for SEO reasons to have your targeted keywords in your image title AND in the image ALT field.
3. Inserting Tables
Clicking this button, you can create a table and insert it to your WordPress website
4. Insert a line
If you want to seperate your content in your website using a grey line, you can click this button. Then you will see a line like this in your website:
5. Hyperlinks
Another very important thing you need to know in order to Search engine optimize your website. You need to use hyperlinks to every post or page you create. What is a Hyperlink? If for example you create a website related to “puppy shot schedule” and you want to SEO your website, you need to select your targeted keywords (puppy shot schedule) and then click the hyperlink icon. Then you will be asked to fill in a field with a link that you want your visitors to be redirected when they click to the phrase “pyppy shot schedule”. You just put there another link of your website you want to Search engine optimize.
For example, if you create a new post regarding ” puppy shot shcedule cost”, somewhere in your text, you can select the phrase “puppy shot schedule” (the main keywords you want your website to rank for). Then you click hyperlink icon and you add the homepage of your website (for example: http://www.puppyshotschedule.net) That means that Search Engines consider your website highly targeted to these keywords and they rank your website higher for these keywords. The keywords you use to make this process are named: anchor text.
So you need to create anchor texts that are linking back to your website( Interlinking) You need to create hyperlinks using the keywords you want to rank for. It is very good to have at least two different hyperlinks in each post or page you create. Of course each hyperlink will redirect your visitors to different areas of your website.
Have more questions about this article? Post to our Forum !
[...] To install these plugins to your website, just follow the instructions listed in this part of our guide: WordPress plugin tutorials [...]