Guide: Creating an Amazing Website on WordPress

As a software development company, we know a thing or two about creating aesthetic user-friendly websites that rank at the top of search engines. Follow our guide, and your website is sure-fire to succeed and elevate your business.

1. SEO

One of the best ways to rank highly on search engines is through keyword optimization. Google has a vast library of documentation for properly optimizing your website. Along side keyword optimization, ensure that your website is mobile responsive and passes the lighthouse audit. Google created a tool to test and audit your website for things like performance, best practices, accessibility, and SEO. Google indexes for mobile first so the stats shown for the lighthouse tool, default to display your mobile analytics.

Luckily, WordPress has built in SEO tools, as well as a full library of Google powered plugins. Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Docs and Photos, and more are all supported by WordPress. Easily integrate Google’s free tools and optimize and monitor your website.

Another great plugin we recommend is Yoast. Yoast offers a free version as well as a premium version with various additional features. From Schema.org integration, sitemap structures, canonical URLs and meta tags. Get in control of your website’s rankings.

SEMrush is a fantastic analytics tool. Get in-depth knowledge on your site as well as competitors. Track and conduct keyword research. We use SEMrush to run site audits, check our domain rankings, run organic research and get content and website suggestions.

2. UI/UX

Understanding user psychology is an important part of designing and building a website. Your website is for users to interact with and learn from. If people have a poor experience visiting your site, then they will not convert to customers nor return. UI/UX design paired with the data from your website analytics can supply you with necessary user information to make informed and relevant design decisions.

Depending on your demographic you can decided what design style will fit your business and make you stand out. For instance, if your target demographic is the older generations, a simple and clean design with large text and clear CTA’s will benefit you and your conversion rate.

WordPress offers a myriad of themes to choose from. All have been optimized for fast load speeds and readability. Easily customize and make a pre-made theme feel more unique and represent your business properly.

If you are still unsure about pre-made themes, there’s another way to design your website. Contact our team for a full design suite and website UI/UX optimization. Our team of designers and developers can create a fully custom WordPress website for your business.

3. Proper Landing Pages

With proper and optimized landing pages, your marketing team and sales team can work congruently and efficiently utilize and take advantage of your most important marketing tool. (Your website.) Not only will your marketing team be able to funnel specific traffic to your various landing pages, your sales team will be able to properly leverage information and services for your leads. WordPress’s CMS gives you complete control over your website’s pages. Easily add, edit, and delete pages at will. Edit content and optimize your landings pages regularly to keep them ranked at the top of search engines and attract the most traffic possible.

4. Utilize your Analytics

There are several sets of data analytics you can use to continually improve and adjust your website. Google analytics can integrate directly into your website through WordPress plugins.

If you are developing your website and simply using WordPress and your CMS, adding Google Tag Manager will help your marketing and sales departments vastly. Google Tag Manager is a code snippet that gets installed into your website, allowing your marketing department to add, tweak, and remove code snippets at will.

As previously stated, WordPress offers a vast library of SEO related plugins. Amongst these SEO plugins are also analytic tools to help analyze your traffic and learn about your users.

5. Listen and Adjust

With the help of website analytics, you can adjust your website layout, button placement, and call to action. Learn your top referral channels and take optimize your marketing strategy. Always listen to your audience. The best way to listen, is by investing in a heat map. Track where your users hover the longest, where they click, how far they scroll, what content they look at. Adjust your website layout and content to accommodate what they’re telling you.

Is you user interface too busy? Is it too complicated? Is your content and intent clear? Is it easy to navigate?

It’s easy as a designer or the business owner to mistake your website as being clear and concise. But you already know all the information. You know what your website is trying to communicate to your users. Your users go in with a clean slate. If your interfaces aren’t intuitive, they’ll never land on your contact forum.

Conclusion

Design and SEO go hand in hand. If your website isn’t designed or built correctly, your website will not rank properly and show up in search results. If your website is not properly optimized for search engines, then your beautifully designed website is useless.

There are a number of reasons your website can fail to produce the desired results. From SEO to design, to improperly implemented landing pages. Your website must be fully optimized, not just for SEO.

Satisfied with your website performance? Contact us for an in-depth website audit.

Be sure to tweet us your thoughts @Nexrage 👋

Check out our blog on 6 Reasons Your Business Needs a WordPress Website.

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