Making a website has never been as easy as it is today. If you want to get professional maintenance and design, the most natural option is getting one of those great premium WordPress themes to create a unique and appealing website.

On the other hand, you can go for custom design and development, get more refined and specialized product, but this takes more time and requires patience. Again, the most popular and probably the most efficient platform for this purpose is WordPress.

But whatever you choose to do, you need to give soul to your online presence in order to keep pace with your rivals in the quest of winning online attention.

How to Keep Your WordPress Website Alive

Competitiveness

Every website and blog owner wants a lot of hype about their creation and affirmative feedback from the users. Those of you who decide to take the traditional path of online marketing could also have a great turnout, but the point is in being different and at the same successful.

You should imagine that the website and the blog you create with the help of WordPress powers is there for fun and success. Only when you include a touch of play into the whole story will you match business and satisfaction.

If you want people to come back to your site both for interesting information packed with knowledge, implementing user points (rating system) into your site could be a great step forward. You can see how this works at Moz’s Members page. You can even give thumbs up or thumbs down to particular comments. With every new comeback and every posted comment or forum engagement, the user gets more points which will put them on the top of the ranking. This also gives people a sense of community and being able to make a difference.

Make the standings public, visitors can start competing for real and give additional boost to your site. Free plugins like myCRED will help you creating introducing the points system, but there are many others you can choose from the WordPress.org repository.

Try creating a sidebar widget with latest or most popular comments and blog posts to show how active your WordPress website is.

Visual Content

Today, everything seems to be about getting viral. If you aren’t hot, you seem translucent. No matter how your textual content is strong, sometimes people act like moths and when they notice a picture or a video, it’s like a street lamp to them. However, you should never post visual content that is not directly related to your field of interest and work or put it there solely for the purpose of having it. You don’t want to seem like a spammer on your own website.

For creating your own graphics, I suggest you try Canva. It’s an online tool which enables you to design blog graphics, Facebook covers, presentations, posters, invitations, flyers, etc.

The most useful tool for videos out there is YouTube and we all know how Google shows a YouTube video in its search engine result pages for almost any search query you can think of.

Embedding videos from your channel to your site and blog can spark interest and if you’re really passionate and personal in your videos, your visitors might develop a relationship with your website, leave comments, participate and earn those points mentioned above.

You can showcase your portfolio this way, make a case study or present your work process using an animation. WordPress comes with a nice set of supported embeds. Videos are the most converting media you can bless your website with and for a good reason. A 2-minute video can pack as much as a 600-word post. Enrich your website with videos.

Social Presence and Your Website

If you’re into WordPress design or development and you have profiles on networks like Dribbble, Zurb (formerly Forrst) or Behance that allow you to promote your site without any charge, it would be crazy not to interconnect your website with them.

We are all well aware of all the advantages that Facebook, Twitter and Google+ can have in the marketing area, so think about installing social media WordPress plugins that connect or show your latest activity on the networks. Social activity means you’re human and that’s a highly regarded trait in the digital world.

Some advantages to using WordPress commenting system to the one Facebook or Disqus offers, is that the content stays yours, but offsite commenting platforms offer some social aspects, so I suggest you try both systems and see which one works best for you.

By using 3rd party plugins for comments, the thoughts your visitors leave on your website is also seen by their friends and followers on other networks, extending the reach of your content.

Forums Are Ancient, No?

Everyone who has a website or blog should know that offering a special section for discussion could be pretty beneficial for the whole site. As in the ancient times, when forums embodied true democracy, where people would (dis)agree on important topics for the whole community, today online forums have a very similar role.

If you want to enrich your WordPress website or blog with other people’s opinions on your WordPress products, services or content you share, including a forum section into your online home would be a great decision. You can choose from a couple of really great WordPress plugins, such as bbPress or BuddyPress if you want more of a social-network kind of thing, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams and user groups.

On several sites I manage, I’ve created a bbPress forum to give support for WordPress plugins, where people can also suggest new features or provide support to each other. This makes forums self-sustaining online entities. When users subscribe to using the forum, I also politely ask them to subscribe to my newsletter. Emails are definitely one the most valuable thing your online business should be after, because it offers precise marketing.

Offsite Works

People who want to gain more muscle mass and have regular workout routine know that they have to let their muscles relax and have a rest for a couple of days in a week. That technique should be also applied to your own web activity. So, try to dedicate two days a week, for instance, to observing other sites and learning how other people deal with their updates and material in general.

If you become a member or a regular participant in discussions or other contributions to those other sites, they could easily get interested in what you do and associate with your site. We can often see that some small business sites like highlighting what more famous companies they have worked for.

You should let people know who your most powerful clients are, using your blog or the footer area like you see on so many websites today. You will earn recognition of more visitors, users and ultimately customers. After all, in the online world you are either visible or invisible and your website is alive and ticking or non-existent. If you stay invisible, every other effort you make on your website will be futile.

The online race is merciless and it requires tons of sweat, time and skill to stay in light of the virtual space. If you aren’t completely absorbed in the material that you present to the world not even WordPress, its plugins and vast community would be able to make your website tick.

With regular work, social activity and smart decisions, you can establish a healthy online presence, which gets you more connections, followers and ultimately customers.