There are only 53% of small businesses own a website. A staggering 18% of small and medium businesses admit that they avoid building a website due to the unaffordable cost of designing it.
But most of these businesses are not aware of the fact that it takes only or less than $100 to build as well as launch a website.
You heard it right! With the world’s most used content management system, WordPress, you can get your business online in the most convenient way. You can set up your own website with a proper domain name and website hosting within a few minutes.
Are you ready to set up a stunning looking WordPress website in just $100 or still thinking it as a lot of investment?
Now, you might be confused with the continuous appearing term: WordPress and wondering why the web development companies don’t mention it. Well, find all your questions and doubts addressed here.
First of all, what is WordPress?
According to Wikipedia, “WordPress (WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP & MySQL. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system.”
This robust content management system allows businesses to easily create, manage, edit, and publish content on the websites without any need to have expertise in programming.
According to Venture Beat, “WordPress now powers more than 25% of the Web”
Contrary to the assumption, WordPress isn’t just a blogging platform, you can leverage it for multiple purposes such as eCommerce sites, business websites, and set up professional portfolios.
Here are some of the best reasons why you should build your website with WordPress. Let’s have a quick glance.
Solves Biggest Problem: Money
If you are in no mood of spending $2000 to $25000 on a website by hiring a web developer then WordPress is for you. You can build an eye-catching website or just a blog section for your business without any prior web design knowledge. WordPress doesn’t charge extra if your business starts getting more traffic through the website.
Build a Website You Always Wanted
With WordPress’ amazing customized theme, you can make your website look the way you want. You can use any one of the many themes freely available or buy a premium one such as astra theme. You can also use plugins to add certain features to make your website function the way you expect.
No Designer/ Middleman Required
It requires a lot of efforts in maintaining a website. From keeping your website updated to optimizing it for multiple devices to implementing robust security in it, there is continuous work involved. In order to build a custom website, you need to hire an expert web developer who can handle all tasks, but this option is a bit costly.
On the other hand, building your website with WordPress doesn’t have such challenges. You can update your website, install plugins, and manage content on the webpages, everything on your own. It will help you save time and money.
Scale your Website with Plugins
WordPress plugins enable you to add functionality to your website. With the help of these plugins, you can add a checkout system, create a contact page for your website, improve SEO, create landing pages, and add an extra security layer, in just a few clicks.
There are more than 40,000 plugins available on the WordPress plugins database to help you scale your website.
Continuous Updates and Support
Being an open-source platform, WordPress delivers high-quality, premium user experience. Along with that, millions of users support WordPress across the world. In case you come across any issue, these experts are there to help you.
WordPress get at least 3 major updates in its software every year and your system will be automatically updated along with other minor updates for free. Isn’t it a big enough reason to choose WordPress for your website.
Optimizing your website and content for every search engine has become the crucial thing today. It requires a lot of resources, time, and efforts. Doing proper SEO on every web page can be a tedious task. WordPress has not only addressed but also solved this challenge with its plugin. Yes, there is a plugin that can take care of your SEO tasks: Yoast.
Yoast SEO plugin enables you to implement meta titles, description, and even optimize your content for keywords in a convenient and time-saving way.
Easy Content Management
With WordPress dashboard, you get to experiment with a lot of functions. Such as creating image galleries, uploading multimedia content with drag and drop interface, schedule posts for a fixed time, adding widgets, and customize sidebar. All can be achieved without having experience in coding.
To Sum Up,
WordPress is an easy-to-use, powerful website-building platform that allows everyone to create a responsive and wonderful website. It is changing and adapting continuously as per users’ requirements and expectations. This is one of the biggest reason to choose WordPress over other alternatives.
Interested in building your own website with WordPress? We help you with a wide range of shared web hosting plans that are optimized for reliability and speed when using WordPress.
Good luck. Hope you have a great website experience.
Ritesh Patil is the co-founder of Mobisoft Infotech that helps startups and enterprises in mobile technology. He loves technology, especially mobile technology. He’s an avid blogger and writes on mobile application. He works in a leading mobile app development company with skilled iOS & Android app developers that has developed innovative mobile applications across various fields such as Finance, Insurance, Health, Entertainment, Productivity, Social Causes, Education and many more and has bagged numerous awards for the same.
If you want to reach customers from the millennial generation, you might consider incorporating more millennial employees into your hiring strategy. Millennials, also referred to as Gen Y, are currently the largest living generation across the globe. At this point, they’ve been joining the workforce for years, and many are now transitioning to management positions. During this time, they've had a big impact on how modern workplaces are shaped.
As a business owner, you've probably observed the differences millennials display in their purchasing habits when compared to previous generations. They don't respond to traditional marketing methods; "in your face" advertising doesn't impose the same effect for them that it did for earlier generations. Yet, with a purchasing power of about 0 billion per year, millennials are a market segment you probably want to find ways to attract. To accomplish this, it's a good idea to think about adding more millennials to your team.
Millennials Know What Makes Other Millennials Tick
Millennials can play an important role in shaping your business' success. Look at it this way: If you want to attract this powerful demographic to buy your products or services, you'll need to know what makes them tick. And who better to show you than other millennials? Here are some things we know about millennial consumers:
Gen Y values experiences over possessions. Outdated ad approaches that throw things at them will fall flat.
A marketing strategy for millennial audiences has to feel like a natural experience. Traditional one-way advertising won't reach them; they want to be a part of the conversation.
Gen Y audiences view traditional advertising avenues as intrusive and largely ignore them — so newspaper, television, and radio ads won't grab their attention. In fact, they’re probably so busy reading news online, streaming videos, or listening to music on a streaming app that traditional ad formats wouldn’t even reach them, anyway.
Millennials are digitally savvy and frequently check their Twitter or Instagram feeds for interesting information. This group is more likely to listen to social media influencers than spokespeople for companies.
Millennials are socially conscious and community-oriented. They want to know how or why a product or service generally makes life better for people. “You need to have this" hard sales approaches won't work.
Reaching millennials requires a creative approach because they expect to experience a real value proposition. Businesses that can effectively deliver this will earn their brand loyalty, but it often requires a “native speaker” to make the delivery. By choosing the right team members from the millennial generation, you can shape a well-equipped team to develop solid marketing strategies and reach this target market.
Millennials are Good Problem Solvers
Gen Y believes technology offers a solution to most problems. They have adapted easily to accomplishing daily tasks via their smartphones, such as online banking, ordering groceries, taking classes, and evencalculating taxes. They are strong multitaskers consistently looking to automation in search of faster and less expensive ways to get things done. Consider how valuable this trait is in a business setting.
Gen Y members are constantly connected digitally. They can share informed ideas about the best communication channels to reach consumers of their generation.
Gen Y values streamlined methods of buying (i.e. Amazon's one-click ordering) and can help employers develop appealing ways for other millennials to make their purchases.
They understand the urgency millennial consumers feel during a transaction, as they, too, want easy-to-access online answers and suggestions on demand.
In most instances, millennials want a fully automated customer experience from beginning to end; they can help provide unique ideas to get this accomplished.
Through automation, millennials can help their employers find ways to save money and stretch their budgets in a more efficient and, perhaps more importantly, an effective way.
Millennials are Disruptors
Millennials tend to be more altruistic than other generations and want to make things better for the world. Since they have a propensity to question the status quo, their disruptive mindsets can be pretty valuable when it comes to developing inventive marketing and sales strategies. Traits they display include:
Innovative ways of thinking and problem-solving
Tendency to question where things can be improved
Willingness to suggest new ideas not considered before
Eagerness to share their thoughts
Millennial employees can be a great barrier against the dangers of group-think. Companies that aim to move forward in a competitive industry should strive toavoid group-think because it creates a stagnant environment and dampens a company’s ability to make the best decisions. As natural disruptors and creative thinkers, millennials can easily help their employers hop this hurdle.
Millennials are Good Influencers
Millennials place a high value on the quality of their experiences. Consider how this can augment a marketing campaign: They have a full understanding of what millennial customers want in their brand experience.
Millennials are also social media experts. They know thebest corners of the web to share thoughts and ideas, and they know what types of content their generation shares and talks about on digital platforms. If you want to bring your brand to the next level or to new market segments, put a millennial in the position to be a social media influencer and see how well they get the job done.
To attract millennials to your team you’re going to want to offer competitive salaries and opportunities for growth. Consider combining on-the-job training with certifications (if your industry has any), that way your employees know you’re invested in them. Try losing the traditional workplace hierarchy but make sure you’re providing feedback on their work. Offer to send some of your employees to trade shows and conferences. The ones who want to go will consider this a perk, especially if it’s in a cool city.
Working with millennials is easier than you might think. Companies that look past the negative stereotypes generally find there is a huge population of hardworking, energetic, positive thinkers wanting to take on responsibility. If you're looking to expand your team and simultaneously reach an important marketing demographic, try looking at millennial talent. Chances are, you'll find refreshing — and lucrative — ways to bring your company into the soon-to-arrive next decade.
On page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing individual web pages so that the pages are ranked higher and therefore get more online traffic. There is a difference between on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-page optimizes both the content and the HTML, with a focus on websites, while off-page optimizes links and other external factors. However, on-page SEO does not work independently; it has to be used in conjunction with technical SEO and off-page SEO.
Here are the ten best SEO ranking techniques as explained by the best SEO company in Toronto.
1. Headings and Content Formatting
Use headings and sub-headers. It makes it very easy for the reader to skim through your content and get the key points within a glance. It could also be of use in increasing the keyword density in the article.
Have only one H1, or heading tag. When coming up with the other headings, h2 and h3, avoid using single words, try to make them as interesting as possible and incorporate your keywords.
When making important points in your text, make them stand out by either using bold, italics or underlining them. Use a font that makes reading easier and especially on words that are in bold. Make sure that the type of font chosen does not become illegible when made bold.
Split your text into small portion as people stay away from articles that look bulky.
2. Optimization of the length of the article
Google gives priority to articles that are longer. The advised range is a minimum of 300 words and a maximum of 800 words. Keywords shouldn’t be thrown all over the place, especially in long articles, but kept at a saturation of around 2%.
3. Be selective in your choice of keywords
Image by freepik.com
Keywords aren’t just the words that you want the readers to see as often as possible.
Once you choose your keywords, create a list of related keywords or long string keywords and use them like you use your regular keywords. It is because as everyone is becoming more aware of keywords and how to use them effectively, Google search has had to go a step further and not just consider keywords but also relevance to the topic.
There is a methodology that helps you to choose keywords. It can be done even on a feature that Google provides such as Google suggest and the ‘People also ask for’ feature. If it is too tedious, there are also paid tools for this. You should use Keywords in the title, headers, tags, and main text.
4. Optimize your images
Other than the images on your website being attractive and relevant, images can further be optimized by adding keywords to the image files and providing ALT tags. ALT tags help search engines understand the contents of the image.
Make the filename as descriptive as possible.
Use an original image. Where not possible, make sure to quote the source of the image.
The size of the photo should also be appropriate, pictures that are too large make the page take a long time to load. If you have multiple images, you can use a CDN service. This is where your image will be hosted by some servers as opposed to one and thus speed up the page loading process.
5. Make your content shareable
Once you have an SEO friendly article, the next step for optimization would be to make sure that your article gets as much viewership as possible. Make sure to add social media and email tabs to enable your readers to get your content with just a few clicks.
6. Write high quality content
Make sure you do proper research on your articles and that you don’t have catchy titles with no substantial content within. Your website will soon be tagged as one that looks for click-bait, and although you might get a lot of traffic at first, it won’t be sustainable.
Here are examples of what is seen as good content:
Original content: Picking another article and retelling the story differently does nothing for you.
Synchrony with your entire website: Make sure that articles on your website are coherent and have the same quality, if not quality that is improving. Don’t just write and post an article for the sake of doing so.
Make sure that you are the first to publish the article.
7. Page title and meta descriptions
The first information that search engines get is the page title, the description of the page and the headings.
The page title must be catchy yet describe the entirety of the page in a few words; sixty or less. As previously noted, include the keyword in your page title.
Include power words, for example amazing, checklist, etc
When using meta descriptions, avoid using the ones that are auto-generated and also remember to include your keywords.
8.URL Optimization
This process has two parts: URL optimization and URL structure.
There is a permanent link as the unique URL of each page. Just like headings, an SEO friendly URL should be short, descriptive and include target keyword.
The URL structure should be a reflection of the structure of the website. It means that you should group your pages into categories to help the user find what they want easily.
9. Internal and external links
Internal links are links to pages within your website. They are a way of making search engines aware of your other content and for you to let them know which pages on your website hold more importance than others. It also increases the time that a reader spends on your website as they are more likely to click on a link within the article. It is advisable to use around 8-10 internal links.
Quality linking, of course, increases the credibility of your website. Ensure that the links are also from reputable sources as their reputation is linked to yours. Also, you can go a step further and quote credible sources.
10. Mobile friendliness
Make sure that your website opens on mobile devices the same way it would open on a computer. This is because Google records show that more searches are coming from mobile devices.
Try to create a checklist to make sure you check all boxes in SEO optimization. Visit the best SEO company in Toronto for guidance and assistance in optimizing your website to rank on Google's top five results.
In the past few years, security has become a foremost concern on the web. The websites have become a soft target for the hackers and they have always been around to keep you on your toes, specifically if you are running your online business using WordPress.
Be it a Brute-force login attempt, cross-site scripting or denial of service, WordPress has always suffered from the security vulnerabilities. According to one survey from WpWhiteSecurity.com, 73.2% of the most popular WordPress installations are vulnerable, which can be detected using free automated tools.
There is no denying that WordPress Development Services bring tons of benefits for your online business but when it comes to the security, it is something you must consider a do or die situation. If we talk about WordPress security, it is often referred to as hardening and even it makes sense too! No matter how hard you put the efforts by putting various reinforcements and checks, it can always find itself in harm’s way.
Do you feel your WordPress site is under threat? You have taken help from the WordPress development company, but still, you don’t have WordPress security in place? This post will help you understand 5 ways you can secure and protect your WordPress site at your own.
Get the Username and Passwords Improve
One of the very first and basic steps is to take care of what username and password you are using to login into WordPress. Many of us are least bothered about the username and keep the default admin as the username. Try to use a different and unique username, which is hard to break.
On the other hand, ensure to use the passwords that are complex and comprised of different letters, characters, and number. Avoid using a password that is matching to the username. Also, you should not use common words that are easy to crack.
Think about SSL Certificate
Another mistake that many website owners make is to overlook the importance of SSL certificate. It is important to understand that HTTPS will allow your browser or application to connect securely with a website. Installing SSL certificate will bring plenty of benefits including trust, credibility, improved SEO results, better performance and more. You can hire WordPress developer or a Professional WordPress Development Company to get it done for you.
Say NO to Third-Party Code
One of the main culprits for the security vulnerabilities in WordPress is 3rd party code. They are also the hardest part to crack when it comes to securing your website. Check if your website is still using plugins, themes and outdated version of WordPress or not. If you are getting help from the WordPress Development Services, asks the provider to help you understand whether the plugin is actually needed for your business or not.
You can ask the team to validate the code of any third party theme or plugin in order to ensure it contains proper sanitation and escaping. If you want to validate at your end, then you can simply search for the below strings:
esc_attr
esc_html
wp_nonce_field
wp_nonce_url
sanitize_text_field
$wpdb->prepare
If you find any of these strings available in the plugin, you are good to go ahead.
Don’t forget to tweak wp-config.pho file!
When we talk about WordPress, wp-config.php file is the core of it. It is the most crucial part of your WordPress website when it comes to security. Starting from the database login information to the security keys, it contains all the critical information.
Ensure that you move it any non-accessible directories instead of the default root directory. All you need to do is to copy everything from wp-config.php into a different file and put the below snippet in it, which redirects the path of your other file.
<?php
include('/home/yourname/wp-config.php');
You also need to change the security keys and update the permissions for the root directory.
Update WordPress site on a regular interval
It is one of the easiest yet essentials steps for securing the WordPress site. Version updates from WordPress bring a lot of security enhancements and bug fixes. Therefore, it is always a great idea to get your site on the latest version. You also need to pay attention to updating WordPress themes, plugins and passwords on a regular interval to avoid any issues at a later stage.
With these 5 basic security tips, you can be sure on a way to improve WordPress security. The list we discussed is not exhaustive, but it will surely be a great help for the site owners having no technical knowledge to keep the site safer until they get help from the WordPress Development Company. Want to hire WordPress developer to improve the security of your site? Want to share other best practices for better security? Hit the comment now!
Author Bio: Nishant Desai – Digital Marketing Strategist at Pixlogix Infotech Pvt. Ltd. I love to write about the latest trending updates, WordPress, Web Design, SEO and other interesting information. I believe in Learning, Sharing and keep growing together.
In case you're a professional website specialist (or in case you're
making your very own site without any preparation), it's vital to know a couple
of SEO essentials – a little learning goes far to building websites that
contact their target group. Understanding these ten parts of SEO will enable
you to design sites that function admirably, notwithstanding looking
extraordinary.
1. Site
Structure
Each site ought
to be designed with a reasonable, logical structure at the top of the priority
list. The landing page should express the big picture motivation behind the
site – its explanation behind existing – and subtleties ought to be separated
into subpages.
For instance, in
case you're designing a website for formulas, the landing page could prompt
separate class pages for meals, soups, and treats. Each of those subpages could
then inspire individual formula subpages of their own.
It's okay to
have a few 'layers' of subpages on your site, however, don't dive excessively
deep or Google may experience difficulty crawling every one of them. When all
is said in done, attempt to hold your site's profundity to three or four
layers. Here's a visual from Moz of what a very much structured site resembles:
2. URL
structure
URLs influence a
site's SEO, so it's imperative to pick great ones ideal from the begin. Here
are a couple of best practices to pursue URLs:
Shorter is
better since shorter URLs are more vital than longer ones
A URL ought to
depict the content of the page as obviously as could reasonably be expected.
Utilize plain English rather than abbreviations or series of letters and
numbers
For subpages, go
through hyphens to break words for lucidness. For instance, use
https://example.com/fabricateanaviary rather than
https://example.com/buildabirdhouse.
Incorporate
keywords in URLs at whatever point it appears to be normal to do as such (yet
keep away from keyword stuffing).
3. Site navigation
Notwithstanding
being very much structured, your sites ought to be simple for visitors (and
Google) to explore. A site menu ought to be located prominently at the highest
point of the page or along the sidebar. Each page on the site ought to be
findable. Abstain from making 'stranded pages' that aren't connected from some
other pages on the site. On the off chance that visitors can't discover a page
by following links, search engines won't realize that page exists either.
4. Versatile,
friendly design
The period of
versatile is here, and responsive website architecture isn't discretionary any
longer. For a site to give great UX and rank well, it needs to change for happy
with a survey on a little screen. If you haven't as of now, make responsive
design your default design mode. You can go without much of a stretch test the
versatile neighborliness of your sites utilizing this primary tool from Google.
5. Site speed
Alongside
versatile agreeableness, site speed is another UX thought that influences SEO.
Google punishes moderate sites in their rankings, and visitors are more
reluctant to stick around if a page takes a couple of moments to stack.
Google's PageSpeed Insights tool can disclose to you how quick your sites are
and what you can conform to make them faster.
6. Titles,
headers and meta descriptions
Titles, headers
and meta descriptions are critical parts of on-page SEO. Each page on a site
ought to have interesting content in its <title> tag – as it were, don't
reorder a similar title over your entire site. Each page's title ought to
incorporate no less than one keyword that is pertinent to the content on the
page. Moreover, include keywords in the header tags on each page, particularly
the <h1> tag.
Meta
descriptions – the blurbs that show up under links in SERPs – are somewhat
unique. They don't legitimately influence SEO. However, they do affect what
number of individuals click on your site in SERPs. They're fundamentally free
publicizing space, so put some idea into them, and incorporate your principle
keywords to get searchers' eyes.
7. Picture
streamlining
Search engines
can't 'read' and get pictures (yet). However, you can disclose to them what
your pictures are and what they allude to. Here are a couple of things you can
do to improve your pictures for SEO:
Name your
pictures precisely. For instance, it's smarter to call a picture something like
png than img238.png
Use alt tags
with your pictures. This is a smart thought for accessibility purposes, yet
also, tells search engines what your pictures portray
Try not to
utilize bigger pictures that would generally be appropriate as this can
moderate your site's stacking time.
8.
Utilization of Flash
By and large,
avoid Flash except if it is significant. It's particularly imperative not to
utilize Flash for critical pieces of your site, for example, the navigation bar
and the principle message on your pages.
9. Structured
information
The jury is
still out on whether structured information, for example, outline markup, gives
sites a lift in search engines. Be that as it may, it can bring all the more
high-quality traffic by providing valuable data to human searchers. After some
time, this traffic lift can improve your rankings.
10. Site
interface
Great SEO isn't
just about specialized subtleties; it's additionally about helping individuals
and providing extraordinary UX. While it's vital to focus on everything on this
rundown as you deal with a site, don't give incredible design itself a chance
to fall by the wayside – particularly in case you're making your very own
website with a free website developer. An alluring, simple to-utilize interface
will encourage visitors to remain on your site and make it simpler for them to
discover what they need. This keeps your ricochet rate down. An appealing site
is extraordinary for a brand's picture, as well.
Wrapping up
Website design
enhancement isn't the specialty claim to fame it used to be. Search engines are
assuming an undeniably essential job later on of the web, and it's vital for
individuals in other tech fields –, for example, website composition – to have
the capacity to keep up. If you design your site in light of these significant
parts of SEO, the completed item will be both excellent and practical.
Alex
Jone Works in a HR and Recruitment at Alliance Recruitment Agency- an IT
Recruitment Agency. He specializes in helping with international recruiting,
staffing, HR services and Careers advice service for overseas and international
businesses.
