Before designing a website, you should do some background research on the benefits of having a WordPress website.
Over the years, WordPress has been an important aspect of the online business development process. As the largest content management platform, its popularity has grown tremendously over the years.
This can be attributed to the many benefits of having a WordPress website.
It is an excellent website for beginners due to its versatility and robust features.
WordPress has significantly evolved from the time it was only a blogging platform to what it is now. It is not by chance that many big brands worldwide use it to power their websites.
Benefits of WordPress
Here are some of the top ten benefits of having a WordPress website:
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Easy to use and integrate
WordPress is one of the relatively easy sites to use.
It has an intuitive interface and users can easily understand the navigation process. Most open-source frameworks are very complicated, and a bit technical but WordPress is very straightforward.
It is widely known for its convenience due to its excellent user-friendliness in integration. Because of its incredible technology, users spend less time here as the time for formatting is equally reduced.
With WordPress, you can easily embed a video, write articles and add pictures with minimal effort. You do not have to be tech-savvy or be an expert to use WordPress.
You only need to have a web browser and internet, and you are good to go.
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It has user-friendly features
If you do not have user-friendly features, chances are very high that your clients will not spend much time on your site or bother visiting again.
Wordpress eliminates that problem since it comes packed with features for every possible user.
The features are not only authentic but are also user-friendly.
The navigation is quite simple and effective. You can easily select a suitable theme to use and add as many pages as you would like. To get theme you like check some incredible options on Great WordPress Themes To Consider.
All you need to do is follow simple steps to be able to achieve this.
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Search Engine Optimisation benefits
Search engines usually rank websites based on some predefined parameters when a search is done.
Ideally, the more parameters you fulfil, the higher your website ranks.
WordPress incorporates all these parameters to give you full SEO benefits.
Some of the ways WordPress has managed to get a higher ranking include;
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- Good coding standards
- Great image optimisation
- Social media integration
- Fast loading speed
- Great user experience
These WordPress layouts and themes among others give the users a great experience hence the default SEO benefits. When you use the plugins, you are guaranteed that your website’s search engine visibility will improve significantly.
This is one of the greatest benefits of having a WordPress website. With these benefits, you can fully optimise SEO – to see more of what we mean click here.
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Loads of Plugin
The other benefit of WordPress is the fact that it has plenty of quality plugins to use. Plugins are essential and fantastic because they help your website to perform better in the functional aspects.
Different plugins have different functional advantages hence the more you have, the better.
The plugins cover so many things that you could need.
The functionalities will allow you to do things like:
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- Add some beautiful photos to your gallery
- Sell products online
- Check conversion rates
- Share your social media options
- Track the number of visitors to your website
- Set up online surveys
- Add registration forms
On WordPress, getting the plugins and installing them is fairly simple and does not need a lot of work.
Most plugins here are free, but the paid versions are highly recommended as they offer better support and more features.
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Security and Information protection
As a business with a high stake, it is important to have valuable information or data protected at all costs.
You need to have the information that will help you protect your company.
WordPress has some fantastic security measures put in place to mitigate such risks. It enables you to do some modifications and even upload content from a secret admin area.
This is a better alternative than using the traditional FTP.
WordPress also ensures that through this, there is less risk of mistakenly deleting crucial files.
Finally, they also release securities patches for bugs found and new updates. This assures you that they are up to par with the latest website security.
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Highly Affordable
One of the key benefits of having a WordPress website is the fact that it is easily affordable.
You do not need the fortune to be able to access it. With a very minimal budget, you can get an excellent website with many options and features to work with.
Having your website on WordPress is free, but for the additional themes and plugins, you will need to part with some money.
Also, maintenance expense and upkeep is cheaper compared to other sites. This is because in most cases you can decide to do the maintenance and upkeep yourself.
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Perfect for Aggressive content marketing
Online marketing in this era is of utmost importance to any company. Uploading fresh content is great using WordPress themes as opposed to the traditional ones.
You can easily update content to your site in seconds and as often as you would like without going through so many complicated steps.
Frequently updating content will give you a heads up as you will build credibility in your niche.
Additionally, you can easily update your design effortlessly. This makes it ideal for tactical campaigns.
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Responsiveness
This is an immensely valuable feature that has made it very popular. In this era, having a responsive website design is no longer an option but mandatory.
There is nothing as frustrating as trying to visit a website, and it fails to respond because of the device you are using. For this reason, WordPress is designed to respond fully to any device.
The WordPress display is seamless and beautiful on any device that the user might be using.
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WordPress is perfect for blogging
When WordPress started, its original function was blogging. It has top-notch blogging capabilities that are in-built and effective. Since it is quite simple to use, you can also expand the website’s blogging capabilities.
This includes displaying your latest blog on your homepage or elsewhere on the blog, editing users’ commenting abilities, setting up email subscriptions and so much more.
Another fantastic strength of WordPress is the fact that it is not only ideal for bloggers but for creating professional blogs too.
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WordPress is reliable and stable
One of the reasons for its popularity is its great reputation for reliability and stability.
Other platforms have had a short-lived existence, but WordPress has been a constant for years.
It has a large number of professional developers who regularly code and test updates to support it.
Because of this, people keep adding to WordPress engine hence making it richer with features and better too. WordPress works well in all the major web browsers.
WordPress Website SEO: The Ultimate Guide
The benefits of owning a WordPress website explain why so many businesses opt for this content management system and its website templates. Creating a website is the first step to owning a successful online business.
The next step is enhancing its SEO to rank high in SERPs, generate qualified leads and compete effectively with other businesses.
Here are the top 12 WordPress SEO practices you should do to give your website the muscle it requires to rank highly and generate sales.
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Choose Themes That Are SEO-Friendly
WordPress has hundreds if not thousands of themes that you can use to create an outstanding website for your business.
Apart from ensuring that the theme matches your business vision and personality, it also needs to be SEO friendly.
We recommend settling for a theme devoid of unnecessary visual elements and bloat plugins.
Yes, visuals and plugins will make the website functional, but if they are too many, they will affect other aspects of your website, such as load time.
With human attention spans getting shorter daily, you cannot afford to have a slow website. The audience won’t wait more than 4 seconds for the page to load.
A simple WordPress theme that has all the essentials will get the job done by ensuring the final website loads fast and meets your target audience’s expectations.
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Select the Right Domain
Like themes, there is no limit or shortage of domains you can assign to the new WordPress website.
Choose a domain name that matches your business’s services, products, and overall nature.
Carry out keyword analysis to identify phrases that the target audience uses to find information related to your niche.
Consider including a target keyword in the domain (if possible) to make your website more discoverable and visible in SERPs.
Also, go for non-www domain addresses to stand out from the crowd and realise the full potential of your online business.
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Boost Website Speed
User experience is one of the ranking factors used by Google to rank a website.
Site load speed has a direct impact on the user experience of a website.
A website that loads fast, for instance, offers a better user experience than websites that take minutes to load all page elements.
Therefore, optimising your website speed is prudent to improve user experience and ranking.
Consequently, a good user experience will result in a high site conversion rate and organic traffic.
How Do I Increase My Website Speed?
As the website admin, you have full control of your WordPress website.
Here are 5 easy ways of increasing website speed without spending a fortune.
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- Optimise images
- Minify CSS, Javascript, and HTML
- Reduce the number of redirects
- Enable browser caching
- Get rid of unnecessary plugins
- Make sure the theme is updated
WP Rocket is one of the WordPress plugins you can use to enhance the speed of your website.
This plugin has been proven effective in increasing Core Web Vitals score, boosting page load time, and increasing Google PageSpeed.
WP Rocket is a paid WordPress plugin available at $49 for one website. However, you can use Google PageSpeed Insights to measure your site speed.
Use the recommendations in the report generated after that to know which actions you should take on slow pages to crank them up.
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Create Correct Sitemaps
Search engine bots rely on the information you feed them to know the context of your website and which pages to index.
What is a Sitemap?
A sitemap is a file with details of your website pages, videos and other essential files that make up your website. The bots use this information to know which pages they should crawl and index.
Pages that you consider most valuable should be included in the file to ensure that they are correctly indexed and displayed to your target audience.
The sitemap file should be updated whenever the website is updated to ensure that new content such as videos or new landing pages is indexed and made available to potential customers via SERPs.
After creating your WordPress website, you should create a comprehensive sitemap with details of all your website pages. You can effortless enable and view your WordPress XML sitemap on the Yoast SEO plugin.
Watch this video on how to create a sitemap for WordPress. It also details how to submit the file to Google Search Console.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExKynNMzxJY
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Audit Your Website for Broken and Spam Links
Google relies on the number of backlinks a website has to determine its rightful position in SERPs.
Therefore, you should strive to have a healthy backlink profile to increase your WordPress ranking after launching it.
Ideally, the links should be from sites considered an authority in your niche. Regularly audit your website to benchmark its backlink profile.
The process will pinpoint both broken and spam links on your pages.
Get rid of such wrong links to enhance the overall SEO health of your website.
Otherwise, too many invalid or broken links will negatively impact your site’s SEO. For example, visitors directed to a 404 error page may vow never to revisit your website.
Use credible plugins such as Broken Link Checker to locate these wrong links and take the necessary actions. Go the extra mile and do a comprehensive SEO site audit on MediaOne Marketing to get a holistic perspective of your website.
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Leverage AMP (Google Accelerated Mobile Page) Plugin
Google Accelerated Mobile Page is an open-source project that is desired to increase the speed at which website pages load on mobile.
Bearing in mind that most people use mobile devices to browse the web rather than desktop, you should ensure that your website pages load fast on both desktop and mobile.
Reports indicate that Google gives a higher preference to websites that have AMP.
Therefore, we recommend that you install and activate the AMP plugin to boost on-site SEO and your site ranking in SERPs.
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Optimise Images
Earlier, we mentioned that optimising images is one of the ways of enhancing website load times. Pages with large images load slower than pages with smaller optimised images.
Apart from including the properly ALT text, you should also reduce the size of large images.
Be vigilant not to compromise the quality of the images in your quest to reduce the size of the images.
Check the image resolution to ensure that the new images are clear and convey the intended message effectively to your audience.
Here are the top 10 WordPress plugins for optimising website images.
Compare the features of each plugin to identify one that best matches your WordPress image optimisation needs.
Avoid guesswork by experimenting with the trial versions (if available) before paying the full price.
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Set Correct URL Slug
Surprisingly, Google ranks websites with URL that contains a category and subcategory higher than sites with mere short, clean URLs.
The study also revealed that 250% of organic users are more likely to visit a website with a short URL than one with a long URL.
WordPress is wired to generate a unique URL for every website page automatically.
Don’t settle for the automated option; edit the slug to indicate the page’s primary category and subcategory, as shown in the image below.
Go the extra mile to include a focus keyword in the URL to make the pages more discoverable.
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Optimise Content Using Focus Keywords
Google is more than ever before keen on matching websites with the searcher’s intent. Make your website pages and blogs more visible to the target customers by optimising the content using multiple focus keywords.
The content should much the searcher’s intent for the page to be displayed in SERPs.
So, do thorough research to know the kind of content your website visitors expect to read on the various pages.
One of the mistakes that most WordPress website owners make is limiting themselves to just Google when doing keyword research and content optimisation.
Sections of your target audience also use other search engines such as Yahoo and Bing. And so, you should also include them in your keyword analysis.
More importantly, appreciate that most people quickly use voice search to find information on search engines.
This group of searchers use question-based queries to look up information instead of the conventional short and long-tail keywords.
The point is; to include short and long-tail keywords in your content and question-based queries to make your website content discoverable on voice search result pages.
Monitor the search volume and search intent of the different keywords as well the organic traffic accrued after optimising the pages to gauge the performance of your on-site SEO strategy.
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Eliminate Duplicate Content and Pages
Duplicate content and pages exhaust your site crawl budget and negatively affect your website SEO. Unlike before, search engine bots, especially Google, can sniff out duplicate content from a mile away and penalise your website.
Another reason you should get rid of duplicate content is that it dilutes the keywords on your website, reducing its discoverability.
Note duplicate content does not only refer to the content in the body of a website page, blog, or press release. It also includes duplicate meta tags and subheadings as they impact site ranking.
Focus on creating fresh content that resonates with the target audience’s information needs.
As mentioned earlier, consider the search intent to know which topics to discuss and the keywords you should use to optimise the content.
On the same point, create evergreen or cornerstone content pieces to increase your real estate on SERPs. Simply put, this content is not time-bound – it will still be relevant many months and years after publication.
In the process, remove pages with thin content and freshen up content pieces such as case studies by adding new statistics. Pages with thin content can be used to enhance other top-performing pages by transferring the content to the latter. Make sure you redirect the old URL to the enhance page to avoid a 301 error.
Be on the lookout for comments posted by the readers. Respond to them to start a conversation and increase the engagement levels of your website.
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Optimise Your WordPress Website for Core Web Vitals and Page Experience
Today, two of the most crucial ranking and SEO factors are Page Experience and Core Web Vitals. The two are part of the current Google algorithm, so they should be part of our SEO checklist in 2022 and beyond.
Core Web Vitals analyses several metrics, namely;
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- Cumulative layout shift
- First input delay
- Largest contentful paint
We found an insightful article that discusses Core Web Vitals and how to optimise your WordPress website accordingly. Check it out.
Page experience refers to how well website visitors can navigate your website and take the desired action. The better the page experience, the higher the website ranking and performance in organic traffic and conversion rate.
Here are the four primary factors Google uses to determine page experience.
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- Safe browsing
- HTTP
- No interstitials
- Mobile-friendliness
Visit Google Lighthouse, Core Web Vitals, and PageSpeed Insights extensions for the Chrome browser to know how your website is fairly on the two.
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Audit Your Website for Crawling and Indexing Errors
Like the bad links we discussed, you should regularly audit your WordPress website for crawling and indexing errors.
Check out Google Coverage Report once Google verifies your website to confirm that all the essential pages are correctly crawled and indexed.
The report lists all the URLs that are indexed and those that have not been shown in SERPs.
Also, upgrade to the new generation Google Analytics 4 (GA4) that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning power. Use it to better monitor your website and create better Google Ad campaigns.
Final Thoughts
WordPress is considered one of the best content management systems today, and for a good reason.
Get the website optimised to match search engine recommendations to get maximum results from it. MediaOne Marketing is ready to make your website more functional, and SEO optimised. Get in touch with us at +65 6789 9852 for more details.
With the many benefits of having a WordPress Website, it is without a doubt a perfect choice for anyone looking to create a website.
