If you need a website for your business or personal use, you probably must have heard of WordPress web designing. WordPress is the most popular CMS (Content Management System) and blog platform used by millions of individuals and business owners. This is no surprise as the platform is easy to use, versatile and requires little or no web design knowledge to manipulate.
In this article, we shall discuss 4 big mistakes to avoid when making your WordPress website for SEO. Before then, let us consider some basic reasons why WordPress is an ideal platform for web designing.
· Easy Customization
WordPress has been the major driven force behind most successful website design and development. The success of these projects is as a result of the easy customization process that WordPress offers. With user-friendly and intuitive features, WordPress can be used by beginners and professionals to build and create a website that is suited to their need.
There are thousands of custom themes and plug-ins available online. Some of these varieties software are free while others are premium. Due to this, many owners are able to customize their website to reflect their personal preference and choice. This accounts for why WordPress is the most preferred web designing platform. More so, WordPress is compatible with most browsers and is another advantage.
· Search Engine Friendly
WordPress design is simplified with search engine friendly features. These features come in default with the WordPress configuration. WordPress offers an easy way for individuals and business owners to achieve their search engine goals.
For instance, WordPress allows you to create custom URL addresses that are friendly to search engine, publish contents whenever you like and install new plug-ins for added search engine features. What’s more, WordPress automatically and instantly submit your contents to the search engine immediately after you hit the publish button. The Content Management system allows you to moderate your contents and decide which one to index and how the results are displayed.
· Plugins
WordPress comes with its own default features and you can extend these features even further through the use of Plug-ins. With so many plug-ins out there, blogging on WordPress is increasingly getting easier than before. No matter what you are looking for in a website, there are plug-ins that will do just that.
WordPress has thousands of Plug-ins in stock each with its own unique feature. Whatever you need, just go to the plug-in page and search for your preferred one. Many argue that premium plug-ins are more effective than free ones. However, your choice will depend on what you need.
· Themes
In order to create and design a befitting WordPress website to taste, there are thousands of WordPress themes available for you. Many of these themes are provided by the WordPress developers and others by third-party developers. Explore the numerous options available and see the one that looks good for your website.
More so, these themes can be modified and customized to suit your taste. It is possible for you to like the layout of a theme but not the color. The customization option available allows you to alter certain features of the theme.
· Cost Effective
Apart from the cost of purchasing domain and hosting, maintaining a WordPress site is relatively not costly. Themes and plug-ins are free except if you need a premium feature. More so, the cost of licenses to the premium theme and plug-in features are inexpensive and one-time.
· Easy to Use
Needless to say, the WordPress user interface is simple, easy, and user-friendly. It is quite easy to use for beginners without any coding experience. However, a little coding experience will enable you to modify and make substantial changes to the website design.
· Search Engine Optimization
WordPress is very efficient when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. With an intuitive content management and permalink system, you can easily format your contents into a search engine friendly one. Furthermore, WordPress is built with a simple programming language that search engine bots can easily understand and indexing isn’t an issue.
However, in order to enjoy the dividends of WordPress website design, there are some 4 big errors you should avoid.
4 Big Mistakes to Avoid when Making a Website for SEO
1. Missing or Duplicate Title and Meta Description tags
Meta tags are HTML codes that are inserted into the Head part of a web page, just after the title tag. There are some WordPress plug-ins that allows you add a custom Meta tag to each page. Perfect Mata tags help to explain the details of your website to the search engines and give directions as to how the website will be ranked. Simply, a Meta tag indicates how a web page should be ranked and what it is to be ranked for.
Without a Meta title, tag, and description, search engines would find it difficult to rank your website. Since Meta details tell the search engine how and what to rank your website for, your website may end up being neglected by search engines.
Duplicate Meta details, however, can cause confusion and discrepancy to the search engine robots. It is necessary for you to have comprehensive, non-duplicate Meta details in order to catch the attention of the search engine bots.
2. No “About”, “Contact” or “services” pages
When creating a WordPress website, the first few pages to prepare are the About US, Contact Us, and Services page. The about us page gives information about yourself (the owner), about the business (or company) and what the website is all about. The Contact Us page should contain information on how your readers can contact you. Typically, a Contact Us page must contain contact information like email, phone number, and postal code.
The Services page shows the types of services you offer on your website. If you blog for personal purpose, then your services can include the several categories of posts your blog covers and a brief introduction about them. If you use WordPress for an official purpose (for your company), you may want to include the services your company offers.
3. Website images are too large in byte size
Large Images slow down the page speed of a website. Websites that are too slow to load are often ignored by search engine robots. In fact, users generally love a fast and responsive website. The best practice is to avoid the use of images as much as possible. Instead of using images, you can opt for icons or even gave a simple design using HTML codes.
We understand that it is relatively impossible to avoid using images on a website. In fact, some websites deal with displaying images of products. Still, images with larger sizes are not good for your WordPress website.
To resolve this, you should compress your images as much as possible in order to reduce its file size. Also, you should optimize your images after they have been uploaded. There are some WordPress plug-ins that focus on image optimization. You should check them out.
4. Missing Physical Address
Physical address proves that you are authentic and reputable. Apart from the fact that users love to deal with a company they can trace physically, search engine gives priority to websites with a physical address. Adding a physical address isn’t just about adding any random address. We recommend that you add a Google verified address, such as Google+ or Google map.
Of course, having a Google verified address is a great boost for SEO. Users want businesses they can track physically and search engines have configured their robots to prioritize such websites. With a verified address, your website would be given a top priority.
Conclusion
WordPress is a popular Content Management System and blog platform that allows individuals and businesses to create and design a custom website to their taste. WordPress has a number of interesting features which makes it a better option for other website platforms. One of these features is Search Engine friendliness.
WordPress is configured in a simple language which makes it easily accessible and understandable by search engine robots. However, there are some big mistakes you should avoid when optimizing your website for SEO. This article contains 4 big mistakes to avoid when setting up your website for SEO. We hope you will find this piece useful.