When you’re looking at solutions to help build a stronger web presence for your business, WordPress is sure to come up as a consideration. The open-source content management system was launched in 2003 and primarily served to fill a niche for the growing blog market. Today, WordPress has become a top choice for businesses of all sizes that want to connect with their digital audience and add fuel to the search engine optimization strategy at the same time.
There is no shortage of web building platforms to choose from, yet more than 30% of all websites on the Internet are powered by WordPress. This number includes nearly 15% of the top 100 websites worldwide. So, what is it about WordPress that makes it such an insanely popular choice? The answer to this question can be summed up with three little letters – SEO, or search engine optimization.
What Makes WordPress SEO Friendly?
There are some pretty big brands with sites powered by WordPress. Even though these brands already have some digital clout behind them, you can bet their marketing departments have a laser-sharp focus on SEO. We’re talking about major brands like Sony Music, The New York Times, The Walt Disney Company, and Wired, just to name a few. Go ahead and do a Google search for top WordPress sites – you’re going to be impressed.
Anyway, names like these aren’t going to play around with anything less than a platform that’s seamlessly optimized for SEO, and neither should you. As a small or medium-sized business, your ability to reach out further into your market and build a stronger online presence is key to helping your business thrive.
Search engines, like Google, are constantly crawling and indexing sites online. What they find determines where you rank in their results in response to a user’s search query. Google has a complex network of more than 200 ranking factors that are taken into consideration when determining a site’s rank. Some of these factors are more important than others, and it’s here that a WordPress site can help you elevate above the crowd.
WordPress is designed to be user-friendly. This is a pretty broad concept, but one that embodies so much about what makes for successful SEO today. The more quality and value a search engine user finds on your website, the more favorably Google is going to look upon you.
WordPress enhances the user experience (UX) in a number of ways.
- Speed. How fast your site loads is critical to UX, and there are many elements of web design that can slow down a site. WordPress has created a platform that eliminates these speed-reducing glitches.
- Mobile responsiveness. A growing segment of your audience is reaching out to you via mobile devices, and it’s a number that’s expected to continually climb. WordPress offers responsive design, which provides a seamless experience across any device.
- Link building. WordPress makes it easy for you to link to other high authority sites, as well as building in internal links to your own pages. WordPress also makes your site more attractive to others, meaning you’re more likely to earn backlinks to boost your SEO.
- Content publication. There’s no better vehicle for connecting with your audience and delivering value than high-quality content. Since its inception, WordPress has been at the top of platforms for content delivery.
WordPress Has Mastered the SEO Friendly Theme
Unless you’re experienced in web development, building a website from scratch on your own is something even the most tech-savvy individual would have difficulties with. The process is just so complex, and there are so many details to consider – especially from an SEO perspective. Fortunately, for those whose talents are outside the realm of web development, WordPress has already taken care of all the details.
WordPress offers an incredible selection of templates and themes, each already fully optimized for SEO. Most WordPress themes already contain the proper HTML markup that search engine crawlers are looking for. Not to mention that each theme is already designed to meet all the SEO expectations that were mentioned above.
Selection of Plugins for Optimized SEO
One of the biggest perks that WordPress sites offer from an SEO perspective is the fact that there are literally hundreds of plugin options created to enhance your search engine performance and the user experience all at the same time.
For instance, plugins like Yoast, SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner, and Broken Link Checker provide you with all the tools you need to boost your search engine performance and achieve noticeable results. At the end of the day, WordPress offers a plugin to make just about every component of SEO and user experience easier to handle.
Top-Level Security Features
With all the advice you hear floating around about the best SEO tactics, you don’t hear enough about security. Here’s the thing, digital consumers have become increasingly cautious (and with good reason) when it comes to engaging with a new website, especially if it’s an e-commerce site or they’ve been asked to provide any degree of personal information. If a lack of security features is preventing traffic from moving to your site, and lingering there, then that’s a thumbs down for your SEO.
As a smaller business, you might not think that you’re a major target for a cyber-crime, but that’s the exact type of mentality that hackers find appealing. If your site gets hacked or lands on a spam list somewhere, it can be a difficult, uphill SEO battle to recover from. The WordPress platform is very secure, and they’re dedicated to continually monitoring and improving upon their own security standards. This gives you an instant leg up from a security standpoint.
Experts in WordPress SEO
Do you have a WordPress website and want to know how to maximize the results you get from search engine optimization? Are you a new business that’s looking for the best platform to build a successful business website that’s designed for SEO? We’re the web design team that also happens to be experts at optimizing WordPress sites for SEO. Reach out to Double Up Digital today and speak with one of our WordPress experts today.
