Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for a successful blog. Why? Well, your blog is basically useless if you have no audience. With an effective SEO strategy, you can build your audience and actually earn some money out of blogging.
To have an SEO-optimized blog, you must select the right blogging platform so that you won’t run into SEO problems down the line, and you’ll be able to rank your blog high in search engine results easily. SEO-friendly blogging platforms not only allow you to focus on your specific SEO copywriting but also do a ton of the work for you. For example, an SEO-optimized blog will automatically expand your market reach, helping you reach new audiences every day. Thus boosting your profits.
What is the best blogging platform for SEO? In this article, we’ll look at what we consider the best option on the market – WordPress.
Why Is WordPress the Best Blogging Platform for SEO?
WordPress comes in two forms: WordPress.com, which is hosted on WordPress servers, and a self-hosted WordPress blog on WordPress.org. It’s essential to note that self-hosting may affect your SEO performance. That’s because selecting the right hosting is crucial in terms of website speed. WordPress servers offer high speeds and a content delivery network (CDN) feature.
Pros and Cons of WordPress
Pros:
- Full Control and Customization: Allows you to customize your content, URL, theme, and settings.
- Access to Professional SEO Plugins: Includes speed, cache, and optimization plugins.
- Easy Integration and Custom Development: Seamlessly integrates with other tools and allows for custom development.
- No-follow and Canonical Links: Easy to define no-follow and canonical links to manage SEO effectively.
Cons:
- Lacks Personal Support: Limited support for issues only if using a premium service.
- Finding Good Hosting: Challenges in finding optimized hosting; WPengine is recommended.
- Security Threats: Risk of hacking and penalties from Google if issues go unnoticed.
Self-hosted WordPress Plugins Improve SEO Performance
SEO for a self-hosted WordPress blog is easy, and you can enhance it by using the right plugins. WordPress features dozens of efficient plugins that post unique meta descriptions and create sitemaps. This allows you to create everything for your blog, including SEO, which will rank your blog high in search engine results. A self-hosted WordPress blog is ideal for bloggers looking to make a mark on the blogging world.
Top-Rated SEO Plugins for WordPress:
- Yoast SEO: Yoast SEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress sites. While there are many things you must configure, the free version covers your most basic needs. It’s as simple as clicking and installing and then configuring based on your requirements. Yoast can also help you create backlinks for your blog.
- WP Rocket: This SEO plugin offers immediate results with minimal configuration. WP Rocket also provides all the features that make your blog rank at the top of search results. WP Rocket provides the fastest website performance, using these features: cache loading, page caching, image on request, and static file compression.
WordPress Hosted Premium and Free Versions Comparisons
WordPress.com features both free and premium versions. If you choose WordPress for your hosting, all you have to do is just sign up and start blogging.
With this option, you don’t need any SEO plugins because WordPress.com has excellent SEO right out of the box. All the themes are SEO optimized with XML sitemaps, which ask Google and other search engines to crawl your content once you post a new blog post. For better SEO when using WordPress.com, it’s advisable not to use too many tags. Just a few tags for each blog post are enough for the best SEO on WordPress.com blogs.
Further, it’s not wise to blog on WordPress.com blogs and switch to self-hosted WordPress blogs because it requires more customization in terms of speed and SEO optimization. Strategically, sticking to WordPress hosting is better for newbies so they can focus on content creation. Once a blogger gains enough experience and a larger audience, they can easily switch to a self-hosted WordPress blog.
Additional Pros and Cons of Using WordPress.com Blogs:
Pros:
- Fast Blog Creation and No Setup: With WordPress.com blogs, you don’t have to optimize your blog. The WordPress team will take care of everything.
- Simple to Use: WordPress.com is built for end-users, allowing you to focus on creating content that resonates with your audience. It’s essential to note that content is king and is very critical for SEO.
- Managed Hosting by WordPress: With WordPress.com blogs, you’ll enjoy WordPress SEO-optimized hosting and CDN solutions.
- High Authority Sub-domain or Custom Domain: Using your WordPress.com blog, you can reap the benefits of WordPress.com domain authority, which has significant impacts on SEO.
Cons:
- Limited Ownership: Technically, you don’t own your blog, and WordPress can stop it anytime due to their policies.
- Theme Limitations: You can’t fully customize themes or edit codes.
- Lack of Control: Limited control over hosting, theme customizations, and code.
Final Thoughts
While WordPress has many pros, it also has some cons that bloggers should know about before choosing it. Sometimes WordPress duplicates pages, causing the same to come under two or several URLs. You can fix this issue using canonical and 301 redirect tags. Having the best blogging platform for SEO sets a great foundation for your new blog, but there are still many things that it can’t do for you.
Even after visitors have found you online and clicked through to your site, utilizing proper SEO copywriting techniques is still the best way to keep readers engaged. Using readily available SEO optimization plugins, such as Yoast and WP Rocket, can help you enhance your blog’s performance. With WordPress, you only need to take care of this, and soon, you’ll realize it’s the best blogging platform for SEO.