If you’re looking for cost effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to improve your search rank and traffic, WordPress is one of the best free tools available. WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world, and is currently used by over 16% of Alexa Internet’s top 1 million websites. It’s estimated that 22% of all new websites use WordPress, and over 57 million websites currently run on the software.
Many people associate WordPress only with it’s use as popular blogging software – and at one time this was true. But WordPress has become a robust content management system, capable of building polished, professional websites with or without a blog. And I believe it is the best tool for doing your own cost effective SEO.
Because of it’s open source nature, WordPress is constantly being improved and updated. A large developer community contributes to plugins that can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine (over 21,985 are currently available). And the software releases updates three times a year to keep it glitch free, secure and running smoothly.
Professional Look That is (almost) Free
The official web site of the British Prime Minister
Don’t be turned off by the fact that WordPress is free. Many successful businesses are currently using WordPress for their web content, and have achieved professional results at no extra expense.
WordPress’ use stretches across all industries. A few examples of thriving businesses with WordPress websites include: E-Bay, CNN, UPS, music phenomenon Spotify, and social media juggernaut Mashable.
You’ll find a nice showcase of Fortune 500 Companies who use WordPress here.
Federal agencies using WordPress internally or externally include (this list made available in 2008 at WordCamp San Francisco):
- Department of Homeland Security
- US Census Bureau
- NASA
- Department of Heath and Human Services
- Library of Congress
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Defense Intelligence Agency
- National Security Agency
- Federal Bureau of Investigation
- Drug Enforcement Agency
- Department of Treasury
- Department of State
- US Army
- US Air Force
- US Navy
- US Marine Corps
- US Coast Guard
- Central Intelligence Agency
And here are a few other notable WordPress sites. (More can be found at
http://wordpress.org/showcase):
Pair Free Capabilities with Professional Services
Gateway2Global.com website by Shebang
Of course, sites like E-Bay and CNN aren’t putting their content on-line without some expense. Combining the WordPress savings with professional services can be a great way to have a sleek website that is easy maintain and market. Our firm, Shebang, has a track record of creating dynamic, search engine optimized websites with WordPress. Examples include:
Easy Updates, Cost Effective SEO
One of the greatest advantages of a WordPress website is how easy it is to update content, and how easy it is to customize your SEO operations. (Check out my earlier post on the right way to do on-page SEO here).
WordPress has a number of easy-to-use SEO plugins, that make it easy to add and update meta tags, titles, page names and content. Updating your titles and meta tags allows you to streamline existing content based on search engine results at no additional expense – a great feature for developing SEO on a budget. All in One SEO Pack (12,695,413 downloads) and WordPress SEO by Yoast (2,597,269 downloads) are the two most popular WordPress SEO plugins, and either can help you get the job done effectively.
For example, if you’re running a hair salon and begin to find that many of your customers are searching for “ Cincinnati barbers” while your current SEO plan is targeting “Cincinnati salons”, you can easily make adjustments without the help of an IT department. This flexibility also gives business owners the ability to add new keywords, buzz words and industry trends to their existing SEO operations as their industry and business develops.
Marketing Can Skip the IT Department
Because it was originally designed as a blogging system, all of WordPress’ features involve the ability to easily update content. WordPress allows for quick, easy changes or additions to web content by anyone given access, and it allows Marketing Departments and business owners to generate landing pages, blog posts and inbound marketing offers without the need for an IT department.
Since posting fresh content at regular intervals is an important part of a sound marketing strategy, WordPress allows you to do this easily and instantly whenever you want – yet another great feature for obtaining high-quality, cost effective SEO.
If you’re looking for an SEO-friendly content management system that is easy to access, update and improve, WordPress is one of the best options you can choose. With it’s free cost and powerful toolset, it’s hard to beat WordPress for obtaining cost effective SEO.
Finally, here’s an inspiring talk (“The state of the Word”) from from Matt Mullenweg, one of the founders of WordPress:
[wpvideo M1HXqjrf]
And some good WordPress stats:
