WordPress is a simple, free, and open-source software that is used to create interactive, practical, and well-designed websites and blogs.
It is a framework that helps builds websites with tens of thousands of templates that incorporate all kinds of themes, framework, and plugins that are necessary to build a website.
It is currently the most popular content management system and blogging platform. 24% of all websites use WordPress web design.
Most web developers prefer WordPress web design because it is easy to use, is easily customizable, great for search engine optimization (SEO), and has excellent security features and customer support.
The importance of good Web Hosting for WordPress
Good web hosting is essential in this day and age for a myriad of reasons. The proliferation of internet-ready devices has made it essential for websites to have little to no downtime.
When visitors come to your site they expect it to be fast and safe. Furthermore, a good web host should have excellent 24 hour support.
You always get what you pay for – cheap web hosts are cheap for a reason. Try to avoid web hosts that have low security, bad reviews, and are overcrowded with other web sites.
Lastly, scalability is important as when the website grows it is essential to have the capacity to increase its bandwidth to cope for the demand.
What is Local SEO?
Local Search Engine Optimization ensures that web searches of potential customers are done in such a way that businesses that are local generally rank higher in the Search Engines. This helps the user find what they are looking for close to their location. Hence, the word ‘Local’ SEO.
For example, a user searching for their Local Ipswich SEO company would ideally like to have SEO businesses in their area work for them. It’s different to online shopping where you can get a product shipped to you from anywhere in the world.
This is extremely important to the sales of businesses and trades that adopt Local SEO tactics so they can provide a service for their community.
Importance of onsite SEO
Onsite SEO is a way to optimize elements of a website that enable the website to rank higher for the keywords the are wanting to rank for. Without optimising each web page for specific keywords you have a lower chance of appearing in the Search Results ahead of your competitors.
Ensuring that necessary Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, and Heading Tags targeting specific keywords are found within the website content goes a long way in assisting Google with promoting your business higher in their Search Engine.
Other important aspects of Onsite SEO are:
Site Speed
Site speed is measured by how quickly a particular web page takes to load on both mobile and PC. The faster it is, the better a website is optimized.
Having a good web host goes a long way in ensuring your website loads quicker. Running diagnostics on your website particularly with regards to WordPress Plugins is a great way of keeping your site speed at an acceptable level for you users.
This is because most people will stay on a site that loads faster compared to one that is a loads slower. Therefore ideally, a website should load quickly to ensure website visitors are kept happy.
Internal Linking
This is links between pages on the same site. They are links that are within the site that will not be redirected outside the domain. They are helpful in user navigation and organizing website structure.
At the end of the day, keeping your website visitors happy with easy internal navigation is extremely important with Onsite web design.
Unique Content
This is exclusive content to your website only. Content is what makes or breaks a website. Content that is refreshing, engaging, and exclusive is highly desired by your website visitors.
Ideally, the content of a website should be both private and appealing. This is to ensure unique visitors seek to visit your site and return to it on an ongoing basis.
What is Offsite SEO?
These are activities that are undertaken off the page of a website that serves to impact the rankings of the website in search engine results positively.
Importance of Back-links
They are used by search engines to give credit to websites that have good back-links. This further serves to strengthen the site.
Consider, back-links like votes. The more votes you have, the higher you appear in Google – Generally
This depends on the type of back-links you have. Some back-links can be helpful, whilst, other links can have a negative impact – like Toxic Back-links.
Toxic Back-links
These are generally back-links from websites that are known to Google (or other Search Engines) to be considered producing a lot of SPAMMY content just for the purpose of links.
Try avoiding getting back-links from sites considered link farms or blogs that serve no other purpose than back-linking.
Over-optimization of Anchor Text
Anchor text is the hyperlink that links to another web page and is used to link to another web page. They are used by search engines to ensure that the content linked is actually on the other page linked.
Over-optimization is when there is a significant unsustainable amount of anchor text that directs to a particular web page. This is generally frowned upon as search engines tend to avoid showing results from pages that have been affected by this.
Google Penalties
This is defined as the damaging impression on a website’s search ranking due to intentionally punishing a site for using underhanded SEO techniques that forced the website to be ranked higher than it should have been. Two of Google most feared Penalties are known as Penguin & Panda.
Thin Content
This is content that is generally low quality and quantity. Search Engines appreciate long flowing content so your readers can find useful information that will satisfy them.
There is no set number of words that makes a web page “thin”, however, if your website has a lot of pages with minimal words on each page then you could find a Google Penalty might not be far from around the corner.
As a general rule, try to provide the user with at least 500 words on a web page to keep both the user and Google happy.
Duplicate Content
This is content that is repeated several times across different websites. This serves to harm SEO performance because it may force undesirable web sites to show up in the search results.
Google generally knows which web-page created the original content via a timestamp. When other webmasters copy content – without a reference – then Search engines might rank your website lower than the other site, which is a big negative.
