Why You Should Build Your Website With WordPress

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world, and one that many companies choose to use when creating a website. If you’re thinking, “I just want a website, I don’t need a CMS” you’re mistaken. Content management system (CMS) is simply a term used to describe a way for users to build and manage websites without needing to create everything from the ground up via coding. This means that updates can be done by more people and that there are ready-built features and plugins that will work on the website.

First, it’s important that we explain that we’re talking about WordPress.org – free, open-source software that can be used to build many different types of websites that are hosted on a server of your choice. WordPress.com is a website that helps you build a website using the WordPress platform and is also your host – meaning the site is on their servers. Either are viable options, but self hosting is more flexible. For the purposes of this article, when we refer to WordPress, we’re talking about the software and not the service.

WordPress started out as a blogging platform but is now a powerful website-building tool that is user-friendly, intuitive, trustworthy, and has a strong developer ecosystem who are constantly creating and improving plugins and features. It’s flexible enough that very different businesses can have WordPress sites and not have anything in common beyond the platform used to build them. It’s the open-source CMS of choice here at Y, and the one we built our own site with because it’s so versatile, inherently mobile-friendly, integrates with external services (i.e. analytics programs, social media platforms, and email marketing tools), and it is designed with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in mind). Let’s take a closer look at some of the benefits of building your website with WordPress.

Search Engine Optimization and WordPress

We’ve discussed before what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is and why it’s important for your business, but did you know that there are plugins that are specifically designed for WordPress sites that can help you with SEO? Two of the most popular plugins are Yoast and All in One SEO (AIOSEO). Both of these plugins are easy to install and will allow you to optimize your site for SEO by helping you use tags and categories, build XML sitemaps, give you ideas to optimize your titles and content with the use of relevant keywords, control your site’s breadcrumbs, and take advantage of Google Analytics and everything it offers. You can do most of these things without the plugins but they save a lot of time and effort and produce great results so it only makes sense to take advantage of them.

Social Media Platform Integration

Just like for SEO, there are a ton of plugins that allow for social media integration with WordPress. Social media engagement is important to help spread the word about your website and the products and services your company offers. There are plugins that will share your posts and web content on your social media channels and ones that will pull your social media feeds onto your website. If you’ve been to a website that is built on WordPress and seen a widget with the company’s latest Instagram posts, it’s likely that they are using a plugin to do that.

Google Analytics in WordPress

Ah, Google Analytics. One of the most underrated tools available for understanding a website. Google Analytics can tell you which pages people spend the most time on when they visit your website, how they’re coming to your site in the first place, and which pages have the best conversion rates – and that’s only the beginning. Once again there are great plugins available for Google Analytics, but even if you don’t want to use a plugin, you can still set up Google Analytics to work with your WordPress website and give you all the information, it’s just a little more work.

Easy WordPress Updates

As stated earlier, WordPress has a robust developer community, meaning that there are always new plugins coming online and new updates and features for plugins that already exist. WordPress makes it easy and convenient to update your site with its console. Even better, when you have a company like Y managing your website, we can do all the updates for you. Check back soon for a post on why it’s so important to keep your WordPress site up to date.

Of course, WordPress isn’t the only game in town when it comes to open-source content management systems for websites, but we think the features it provides make it the best choice for many corporate and personal websites. For more information or to get a quote on having a WordPress website built for your business, contact us today.