A website plays a vital role in the success of small businesses because it helps them generate revenue on a shoestring budget.
Especially with the help of a WordPress website, small businesses can establish their online presence at an affordable cost and grow their revenue with a limited budget.
Why WordPress is an ideal choice for website development for small businesses:
- WordPress CMS is free to download & use.
- WordPress CMS is easy to manage, even for newbies.
- WordPress developers are available at affordable prices.
- Most of the plugins for WordPress websites are either free or nominally priced.
- Search engines love WordPress, so small businesses have an advantage in leveraging the higher search engine rankings.
Now that we know the significant reasons for using WordPress to build websites for small businesses, let’s review some helpful tips for designing and maintaining a WordPress website for small business owners.
In this blog post, I have shared nine such tips that will help you, as a small business owner, to manage your website effectively.
#1 Install Yoast SEO plugin
This is perhaps one of the best advice for small businesses.
Yoast SEO plugin can help you rank your websites in higher positions in search engines by:
- Allowing you to input essential meta tags like title & meta description for each of your web pages.
- Use keyword density in your pages and blog posts to optimize your content for search engines.
- Creating XML sitemaps for your website.
- Allowing search engines to index essential web pages on your website.
- Writing the content in an easy-to-read format for the users.
- & more…
#2 Mobile-friendly theme
It is understood that most small business owners have a low budget for building their business websites.
In other words, they cannot spend much on website development because they must also manage different business activities.
But the good news is that building a mobile-friendly website requires no additional cost.
Especially when you choose WordPress to develop your website, you will find most of the WordPress themes responsive or mobile-friendly.
A mobile-friendly theme helps small businesses to:
- Capture more mobile traffic.
- Lower the cost of web development.
- Load the web pages faster.
- Lower the bounce rate.
- Get more conversions, leads, and sales.
- Improve SEO score.
#3 Choose reliable hosting
Reliable web hosting is very crucial for small businesses.
Since small business owners have a limited budget for website development, they must take special care when choosing a reliable and affordable website hosting package or company.
It would be wrong to say that all the expensive things are good and all the cheap commodities are inferior in quality.
The same applies to website hosting, too.
Several web hosting companies provide high-performance servers & best support, yet they charge very nominal prices.
Here are some of the factors that every small business owner must consider while choosing a website hosting package:
- 24/7 support
- High-performance servers
- Good reviews
- Affordable pricing
- Security enabled servers
#3 Hire affordable web developer
One of the best advantages of choosing WordPress to build your website is that WordPress developers are abundant and affordable.
Whether you need a new website or are looking to redesign your existing one, you can find plenty of options to shortlist and hire an affordable website developer.
Not only this, but you can also engage a website developer to maintain your WordPress website regularly for:
- Plugins update
- Themes update
- Integrating security patches.
- Uploading & updating the contents.
- Making minor changes in the design & functionality of your WordPress website.
#4 Add alt tags for all the images
Here is another great tip for small businesses to follow on their WordPress websites.
They must optimize and update the alt tags for all the images on their websites.
What is an alt tag?
An alt tag, also known as an “alt attribute” or “alt description,” is an HTML attribute applied to image tags to provide a text alternative for search engines.
Here are but some of the significant reasons for every small business owner to optimize the alt tags:
- Alt tags let search engines interpret images through these alt tags.
- It also allows users to view web pages that can’t process images on browsers.
#5 Keep blogging
Why blogging?
Here are some of the essential reasons for every small business to publish blog posts on their WordPress websites regularly:
- A blog can boost your search engine optimization. Being a small business owner, you may have a low budget to market your website. So, blogging is an excellent way to get quality traffic at no additional cost.
- A blog can help your business to establish a communication & engagement channel with your customers.
- A blog can help you to establish yourself as an industry leader. When you write & publish blog posts based on the problems your targeted customers must face, you can showcase yourself as a solution provider.
#6 Encourage users to contact you
A website will serve no purpose if there is no option for the users to contact the business owners.
Since the primary objective of any website is to increase sales and revenue, it must have several options for users to contact business owners and inquire about their services or products.
If you, too, are a small business owner and wish to increase sales from your website, encourage your users to contact you through inquiry forms and several CTAs (calls to action).
#7 Keep measuring loading speed
The loading speed of any website is as important as its existence.
A slow-loading website may have a higher bounce rate. In other words, users may quit a website that loads too slowly.
There are several free online tools to check the loading speed of any website. Therefore, if applicable, you must use these free tools to measure & diagnose the loading speed issue on your WordPress website.
You may use any of these reliable tools to determine the loading speed of your website:
- https://tools.pingdom.com
- https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
If your website takes more than 5 seconds to load, you must consult a WordPress developer immediately to resolve this issue.
#8 Interlink the webpages
What is the interlinking of web pages?
Internal links point from one page on a domain to a different page on the same domain.
Interlinking the webpages and blog posts can also help you optimize your WordPress website for search engines.
Here are some of the significant reasons for every small business to interlink their web pages:
- Interlinking enhances the website navigation for users.
- Interlinking helps spread link juice among the web pages, allowing the website to secure higher search engine rankings for the interlinked keywords.
- Interlinking among web pages also reduces the bounce rate, as users can click on several links to find more information on your website.
#9 Keep in touch with your web developer
Last, I advise all small business owners to keep in touch with their website developers.
There are many ways in which a website developer can help you to create, maintain, and grow your online business.
Here are some of the benefits that you get when you engage a website developer for the long term:
- Your website gets updated regularly with fresh content & images.
- Your website is less likely to get hacked or virus injections because your web developer can maintain & update all of the plugins and security patches on your website.
- Your website loading speed is maintained because your developer can help optimize your website regularly.
- You always get the latest backup to reinstate your server in case of any emergency, such as a server crash.
- You get all-time support from your website developer when you engage him or her for your website maintenance.