The stats don’t lie; WordPress is officially the most popular platform in the world. This isn’t some sort of slender lead it has over rival CMS packages either. Studies have shown that WordPress powers around 30% of the most popular sites in the world and based on that, little else needs to be said about the matter.
Historically, these popular CMS platforms were the worst nightmare for a digital marketing agency. They were based around the drag and drop philosophy (which WordPress still is in some regards), and this meant that code was messy and for search engines, finding the actual content within there was nigh-on impossible.
Suffice to say, WordPress has broken boundaries in this regard. There are still a lot of grey areas when it comes to the platform though, and today’s post will take a look at some of these SEO myths in greater detail.
1. All WordPress themes are equal
We all know about the sheer number of WordPress themes that are available today, but don’t be tricked into thinking that all of these are suitable from an SEO perspective.
Even some premium themes out there might be powered by JavaScript (which can be tricky for Google to tackle), or they might just be formed across one page which can mean that it’s difficult to target several keyword terms.
2. It is plug and play for SEO
We’ve spoken about the plug and play nature of WordPress already, but this isn’t necessarily true from an SEO perspective.
In other words, if you think that installing your site on this platform is going to end your SEO woes you have another thing coming. In truth, WordPress needs a lot of help, and the fact that some SEO plugins have been downloaded millions of times to complement its features should highlight this.
Some of these plugins will just allow you to add noindex tags to pages, while others might give you the ability to change meta descriptions. Out of the box, WordPress isn’t completely equipped though.
3. WordPress plugins do all of the work
Following on from the previous point, let’s take a look at plugins in a little more detail. Put simply, these are not going to do the work for you. Sure, they can help, but you will for example need to add your own meta descriptions for posts, and decide which content you want Google to index.
The plugins tend to just give you a few more tools, but you need to provide the “answers” yourself.
4. WordPress is great for images
We’re going to mention the P-word with this final myth; it’s plugins again. Sure, WordPress has all of the glitz and glamour on the face of things, but if you are trying to optimize your site for image search you might have a hard time.
Again, on its own, WordPress doesn’t always optimize images for Google. They aren’t compressed, while it can be tricky to add the likes of Alt tags. Both of these can hurt you in the rankings.