Search engine optimisation is one of those terms you hear often, but it seems to change so often that you might wonder if you really need it at all.

The answer is a resounding yes! There’s a reason WordPress has built-in SEO features (though a little more optimisation is always a good thing).

One of the most cost effective website marketing tools that also has a high ROI is search engine optimisation. If you’re still one the fence about implementing it, let the following reasons convince you to start today.

Gain Organic Traffic

Imagine spending a few minutes marketing and then getting traffic again and again with no additional work. SEO gives you something that other marketing methods fall short on – minimal time for optimal results. For instance, if you write an optimised blog post for your site, it could help you rank in search engines for years to come.

Some even call if free traffic because it comes as a result of something you were doing anyway, such as adding product description or updating your site’s content. Organic traffic comes from real people searching for what they need. It’s just one of the many reasons this type of traffic is so valuable.

Reduce Marketing Time

Social media, ad campaigns and email lists all take time. With search engine optimisation, your site is doing the marketing for you. All it takes is the time you’d already be spending uploading new content and maintaining your site. While the other types of marketing are important, wouldn’t it be nice to get results even when you don’t have the time or budget for other types of marketing?

Target A Specific Audience

When you think of SEO, you probably think of keywords. This is an important part of search engine optimisation and it still works well as long as it’s done right. The key is to forget about keyword stuffing and consider user intent instead. You can still focus on a keyword (for instance, this post focuses on “search engine optimisation), but work in common phrases naturally, such “optimise a website,” “SEO” and “website marketing.” By focusing on natural searches and long tail keywords, you optimise your site for a specific audience.

Out Rank The Competition

Search for your site’s basic purpose on Google and see how many results are there. For instance, I just searched for “WordPress developer” and got over 26 million results. So the problem is how to become more competitive and land on those first few pages of results. This is where a search engine optimised site is key. For instance, I don’t just optimise my site for WordPress development, I also geo-target by my location along with using other SEO tactics, such as:

• Using cleaner code
• Optimising page load speeds
• Updating content regularly
• Using a variety of keyword phrases based around user intent

The right SEO can help you out rank your competition.

Make Your Site Easier For Google To Find

Sitemaps aren’t covered much when it comes to optimising a website. However, they’re vital for helping Google and other search engines find your site. Think of them as a way for search engines to “read” your site and understand its structure. This leads to better rankings.

Become A 24/7 Store Front

The more important reason your website needs to be optimised is so it becomes a 24/7 store front for your business. With optimisation, it’s going to be difficult for anyone to find you without direct marketing. When you’re sleeping, SEO continues to draw in traffic for you. After all, this is the entire purpose of your site – to work for you, even when you can’t work.

Search Engine Optimisation Tools To Try

While you can do search engine optimisation on your own, WordPress has this great feature called plugins. As you may have guessed, WordPress has plenty of SEO plugins to choose from to help you out, such as:

• Yoast SEO
• All In One SEO Pack
• SEO Ultimate
• SEOPressor
• Premium SEO Pack

Each has its own benefits. You can also check out some of my favorite overall WordPress plugins.

Ready to optimise your website? Contact Darren today to get started with an optimised WordPress site.

Image: Maliha Mannan

SEO is a key part of ensuring search engines find and rank a website.

Optimising your site yourself is often time consuming and confusing. WordPress has many built-in features along with add-ons such as different themes and plugins to better manage your website’s SEO.

WordPress has set itself apart as one of the best content management platforms for SEO. Simply using the CMS could help boost your site’s ranking.

Customised Permalinks

WordPress allows the user to change the permalink structure of post and page URLs. Search engines love links that contain the keywords or phrases you want to target. Instead of having a link with seemingly random numbers and letters, your permalink structure could contain part or all of your post’s title. This helps boosts your rank and allows visitors to find your site easier.

Takeaway: Take the time to edit the default permalink structure to show your post titles. A developer can set this up for you if you’re not sure how or want them highly customised.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds and other feed types are built-in to WordPress. These feeds allow a site’s content to be picked up by feed readers easily. The feeds could be used by visitors to keep updated on a site’s latest content or the feed may be posted on another site with links back to the original site. Site owners can submit their feed to numerous feed services to increase traffic. The SEO benefit is a site builds traffic and loyal followers, both of which Google factors in when ranking a site.

Takeaway: Take advantage of the built-in feeds to submit to feed services. They’re an easy way to market your site and improve your rank without dealing with extra code yourself.

Clean Code

By default, WordPress uses clean code that makes it easier for search engines to read a site. This code also makes it easier for search engines to determine if any malicious code is present. Adding customised themes and plugins can complicate things, but with the right developer, the code is still clean and optimised for search engines.

Takeaway: Consider hiring a developer if you want to add in customised themes and plugins. A developer will be able to clean up the code to make the most of WordPress’s SEO benefits.

Optimised Themes

While WordPress already boosts a website’s SEO, some themes are designed to further optimise a site. These themes may focus on more optimised layouts, better metadata, proper headers, built-in plugins and more. Many themes are also responsive. Mobile friendly sites rank higher when users search on a mobile device. Using a responsive design helps a site comply with Google’s new mobile ranking guidelines. Thousands of themes are available and developers can create a custom theme with even more SEO benefits built-in.

Takeaway: Combining an optimised theme with WordPress makes SEO even easier. Developers can ensure you have the right theme to make your site more SEO friendly.

SEO Plugins

SEO plugins are one of WordPress’s most powerful features for optimising a site. Hundreds of free and premium plugins are available to further optimise SEO on posts and pages. For instance, the popular WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin gives you an SEO section to fill out with a keyword, SEO title and meta description. It also shows you if you’ve used the keyword in all the right places. Think of these plugins as a guided SEO tool to ensure your posts are as optimised as possible.

Takeaway: Choose an SEO plugin to use for your website. The built-in SEO features are great, but a focused plugin helps even more. Ask your developer to install or develop an SEO plugin for you.

Add Content Easily

Regular content is an easy way to optimise a site. Many platforms make it difficult to add and format content properly for search engines. For instance, using H2 header tags in your content is better for SEO. The WordPress post editor has that feature built-in without the user having to add in any code. Plus, the ease of using the editor and posting content makes it easier for users to add content regularly and keep their site fresh in the eyes of search engines.

Takeaway: WordPress is a popular CMS because it’s so easy to manage content. Add content on a regular schedule to further improve your ranking.

Conclusion

WordPress is an SEO rich platform. The right developer can ensure the code is clean and all settings are in place to make the most of these features. Unlike many other platforms, you don’t have to be an SEO expert to optimise every post and page.

Stop making SEO so difficult. Contact StuartMedia today to find out how WordPress will do the hard work for you.

Image: Harsh Agrawal

It’s not enough to choose a theme and mix in some content to create a professional looking WordPress site.

The best WordPress sites all have something in common that helps to set them apart – the five essential elements that every business website should consider.

By using a professional WordPress developer, it’s not hard to get a stunning WordPress business site that invites visitors to look around.

Responsive Design

One of the most important elements is responsive design. Businesses never know where their visitors are viewing the site. They could be using a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. Designing a different site for each type of device is nearly impossible, not to mention expensive. Responsive design automatically readjusts WordPress sites to fit the screen size. These designs incorporate the most important elements on the page into an easy to use version of a site whether the visitor has a 5 or 20 inch screen.

Takeaway: To ensure a business site is available for anyone, anywhere, always use a responsive design. WordPress developers know exactly how to create responsive themes to fit any business’s unique style.

Fixed Navigation

Visitors don’t want to hunt for navigational elements. Instead, incorporate fixed navigational toolbars so visitors always know where to go. This single element makes a major difference in how long a visitor stays on the site and how many pages they visit.

Takeaway: Don’t make navigation complicated. Let a WordPress developer design an eye-catching navigation toolbar to keep visitors exploring the site.

Custom Fonts

Far too many business sites settle for common fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman. Custom fonts make text stand out and give the site a unique personality. Think of them like a person’s unique handwriting.

Your developer can work with a designer that can provide a custom font or the developer might find the perfect custom font from fonts.com, typekit.com, fontshop.com.

Takeaway: Use a WordPress developer and have them find the perfect custom font set for your site. They can find one that reflects your brand, so visitors instantly associate the font with the business.

Organised Content

Many WordPress sites make the fatal mistake of having disorganised content. Text blurs together and becomes completely  unreadable. Visitors love being able to quickly scan content to see if it’s useful or not. Professional sites incorporate subheads, bullets, short paragraphs and even break up long sections of text with images.

Takeaway: Always organise content so it’s easy to read. Many custom themes have page templates to make it easier to layout content.

Fast Page Load Times

Many businesses tend to get carried away with adding numerous graphics, videos and animations to make their sites pop. All this does is clutter up the pages and reduce page loading speeds. The key to fixing this problem is to opt for clean layouts with ample white space between elements. This also means using simple colour themes, high quality images optimised for the web and a limited number of animations or videos.

Takeaway: Always opt for professionally developed business theme that is made specifically for faster loading times. The elements are laid out to ensure optimal speeds to keep visitors happy and navigating the site.

Conclusion

Overall, keep the look and feel simple and focus on the content instead. To get all these elements, always use a professional WordPress developer. The site will look cleaner, more professional and completely unique to the business.

Ready for a site overall and don’t know where to start? Contact StuartMedia today for all your WordPress development needs.

Image: Serge Kij

No one enjoys sitting around waiting for a website to load. Most visitors will move on to the competition’s site instead of patiently waiting.

In fact, a KISSmetrics study when a site takes more than four seconds to load, the site is losing 1 in 4 visitors.

The faster your client’s WordPress website loads, the lower the bounce rate, leading to more readers and a higher search engine rank.

From plug-ins and themes to coding and hosting, WordPress site owners have a variety of ways to drastically speed up their sites.

Only Use The Plug-Ins You Need

WordPress is easy to customise, but that’s also one of the main reasons many WordPress sites run slowly. The temptation to use numerous plug-ins to add as many features as possible bogs down page loading times. Another problem is many site owners grab plug-ins at random. These plug-ins might not be optimised for faster loading or they may be outdated for the version of WordPress your client’s running.

To solve this problem, site owners must choose their WordPress plug-ins carefully. They have to limit the number of overall plug-ins and also only use high-quality, optimised plug-ins. The result is a feature rich site with incredibly fast loading times.

Takeaway: For the best plug-ins for your client’s WordPress site, use a professional WordPress developer. They can customise plug-ins to handle specific tasks while optimising them for the best site performance possible.

Skip The Free Or Cheap Themes

For extremely budget conscious clients, their desire to trim their website costs could actually cost them visitors. The theme a client uses affects how fast the entire site loads. Poorly coded themes often have excess elements that bog down loading times. Plus, some free themes also include viruses which not only slow things down, but threaten the safety of site visitors. Either way, saving money isn’t worth it in this case.

WordPress themes aren’t outrageous. Considering they serve as the template for the entire site, it’s worth investing a little extra for a theme that looks great, functions well, loads fast and doesn’t transfer viruses to visitors’ computers.

Takeaway: Buy a professionally developed WordPress theme or have a custom theme developed for your business. WordPress developers are able to design custom themes that best reflect a company’s brand and personality. With custom themes, clients never have to settle for pre-designed templates or pages they’ll never use either.

Use Caching Plug-ins

One of the easiest ways to speed up a WordPress site is through caching. With a caching plug-in, visitors don’t have to reload every single element of the site with each page load. For instance, instead of loading the same header image for each page, caching allows the image to be stored on the visitors computer. The next time the visitor opens a page on the site, the image is loaded from their computer, drastically reducing loading time and improving the visitor’s overall experience.

Depending on the plug-in used, your client can customise the level of caching and how the cache is flushed or refreshed. They can also choose between server and client side caching options.

Takeaway: Tell clients to install and configure a caching plug-in of their choice. The three most popular options are W3 Total Cache, Quick Cache, Hyper Cache Extended and WP Super Cache. Depending on your client’s technical knowledge, a professional WordPress developer may be necessary to optimise the plug-ins for optimal site performance.

Always Update

WordPress doesn’t release updates just for the fun of it. Every update is essential for ensuring a site has the latest security and performance enhancements for the WordPress platform. Since these updates are free, there isn’t a single reason not to run them. However, many site owners never update simply because they don’t notice the updates are available or they’re uncertain how to install them.

Your clients don’t have to handle the updates themselves. A WordPress developer is always ready to install updates to sites. They’ll can even run checks on any installed plug-ins and themes to ensure the entire site is up to date.

Takeaway: Encourage clients to install all available updates to their sites. If they aren’t comfortable doing it themselves, suggest hiring a WordPress developer to maintain updates.

Avoid Large, Bulky Images

While images are ideal for grabbing a visitor’s attention, they can also hinder the site’s performance. Clients using an abundance of images should optimise the image files so they load faster. Image compression or smaller original file sizes go a long way towards improving performance. They can even install plug-ins to help boost image load times.

Some themes are even designed specifically to tackle image heavy sites and ensure they load as quickly as possible. If clients prefer their existing themes, they can add special coding to use image sprites, which load images in groups versus individually. Using this approach drastically reduces the overall site loading times.

Takeaway: Odds are, most clients won’t know how to best optimise their sites for faster loading images. WordPress developers already understand the issue and can resolve it quickly and easily with a few coding changes or a custom theme.

Conclusion

With all the various plug-in, theme and other coding customisations, there is no reason for a WordPress site to load slowly. Using updated, optimised plug-ins and themes along with the latest version of WordPress is a great start to getting a faster site. For the fastest site possible, a WordPress developer is crucial. They understand every tweak necessary for optimal site performance.

Have a slow loading WordPress site and feel helpless to stop the flow of visitors leaving for the competition? Look no further than StuartMedia for all your WordPress needs.

Image: John Talbot

Some believe that WordPress is complicated to set up, expensive and challenging to use.

These myths couldn’t be further from the truth.

Once your clients understand what WordPress has to offer, they’ll jump at the chance to use one of the most user friendly CMS available.

Here is how you can convince your clients that WordPress is right for their website.

Social Proof: Everyone’s Using It

According to WordPress founder Matt Mullenberg, WordPress has been downloaded over 46 million times and powers 18.9% of websites throughout the world. WordPress isn’t the only CMS available, but these numbers alone set it apart as one of the most popular. Between the self-hosted WordPress and the WordPress hosted sites, 74.6 million sites use WordPress to share thoughts, ideas, products and services with the world.

Businesses, news sites and individuals all love using WordPress, but businesses love it more than anyone. Since it’s extremely cost effective and easy to manage, businesses are eager to embrace it to power their blogs and websites. According to Mullenberg, WordPress is used for as a CMS, hybrid CMS/blog, blogs only and app platforms.

Takeaway: Millions use WordPress for a reason. Many businesses have already discovered what the free software can do for their business. Trying it is easy and odds are, once you’ve spent even a week using it, you’ll never want to use anything else.

Even Big Brands Love WordPress

It’s not always easy to tell which sites use WordPress and which don’t. Some of the most well known brands and businesses use WordPress to power their sites and blogs. Some people believe the software is only designed for small businesses and individuals, but companies such as CNN, Enterprise Magazine UK, BBC America and The Rolling Stones Magazine might beg to differ. Yes, they all use WordPress along with millions of others.

Time and The Wall Street Journal blogs use WordPress to create most of their web content and applications. Since it doesn’t require in-depth programming knowledge, it’s easy to quickly create and launch new content. With numerous plug-ins available, everything you might need is usually already available.

Takeaway: After visiting some of these brands’ sites, it’s hard to deny what WordPress is capable of. These companies use it because it’s easy to use, highly scalable and mobile friendly among hundreds of other great reasons.

Professional Style, Easy To Use

Don’t let the professional looking sites from companies such as CNN fool your clients. WordPress and its extensive community give you all the tools necessary to create dynamic and static websites without needing a dedicated team of developers by your side. The appeal of WordPress is the professional style that’s amazingly easy to use.

Businesses are usually able to handle all content creation within the content or website management system (CMS). They can also make many design changes, such as changing themes and adding in plug-ins by using a single developer. In the end, the site/blog looks incredible, runs smoothly and costs less than other web development options.

If your clients struggle to use a certain aspect of the editor there is usually a step-by-step procedure for doing it in WordPress’s Knowledge Base.

Takeaway: Sites and blogs don’t have to cost thousands to look professional. WordPress gives sites a cutting edge look while still making it easy for businesses to manage the site themselves. It’s a win-win for businesses.

Customised Fit For Any Business

WordPress fits any business. Whether it’s an entrepreneur starting a small online company or a large corporation with hundreds of thousands of employees, WordPress is ideal for ensuring your company is accessible online. On WordPress.org alone, there are currently over 31,000 plug-ins available to extend functionality and more than 2,500 themes to get the perfect look for your site.

If you can’t find the functionality you need from these, it’s easy to find a professional WordPress developer like StuartMedia to build exactly what you need to make a site stand out from the competition. Free options only take sites so far. The well-known brands using WordPress to power their sites all use professionally developed themes and plug-ins to get the look and feel they want. You can customise the look and function at any time.

Takeaway: WordPress can do anything a business needs it to do. With unlimited style, plug-in and layout options, WordPress is anything a business wants to turn it into.

SEO Friendly Features

Ranking in search engines is vital to receiving organic traffic. WordPress is designed to be search engine friendly. Businesses don’t have to worry about trying to add in special code with every piece of content they upload. Instead, the CMS is designed to take the guesswork out of SEO. Fill in the blanks, post and WordPress handles the rest.

Takeaway: Optimising a site often costs hundreds or thousands. WordPress does it for free.

Conclusion

WordPress is the easiest and most powerful CMS for businesses. You don’t have to be a computer pro to use it. A single developer is all you really need to take care of the installation and design. The rest the business is able to handle.

Have a company interested in WordPress, but they need a developer to get them started? Contact StuartMedia today for custom theme and plug-in development along with full installation services.