Should I Move to WordPress for SEO Reasons?
I get this question a lot. This time, it came from a friend, and eventually, she hired me to do the work for her. The question is: Do I have to move to WordPress if I want to do SEO for my website?
This is a fair question, especially if you're not very well versed in how search engines work and what roles WordPress and other website builders play in the whole process of giving people information they want and need.
Companies that my friend was inquiring about to do SEO for her local brick and mortar business were pushing her to move to WordPress. Some even made it a requirement to do business with her.
And how convenient that they also offer the services to move websites to WordPress, I thought. I can't blame them for wanting to get more business out of a customer. That's how you grow your business, but moving your entire business website to WordPress just to do SEO may not be the right move.
Many SEO companies will tell you that you have to move to WordPress if you want to do search engine optimization for your content and if you want to rank higher.
This is partially true, but you have to look out for your best interests as a business owner and don't be too quick to jump into WordPress.
My answer is in the video, but I also elaborate a little bit more after the video, below.
Additional considerations
Many companies that do SEO services will steer you to move to WordPress. Are they wrong to do this? Do you really need to move? Do you HAVE to move?
So many questions. Hopefully the video was helpful, if so, would you mind sharing this post out to your social networks? I'd greatly appreciate it!
They're not evil, per se
A company isn't bad for recommending insisting that you move to WordPress. As I mentioned in the video, it's really more about the intentions and the reasons why they want you to move to WordPress.
As a professional and as an entrepreneur, I would advise that you first look at all the stuff that can be done for SEO on your website before moving to WordPress.
Maybe they're greedy
Many companies will take advantage of the lack of knowledge available for small business owners in regards to SEO. In fact, many budget search engine optimization agencies will recommend moving to WordPress because they want to be able to install a couple of plugins that automatically make your website more visible to search engines.
This is great, but they're going to charge you several hundred dollars for that service, in addition to all the costs of moving to WordPress.
What do you want from an SEO then?
What you want is someone that can review your site, the way it is and recommend how to fix or improve the SEO in the current hosting and current framework (the website builder).
Moving to WordPress is definitely an improvement, and 99% of the time, I would tell you that your website should be in WordPress. But if you've already built your site on something else, it's okay, you can do SEO there and work on moving to WordPress as a future project.
Concern for your business' well-being in the long term
You don't necessarily want to start an SEO campaign or start doing SEO and make a major move to WordPress at the same time, anyway. It can get complicated and distract your focus.
A good SEO company will be honest with you about your aspirations and expectations. They'll explain how SEO works. A good SEO company will not push you towards moving to a platform that they feel comfortable with, but will help you make the choices that are right for the longevity and growth of your business.
You have a business to run, and many website platforms work just fine, systems like Squarespace, or Magento, or Joomla, or even with something like Godaddy's website builder, work fine if you do the basics for any SEO strategy.
Make sure the company you're considering can help you take care of those things and they can work with your platform. This means that they're a true expert in SEO, not just a "WordPress SEO expert."
But you're always pitching WordPress!?
Yes, like I said, most of the time I recommend WordPress, and even in this
A good SEO or marketing agency will be able to help you do SEO no matter what platform you are using because they understand the overall vision of your business and understand how search engine optimization works independently of any platform. You can start optimizing your website today, with or without WordPress.
What to do next?
Work with a company that understands you and doesn't force you to move to WordPress if you're not ready.
Go over the basics of SEO for your small business site and make sure that's all taken care of. Create great content. Put yourself in the shoes of your prospect and try to see what they see when they come to your website.
Are you answering their questions quickly and efficiently? Are you keeping them interested in your products or services? Have you given them a chance to sign up to your email list? Connect with you on social media?
Take care of the basics before you hire an SEO company. It will save you hundreds of dollars and it might even teach you a thing or two about SEO and your business
- Titles and headings. Use proper descriptive titles for each of your pages. Also, break down the content within the pages with headings and sub-headings.
- Link to other content within your site to enrich the experience of the reader and to denote the importance of certain pages.
- Organize your content efficiently.
- Educate, guide and ask. Educate the reader about your product, guide them to where or how they can do business with you or take action with you. Then ASK for that action, ask them to buy, order, schedule or whatever, but do it.
- Create amazing content. Write content about your niche, about your products, about your services. Try to write the best content you can and if possible the best content available
in the subject. - Try to get people to link to you. This is the holy grail of SEO, getting people to link to you. Talk to other business owners, join social networks, directories, or try to get written about or talked about and get links going to your website from other websites.
In Conclusion
Moving to WordPress is not a requirement for your to do well in the search engine rankings. SEO isn't dependent on WordPress, so make sure you focus on the right things when hiring an SEO company.
If you're keeping up with the Twitter Growth Case
Here's a quick update. It's working and I think I'll have 1000 followers within a week from today's post.
- Following: 1197
- Followers: 608
- Tweets: 325
The ratio is closer to .5 now which is good. I also am using the auto-scheduling tool from Hootsuite quite a bit now. My automatic tweeting machine seems to be working so I'll cover how to build that next.
