10 Essential Marketing Tips to Boost Your WordPress Business

Have you heard of a successful business that has no website? Of course not.

Online presence has become a must for everyone who wants to reach their customers quickly and easily. A website is like a home for your business ‒ everything starts and ends on the website, or at least, that is what successful companies do.

Do you know what the most popular website development platform is? This one is really easy. Well, WordPress, of course. As much as 30% of all websites are built and managed using WordPress. The runner-up, Joomla, is used ten times less. Also, Joomla, Drupal, Magento and Shopify barely reach 7.5% usage.

And if we take a look at the market share, WordPress beats them all hollow, with 60.2%. The other four CMSs together take up only 15% of the market.

Of course, there are many reasons for this. WordPress is fairly easy to use as it allows you to do many things with just a few clicks. That is why we recommend you to explore all the opportunities of this fantastic CMS and switch to it if you don’t already use it.

Moreover, WordPress is an open platform which enables web developers to create and use countless plugins, and this is the thing that makes WordPress marketing potential unparalleled. Indeed, if you know how to use this platform in combination with other marketing tools, you can boost your marketing very effectively.

Here is a list of the ten most effective marketing tips that can help you grow your WordPress business today.

1.  Content

Your content is what attracts your readers most of all. Digital marketing experts recommend different strategies to boost your website, but most of them agree that content is still the king, and it is so for a good reason.

When you publish relevant, fresh and useful content, you give something of value to your visitors. Posting quality content shows that you truly care about your audience and this is something that they can recognize easily.

It is important to post regularly as this is one of the top ways to keep your website updated with fresh and useful content. When you write helpful content, you give your readers something and expect nothing in return (or at least not right away and not so obviously).

This builds trust among your audience and keeps them coming back to your website, increasing your traffic on a regular basis.

Apart from the text itself, readers always want to see posts rich with multimedia content. After all, we are visual creatures, so you better use this to your advantage by inserting images, infographics and videos into your articles.

And of course, don’t forget your website design. There are so many aspects of your website that can be beautifully designed in order to boost conversions. For example, designing your forms is very important as forms are among the most interactive parts of your website.

Finally, all of your posts and their segments should be optimized. This means that you need to optimize your keywords, images and all other content that you include in your posts.

This takes to our next point ‒ SEO.

2.  SEO

It feels so good to be ranked among the top results for a given keyword. But you can’t do this without great SEO. The competition is so fierce that you have to push your website optimization as far as you can.

The first thing that you should check is your website theme. Many developers are so concerned with a theme’s design and features that they completely ignore how it influences the website SEO. It is essential that you choose an SEO-friendly theme because this seriously improves your website visibility.

Also, rich snippets are an excellent way to increase your traffic since they add to the visibility of your posts. And broken links are definitely something you want to fix as soon as possible because they can seriously harm your SEO.

Another thing to ask yourself is how many WordPress SEO tools you use. These tools can help you optimize the content you add and other aspects of your website. Luckily, WordPress is an open CMS that can be integrated with myriads of tools.

For example, Yoast SEO plugin is great for content optimization, while Google Keyword Planner helps you decide which keywords to target for your website. Broken Link Checker helps you fix broken links and W3 Total Cache increases the speed of your website.

As you can see, there are a lot of SEO ranking factors, as well as tools that you can use to improve them. The sooner you start working on them, the more visible your website will be to search engines and your visitors.

3.  Social media

Gone are the days when social media platforms were used only for communication with our family and friends. Nowadays, social media exposure is a crucial factor for each online business, and we all know it very well.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media giants are the easiest, fastest and most efficient channels to reach a large number of people at once with engaging posts.

To integrate your website with social media, try these tips:

–        Create shareable articles

By adding share buttons in your posts, you allow your readers to share your pages with their social network. If your visitors appreciate your content, they will share it by simply clicking one of the social media buttons on your page.

–        Create your social media page

This goes without saying. A social media account is a must-have for all online businesses. This is by far the best way to give your audience regular updates on what’s new about your brand.

–        Use social media tools

Social media tools can be extremely helpful when it comes to boosting the presence of your website. For example, WP to Twitter lets you send tweets from WordPress, while OnlyWire allows you to post content and run social media campaigns from WordPress.

Of course, there are many more tools, but try using these for the start.

4.  Paid advertising

If you want to reach as many people as possible outside your social media accounts and your website, you need to start paying for ads. When you pay for direct advertising, your ads are shown on relevant websites.

Relevant websites are those directly or indirectly related to your business such as forums, panels, directory websites, and so on. The ideal website for advertising will depend on your niche, your product and your audience.

Another place that you can use for advertising is, of course, social media. Social media advertising is becoming increasingly popular, with hundreds of different ads passing before our eyes every day. The key to a successful advertising campaign is combining Google AdWords with social media ads. Be sure that this combo will reach more people than you can imagine.

Wherever you place your ads, you should create a high-converting landing page on your website. This way, when someone clicks on an ad, they will be redirected to your website and increase your traffic.

5.  Email marketing

Despite the rise of social media advertising, email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to target your visitors. In your emails, you can send them a newsletter and latest offers, connect with them and keep your relationship personal.

Once you have collected enough email addresses for a solid customer base, make sure you regularly send them emails. But be careful, because it is a thin line between regular and spam.

Your visitors should receive direct promotional emails at regular intervals. These are emails which include call-to-action text and links that invite your audience to click them. However, as advanced as your marketing skills may be, it is important to always provide your audience with accurate information.

Also, with the introduction of GDPR, it would be wise to have opt-in emails. This will allow your visitors to stop receiving further emails from you with only one click whenever they want.

6.  Build backlinks

When you want to buy something, you are much more likely to buy it if someone has recommended it to you. That is exactly what backlinks are ‒ a way in which other websites recommend your website. This means that your content is useful and people can trust you.

And again, not only does this work for visitors but for search engines as well. It is all interconnected, as you can see.

When someone links to your web page, they inform the search engine that your page is legitimate and useful. But not all backlinks are equally valuable. The higher domain ranking a website has, the more valuable a backlink from it will be.

Now, you can create amazing content and wait for your readers to link to it, but this will take a lot of time. If you want to speed things up, you need to reach out to other relevant websites and ask them to link to your page. They will not always accept the offer, but you have to try.

Who knows, if you create a fantastic piece of content and ask for a link, you may get it from one of the high-authority websites.

7.  Optimize for mobile

Remember last time you browsed a website on your cell phone but it wouldn’t load properly? What did you do? You probably gave up trying and loaded another website instead.

This is exactly what you don’t want to happen to your visitors. We spend more and more time on our mobile devices, which means that you have to optimize your website for them.

And it is not only about people ‒ Google loves mobile-friendly websites as well. If your website is not optimized for mobile devices, Google will crack it down.

Should we keep on listing reasons for optimizing your website for mobile or is this enough?

If we have managed to convince you, then the first thing you should do is choose a website theme that is marked as mobile-friendly. Most themes are mobile-responsive to a certain degree, but not all of them are fully optimized.

Another thing you should do is create a mobile-responsive WordPress menu as it makes it easier for users to navigate through your website.

Once you are done optimizing your theme and menu, it would be wise to check your website’s mobile traffic. This can show you if there were any issues with your traffic back in the days when your website was not optimized for mobile.

For this, you can use Google Analytics, which will show you the difference between mobile, tablet and desktop traffic. If your mobile traffic suddenly increases after you have implemented these two changes, this means that your new theme and menu are working great.

8.  A/B test

In case your analytics are not showing you why your traffic is slow or why your bounce rate is high, A/B testing can be useful.

Most people dislike A/B testing because it is time-consuming and exhausting. It includes creating or duplicating pages with different versions of your website and testing for a considerable length of time.

You can A/B test different landing pages to see how they convert and which one is the best. This is very important because it will show you how your audience thinks and it can help you with creating landing pages in the future.

In addition, you can A/B test your headlines and page titles. Most people decide if they are going to read a post by only looking at its title. That is why your titles have to grab your visitors’ attention and engage them enough that they click on it without even thinking.

Another way to create attention-grabbing titles is to use tools to generate headlines. As the matter of fact, we used the first tool from this list to come up with a title for this article. When you see how creative these tools are, you will never want to create a title on your own again.

9.  Syndicate your content

Not everyone agrees that content syndication is a good thing, mainly because Google and other search engines dislike duplicate content.

However, if you are smart enough, you can get away with syndicated content while reaping its benefits.

In a nutshell, you should get your content syndicated only on reputable websites. If you do this, there is no reason to worry that you will get penalized for duplicate content.

These sites acknowledge that they publish someone else’s content and ensure proper code to prevent search engine penalties.

Getting your content in front of as many people as you can is a very smart thing to do, and with top syndication websites, this strategy should be a piece of cake.

10.   Recycle

If you produce a lot of content on a regular basis, recycling your old content can definitely come in handy. You can do this by refreshing your old posts and updating them with new, relevant information.

First, you should find out what were your most popular posts in the past years. Then, go through the content and check if it is still relevant to your visitors. Also, check for any broken links, see if you can find better images, add infographics, and so on.

Once you have updated your content, simply reshare it. You can do this once a month if you have a lot of old articles. This way, you will have a regular flow of recycled posts that you can use when you run out of ideas for new content.

In addition, recycling is good for SEO since it can help you enhance your meta-information and keyword distribution.

Besides updating old content, you can create a sequel article where you will cover the same issue from a different angle.

Finally, you can transform articles into ebooks or SlideShare presentations and offer them to your visitors for free.

Some of these recycling methods are more time-consuming than others, so it is up to you to decide what posts deserve what kind of treatment.

Obviously, if you have an old ultimate guide, make sure you redesign it the best you can. On the other hand, if a post is not as detailed, it will probably require fewer tweaks.

Conclusion

These were the best ten ways to improve your WordPress marketing results. Depending on your niche and brand, some of them will work better than others. But the key thing is that you try all of them and experiment. Nobody can tell you as much as you can learn from your own experience.

Make sure you use WordPress tools as they are one of the factors that make this platform so fantastic and unique. When you master these tools, you will see how simple it is to boost your WordPress marketing.

But keep in mind that website building and maintenance require constant effort. After all, you need to clean and maintain your home on a regular basis, so why should your website differ?

Guest article written by: Dave Schneider is the founder of LessChurn, churn reduction app. In 2012 he quit his job to travel the world, and has visited over 65 countries. In his spare time, he writes about SaaS and business at DaveSchneider.me.