There’s a lot to consider when you set up a blog on WordPress. From the topics you’re going to blog about to how often you’ll post and what theme to choose for your site, you want to make sure you get everything right.

To help you hit the ground running, here are six features you should definitely include when you set up your blog.

In many cases, your home page will be the first part of your website that readers see, so you need to ensure it gives off the right impression. It should be easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing, and give people a good idea of what kind of blog you have. For instance, if you’re writing a travel blog, be sure to have some gorgeous vacation snapshots on display. Conversely, if it’s a recipe blog, then let mouth-watering food images take center stage.

In order to make it simpler for readers to find the content they’re looking for, you might like to consider categorizing your blog posts. This will be particularly important as your blog gets bigger and you have more and more posts to discover. Aim to keep the groups easy to understand – for example, with titles such as beauty, travel, DIY, education, and so on, in accordance with the overall focus of your blog.

Making sure that your blog is optimized for search engines will help you to generate more traffic to your site. You don’t need any technical expertise or special hardware to do this. As long as you have a good computer like an 11th Gen Intel Lenovo Laptop you can install some WordPress plugins to do the work for you. Using keywords in your posts and interlinking them will also help, as will optimizing your site for mobile devices.

Having a box where people can subscribe to your blog via email is a great tactic for ensuring people keep coming back to your site. You can alert those on your email list when you publish a new blog post, plus let them know about any exciting news or announcements. Popups can be irritating when people are trying to read, so consider having a box at the end of each post instead.

If you’re active on social media, be sure to include some buttons on your blog directing people to your pages. This can help to generate more engagement and increase your followers across all different platforms. Don’t feel like you need to link to every service, though – only those you use frequently.

Having a contact form on your blog is important for enabling people to get in touch with you. In addition to readers offering feedback, this is how potential advertisers and contributors can reach out with proposals and offers. Don’t ask for too much information on the form as that can put people off, just keep it simple with fields for their name, email address, and message.