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Can You Achieve
SEO with a WordPress Site?
By Paul Marshall (c) 2010 Strategic Web Marketing Net
Experts in online marketing consulting emphasize a primary goal:
getting your site indexed and ranked with the search engines.
Not long ago, they would have said a blog might help you do that.
They likely wouldn't have recommended that a blog serve as your
main site.
Thanks to advances in content management software, however,
that's no longer the case. The line between conventional
websites and blogs has all but disappeared.
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"Blogging" programs have evolved into some of the most powerful
and flexible content management systems available. One of the
leading packages, WordPress, is completely free.
WordPress For Content Management
Sites built with WordPress can easily include static pages and
sections. Technically, you will have a "blog," but it can be
made to appear virtually indistinguishable from any other site on
the Web.
For new website owners who want to manage their own sites without
learning code, content management systems like WordPress are
particularly attractive.
Rather than compromising on your available SEO options by running
your site with blog software, you are actually gaining some
unique and affordable SEO advantages and opportunities.
Effortless Structure
Content management systems allow material to be easily
categorized. Search engines love structure. Categorization
options will allow you to keep a more orderly site that will
naturally perform better with the search engine spiders.
By establishing and sticking to categories, you can effectively
group relevant material and keep up with keywords and anchor text
you're optimizing. This includes:
- URLs with anchor text. Blog software makes it easier to
create "crawlable" URLs that include your keyword phrases
and anchor text.
- Relevant internal links. By grouping material in categories,
you can make sure your internal links are relevant and doing
the best job of dispersing PageRank across your site.
(All reliable online marketing consulting professionals stress
the importance of relevant internal linking.)
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Creating Fresh Content
Software like WordPress was specifically designed to handle the
frequent creation of content. By regularly updating a portion of
your site, either as a "news" section or as conventional blog
commentary, you will:
• get crawled more often by the search engines,
• cultivate a regular readership to generate "word of mouth" traffic,
• more readily attract inbound links,
• and develop site "authority" faster.
The "blogosphere" is a social environment. Studies show that
blogs trade links much more often than conventional websites.
By including a "blogroll" or list of links to relevant sites in
your sidebar, you will find that other bloggers organically
return the favor. Inbound links bring PageRank to your site and
create a greater perception of site authority.
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Traffic and Links Via Comments
Commenting plays a large role in link sharing on blog sites.
Comments and trackback features further encourage interaction
among sites and increase overall visibility.
Be warned, however, that for comments to best serve your site,
you will need to engage your readers by answering their comments
and by visiting their sites and leaving comments of your own.
(Note that comments can be turned on and off throughout your site
with the WordPress system.)
Links in "Unconventional" Locations
Syndicating a site managed with blog software via RSS is a
largely automatic process. By actively managing your RSS feed,
however, you can include links and generate traffic that does not
come directly from the search engines.
Further, your site will be eligible for inclusion in blog
directories and will be crawled by blog-specific search engines
where your competition may have no presence whatsoever.
Content management software like WordPress will:
• impose structure and order on your site,
• strengthen the use of anchor text in your urls,
• encourage the addition of fresh content,
• lead to organic links in the blogosphere,
• increase the frequency with which the search engines crawl your site,
• gain visibility for the site in areas your competition may ignore,
• and generate a greater sense of authority for you and your site.
So, how can using the software to manage your site be a bad idea
in terms of SEO?
Wrapping It Up
Content management systems, when used with the basic principles
stressed by online marketing consulting professionals, are simply
another tool in an affordable SEO arsenal.
Such systems do not change the core purpose for establishing your
site, they simply provide a different means of maintenance and
improvement.
While you may spend money initially to have your site's
WordPress installation customized, overall, you will save on
dollars that would otherwise go to a webmaster. Over time, that
money can be spent on other SEO strategies.
With the ability to more easily and quickly manage your own site,
you are not at the mercy of another person's schedule. At the
same time, the native controls built into the software will give
you greater control over your efforts to gain search engine
ranking.
That's a win / win in anyone's book.
About The Author
Marketing online since 2004, Paul Marshall can help you market on a realistic budget. You can learn about his professional
Internet Marketing Coaching and Consulting Services on
his home page. He also offers Affordable SEO services (and d-i-y Coaching), which you can learn about at
strategicwebmarketing.net/seo.html. Get to know
Paul, just visit Strategic Web Marketing.net today!
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