WordPress SEO: What makes WordPress such a good option for improving a companies SEO

As a business, there are several content management systems (CMS) that you could choose from. For example, there’s Drupal, WordPress, Joomla to name a few.

There are several ways to own a new website, for example you could choose to pay monthly, some options where you own the website outright, and a wide range of CMS to choose from.

We are a little biased; however, we really like WordPress here at W&P. In this article, we will explain precisely why it’s such a good CMS option for many Welsh businesses to choose, when you’re thinking of improving your SEO.

Table of contents:

• How to get the SEO basics right from the start
• Why your business needs to write good quality content marketing (Google E-EAT)
• Why it’s essential to have a superfast WordPress website (We recommend SiteGround for website hosting)
• Why security is important (SSL and changing your password on a regular basis is important)
• Why do we need a good mobile design
• Why do you need to build on your SEO efforts constantly
• Why businesses need to improve their Google E-EAT score
• Why you should make regular backups of your website
• How to use internal links
• Why you should use white hat approaches to search engine optimisation
• Why we are one of the best web design companies in the whole of Cardiff, South Wales

 

WordPress PHP- What is WordPress?

Many businesses undoubtedly choose WordPress because it features a user-friendly and intuitive dashboard. This means that someone with no coding experience (PHP), someone who doesn’t even know what PHP means! Well, they can make some relatively straightforward changes to the website’s design within the WordPress dashboard.

The reason we state this is that some content management systems are an absolute nightmare, making it difficult to make changes (we wont say who). We would even go so far as to say that some web design agencies prefer this approach, having a difficult to use CMS, quite simply because it requires frequent revisions to make minor edits which means, well more profit over the lifetime of that website for the web designers.

The point being made here is that WordPress runs on PHP, has a well-designed dashboard, and it’s open source coding, meaning that WordPress itself can actually be obtained for free.

 

Choose the proper Permalink structure (URL slugs)

When you go and create brand-new pages, you will often have to add a URL slug or extension to the domain name to create the unique web address for that page.

Therefore, what this means is that, for example, if you sell wedding cakes, a page titled ‘Wedding Cakes’ would be your URL slug such as “ABC-cakes.co.uk/wedding-cakes”.

This carries some search engine optimisation benefit, as search engines read the “URL slug” to gain an understanding of what that page is about.

First things first, before setting up pages, ensure the Permalink settings are configured so that the URL slug accurately describes the page, like the example we provided about wedding cakes.

Therefore, take some time, perhaps using Microsoft Excel, to set out your URL slugs so that they are optimised in a white hat way.

This is the set of URL extensions that you plan on using. You can then send these to the web designer to add to your WordPress CMS. When they start designing the website and each page, you can use the WordPress URL slug editor to begin changing the URL slugs.

 

Optimising the content marketing

There are many different page builders that can be used to design a WordPress website.

Our favourite by some margin is the “WP Bakery Builder”.

However, what is important is that you add unique content marketing to each page that has a high Google E-EAT score. Therefore regardless of which page builder you choose, make sure that you add content marketing that has a high E-EAT score.

For example, you might be using a WordPress plug-in called “Elementor” to build your actual website.

We recommend adding high-quality content marketing to each page and to add this using your WordPress page builder. Therefore what this means is a lot of time will be spent on the web design process of actually writing the copywriting, proofreading the written work, and editing the text.

At the end of the day its the text which will inform shoppers about that page and what you were actually selling.

To the point being made here is, don’t overly rely on AI, that is, artificial intelligence, to write the text for you.
Instead, try to manually write it yourself to describe the product you’re selling.

Focus on search intent.

So, what this basically means is to think about what keywords customers are searching for on Google to find your products on services. It might not be as apparent as you might think.

For example, let’s say you sell batteries for cars. Often, people know the brand they want to buy from there car, this means might want to optimise your website for different battery brands, such as Bosch car batteries, for example.

This means improving on-page search engine optimisation, ensuring that the whole page is correctly optimised using title tags, internal links are added, anchor text optimised, and URL slugs are well written for example. Then there’s the actual content marketing itself, which you can optimise to align with search intent by offering helpful advice to to the shopper.

Our advice is to dedicate a significant amount of time to copywriting, proofreading, and crafting the text when designing a new website for your Cardiff business.

Don’t settle for AI-generated content, as the page is likely to be deemed content-thin and therefore have a low SEO quality score.

Write the page title correctly.

What is incredibly important, when having a brand-new website designed, is that you get the title tag set correctly.

For example, on any page, there could be 700 words written within say the accordion, along with all the text blocks added to the page, and the product descriptions- this text should be well written.

Correctly write the meta description

The meta description is what appears in the search engine results pages (SERP’s), and is for shoppers read before they click on your business.

So, if you add a well-written meta title and meta description, then as any good web designer will tell you, this can improve the click-through rate (CTR) on the website significantly.

It is sometimes the case that you might not be the business ranking at the top of the search engine results pages (SERP’s); however, if your business stands out because of something called a “featured snippet”, or if you have correctly optimised the meta description, then this can improve the CTR quite radically.

For example, the click-through rate could be radically improved if you add a well written meta description.

 

Well-written alt text images

When you take pictures of particular products or services, the camera you are using, such as a Canon SLR camera, typically saves the picture to the camera’s memory using a unique code.

However, this doesn’t tell other search engines anything about what the picture is; for that you need to add alt text, so if you’re selling, for example, a “high-carat diamond solitaire ring”, label the image accordingly with well written alt text..

This will inform the search engines that that picture is of a diamond ring.

The great thing about using WordPress is that you can add the alt text very quickly, and it’s straightforward to do, this is another reason why our web design Cardiff agency recommends using WordPress.

Regularly add new content marketing.

One of the reasons why WordPress is a leader as one of the most popular content management systems, not just in the United Kingdom but globally, is very simple: it is one of the best CMS in terms of being easy to add a blog post and new articles to.

When you go to any particular brochure website or any e-commerce website for that matter, they often add blog posts on a regular basis. For major businesses, international brands are sometimes adding content marketing every single day of the week.

The reason WordPress is a content management system is that it is so popular, simple, and easy to add blog posts.

With just a few clicks, you can add a new blog post, which makes it really simple to do.

 

It’s also essential to add schema mark up to your company website as well. This can be used for a multitude of uses, one of which can help users improve their business’s local search engine optimisation.

For example, a web designer, whichever web design agency you choose in Cardiff, can use schema mark-up, to clearly mark up the businesses name, address and phone number of your business.

This makes it really clear to the search engines that that is your business’s name information.

Add breadcrumbs for more straightforward navigation

As you shop on a high-quality website such as Amazon, its clear to see they use breadcrumb navigation.

The reason is that it allows shoppers to navigate the entire website more easily.

For example, let’s say you’re shopping for a product, such as a bathroom suite.

You might shop for quite a while, looking at wide range of products before selecting the ideal bathroom suite option.

It is therefore very easy to get lost within all the hundreds of products that the business is selling, and not know exactly where you are.

This is where breadcrumb navigation comes into its own, as you can navigate to the correct page with ease, and navigate back and forwards without having to use the main menu extensively.

 

Ask your web designers for an XML site map.

Adding an XML site map is a relatively straightforward process, although it may sound super complicated, and it seems like it would take a web developer a hundred hours to complete, right?

However, by using a quality SEO tool, such as a free SEO plugin like Yoast SEO, you can add an XML site map in just a matter of minutes.

 

But what is an XML site?

An XML site map is simply a long list of all the blog posts that you’ve added to your WordPress website, which appear in what is often an extremely long shopping list.

This makes the piece a cake for the search engines, such as Google and Bing, to then use that XML site map to make sure they crawl and index as much of your website as possible.

It depends on the businesses crawl budget of your website, and how many of these pages get crawled and indexed by Googlebot. It could even be the case that the page or blog post is deemed low quality, so it is “crawled but not indexed”.

However, to determine if the page has been crawled but not indexed, you first need to ensure it has been crawled. One way to do that is to add an XML site map.

Make your WordPress website super-fast

 
Some the cheapest web design companies in Cardiff will offer websites, where the hosting is simply too slow.

If the web design is too slow then it will take an eternity to load.

If so, the bounce rate is likely to be extremely high; therefore, search engine optimisation is also going to be damaged.
Therefore instead, many businesses large and small in the city of Cardiff, come to our web designers at W&P web design. We will design a well-designed WordPress site for your business, it will also be super quick, because we use quality website hosting, from companies such as Siteground. Which offer super fast website hosting.

When we design a brand-new content management system for your business using WordPress, we can install a search engine optimisation plugin at no additional charge, allowing you to have an XML site map set up from day one.

It’s essential to choose an XML site map that automatically updates. This means that, for example, when you add a new blog post, such as a new page, the new URL slug, the XML sitemap should automatically update.

Do make regular backups of your website

When you’re working hard to improve your business’s search engine optimisation (SEO), you will want to ensure that you have made backups of the website. We would recommend using a plugin called WP migration on WordPress.

The reason for this is that if the website was hacked, you could then restore a backup that you had already made.

 

Do make sure that your WordPress website is mobile-friendly 

When you shop around and ask various web design agencies for quotes, scrutinise the quotations offered by those Cardiff web designers, this is to ensure that mobile-friendly website design is included.

Quite simply put, “a responsive design”, or “mobile-friendly design”, means that the website will adjust to the same screen size as the smartphone on which it is being loaded.

As you can imagine, this is incredibly important for most Cardiff businesses to have a “mobile ready” website, as for roughly 50% of visitors that visit a company website, they will access the site via smartphone or tablet.

Make your website super simple to use
 
You might want a super complicated, razzle-dazzle type of WordPress website designed?

However, you have to ask is the website super slow and full of annoying glitches?

This can lead to a low dwell time, resulting in a higher bounce rate. Additionally, the website may become slow, which can result in it ranking low within the organic search engine results pages.

Therefore, prioritise what’s essential: have a website designed that’s simple to use, allows the customer to get to the right page with a minimal number of clicks, and makes it as effortless as possible.

Here are some of the ways you can improve the design of the website to help improve the user experience

 

• Load faster
• Easy-to-read text
• Main navigation, the work simply
• Well-designed mobile version of the website
• Keep your WordPress updated
• Embed contact forms on the website make it easy for the customer to contact you.

Do analyse your SEO performance

Search engine optimisation is a continuous effort; it’s a long process, it’s also a battle for any business to reach the top of Google’s SERP’s.

Your competitors, the direct ones in the Cardiff area will often be constantly be working incredibly hard to ensure they also can get to the top of Google’s SERP’s. This is so they gain as many customers as possible and rank as high as they can in search results.

Therefore, it’s a bit like playing chess; you have to constantly improve your business’s content marketing, backlinks, and on-page SEO to gain that business advantage.

 

Come to one of the best web designers in Wales.

Regardless of which type of business you run, whether your construction company, such as a plumber, electrician or a building company, right through to solicitors, dentists or accountants, we can design a brand-new website for your business.

Visit one of the top web agencies in Cardiff, offering web design from £950 for a brand new WordPress website.

We can also offer SEO Packages starting from £250.00 per month!