Can I get an Amen!! This is an excellent article outlining the value of keeping your website up to date and some steps for how to do it. Please read this while looking at your website!
Google Partners With WordPress
Google has started partnering with WordPress. This gives all of us WordPress site owners a little lift in Google juice. Read the Article.
Why?
- WordPress now represents 59% of all content management software websites. That’s an estimated 1/3 of ALL websites.
- Google is focused on speed! They have made upload speed a priority and an algorithm factor. WordPress sites are speed friendly. You do have to be careful about the size of photos, PDFs or other uploads to your site. But the basic WordPress structure is speed-friendly. (If you’re concerned about the upload time for your site, let’s take a look and see what we can do. We have tools to shrink photo sizes, delete comments, improve the site.)
- Google is prioritizing mobile-friendly sites because so many searches are now done from mobile devices. WordPress and WordPress themes are responsive aka mobile-friendly. (If you have an old WP site, let’s make sure it’s responsive. This is urgent!)
If you aren’t using a WordPress site, let’s talk about your options. Every site needs to take advantage of every opportunity to be Google-friendly.
New version of WordPress
On Dec. 6th, WordPress released a new version with a new editor. We were aware of the coming change. One of my programmers has been participating in the beta test team.
The new release is supposed to make the web experience better for your visitors and speed up load times. So far we are not impressed!! The upgrade has caused more problems than anticipated. Previous upgrades may have conflicted with a plug-in for a little glitch. This update has caused major issues on a couple of sites. On one of my sites, every blog was pointing to the same blog post! On another site, the payment processing glitched. I encourage each of you to carefully look at your pages and test all of your forms. (It’s good to review your site 2-3 times a year any way!)
In addition, WordPress published a new editor. Again, we are not impressed! The new editor does not seem to be as versatile as the previous one. It is definitely not “What you see is what you get” which makes pages and blogs easier to create. Fortunately, we are able to return/switch to the previous editor.
Please email if you have questions.
What is Duplicate Content? Does It Harm Your Site?
A great way to beef up your website content and educate your visitors is to share websites and articles from other sources. Industry sites. Industry magazines. Expert articles.
Your best method is to write a short intro using your keywords and showing your expertise on the topic THEN link to the article.
There is a proper way to it and this article walks you through the pros and cons.
What is Thin Content and How Does It Hurt Your Website?
This article goes into detail explaining what thin content is and why it is so harmful to your website. Thin content briefly is any page of your site with too little content or rambling content without keywords.
Duplicate content is also considered thin content. We all have some duplicate content on our sites. We have to balance giving our readers good, interesting content and making the search engines happy. However, writing this intro piece before linking you to the article puts keyword content on my site and shares the expert article.
We can all write original content however. We are the experts on our business! So figure out the keywords you want to rank for and write content using those words.
Review your pages. Make sure those words are used as often as possible. I’ve found the best method is write your content for the visitor. Then go back and insert the keywords where possible.
WordPress is Here to Stay!
“98 Versions of WordPress to Date
There might only be 229 employees, but those 229 sure are kept on their toes. Major updates are rolled out once every few weeks.
In addition to that, the WordPress.com source code is updated 60-80 times per day, pushed out many times throughout the day. These changes are synced with the WordPress.org platform daily.
46 Million Downloads of WordPress.org
The free WordPress.org platform that supports self-hosted websites has been downloaded 46 million times up till July of 2013, which approximates to 100 downloads every day since 2003. You might not have downloaded WordPress and uploaded it to your FTP manager yourself, but when you installed it using Fantastico or the much loved 1-Click, it was counted as a download.
Since it’s only in the recent years that blogging has suddenly become quite a bit more popular, the downloads per day in 2014 are significantly higher (think tens of thousands) than they were in 2003.
WordPress Is Most Popular With Business Websites
Of the top 1,000,000 sites in the world, the number of business sites (most popular with WordPress) powered by WordPress is five times the number of WordPress-managed news sites (least popular with WordPress).
This statistic is not all that surprising, as online marketing circles will often discuss WordPress more than any other CMS out there. WordPress also ranks high as one of the most blogged topics in the online marketing niche and nearly all its keywords have very high PPC competition.
Akismet Is the Most Popular Plugin
Of all the 19,000 free plugins available for download, Akismet has received the most downloads. The main reason for this is that Akismet comes auto-installed with the newer versions of WordPress.
Akismet has been downloaded a total of 18 million times, a truly mind-blowing figure. The spam protection plugin alone has been responsible for close to .06% of all plugin downloads at WordPress.org. The All in One SEO Pack from Michael Tolbert comes in at a very close second, with a total of 17 million downloads. In third place,with 14 million downloads, is Contact Form 7 , another familiar name to most bloggers.
Wrapping Up
The statistics that make WordPress the world’s most popular CMS are truly mind-numbing.
In its eleven short years of its existence, WordPress had dominated the CMS market. From what we can tell, it isn’t going anywhere, either.”
Found on https://managewp.com/blog/14-surprising-statistics-about-wordpress-usage
WordPress
WordPress sites aren’t going anywhere. Here are some more interesting statistics about it.
“A 2012 survey revealed that the average rate for a WordPress project clocks in at $50/hr. It’s nothing to write home about, but $50/hour is a decent sum for most.
Desk, one of the most popular outsourcing sites in the world, lists WordPress development as the fifth most-requested skill. Freelancer.com, a similar website, has thus far recorded over $3.5M in revenue for WordPress developers.
WordPress development is clearly a valuable skill to learn — one that can definitely pay off in the future. The need for it won’t be going anywhere for a while.
Without doubt, the number one feature that sets WordPress apart from any other CMS is their plugins. Plugins extend and capitalize on the functionality of WordPress — removing access to them would cripple WordPress users (and that’s one of the reasons why WordPress.com falls second to Blogger).
Fortunately, nothing of the sort is happening. On the contrary, WordPress.org’s database of plugins has recently hit 29K and a new one is added nearly every hour. In total, these plugins have been downloaded 286,000,000+ times. Give it a few years and all you’ll be hearing is “there’s a plugin for that”.”
Statistics found on https://managewp.com/14-surprising-statistics-about-wordpress-usage
Interesting WordPress Statistics!
WordPress.com Employs Only 229 People
It’s hard to believe but true. The site that receives 130% the unique visits of Amazon employs only 229 people. To keep that in perspective, Amazon.com employs 88,400 people to run their business, 38,603% more than WordPress.com.
That is probably one of the reasons why they’re always looking for new developers to join their team.
6 New WordPress.com Posts Every Second
That’s right. Every second, close to 6 (the actual figure is 5.7) new posts are published on WordPress.com blogs. That averages out to 342 posts per minute. Just above 20,000 per day. And a grand total of 7.49 million annually.
Not only is WordPress.org the world’s most popular self-hosted CMS solution, but the free version is also second in popularity on the list of free blogging platforms, with Google’s own Blogger topping it.
There’s a neat map view on the WordPress.com site that shows you the location of a blogger as he publishes a post in real-time. Check it out.
Statistics found on https://managewp.com/blog/14-surprising-statistics-about-wordpress-usage
WordPress Searches and Translations
“WordPress-Related Keywords Score 37 Million Searches Per Month
The keyword “WordPress” alone receives over 450,000 exact match searches every month. That’s just “WordPress”, not “WordPress help” or “WordPress plugins” or anything of the sort.
When you count the searches of all keywords with WordPress or WP (a common abbreviation for WordPress) in them, the monthly figure is a whopping 37 million searches. Assuming that this figure remains constant, WordPress will get 444 million searches in 2014. That’s nearly one and a half times the population of the U.S.
WordPress is searched five times as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
40 Translations of WordPress
While the actual number isn’t half so mind-boggling as the others you’ve just read, it is no less significant. If English isn’t your first language and you would rather have Croatian, Dutch, Estonian, French or Finnish (see full list of WordPress translations) governing your dashboard, you’re in luck.
If you don’t happen to speak one of the forty languages listed and you are more comfortable with something else, hold on tight. The WordPress team is actively updating their list with new language translations all the time.”
Statistics found on https://managewp.com/14-surprising-statistics-about-wordpress-usage
How Many Sites Use WordPress?
“48% of Technorati’s Top 100 Blogs Are Managed With WordPress
When you consider that there are is an enormous amount of alternative content manage systems available, this statistic speaks volumes about WordPress popularity.
If you decide to go with WordPress, you will definitely be with good company. The New York Times, CNN, Mashable, and eBay all run their blogs on the most popular CMS in the world – WordPress.
74.6 Million Sites Depend on WordPress
Yep, you read that right. 74,652,825 sites out there are depending on good ol’ WordPress. That’s one site per person in Turkey.
Around 50% of this figure (close to 37 million) is hosted on the free WordPress.com. In the realm of self-hosted sites, WordPress accounts for 18.9% of all websites. That’s even more astounding when you consider that over 70% of sites worldwide do not use a CMS.”
Statistics found on https://managewp.com/14-surprising-statistics-about-wordpress-usage.