Which came first: the blog or WordPress?
Blogging’s popularity owes a great deal to the rise of WordPress. Even though WordPress has become the platform of choice for all kinds of websites, its original architecture is meant for blogging.
If you hope to start a blog or are considering a switch from another content management system, WordPress should be among your favorites. Even more so when you consider that WordPress hosting is a thing that comes at highly competitive prices and with top-notch support.
Still not convinced? Here are seven reasons that will show you the true power of WordPress:
SEO
By definition, a popular blog must attract people. The most powerful tool you can use is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Search engines are constantly sending out their crawlers to catalog pages. The search engines use that information in their search algorithms to provide the most relevant results in a search.
SEO is the practice of aligning your audience goals with the measurements search engines use to rank relevance.
Several WordPress plugins analyze content on your pages to estimate how “search engine-friendly” they are. Yoast SEO is among the most popular plugins out there, with over 5 million installs.
Others good choices are available as well and many bloggers use more than one to make the most of the advantages of each.
This simplicity of SEO implementation makes WordPress especially good at building audiences.
Sharing
With social media adoption around 70%, these communities are the ideal soil for the seeds of the growing popularity of your blog. Any blogger worth his or her salt knows this, but WordPress plugins can make the process easy – even automated.
Whether you are looking for visual attention-grabbers in share buttons, popups which encourage sharing or a system that sends out your posts to social media accounts automatically, there are great choices out there.
WordPress’s plugins make social sharing work for you.
Opt-ins and Post Updates
Social media sharing is important. Yet, you also want to be able to maintain close contact with fans of the blog.
Form generation plugins allow you to develop a list of readers who opt-in for updates when you post a new article. These readers can follow an article to find out when others add comments. They can be notified when their comments get a response.
A growing base of readers creates synergy as they begin sharing in their circles. WordPress is a great platform to instill loyalty in your fans.
Organization
Let’s face it: blogs can get a little sloppy. Posts become stale. Timeless content gets buried beneath time-sensitive pieces which lose their relevance.
Readers can find it hard to search through. Those wanting specific content may not have an easy way to access it. They won’t have the patience to scroll through thousands of words.
WordPress brings order to the looming threat of chaos. Categories can group your content into easily reviewed collections. Tags can help the reader select items with relevant keywords or topics. Sliders and carousels can highlight content you want to keep front and center.
The reader finds navigation and review of your posts easier. Therefore, your relevant content receives the spotlight.
Attractiveness
Not happy with the look of your site?
Don’t worry, you have choices. WordPress design templates, called “themes,” called in both free and paid varieties. The WordPress developers create their own free theme annually, named after the year.
Free themes can be explored through your WordPress admin site’s user interface. Marketplaces, like ThemeForest, can show you what’s available for a fee.
Themes can often be changed with very little “construction” work afterward. Each can be customized based on how you want your blog to look and work for the reader. And, as always, plugins can improve those design elements to whatever your taste.
Multimedia
Sometimes, you need more than just words.
Once again, WordPress plugins come to the rescue.
Content which spices up your blog shouldn’t create frustration for you on the backend or, worse, loading problems for your pages on the front end. Whether you need a window for a video, a player for some audio or a something to resize your photos, you have many excellent choices through WordPress.
Community
The WordPress community now totals nearly a third of all websites.
In blogging, in particular, it dominates all other platforms. So, almost any problem you might have someone else has dealt with before. And a solution has probably been found, tested, and shared.
Along with the power of millions of implementations, workarounds, and results, WordPress provides the distinct advantage of familiarity. Blog readers are comfortable with the look and feel of a WordPress site. They know where things should be and how to get there. Comfortable readers return to your blog, again and again.
The creators of WordPress wanted to build software which made personal publishing easy, according to the WordPress Codex. By all accounts, they succeeded. Let their success be the foundation of yours.
