WordPress Is The Perfect Local SEO Solution
WordPress is the CMS system that all local businesses need. Simple installations, easy publishing, and local SEO plug-ins make this the platform of choice.
The times when WordPress was simply a piece of blogging software are long gone. It has evolved into a fully-fledged web content management system that many large brands such as Sony Music, The Rolling Stones, The New York Times Company, and Reuters blogs are using to great effect.
However, the beauty of WordPress is that it’s just as suited to small websites that need to win more local business.
Simplicity of WordPress
WordPress is a free (open source) piece of web software that is an out-of-the-box solution for businesses of any size. What’s more, the ease at which you can select a design theme and layout that fits your brand means that development costs can be kept really low. An entire local website powered by WordPress can be online within a day – although it will be a little rough around the edges!
WordPress and Local Business
There are several plug-ins that are designed to assist local businesses in gaining favour with Google and the other search engines. Keep in mind that they want to return relevant search results for their users, but it’s up to you to help them do this. This means that as a local business webmaster, you should provide elements such as a Google map, store locator function, opening hours, and a correct business address on your site. The installation of a Local SEO plug-in will do all of these things for you.
Other SEO Advantages
A few years ago, it used to be reasonably simple to rank well for a particular key phrase in your local area. All you had to do was stuff your web pages and HTML tags full of keywords and gain a large number of backlinks. These black hat techniques are now the best way to obtain penalties from Google and risk being deindexed completely.
WordPress is able to assist your SEO strategies by providing plug-ins that are incredibly easy to download, install and configure. The All-In-One SEO plug-in provides a speedy solution for adding appropriate keywords, title tags, and descriptions to each and every post or page that you write. Using a plug-in like this can do wonders for your rankings. In fact, former Google engineer Matt Cutts once famously said ‘WordPress automatically solves a ton of SEO issues’ – he must believe this statement as his own blog is WordPress-built.
Content Is King
Nowadays, one of the best ways to rank well and reach a wide local audience is to provide tons of quality website content that will interest your visitors. Ideally, you should add or improve your site content every week, so that Google knows that it is fresh and crawls your site more regularly.
A WordPress blog fits seamlessly into your site and is the quickest way to publish content at the click of a button, which is an important time-saver for local business owners. Blogging is also great for business as it gives owners an opportunity to establish themselves as experts in their local industry. Blog posts that allow user comments also create the opportunity of engaging with your customers and encouraging questions and feedback about your services.
If you’re starting up your first business website or are looking to switch to a more flexible CMS, then WordPress should be your first and only choice. Our web developers are skilled in WordPress design and optimisation, so call Freelance SEO today and get your business off to a flying start!