We Wanted to Know: Does Building a Website in WordPress Really Help SEO and Search Engine Rankings?
Since we have been designing custom websites in WordPress for several years, we knew (in the depths of our souls) that sites developed in WordPress helped search rankings, but we never put the numbers together to quantify it. It had been difficult to calculate because we don’t have SEO or traffic data from our clients’ old sites because they had been hosted elsewhere and/or our clients simply didn’t have the data.
So, we recently gathered data from six long-term Radiant Design clients. These clients include churches, construction companies and other small businesses. For each client, in addition to building their new WordPress site, Radiant Design had also built and hosted the PREVIOUS version of their site as well. We also wanted to make sure that we gathered at least six months of data BEFORE and AFTER the new WordPress version of their website had launched.
While we weren’t surprised that our notions were confirmed, we were surprised at how big the jump in traffic was for these six clients. The AVERAGE increase in monthly site visitors after launching a new WordPress site was a whopping 133%. That means, if they had 1,000 visitors per month BEFORE launching a WordPress site, they ended up averaging 2,330 visitors AFTER the new WordPress site launch. Wow! And those numbers were sustainable! It’s not like there was a surge and then it reverted back to normal. Nearly all are seeing a continual increase in site visitors month after month.
As you might expect, WordPress in and of itself may or may not be the only reason behind the higher site traffic. The site must also be properly coded, have relevant content, and contain several other factors (like 301 redirects, meta tags, XML sitemaps, webmaster tools, etc) that can enhance SEO and search engine rankings.
And while we can’t specifically say that WordPress directly affects SEO rankings with this data, we can certainly declare that properly-designed WordPress websites seem to have a considerable impact on overall site traffic and new visitors. So, it can only be assumed that the increase in site traffic was significantly related to the entire sire performing better in search results.
Want to help increase site traffic by an average of 133%? Let Radiant Design build your new WordPress website!
Copyright 2017 Tom Lempner and Radiant Design.
