For many small business owners, designing and managing a website can be challenging. You may have designed your site when you first started your business and are now feeling a bit behind the curve when it comes to having an attractive site that\u2019s both user and SEO friendly.<\/p>\n
With the wide variety of website options available, from custom designed sites to cookie-cutter themes, it can be overwhelming to think about doing a website redesign. You want to make sure that your site is a strong and accurate reflection of your business, but also that it gets ranked in Google and people are able to find it.<\/p>\n
When it comes to doing a website redesign, we highly recommend that businesses use WordPress. Some people think WordPress is simply a blogging platform, but it\u2019s much more powerful than that. WordPress is our #1 recommendation for an SEO-friendly website platform, and we\u2019re not alone. Google\u2019s Matt Cutts is also a fan, calling WordPress \u201ca fantastic piece of software.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are many reasons why we recommend WordPress for website development\u2026<\/p>\n
Initially, it may take you some time to get familiar with WordPress\u2019 dashboard and interface. But, once you learn how to use the interface, it\u2019s very easy to update your website structure, design, pages and blog posts.<\/p>\n
Website Structure<\/b><\/p>\n
WordPress offers users a way to create a simple website structure, which refers to the layout of the pages on your site.<\/p>\n
Most WordPress templates include a homepage with a navigation bar that links to the various pages on your website. The layout for this makes it easy for a website user to look for what he\/she needs and click through to the page.<\/p>\n
Google considers the website structure when ranking a website. Not all its users are computer-savvy and Google wants to ensure that even those people have a positive experience on the sites they\u2019re ranking. When users can go to a site and quickly find the information they need, Google is happy. This is why it\u2019s imperative that your site\u2019s layout makes sense.<\/p>\n
Website Design and Content<\/b><\/p>\n
You don\u2019t need to know how to do any type of custom coding or HTML in order to take advantage of all of the capabilities WordPress has to offer. Thankfully, their interface makes it simple to add text, images, video, and effects to your webpages and posts.<\/p>\n
Plus, you can also easily customize your website\u2019s colors, fonts, and design features through your WordPress dashboard as well. And, if you do know how to custom code, WordPress still gives you the option to do so, making it a great fit for everyone.<\/p>\n
With WordPress, you don’t need to spend a fortune having a site built from scratch. WordPress has thousands of themes that create a basic layout and structure for your website and its pages. These themes range in price from being completely free to costing $299, which was the most expensive theme we found. The average theme costs $40, which is way more affordable than a custom site. Plus, themes are available for every industry, so choosing the one you like the best is the real challenge.<\/p>\n
And just because there are themes, it doesn\u2019t mean your site will look just like someone else\u2019s site. All themes can be customized to look just the way you want it to reflect your branding and the personality of your business.<\/p>\n
WordPress Plugins<\/b><\/p>\n
WordPress is known for its plugin functionality, which can make your website faster, more attractive, and useful to users. There\u2019s a plugin for just about anything you can imagine, and that can make it easy to solve many common site problems.<\/p>\n
For instance, if you use GTMetrix<\/a> to test your website speed and find your site\u2019s speed is slow, then you can install the W3 Total Cache<\/a> plugin to optimize your website\u2019s speed. This should speed up the site quite a bit.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s still important to have a WordPress developer take care of major problems or changes to your site, many non-developers can successfully take care of minor issues with the use of plugins.<\/p>\n In March 2018, Google officially announced<\/a> that they are taking a \u201cmobile-first\u201d approach to rankings. That means that it\u2019s more important than ever that your website is mobile-friendly.<\/p>\n The good thing is, WordPress makes it easy to create a mobile responsive website and nearly all WordPress themes are mobile friendly, so you don\u2019t have to worry about your site not being accessible by people using their mobile devices. Plus, the themes automatically update the mobile site when you update your site for desktop, so you don\u2019t have to worry about designing two looks for your site.<\/p>\n While no website platform is SEO friendly out-of-the-box, WordPress definitely comes the closest and also makes it easy for you to update your site to make it SEO friendly. With WordPress, it\u2019s easy to customize the URLs of your pages, add keyword-focused title and meta tags, install Google Analytics to track your SEO efforts, and more.<\/p>\n WordPress also has some great plugins available that will help you understand if your pages are optimized for Search Engines. Our top recommended SEO plugin is WordPress SEO by Yoast<\/a>. This plugin offers a user-friendly way to stay on top of your SEO and optimize your website content and structure to help raise your rankings.<\/p>\n3. WordPress is mobile responsive.<\/h2>\n
4. WordPress is SEO friendly.<\/h2>\n
Need Help with SEO?<\/h2>\n