Highlighted text is a common trait of almost every website that’s available over the World Wide Web. It’s not uncommon to find WordPress powered websites containing text that’s been highlighted with a colored background and the color is usually “yellow”.

If you too own a WordPress site, highlighting text on your WordPress web pages is what you can choose for enhancing web traffic. Through this blog, I’ll be focusing on different techniques that can be used for highlighting important text spread all over the WordPress CMS-based website.

Why is it beneficial to highlight text within WordPress site’s web pages?

Highlighting is indeed an effective means of reading and retaining information from a specific piece of content. It proves effective for enhancing readership for a text. As per a survey, it’s been found that web pages/blogs containing highlighted text receive greater number of readers as compared to the ones that contain plain text. To put it more simply, “Readers” attention is directed to the highlighted areas within a web page/blog post, regardless of what the text conveys. Although WordPress websites have a variety of built-in features that make them stand out from the crowd, the feature of text highlighting is what can actually add perfection to the sites’ overall performance.

Now, the Methods for Highlighting Text in WordPress

Method No. 1– Installing plugins

As per this method, you can easily highlight important content placed on your WordPress site with the help of plugins. Here’s a brief on two plugins that allow you to undertake text highlighting with ease:

Plugin# 1– RAD Text Highlighter

Installing this plugin allows you to highlight your site’s important content without the need to disturb your usual WordPress text editor. All you need to do is insert the text (the one you want to highlight) in between two shortcode brackets and you’re done. The plugin also allows you to change the color of highlighting as per your preferences. You can choose this plugin for highlighting text in your post, page or sidebar widget.

Plugin# 2– CKeditor for WordPress

If you’re “OK” with replacing your usual WordPress text editor then this plugin is tailor-made for you. Installing this WordPress plugin will replace your default editor with one that’ll offer you varied options of highlighting text within your web pages. CKeditor is compatible with a wide range of web browsers and operating systems, making it the best option for global WordPress site owners. With over 397,563 downloads till date, CKeditor is definitely here to stay.

Method No. 2– CSS Approach

If you’re good at playing with your site’s CSS coding then this method is just for you. The steps to be followed here include:

Step 1– Create a new “class” in your CSS file and name it as “highlight-text”.

Step 2– Create a child theme.

Step 3– Put the new “class” (the one created in step 1) in the CSS file of the child theme.

.highlight-text { background-color:#FFFF00; }

Step 4– Choose a color using the color picker.

Step 5– Switch to Text view in your WordPress editor and wrap the text you want highlighted in the following format:

<span class="highlight-text">… text to highlight …</span>

And, you’re done with highlighting the text in your style.

Method No. 3– Inline Styling

As per this method, you can choose to insert a code into the post, which contains the content that needs to be highlighted. You can view the respective post in your Text editor and add the code below mentioned code:

<span style="background-color:yellow;"> … your text here … </span>

In the above code, you can choose any color of your choice. In my example, I’ve chosen the yellow color.

The only disadvantage with inline styling is that if you ever want to change the color of a particular highlight, you’ll have to go back to each individual post and do the editing part. I’ll recommend you to go with Method No.2 if you feel changing the color of highlighted text would be a regular activity for your WordPress website.

Conclusion

So, that’s it for this tutorial. Hope you’d have enjoyed reading it. I’m sure following the steps mentioned in this write-up would definitely aid you in your approach towards highlighting important text within your posts and pages.

Until next time, enjoy exploring WordPress.

Wish you Good Luck!