How To Use WordPress For A Website
As you maybe already know, there are plenty of different website content management systems and platforms available. The most reliable and, commonly, accepted one is WordPress.
Many blog owners, online business owners, e-shops and people who want to present their opinions, work (personal photo collections, ideas, etc.) on the web seems that they choose WordPress as their companion. Web designers are attracted by its flexibility and the wide range of modifications available. Also, users love its extreme simplicity and effectiveness.
We are talking about a very simple blogging system that doesn’t require any coding or cool tutorials on how to design a website from scratch. Nearly 25% of the world’s top 10 million websites, including TIME, are built using WordPress.
However being easy to start and create is just the beginning of the journey. There are many other “hidden”, and more important elements that will make the difference and they shouldn’t be ignored by any chance! Unfortunately, most users think that by creating a colorful, beautiful website, blog, webpage or whatever you name it will boost their online business and make them a very Wealthy Internet Marketing Guru with just a few mouse clicks. Well, that is definitely not true!
Where to Start From
Without the proper training, the right tools and support nothing will happen. Building a beautiful, colorful and well-designed website without the possibility of gaining some visitors (potential customers) means nothing. Except if your goal is to create your personal online diary …
This article is not a WordPress SEO tutorial; my point is only to address some of the most common questions users ask about SEO for WordPress. At this stage, I will only give you an idea about all those “hidden” elements you need to be aware of or give you some explanations about some of the most popular topics about SEO in general.
1. WordPress Is Search Engine Optimized
Most users think that WordPress is Search Engine Optimized. That’s incredibly false. There is a big difference between Search Engine Optimized and Search Engine Friendly. You will always have to make some manual adjustments and changes for better SEO.
By selecting WordPress to create your website doesn’t mean that you will be get ranked on Google’s 1st page automatically. You need to put some personal work and to get to the point fast and efficiently you need the best training since the competition is high and if you don’t follow the right path you will get stuck on Google’s page 100 or give up on your dreams for a successful online business.
You need to be careful on what you select and what product or service you choose because many vendors are using this feature as their top selling point and they make a lot of noise about it. In many cases, it works, and people are scammed to pay for something that they won’t finally get.
What WordPress does offer is an excellent starting tool. It gives you all you need to build a website without spending much time and money.
>> How To Create A WordPress Website in 30 Sec (Video) <<
2. WordPress SEO Plugin is Installed. Then My Website is Search Engine Optimized
That’s another error users do. They think that SEO is a plug and play result. SEO is a continuous process, needs to be dealt with the proper responsibility and be treated as the most important parameter of our online business.
Till now I haven’t seen a WordPress Plugin that can cover all SEO parameters. For sure, a correct and valid configuration of your SEO Plugin is a step in the right direction. However, it’s never enough! It’s more complicated than a few settings and much more comprehensive.
A typical reaction from my side would be to advise you to ask for my help or from another SEO Specialist, but I got something better for you that will boost your willing to do something creative online and also make money out of it. I can show you how YOU can do it by yourself, learn how organic search works, determine how SEO empowers your marketing goals and help you stay away from making costly mistakes and throw your money to something or to someone that won’t pay back its money. You want it, even more, simple than that? No one else knows what you need, how you want it and when you want it. That’s what you know better than anyone else!
Serch Engine Optimization is a very delicate thing and should be dealt gently. You must be careful with what you are doing to your WordPress website and how much you load your website with useless stuff or with extra large images (
>> How to Add Images Correctly To A WordPress Website <<
For example, when you add a Plugin you automatically change the website’s HTML code. That will impact your SEO and will cost you some rankings. The same thing is applicable (even worse) when you change a theme to an already indexed website.
By adding new and many plugins will cause your site to slow down and take more time that it should to load. Website’s loading speed is essential since most users will not wait too long for your site to load. Search engines also “punish” such websites with lower rankings.
Prio choosing a plugin be certain that:
- It’s compatible with your theme.
- It has technical support
- How popular the plugin is. How many downloads and what other users think
- Development: Is the creator updating the plugin?
Content. Quality and unique content are other essential points that most users don’t take into consideration. Quality, keyword based, content is an essential matter. Having unique content is also important for your website’s ranking since duplicate content is also punished by Search Engines.
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The list of the “right” and “wrong” things to do on your website is pretty long and will always be. That’s the reason I highly suggest you to get high-quality training.
3. The Best WordPress SEO Plugin
For the time being there are two SEO plugins that are high rated by users among all available ones. All In One SEO Pack and WordPress SEO by Yoast. Well, All In One is a bit more popular while Seo by Yoast seems to be better rated by the users. Personally, I use All In One SEO for my websites.
Just a reminder that your job is not finished just by installing a SEO plugin but just started!
4. WordPress Hosting
This is another serious problem many users have to deal with. Many factors that can influence your choice.
Here are a … few of them:
- Cost
- How Easy is to Install
- Web Server Management
- What is Included
- Reliability and Uptime
- Security
- Backup/Restore Options
- Website Health Monitoring
- Support – 24/7 – 1 on 1 Help
- Performance
- Training – Live Video Classes
- Website Development Classrooms
- Limitations (number of websites per account)
- Additional Tools
- The Density of Shared Hosting
- Community
Even if you have the equipment (Excellent Server, Huge Hard Drives, etc.), the resources, the capacity, and the knowledge to administer hosting, backups and restores, upgrades, the capacity to have a virtual private server (VPS) and the strength to manage everything …. it’s not worth it! You will find yourself spending many hours per day just to keep your business online and healthy losing valuable time from other more important things! I am saying this because I have the best solution for you below.
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5. Free WordPress Themes and SEO
One of the best features of WordPress is that they have a great variety of free themes available to everyone. Many are harmless and are considered a great choice for almost any website or blog. However, some of them can harm your SEO.
Here are a few important things you need to have in mind when choosing a template or a theme
- Spammy Links. WordPress themes that are given away as part of a link network and/or SEO tactic can harm your SEO and your organic search results. If you are not permitted to remove those links, I suggest that you don’t use that theme or template.
- Updates And Support. Several free themes are patched against security issues and vulnerabilities or been upgraded. That could be harmful to your SEO although it’s something that you can’t control. Theme creators that care about their work will always publish updates and upgrades for their themes or templates. Check what kind of update is that and if it’s worth performing the update. As I state above any changes to your HTML code can cause problems to your SEO. My suggestion is to choose the update, depending on how crucial is for the security of your website. Make sure that you keep copies of any changes you made on the header, footer or anywhere else in the HTML code since you will have to paste them back again!
- Reviews / Popularity. User reviews and feedback can give you clear pictures and tell you if the creator/developer is trusted if users have problems using the theme, and their reputation based on feedback.
- Check if it Follows SEO Best Practices and Google’s Guidelines. Complete a quick quality check on the demo and see if it fulfills Google’s guidelines, if it loads quickly and if it is correctly coded. That can save you lots of frustration and trouble.
- Check if it Is Well Build And Mobile Friendly many themes look attractive and are well coded, following all required standards and best practices. Unfortunately, sites that are not considered mobile-friendly by the Search Engines they will be dropped from SERPs.
6. WordPress On A Domain Or On A Subdomain
This is a major concern for all Internet Marketers and a question that has been asked more than anything else. Plenty marketers use subdomains for their campaigns to lower the cost of their campaigns. Well, this is something we can talk about for days so I will try to be brief at this point.
There are a few things that I don’t like on these campaigns:
- Poor Design
- No Content
- Annoying bars indicating the domain owner (i.e., Wix, Weebly, etc.)
- Leaving the impression that the marketer is not professional, is not supporting (believes in) the product or service promoted, however, their only concern is to … promote it and get the commission.
I can write more about this important subject but, I better stop here since you most probably got my point. I’ll come back with another article dedicated to Free Hosting and Subdomains soon. I’ll also make some reviews on them and compare what they are offering.
Anyway, entrepreneurs usually prefer subdomains for time limited campaigns, events or to start a business, test it, improve it and then transfer it to an owned domain. That looks correct in my eyes if you are not willing to buy a domain from the beginning. That kind of marketers seems that they choose the best available hosting, subdomain provider in the market since the transition/transfer to an owned domain will be easier; the website will keep the layout and its content and of course, Search Engines will not go crazy with that change! That’s why I chose SiteRubix to be my partner to this. I started many Websites, and some of them are already transferred to an owned domain after a testing period. SiteRubix through Wealthy Affiliate University offers the best package in the market with all the required tools (Premium Hosting, Website Creation Tools, State Of The Art Keyword Finder, Training, Video Tutorials, 24/7 Live Support, etc.) to start your Home Based Internet Business Empire!
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7. Adding A Post To Many WordPress Categories
On WordPress, there is an option to assign your posts and pages to more than one category. It’s a great tool if you use it wisely! Don’t over do it and you won’t get punished by search engines.
Choosing to assign many categories to the same articles or pages, will cause that content to appear on more than one URL, and that will indicate that you have duplicate content on your website. This is something that you have to avoid or inform Google, which one is the original, meaning that the original one will be indexed only. An easy way to do so to use meta directive and rel=canonical.
If your content only lives on one URL, you likely won’t need to worry about duplicate content issues (even if other pages on your site contain a citation).
8. H1 Tags and WordPress Themes
Although H1 tags are important, they shouldn’t be used more than once in your post since that will harm your organic search results because your post will be seen as spammy.
Please use H1 for the heading of your post or page only. This is the only place you should use H1 in your content since this is the correct and proper way to use it. All other sub-headers can be H2 or H3. Keep your posts and pages clean. The only thing that matters is your content and not the fancy layout. Keep it Simple!
9. WordPress Widgets for better SEO
WordPress widgets make our lives easier since we can add content, targeted pages according to the subject of each page and many more. Widgets can be placed on the sidebars, header, and footers and that depends on the selected theme. In all cases, we can do that simply with just a “drag and drop”, without editing any code. If widgets are used with a sense they are not harmful to SEO but, they do not offer any extreme advantages to it either.
As I mentioned above, WordPress widgets have a unique feature. They can be tailored, offered anywhere we want them to be by focusing them on the content of the page or post. This is a remarkable feature and provides a unique experience for the visitor. This, of course, adds value to our business, is user-friendly, and enhances the browsing experience. Widgets can be also used to
Widgets can be also used to
- Add a Social Media Plugin that promotes social engagement with your visitors.
- Add a Media Plugin for image and video upload.
- Feature new posts, comments, etc
- Make new content easier to discover.
- WordPress widgets allow you to target sub-niche viewers within your niche.
- You’ll improve visitor’s loyalty, and also make it easier for the search engines to comprehend what the page is all about.
- Since your will keep your visitors happy, there’s a big chance of getting more ‘likes’ or +1s on Google.
Remember what I wrote previously. Don’t over do it with widgets and plugins since you will experience totally different results! Keep a balance and keep it simple and relevant to your niche. Stay focus and keep yourself on the subject.
10. WordPress and Languages
Well, this is a matter that personally gives me a hard time, and 
there are more users or web developers out there that are interested in having their websites in more than one languages.
The good news is that WordPress has already done a lot of the work by providing the main website structure in many languages. You just have to select website’s native language through your website’s admin panel without any trouble at all. Just select your preferred language and everything will be updated with a mouse click. It’s very easy and mandatory when your website is targeting a local market/country/region, and everything (content, articles, etc.) has to be written in the selected language. By having Menus, Widgets, etc. in one language, instead of mixing up languages, is for sure something that will boost your visitor’s experience.
Don’t forget to translate all the WordPress Plugins you are using too. Before selecting a plugin make sure that it’s translation-ready so you can translate it. The same also applies when you select a theme. A good assistant for this task is Poedit.
Don’t automatically switch languages. Many users are using proxy servers, which gives a false location (IP) to the system. Let the visitors select their preferred language.
I hope you found this article about WordPress SEO tips useful. I did my best to stay focus on the most popular issues. This topic cannot be considered as “covered” since SEO never stops and you need to make adjustments from time to time.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please share them with us by posting it below.