A Comprehensive Guide to Local SEO in Edmonton: Boost Your Business in the Heart of Alberta

Reading Time: 14 minutes

A Comprehensive Guide to Local SEO in Edmonton: Boost Your Business in the Heart of AlbertaWelcome to Edmonton, a vibrant city in the heart of Alberta! As long as you live in this area, you’ve probably heard about how it is known for its buzzing arts scene, breathtakingly beautiful river valley, and annual Fringe Theatre Festival. Well, the city is not only exciting but also alluring for business. But in today’s world of computers and the internet, great products and services are just not enough. You want to hit the right customers, at the right time, and most importantly, in the right place. And that’s where Local SEO comes into play.

How to make a difference for your business online, particularly in this great city of Edmonton, is what you’ve been thinking. Whether you are in Edmonton or focusing on mastering SEO for pet services in Saskatchewan to boost your local business online, well, look no further. This in-depth guide will take you through all you need to know to give your business the extra boost it needs with SEO for Edmonton businesses. And we promise to make it as fun as possible because who said SEO needed to be boring?

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is the digital marketing way of optimizing your online presence to gain more business through relevant local searches. Different from traditional SEO, which targets global rankings, Local SEO narrows down to location-based searches. For example, if one searches Google for “best Thai restaurant near me,” he is in need of local results.

In other words, Local SEO helps prospective customers locate your business at the very instant that they need a product or service that you have on offer. This is very important for these businesses whose target lies within their immediate geographic vicinity.

Why is Local SEO Important for Edmonton Businesses?

As the local culture and engagement with the community grow in cities such as Edmonton, local search optimization can no longer be considered optional. Here are a few reasons you should start paying more attention to Local SEO immediately :

  1. Receive Targeted Traffic: It’s more advantageous for businesses that are nearer to the place. In other words, it most likely ensures a greater likelihood of conversion as compared to those who are browsing without the intention of purchasing.
  2. Widened Exposure: From the local search results, your visibility stretches to more public. It is useful, especially to the small-scale businesses that need to cut through the noise in the market.
  3. Community Involvement: Focusing on local customers can only pull the community to you and make your business an integral part of the neighborhood.
  4. Cost-effective: Less expensive than other forms of advertising and outcomes of the commercials are easily quantifiable.

To sum up, Local SEO is one of the strategies that can guarantee success to any Edmonton business in this competitive environment.

Getting Started with Local SEO in Edmonton

Step 1: Claim Your Google My Business Listing

Think about it: Your Google Business Profile is your online store front. Often it is the initial experience that prospective buyers get of your organization. Hence, a good optimization of this profile can go a long way in enhancing the local SEO in here at Edmonton and get many a customer.

How to Optimize Your Google Business Profile:

  1. Claim your business profile: If you haven’t already, ensure that you own your Google Business through the Google Business page. It gives the ability and control of what appears about the business to the press.
  2. NAP Consistency : NAP merely means your Name, Address, and Phone number. All these should be the same across the web. Where your business is listed variably on different platforms like Yelp, Facebook, and Yellow Pages, this creates confusion for search engines and negatively affects your rankings in Local SEO. Consistency is key!
  3. Write a Captivating Business Description: In the description section of your Google Business Profile, explain what sets your business apart: boast about your services offered and your values. Mention any key differentiators that set you apart from other businesses-special customer service, specialty products, or a commitment to quality. Make sure to work in your natural keywords like your type of business and city/town, such as Edmonton roofing experts, for better visibility in local search results. Achieve the right tone-clear, concise, and engaging-while avoiding stuffing of keywords in your text. Keep the core strengths of your brand in order.
  4. Add High-Quality Photos: Add professional looking images showing your business, products or the services which you offer. You would be surprised to learn that websites having pictures get 42% more asks for directions & 35% more clicks to their site. Visual appeal counts!
  5. Encourage Reviews: You should request your satisfied customers to post good comments on your Google profile. The reviews should be replied to at once irrespective if they are positive or negative. This will make them feel that their feedback is considered important and also is useful to your local SEO.
  6. Regular Updates: To this profile, news, offers, or even an event if any should be provided. Frequent updates are the way that informs Google that your business is active and very busy. Besides increasing the likelihood of people finding you on the internet, when optimizing the Google Business Profile, you are asserting to the residents of Edmonton that you are open for business.

Step 2 Optimize Your Website

Having set up your GMB listing, the next thing you would do is optimize your website for local search. This is your digital headquarters, so it needs to be warm and friendly not only for users but also search engines.

Basic Website SEO Best Practices

  1. Local Keywords: A number of keywords, such as ” Glass repairing in Edmonton , Cardiologist near me” should be organically used throughout the content. For a good mix of keywords within the home, services, and blog pages.
  2. Location Pages: In case your business covers more than one area or neighborhood, you will benefit from location pages, that will give you a good opportunity to rank place-based keywords.
  3. Responsiveness: With more and more users performing their searches on mobile devices, you need to make sure that the responsiveness of your website is varying across different screen sizes. A responsive design enhances user experience, therefore also improving your ranking.
  4. Fast Loading Speed: Make sure your website loads really fast. If the loading speed of a website is too slow, no user will like to stay, and that may have disastrous results on the bounce rate and the rankings.
  5. Improve the SEO of Your Website with Hosting in Edmonton: Depending on whether you use a hosting service that is fast and reliable, your hosting can make a big difference in terms of site performance. Local hosting solutions can also improve the load times for users in Edmonton.

Step 3: Build Local Citations and Backlinks

In improving your Local SEO, local citations and backlinks matter. A citation involves, in essence, an online mention of the name of your business, your business address, and phone number. A backlink is a link to your website originating from another website. Here’s how it’s done:

  1. List Your Business in Local Directories: List your business on local directories such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, and local business associations. Make sure the information is up to date and consistent across all the directories in the case of NAP(Name, Address, and Phone number).
  2. Get Listed in Industry-Specific Directories: If you are from a particular industry, then find the industry-based directory listing and include your business. These citations ensure that your local SEO improves and helps in gaining credibility.
  3. Local Link Building: Look for potential link opportunities within local websites, blogs, and news publications. You can guest-blog on other local blogs or be featured in news coverage.
  4. Collaborate with Other Businesses in Your Area: Collaborate with other businesses in your area to produce content or run co-promotions. You’ll get some great links this way and sometimes cross-promotional opportunities.
  5. Sponsor Local Events: Sponsor local events or charities; in return, you get backlinks from their websites. This in turn further helps in enhancing your SEO and gives a better reputation within the community.

By building local citations and backlinks, you improve your local SEO and increase the visibility of your business in Edmonton.

Step 4: Leverage Social Media for Local Engagement

Social media helps powerfully with your local audience and helps enhance your local SEO. Here’s how you could use social media for local engagement:

  1. Publish Local Content: Share content that will relate to your local audience, including any local event update, community news, and promotions. The idea is to share something that will help in creating a connection with your local followers.
  2. Engage with Local Followers: Reply to comments, messages, and reviews left by the local followers. This generally engages the audience and helps in building up a good relationship and interaction.
  3. Using of Local Hashtags: Use local hashtags while publishing anything on social media. That would help increase the visibility among the local users.
  4. Run Local Promotions: Have special offers or discounts for locals. Utilize your social media to promote it, which will help you grow in local business.
  5. Engage with Local Groups : Social media groups might just be a goldmine in finding ways to connect with possible local clients. Both Facebook and LinkedIn have groups dealing with business, communities, and interests related to Edmonton.
  6. Join Edmonton Buy and Sell Groups: Such groups are superb when seeking to promote your products or services to the local buyers.

With that in place, you become an extremely active member of these groups in the locality, whereby it provides more exposure to your business and helps build trust among probable clients who are working and living in Edmonton.

Step 5: Monitor and Analyze Your Local SEO Performance

Monitoring and analyzing your local SEO performance tells you what is working and what needs to be worked on. Here’s how you can track and monitor your local SEO effort:

  1. Use Different Analytical Tools: Add Google Analytics to your website, you can add Bing and Yandax ; it shows the number of visitors coming to your website from local searches, along with the number of conversion rates and their user behavior. Keep an eye on metrics like visitors coming to your website via a local search and the number of conversion rates with their user behavior.
  2. Local Rankings Monitor: Use Moz Local or BrightLocal to set up rankings so you can actually see how keywords rank in your locality. For example if you are a service provider then you can search for terms like “Best plumber in Edmonton”, “Best hair salon in Edmonton”. These keywords can provide you with useful information regarding your position in comparison with your competitors in the Edmonton industry.

Local SEO Tools:

Following are a few useful tools which will help you track and analyze the performance of your local SEO:

  1. Google Analytics – to track your website traffic and users’ behaviour from local searches.
  2. Bing Webmaster Tools – monitor your local search appearance in Bing.
  3. Yandex Webmaster Tools – analyze your local search performance within Yandex.
  4. Moz Local – manage and track your local search ranking and business listing.
  5. BrightLocal for reporting in local SEO, citation management, and review monitoring. Google Business Profile Insights, for in-depth insight into how users are interacting with your business profile.
  6. SEMrush: You will use it to track local keyword rankings and competitive analysis.
  7. Ahrefs: You can track local keywords and analyze your backlinks using this tool
  8. Check Google Business Profile Insights: Refer to your Google Business Profile for how many people viewed your profile, requested directions, or visited your website.
  9. Review Trends: Monitor the trend in your online reviews and know what you are doing well and where improvements need to be made. Respond to the reviews and address the negative comments ASAP.
  10. Revise Your Strategy: Based on your findings, it involves making alterations in your local SEO strategy to obtain even more optimum results. This can further develop optimization of your website and building of extra local citations, or it can mean the need for adjustments to be made in your social media tactics.

By consistently monitoring and analyzing your local SEO performance, you’ll be assured your work is going in the right direction and make data-driven decisions to help Improve your local SEO in Edmonton.

Enhance Website SEO with Edmonton Hosting

Regarding your topical SEO in Edmonton, the host is a crucial decision you have to make. Several hosting services can be availed from Edmonton, including the 4GoodHosting; these will undoubtedly offer a hosting platform that is fast and reliable; these are very significant factors in as much as SEO is concerned.

Yes, 4GoodHosting is a company that is worth a look if want to enhance website SEO with Edmonton hosting and you want to utilize it as a way to get as much out of your online presence as possible by utilizing Edmonton SEO services. Here is why this would be a good choice:

  1. Local Knowledge: 4GoodHosting hosts customers’ websites locally as a local web hosting service provider, which has a deep understanding of the businesses’ requirements in Edmonton. It means that they can present rather individual options to bring success locally.
  2. Great Support: Continued support for the customers is possible through the four- four- four customer care service of 4GoodHosting in situation where something goes wrong. This will enable you fix all the technical problems within a very short time thus ensuring that your website stays online.
  3. Reasonable Pricing: The plans of 4GoodHosting are very reasonable that are suitable for nearly everybody. This does not mean that it is impossible to obtain a quality hosting service at an attractive price – or as some may consider to be a realistic price for such a service.

This will in turn help your site to be optimized for the best performance and the local SEO by using the services of 4GoodHosting to help increased the online presence of your Edmonton business.

Advanced Local SEO Strategies

Once you have the basics down, it’s time to delve into more advanced strategies to truly dominate the local SEO landscape.

After having mastered the basics, it’s time to go into some truly advanced strategies that are going to help you dominate the local SEO landscape.

Use Structured Data Markup : Structured data markup, often referred to as schema markup, is a code you’re able to add into your website, which enables search engines to understand what exactly your content is saying. By incorporating structured data into your website, you’ll be in a position to give a boost to your visibility in local search results.

Types of Schema to Consider

Local Business Schema

Description: Local Business Schema provides detailed information about local businesses, such as business hours, physical location, and customer reviews. This structured data helps search engines understand essential details about a business, including its name, address, phone number, and operating hours.

Example: Restaurants, medical clinics, or service providers can utilize Local Business Schema to display their address, hours of operation, and customer reviews directly in search results, making it easier for local customers to find and choose their services.

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “LocalBusiness”,
“name”: “4GoodHosting”,
“url”: “https://www.4goodhosting.com”,
“image”: “https://www.4goodhosting.com/logo.png”,
“description”: “4GoodHosting offers reliable and affordable web hosting services tailored to Canadian businesses, with a focus on Edmonton hosting solutions.”,
“address”: {
“@type”: “PostalAddress”,
“streetAddress”: “1234 Web Hosting Lane”,
“addressLocality”: “Edmonton”,
“addressRegion”: “AB”,
“postalCode”: “T5K 0M4”,
“addressCountry”: “CA”
},
“contactPoint”: {
“@type”: “ContactPoint”,
“telephone”: “+1-800-123-4567”,
“contactType”: “Customer Service”,
“areaServed”: “CA”,
“availableLanguage”: [“English”]
},
“openingHours”: “Mo-Fr 09:00-17:00”,
“priceRange”: “$$”,
“geo”: {
“@type”: “GeoCoordinates”,
“latitude”: “53.5461”,
“longitude”: “-113.4938”
},
“sameAs”: [
“https://www.facebook.com/4GoodHosting”,
“https://twitter.com/4GoodHosting”,
“https://www.linkedin.com/company/4goodhosting”
]
}

Review Schema

Description: Review schema refers to a specific type of structured data markup that helps search engines, such as Google, understand the details of reviews or ratings on a website. By implementing review schema, websites can display reviews in a way that enables search engines to present rich results, such as star ratings, review summaries, and other key information directly in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Example: An online store can use Product Schema to show product prices, availability status, and customer reviews directly on product listing pages, allowing potential buyers to see critical details without having to visit the site.

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “LocalBusiness”,
“name”: “4GoodHosting”,
“aggregateRating”: {
“@type”: “AggregateRating”,
“ratingValue”: “4.5”,
“reviewCount”: “102”
}
}

Product Schema

Description: A Product or Service Schema typically refers to structured data used to define and describe information about products or services on a website. This schema is often implemented as part of Schema.org markup, which helps search engines like Google better understand and present product or service information in search results.

Example: A retail website might use Breadcrumb Schema to display navigation paths like Home > Electronics > Mobile Phones > Smartphone Model, helping users quickly navigate back to higher-level pages and improving site organization.

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “Service”,
“name”: “Web Hosting Services”,
“provider”: {
“@type”: “LocalBusiness”,
“name”: “4GoodHosting”
},
“serviceType”: “Web Hosting”,
“areaServed”: “Edmonton, AB”,
“availableChannel”: “https://www.4goodhosting.com/web-hosting”
}

FAQ Schema

Description: FAQ Schema is used to mark up frequently asked questions and their corresponding answers. This schema helps search engines understand and present this content in a structured format.

Example: A website offering customer support might use FAQ Schema to display a list of common questions and answers directly in Google search results, with expandable options for users to view additional details.

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “FAQPage”,
“mainEntity”: [{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What types of hosting services do you offer?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “We offer shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting services.”
}
}, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Do you offer 24/7 support?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Yes, we provide 24/7 customer support.”
}
}]
}

GeoCoordinates Schema

Description: The GeoCoordinates schema is part of the structured data (often in JSON-LD format) used to mark up geographical information on a webpage. It allows search engines and other systems to understand and display location-based data, such as the latitude and longitude of a place, in a meaningful way.

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “Place”,
“geo”: {
“@type”: “GeoCoordinates”,
“latitude”: “53.5461”,
“longitude”: “-113.4938”
},
“address”: {
“@type”: “PostalAddress”,
“addressLocality”: “Edmonton”,
“addressRegion”: “AB”,
“addressCountry”: “CA”
}
}

OpeningHours Schema

Description: The OpeningHours Schema is part of the structured data vocabulary from Schema.org, which is used to mark up information about the opening or operating hours of businesses or public services. It helps search engines, such as Google, better understand and display this information in search results (for example, in local business listings or rich snippets).

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “LocalBusiness”,
“name”: “4GoodHosting”,
“openingHours”: “Mo-Fr 09:00-18:00”,
“telephone”: “+1-555-555-5555”
}

Monitor Your Local SEO Performance

Consistent monitoring of the performance of local SEO will help you observe not only what works but also what doesn’t.

Performance Monitoring Tools

  1. Google Analytics: Informs about traffic sources, demographics, and user behaviors, assisting in strategy refinement.
  2. Google Search Console: Assists in monitoring the performance of a given website in search results, including the identification of issues that negatively impact the ranking of a website.
  3. Ahrefs: mighty backlink analysis, keyword tracking, and site auditing.
  4. SEMrush – Keyword research and competitor analysis for performance tracking.
  5. BrightLocal: Expert in tracking of local SEO, citation management, and review monitoring.

Utilize Social Media for Local Reach

And then there is the power of social media to make locally relevant. The power of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter can fill a gap with your would-be customer in a somewhat personal manner.

Social Media Success Tips

  1. Posting Local Content: You will want to share any blog posts that highlight local events or feature local products.
  2. Go Local: Speak within the local circle and involve other businesses around you. Organize a mutual promotion or an event which will benefit your common audience.

Stay Up-to-Date with SEO Trends

With its constantly changing face, Local SEO keeps you on your toes with all the current trends and algorithmic changes. Follow some good SEO blogs and forums, and if possible, attend workshops or seminars on local digital marketing events.

Final Thoughts

Local SEO is the powerhouse to increase the visibility of your business, attracting more local customers in Edmonton. Optimize your Google Business Profile, enhance your website for local SEO, create local citations and backlinks, put the power of social media to use, and keep track of your performance to improve in local SEO and be outstanding in this competitive market of Edmonton.
Remember to get the best web hosting service, such as 4GoodHosting , so your website will soar higher amidst everything else. Once you have the right strategies and equipment, you can then enhance your business visibility online in Edmonton and render it successful amidst the heart of Alberta.

Roll up your sleeves, get to work, and watch your business shine in the local search results. Happy optimizing!

FAQs

Question : How does the Edmonton SEO service work with me in ensuring that my local search rank is well optimized?

Answer : Edmonton SEO services have knowledge and strategies that help improve the ranking of your website within the local marketplace. This is done through website optimization using localized keywords, Google Business Profile management, the creation of citation on a local level and content creation specific to your locality in an endeavor to Boost Edmonton business visibility online for the local search results as well as expanding your visibility online.

Question : What are some of the most effective SEO tips for Edmonton businesses looking to improve their local visibility?

Answer : Some of the SEO tips that can be implemented include; Beginning your site with targeted local keywords, for instance, ‘Local SEO Edmonton’; Making sure that your GBP is accurate and fully optimized; Acquiring local links; Asking your customers for feedback; Creating content relevant to what your localized audience may be interested in.

Question : How does hosting in Edmonton, locally on the web, affect my website’s SEO?

Answer : Edmonton web hosting can help increase your website ranking because it will enhance your site speed and dependability to acquire more people from Edmonton. Search engines also consider the location of hosting service of your website that translates to mean that if you host your website locally it can increase the chances of your website to be more local ranked, and boost user experience and overall performance of the website.

Question : Where do I begin to enhance my local SEO in Edmonton?

Answer : First, to ensure perfect results in Local SEO in Edmonton, it is necessary to create a company profile on Google Business and then accurately fill in the business data; this must be done constantly. Moreover, the website has to be optimized for local keywords, create citation sources and backlinks, deal with the online reputation through reviews, and update the website with new, local content from time to time. You can also get the services of a local SEO service provider of your targeted area if available.

Question : What is Local SEO, and why is it so important for businesses in Edmonton?

Answer : Local SEO is a process of optimizing your online presence to gain more business from search engines through local searches. In any case, local SEO will be very fundamental to any kind of business in Edmonton, since it enables you to reach out to customers within your area, increases visibility, captures local clients, and drives them to physical stores.

6 Reasons Why Updating WordPress Regularly Provides Enhanced Security and Performance

Reading Time: 8 minutes

6 Reasons Why Updating WordPress Regularly Provides Enhanced Security and Performance There can be plenty of instances where something is made easy for you but choosing to go ahead with it isn’t wholeheartedly in your best interests. What may be ideal for some may be only passable for others, and if what’s made easy is only passably beneficial for you then you might not opt to proceed with it. Even if doing so requires little to nothing of you. If you’re one of the thousands of people with a WordPress website though, providing your site with the most recent WordPress updates is both easy and darn-near universally beneficial.

Each time one of them is rolled out and made available you can be sure that the WordPress update benefits you’re going to receive from installing the update are going to give your site more of the resources it needs for optimal functionality. That’s always the aim for the software pros that put these updates together, and if they didn’t make each of them better than the last they wouldn’t continue sitting in that chair for long. The same can be said for any software update put together for any web publishing platform.

WordPress speed improvements are always a focus and that’s because faster page load speeds is always a high priority for every DIY webmaster who is focused on good SEO for their website. Page load speeds factor into how well a site will rank with search engines, although it’s only one of many factors that go into that. But it definitely has sway, and installing a WordPress update will almost certainly mean your website becomes faster.

The need for better speed is one reality, and another ongoing one that seems to be more important all the time is website security. There are more threats to a site now than ever before, and if your site becomes a source of malware infection or something similar for visitors it can spell real trouble. Especially if you have a WordPress business website. Fortunately WordPress security updates are also a part of every newest offering.

It’s also a huge plus that these updates will often featuring security patches that are designed to address specific known threats that have emerged and are very prominent right now for WordPress websites. It’s good that you’ll be protected from having an encounter with one if you’ve been fortunate to avoid it to this point. It’s also always a good idea to have your site on Managed WordPress hosting if you have concerns about website security and page speeds. Two of the primary features of this type of hosting are better site performance and better site security.

Let’s now move to looking at our 6 reasons why you’ll have the best site performance and security when you install WordPress updates regularly.

Need to Proceed

Website management tends to be a fast-paced world, and this is why keeping your WordPress site updated is more essential than just optional or even recommended. Proceeding with updates right when they become available equates to having the peace of mind that your site is healthy and safe. And oppositely it is true that choosing to pass on an updated could have very negative consequences for your online presence.

So what exactly makes proceeding with updates so important, even if your site seems to be fine and you don’t seem to be any more at risk of a cyber security incident than before. There are plenty of good reasons why WordPress is continually evolving, and with each update comes news features, improvements, and security patches.

75% of WordPress sites used version 6 over the course of last year (2023) but the 25% who were still with an older version of WordPress for their site were at great risk for security breaches and missing out on new features. The WordPress update benefits you get with installing each and every new one right when it becomes available all contribute to a site that is more secure, increasingly compatible with latest web standards, and equipped to perform that much better overall.

The first of our 6 reasons here is going to be one that you can all relate to, and it’s based on the universal understanding that reputation is important.

Maintain a Good Reputation

A WordPress site that is left outdated is going to be more at risk of infection by malware, and with that the possibility that criminals may use your website in order to mass-attack high-level websites. It’s possible they go after financial institutions, streaming sites like Netflix, social media platforms such as Facebook, or the porn streaming sites you and your friends seem to like so much.

Any such instances may see your WordPress site being blacklisted by Google Safe Browsing, as well as by anti-virus software or by major browsers. Among WordPress benefit updates is the ability to nip this in the bud before it has the chance to blow up into something big and potentially messy.

Enhance website security

You have better be on top of security for your website nowadays, because the chance of it getting a bug or being breached is very likely higher than it has ever been. When you install a WordPress update you will be equipping your site with the latest security patches, and with them the risk of hacking or data breaches is reduced in a big way.

WordPress’s open-source nature is always going to make it a target for hackers, but WordPress updates always include vital fixes for known vulnerabilities. If they are on the radar of the guys at WordPress, they’re the ones that are posing the greatest risk to WordPress websites these days.

New features access

With regular updates you’ll get access to the latest WordPress features and functionalities, which is the fastest and most far-reaching way to maximize your website’s capabilities and offer more customization options. Some of the best ones are the the Gutenberg block editor and the Site Health tool, and refinements and improvements for each of them come with each update so that experience made possible with your website is even better.

Boost website speed

We talked about how WordPress speed improvements are always a priority for webmasters, and that’s to be expected given how a site that hums along and loads pages quickly is always going to be better for users AND site SEO. A site that is running on an older version of WordPress and hasn’t had the most recent WordPress update is going to be slower.

Each new version of WordPress will deliver performance improvements that boost your website’s speed and improve the user experience. Keep in mind that website speed directly impacts visitor behavior, and in the event a page doesn’t load quickly enough it may mean that the visitor doesn’t stay on your site. If that happens you start to accumulate a ‘bounce rate’ – which is a percentage of visitors to the site who leave it shortly after arriving for whatever reason.

Consider this – an estimated 40% of visitors will leave an e-commerce site if it takes more than 3 seconds for the landing page to load. Faster websites are a must for a better user experience and as we mentioned already they will rank higher in search engine results, so speed is really one of the biggest gains you can get from WordPress update benefits.

Resolve bugs & issues

Updates are also very much necessary for fixing bugs that may inadvertently be a part of major releases, and getting that fix for them is the way to enhance your site’s stability and functionality. Even minor WordPress releases focus on resolving specific issues, which is what you want if your user is to have a seamless user experience. If you go WordPress forums you will see how the standard suggestion for troubleshooting bugs is to install the latest WordPress update

Better compatibility

Another major gain for you among WordPress update benefits is having all WordPress components (themes, plugins, WordPress core) updated automatically to ensure they’re all same ‘generation’ and have the wide compatibility you’ll be hoping to have. What can happen when you update some components more often than others is that you start to have incompatibilities that may incapacitate your website.

WordPress security updates can also be a part of this, and for those with complex websites using several plugins it is best to wait a few weeks before upgrading. The reason being that major upgrades may break some plugins/themes.

How to Update a WordPress Site

Start by looking at your WordPress dashboard or cPanel to see if a new update is available. There are several other ways to become aware on being available. You can get this information on the WordPress website, or find it directly on the WordPress interface in the Admin panel. We usually make readers aware of this information through our web hosting in Canada blog here, and that’s an option for you too if you’re a regular reader.

The process of installing the update is entirely straightforward and you should be able to do it yourself. If for some reason it’s too much for you then you can reach out to a webmaster or web developer and ask for assistance with it. One thing that you need to be aware of is the requirement to have a working backup of your site before you proceed with any changes.

If you have one you can quickly revert to your previous installation if any problems occur. With Managed WordPress hosting here you are able to have a staging site to test out the new version before you put it into place. It creates a copy of your live website in a separate staging environment for testing and it won’t affect your production site.

There are considerations you’ll want to go over before updating, because there can be risks to doing this and that may be true even if you know what you’re doing. Here’s what you need to consider:

  1. Incompatibility for plugins / themes: It’s never going to be that every plugins or themes is going to be compatible with every WordPress update. Mismatches between them can sometimes cause issues with your website’s functionality.
  2. Bug watch: New bugs are always a possibility with each new update, and it’s a part of taking the bad with the good when it comes to WordPress update benefits. These bugs will usually be addressed with targeted fixes in subsequent updates, but you should still be aware of their possibility and be looking to identify them.
  3. Importance of Backups: Backing up your site before implementing any updates is always recommended. Doing so provides you with a safety net, and with it you’ll be able to restore your site to its previous state if any problems occur.
  4. Test with a Staging Site: This step is even more advisable for complex websites with numerous plugins, but for any site it’s good to test updates on a staging site first. This approach helps identify and resolve issues before they impact your live site.

Auto vs. Manual WordPress Updates

Scheduling auto updates for WordPress is going to be the best choice for people who have basic websites and are fine with staying in the middle of the road with their site and trusting in the process. For others who might have a larger or more complex site it may be to install updates manually, and so the last thing we’ll look at with this blog entry is when it makes more sense to go with one or the other.

The first comparison will be between minor and major versions of WordPress. As you’d guess, auto-update is recommended for minor versions and for major versions it’s advisable to do manual testing before updating. Here are your other considerations:

  1. Plugins: Auto-update is best for plugins that are reputable & trustworthy
  2. Plugins with Dependencies: Auto-update is inadvisable for plugins with dependencies (with an example being WooCommerce)
  3. Custom Themes: Auto-update usually isn’t the best choice for custom themes, and particularly those with child themes

Now is as good a time as any to determine if your WordPress site is up to date. If not, do so and gain WordPress update benefits with the latest features and security enhancements. It will make for a more secure and faster performing site, and there’s everything to like about that.