Canadian Marketing Tips for Local Business

4GHadmin | 27 August 2024
Reading Time: 8 minutes

Canadian Marketing Tips for Local Business

For a good long time after the Internet got its start the only type of domain extension that was available for websites was a .com extension. It’s still the most ubiquitous and popular among them, but nowadays there are all sorts of domain extensions and the most notable ones are all the ones that are country specific. While the .org and .biz types have 3 letters to them just like the .com extension, all of the country ones will just be two letters after the dot.

A .ca extension is advisable for businesses in Canada, and we encourage you to discover the benefits of a .ca domain today. This is part of the broader topic we’re going to look at with this week’s blog entry here, and it will be more about Canadian business marketing tips online. No one is going to need to be made aware of how essential it is to have a strong online presence for a business nowadays, and here at 4GoodHosting that’s the reason we have many of the Canadian web hosting clients that we do.

You need to have quality website for your business, and it needs to have reliable web hosting behind it so that it is available to prospective customers 24 hours a day. This is because what would be considered local businesses are only local in the physical sense of the term – they’re often taking orders or however else it is they do business from all across the country and possibly even outside of it. Local business growth strategies are going to be built on the idea that not much is explicitly local anymore when it comes to all of this.

One of the things that the nature of our business provides for us is a lot of insight into what works well and what doesn’t with local SEO strategies in Canada. We say that fully aware of the fact that what defines ‘good’ SEO is changing all the time, and in fairness that’s the way it should be. If you’re looking for a provider you want the ones you see on page 1 of SERPS to be legitimately good businesses, not necessarily the ones who know how to manipulate their site so that it has better SEO. The search engines feel the same way, and they tailor and reorient their algorithms all the time to make that more likely. We think that’s a good thing as it relates to SEO for Canadian businesses.

The best approaches to online marketing is an extremely broad topic, so we’re going to keep it a little more centered here. But without going on any further with being introductory let’s get right into these Canadian marketing business tips, and say again that having that .ca domain extension really is best if it is advantageous for your customers to know that you are a Canadian business.

Visibly Canadian

Anyone who runs a business in Canada will benefit if they position themselves as a Canadian business. Doing so is key to attracting loyal customers and to keep them coming back. Businesses that operate online may not need to be persuaded of this in the same way, but for those brick and mortar business it’s equally advisable to create a blend of online and in person sales to maximize potential revenue streams for the coming year and beyond.

Go back 7 to 10 years or so and it was normal for a good number of business owners to not see the need for taking their business online. It wasn’t something many of them considered until recently even, and this was evidenced by how Shopify saw massive gross in its gross merchandise volume for Q1 of 2020. That was to the tune of 46%, and of course Shopify continues to be one of the platforms of-choice when it comes to an E-commerce setup in Canada.

What was most notable from the numbers seen at that time 4 years ago was there was research along with it that indicated the number of consumers who bought something from a merchant they had never shopped with before went up to 45%. Further, Shopify also indicated that brick-and-mortar stores had stepped in to replace 94% of in-store sales online during the pandemic. The preference for shopping online has continued to gain steam since then, and Canadians are just as enthusiastic about it as Americans.

Those numbers were correlated with store closures, and that is also a part of why the online retail trend has continued to accelerate. Many local businesses are considering how to position themselves online to take advantage, and the way it is in Canada now – and anywhere in the world for that matter – is that if you’re not meeting your customers where they are at then you’re going to be losing out on business. And where they are at is on the Internet, likely looking for whatever it is they’re after right now.

Aim High with SEO

Are they going to see your business on that first page of Google search results? Local SEO strategies for Canada are what’s going to determine whether that happens or not, and if you’re not capable of optimizing your site on your own then we have SEO experts ready to help you out here at 4GoodHosting. This paid SEO service that we make available to both our Canadian web hosting clients or others who need to have an SEO optimized website.

Getting back to starting with e-commerce for business, setting up an online store using a service like Shopify is a relatively low-cost way to test out going online. If you’d like more autonomy and a more affordable option then you can build a WordPress business website yourself and use the extremely popular and proven-effective WooCommerce plugin to set yourself up equally well.

Name, then Extension

Any business owner who’s making the decisions about taking it online should be giving plenty of thought to the best domain name for a website. Making a choice about your domain is one of the first steps and most important decisions along the way, and is definitely tied into SEO for Canadian businesses. Those with a brick and mortar business you will want their domain name to be a match with the name of their business.

Most people can come up with a practical and suitable domain name on their own, but one option you have is to use a free tool like a domain name generator. With these tools you can search available names and name ideas that could work for you, and the generator will prompt you to supply information about you and the nature of your business, your location, etc. before providing you with the suggestions you’ll receive.

After choosing the name comes the extension, and as we stressed at the beginning it may better to go with a .ca extension, even if the .com one for your domain name is available. You can always register a .ca domain name here at 4GoodHosting and you can also quickly determine if the one you have in mind is not already in use. You will always have the lowest price for domain name registration here, and we’ve been seeing to that for many years now.

There are so many advantages to using a .CA domain name for Canadian businesses and you’ll find that many of the local business growth strategies you choose to follow will be better suited for you when you do have a .ca domain name for your business. Register your domain here, then transfer your it to connect it to Shopify or any other e-commerce platform you choose. If you choose to go the WordPress website for business route you will be best served with Managed WordPress web hosting here.

Let’s look further into why a .ca domain is so advantageous. Research conducted five years ago indicated that 65% of Canadian internet users agree that Canadian businesses and organizations should use a .CA domain. And specifically because it’s a signal of security and trust. In addition to this, Canadians want to give back to their local community and.ca domains are doubly appealing for this reason.

The Right Focuses

Getting your business discovered to the extent you need it be discovered is going to require you to be strategic about how you position your business in search engines like Google. SEO is how you do this, and it’s always going to be front and center in Canadian business marketing tips these days. At least in as far as all of them related to promoting your business online is concerned.

Even without expert SEO assistance you can probably think of many of the most primary keywords that are going to correspond to the ones prospective customers will be using search terms when looking for a business like yours. Try drafting a list of keywords relevant to your industry, the products you carry, or the services you provide. Give some thought to keywords related to where your business is physically located to ensure you can be found easily.

Websites that don’t have the right keywords incorporated at the right density are going to suffer with SEO, and many of them don’t contain enough text or information to be picked up meaningfully by search engines. The first place to focus is the store or company’s about page. What information best sums up what your business does, and what keywords or key phrases are contained within that information?

You will also want to have ones related to when it was established, and why it continues to be successful to this day. Start here and then helpful contextual information that will increase the chance of your website being best positioned for visibility with customers. More than just keywords, it’s a chance to tell stories about your business and this helps to add a human touch.

Revisiting your product or service descriptions is next with improving SEO and getting the most out of your E-commerce setup in Canada. Include as much relevant information as you can, including where things were sourced, features and benefits and a call to action. It is important to explain the ‘what’ of your product or service in relation to the potential it has for your customers. It is best to write in short, compelling sentences here.

Partnerships & Collaborations

The focus here is not just on existing or long-standing businesses. Some may be starting a new business or looking to expand, and if so they should consider teaming up with another local independent business. Marketing collaboration is nearly always beneficial and especially if the businesses are in different industries but there is a natural crossover between the interests would-be customers will have for each.

This is very much in line with local business growth strategies too, and among the different ideas are to have a co-produced online event, a co-branded piece of merchandise, or one of many other creative options. Teaming up with a local business gives you benefit from their customer network and loyalty and with some partnerships there can be the benefit of sharing costs on goods and services that help you double down on your own business in the future.

There is really a lot of potential value in partnerships and collaborations for new businesses, and especially when both of them are just getting off the ground. However, it may be that you aren’t ready to collaborate with another independent business and if so consider collaborating with an influential individual in your sector to do some influencer marketing.

These types of partnerships also let merchants position their relationships with their collaborators in a positive way, and this tends to foster good sentiment to both brands. Now that you’re armed with these tips, it’s time to test out your newly acquired business promotion ideas and see how much more visibility online you’re able to get from them. Don’t delay in investing in your online presence, and getting a good paid SEO service if you are not capable enough with it on your own.

The sooner you can generate revenue from e-commerce sales you will be growing your business in the way we imagine you have envisioned for yourself. It’s not something that happens on its own, and especially if you’re a type of business where they is plenty of competition. That is the scenario for most of them, so you really do need to work hard at standing out and being more visible than your competitors.

Your website is going to be absolutely pivotal in doing that, and along with that whether or not your website comes up on the first page of SERPS for the most searched keywords related to your business. That is one aspect of this that is never going to change, and you need to do what it takes to SEO optimize a website.

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Choose WordPress Over Shopify as Your Online eCommerce Platform

4GHadmin | 30 July 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutes

Choose WordPress Over Shopify as Your Online eCommerce Platform Long gone are the days when a storefront had to be at least a 3-walled location and with a shopkeeper behind a counter in front of one of them. That was the only means you have of selling products up until nearly 30 years ago, but since then the advent of the Internet has given us eCommerce. You can do all of that selling online now if that’s what you choose to do. For many people it’s exactly what they choose to do, because it’s a more cost-efficient means of doing business and it means expanding your customer base in a way that is simply unmatchable by any other means.

What we’re going to do here with this entry is compare WordPress vs Shopify for anyone who is set to take their store online, and is trying to decide on the best platform for an online store. We’ll be right up front and say for us it is WordPress, and there’s plenty of reasons why that’s the way we feel.

The aim here will be to have you thinking similarly once you’ve read through the entirety of this blog, because there are Shopify alternatives. If you are willing to put in just a bit of work to optimize your WordPress site you’ll be amazed at how it can be just a conducive to selling a lot of whatever it is you’re bringing to the online market. One thing is not debatable is that you will be taking on much less monthly operating costs when you do business online with a WordPress site rather than getting Shopify’s services.

But cost savings are just the smallest part of the advantage here with WordPress for eCommerce. The newest version of WordPress is even more user-friendly and intuitive for users as well as putting much more capability in their hands. That applies to WordPress sites for online stores too, and the value in going this route is even more pronounced for smaller businesses and especially ones for people who are running a small business entirely on their own and selling what they make online.

You can optimize your store with WordPress, and if you’re already doing relatively well with having your website rank for related keywords you can see nearly immediate benefits when you take advantage of what the new WordPress has to offer. So without going on any further setting this up let’s get right into this WordPress vs Shopify comparison and really compared the two.

Launch & Thrive

The one thing that everyone will agree on is that launching an online store is easier and more convenient than ever nowadays, and there are also WooCommerce benefits to consider although we won’t touch on those here. Instead our look at the best platform for online store is going to be a showdown between Shopify and WordPress, and with either the prospect of opening an online business and selling products online is entirely doable for anyone.

Let’s begin by looking at Shopify, and it’s not difficult to see why this platform has had such a level of success in gathering and retaining online store owners who were looking for the easiest way to have success selling products online. Very few people if any start out in any business with lots of money to work with and an operating budget that has no limits to it. For most it is going to be best if starting up is done as affordably and inexpensively as possible, and Shopify is great for that.

It’s also much more hands-off than going the WordPress website for eCommerce route, and for some people that is going to be worth the added cost. That may be especially true when the people who are doing the webmaster work for the site are also the ones producing the products. For a smaller business that has a person doing marketing and operations separately there is a lot to be said for going with WordPress for eCommerce.

But back to laying out the pluses for Shopify. It is an e-commerce platform that has the bulk of its appeal in the way it is an all-in-one solution for creating an online store. Ease of use is definitely the big selling point for Shopify, and it is straightforward for even the most novice users to manage their online business with a user-friendly interface and streamlined inventory and order management process that has received high marks from users all over the world.

Again, though, we have to remind you that this ease of use and proven reliability does come with more cost for the user in comparison to WordPress. There is a $51 CAD monthly fee for the basic package and users will encounter limited flexibility and not much with ability to customize the site. There are definitely more affordable online store solutions, and from where we’re sitting you absolutely have to consider WordPress for this reason.

Heart of a CMS

What makes WordPress so great and our choice here in a WordPress vs Shopify comparison is that at its heart it is – and always will be – a content management system (CMS). Not only does this give you a very proven path for website creation and setting the site up for future success based on the content you feature on it, but it also lends itself to giving users a virtually unlimited level of flexibility.

Now it is important to understand that you will need to know exactly what type of content you’re going to feature on the site, and that will cover everything from the product descriptions to the blog content you publish to share insight into the products and their applications. You will need to be knowledgeable about what you’re selling in the same way you’d need to be if you had an actual storefront.

WordPress is also especially good here because of its open source software and the way that also contributes to it being a complete solution for online businesses. Thanks to a wide range of features, WordPress is impressively adaptable to users’ needs. If you want to create a showcase site, a blog, a portfolio or an online store, WordPress gives you comprehensive options at a much lower price.

The unmatched flexibility and customization really is huge, and this is where we think the most decisive aspect of our finding is seen. WordPress, along with its WooCommerce plugin, provides almost unlimited flexibility and customization. Shopify is different in that it is much more prescriptive, while with WordPress there is the possibility to assemble an online store that is more fully in line with what you envision for it. This freedom to customize every aspect of your site is one of the main reasons why many people prefer WordPress.

Affordability and Site Control

We talked earlier about how it’s very common for $$ resources to be limited when people are launching a business or an online store. It’s clear that WordPress is the better choice here based on more options and lower cost. And we also mentioned how Shopify has that CA$51 per month up-front investment required and right from the start. Plus the fact that Shopify may charge a transaction fee every time a sale as made, along with charging for adding certain features.

Hosting and domain name fees will apply for WordPress, but they’re much lower and you’ll have control over these costs. After that it’s all free if you’re using the basic version of the platform and for many people it meets all of their needs quite nicely. You always have the option of investing in premium features, but even if you do running an online store with a WordPress site isn’t likely to cost you more than a hundred dollars a year.

And even if I did the unlimited scalability you’ll get would make it worth the price if you’re selling quality products at fair price. It’s important not to look past that part of what you’re doing too, and not rely on any Shopify alternatives for an online store platform to make up for sales that are really lacking because you’re not offering a good product.

WordPress wins for site control too, and especially with the absolute control it gives users over both the site and its content. Simply contacting the webhost to resolve the issue is all that will be needed if there is a problem with web hosting, and the host can often remedy any arisen situation very quickly. You also have the final say on your site’s performance and security solutions: you choose the options that really meet your needs.

With Shopify it’s really not quite as good, as it is more of a turnkey solution and hosts everything on its own servers. There are benefits to that, but inevitably you lose control over a number of technical aspects. Your choice should be based on individual preferences and needs in terms of site control and management.

Search Engine Optimization Interests

SEO is always going to be of paramount importance for any website serving eCommerce interests, and you want your site to be ranking high in search results at all time. The advantages of SEO with WordPress are another huge part of what should be swaying online store owners to that platform as compared to Shopify. Unlike Shopify, WordPress offers built-in features specifically designed to optimize content and if you use Yoast for WordPress SEO you are almost certain to be gaining greater improvements for your site and how well it ranks. That really is just the simple fact of the matter here.

Having full access to the source code is a huge plus too when you go with WordPress as an online eCommerce platform. Having it means you are so much more able to optimize everything you’d like to with the site, and nearly every online shop owner is going to want to make significant changes from time to time. With Shopify all you have is the ability modify title tags, meta descriptions and so on.

We said we wouldn’t talk about WooCommerce itself, but we will make a quick mention of the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress here because it is such a potent addition for anyone who wants to be best positioned for sales and increased visibility as business online. If you’re weighing WordPress vs Shopify, the use of plugins for WordPress really needs to be factoring into your comparison and these WooCommerce benefits aren’t to be overlooked.

The free basic version of WooCommerce is a good place to start, and it will make the process of creating your store a lot simpler. Although some premium features require an investment, you can design a very viable store using only the basic version. Once you create product listings and create the link to a payment processing system like PayPal or Stripe then you are set to start selling online. From there you also have the option to add a number of features to enhance the shopping experience.

Dynamic Ecosystem

Another aspect of WordPress ecosystem that makes it so rich is the vast community and many active forum where users can find a wealth of resources and plugins. That can range from advanced e-commerce functionality to social networking integrations to analytics tools, and WordPress also those super-valuable plugins that have always been a huge part of its appeal for DIY website types. This diversity isn’t seen the same way with Shopify, where options are more limited and users are operating in what is really a more rigid framework.

The only thing detracting from WordPress for eCommerce a little bit is the fact that there is a steeper learning curve with it. There is no disputing the way it is more versatile and relatively easy to use once you get the hang of it, but Shopify is a much simpler way to go if you’re looking for a way to set up an online shop that doesn’t require much of you. As we’ve mentioned that simplicity and hands-off nature does come at a cost though. Back to WordPress, there is also the issue for some of having difficulty with tech support.

We will agree that Shopify might be best for those looking for the benefit of an all-in-one, integrated solution, and are willing to pay for it. The conclusion you reach after a WordPress vs Shopify comparison will depend on your needs and comfort level. Those who have customization and flexibility for their online store as priorities are probably going to see WordPress with the WooCommerce Plugin as the best platform for online stores.

FAQs

Why should I choose WordPress over Shopify for my Online Store?

WordPress has a free basic version that covers all of what most online store operators will need, and it offers superior flexibility and customization options plus the ability to pair with the WooCommerce plugin that quickly and automatically optimizes a site for use as an online storefront.

How does WordPress handle SEO compared to Shopify?

WordPress gives users more ability to SEO optimize their eCommerce website with built-in features specifically designed to optimize content along with the Yoast Plugin for WordPress that is well-known for delivering proven results with SEO optimization for a site. With WordPress you will also have access to the source code, and this also promotes more ability to improve SEO for the site through different approaches.

Is WordPress more affordable than Shopify?

Yes. The entry-level price for a Shopify packages is $51 CAD per month, whereas you can have the basic WordPress version for free and higher tiers will still cost less than what you would pay for one year of basic Shopify service for your eCommerce website.

Do I need technical knowledge to use WordPress for my online store?

There is no need for an especially high level of technical knowledge to use WordPress, and for most users they are able to learn what they need to simply by using the platform and getting to know how it works. There is something of a learning curve to it though, so those without a basic understanding of website functionality and how a CMS (content management system) works as the basis for website platform may have some difficulty in the beginning.

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Yoast SEO: How to Optimize Your Website’s Referencing

4GHadmin | 22 July 2024
Reading Time: 7 minutes

Yoast SEO: How to Optimize Your Website’s Referencing Anyone who simply browses the Internet and / or peruses what it has to offer and doesn’t have a website on the Information superhighway is going to have a different prerogative with using the web. At least compared to those who do have a website and especially if that site is giving online visibility to their business as well as a means for customers to make purchases without visiting a brick & mortar storefront of any sort. If that’s the scenario for you and you website you’re not going to need to have the acronym SERPs explained to you, or why there is an ongoing need to improve website SEO.

But maybe you’re not familiar with that grouping of characters, and if so we’ll explain; SERP stands for search engine results page. Let’s make an example. Someone who has a business selling custom sports team jerseys is going to know it’s important that their website is on the first page of SERP pages every time someone searches custom sports team jerseys *city name*. And preferably high up on that page, and ideally in the first spot. SEO optimization for a website is the determinant for whether or not that happens.

You either have it, or you don’t. And if you don’t then your site isn’t going to be on that all-important first pages of SERPs, and definitely not at the top of it. For our example business owner that means it is VERY unlikely anyone is going to be ordering their custom sports team jerseys from the owner’s business. Being maximum visible online is of paramount importance for any business these days, because 9-plus times out of 10 that is where customers find their provider. This is how it is in the 21st century, and it’s going to be this way from now on.

This is why WordPress SEO optimization is so important if you have a WordPress website for your business, and if so we highly recommend looking through a Yoast SEO guide. Yoast is definitely the best plugin for improving search engine rankings for a WordPress website, and that’s what we’re going to look at here with this week’s blog entry. 4GoodHosting is always your best choice for the best managed WordPress hosting Canada, and that goes double if the website is the online storefront or service front for your business.

Near-Instant Expert SEO Fix

It’s natural to think that there’s no way improving your site’s search engine rankings could ever be a quick and easy process. That’s true, but it’s also true that it can be done a lot more easily than you might think if you know which SEO tools for WordPress to use. We’re going to point you right in the direction of Yoast SEO, a WordPress plugin that’s perfect for those new to SEO.

Yoast SEO for WordPress is available as a free or premium version, and it is a powerful means of optimizing a website’s content for better search engine results. Available with it are a wide range of features for optimization of titles, keywords, readability and more. We know from speaking to web hosting in Canada clients that nearly everyone opts to go with the free version of Yoast for WordPress SEO, so we’re going to focus on that one exclusively here.

Starting at the start with this Yoast SEO guide means talking about installation and configuration. You start by using the WordPress content management system, and that should be fairly obvious considering you can’t use Yoast for Wix or any other website builder platform.

Go and download the Yoast SEO plugin and install it on your site. After it’s set in place you need to configure the basic settings. This is done by going to the Yoast SEO section of the control panel and clicking on ‘general’. Follow each step carefully, and be sure that you’ve taken the time to read the instructions. For those who have setup shouldn’t be too difficult, and they’re likely to get it right the first time.

Target Query Focus

You use Yoast for WordPress SEO optimization by focusing on target queries, and doing so one query at a time. Here’s your definition for that; a target query is one or several words that a user types into a search engine. An example might be someone writing an article describing the use of a ketogenic diet for weight loss, and their target query might be ‘benefits’, ‘alternative dietary weight loss approach’, or ‘benefits of a keto diet.’

Their target query there is actually the main keyword of the page (not the site), and for each page, post or product created on WordPress they will need to find and specify the target query representing the content displayed. One thing when using Yoast SEO for WordPress is that word order is very importance with any target query. You will also be better served by it if you diversify your queries. Don’t ever us two identical target queries for different pages on your site. Doing so will mean your pages will cannibalize each other and it becomes possible your site doesn’t rank is SERPS at all.

One of the advantages of using Yoast Premium is that you will be able to rank well for the keywords indicated in your content. This makes it easier to raise the query, and once you’ve located it you then go head and plug it in where indicated in the Yoast SEO section at the bottom of your content.

Optimizing Titles & Meta Descriptions

You get your maximum SEO boost from Yoast when you optimize titles and meta descriptions, and the way the plugin is designed is great because optimizing titles and description tags is supremely easy with Yoast. It’s best to keep your page title short and include the target query in it, and after that you should be putting your focus on the ‘slug’. What’s that? It is the part of the URL after the domain name, and it serves to synthesizes the content of a specific page on a website.

You’ll also want to see to it the target query is found in the slug. The site’s meta description is a very concise summary containing the main query that will appear below the page title in the search results and serving to provide an overview of the page’s content. It should also be presented in a way that encourages users to click on it. You can always refer to the analysis at the bottom of your page to see whether the optimization of certain elements is working or not.

Next the focus moves to internal and external links, and integrating them into a page or article effectively goes a long to helping a site ranks well and show up higher in SERPs, which as we’ve explained is what SEO is all about! Internal linking means integrating a link to another page on your site based on a phrase or word that is related to the subject. External links are the same but point to other websites. Make sure you choose credible sites for them or the search engines will catch you and you’ll have SEO value taken away from your site.

Part of using SEO tools for WordPress is to carefully plan the links you wish to use and then integrating them subtly. Another good tip is to occasionally check your links and determine whether they’re still linking properly or not. To avoid 404 errors.

Looking at Legibility

Search engines evaluate both content and the container that is containing and then delivering the content. The way the site is written very much impacts your ranking too, and we’re not just talking about organic keyword incorporation either. Yoast SEO for WordPress comes with a readability analysis tool that is very helpful for determining if your site is good enough in that regard, evaluating sentences length, diction used, sufficient use of transition words, correct use of passive / active voice, title hierarchy, and the lengths of paragraphs.

With Yoast it’s fairly simple to see how you’ve done with each based on their use of color-coded dots and smiley faces. Green means you’re in line with good SEO optimization, with orange there’s room for improvement, and red means you’ve got it wrong. You’ll also be provided with a Flesch readability score – an index for assessing the readability of a text.

A higher rating means the text is deemed to be accessible. A lower rating means the text is complex the way it is written. For good website SEO you want the highest possible rating. Image optimization is important too, and if you read any Yoast SEO guide you’ll have them harping on the importance of optimizing the various tags in your images.

Yoast will determine if this has been done properly, or not. File names, Alt tags and other image attributes all influence SEO. Effective image optimization will allow your site to come up in search engines’ image search function, and when this happens it becomes much more likely that a higher flow of traffic make its way to your business WordPress website.

Yoast SEO Checklist

Here’s a summative checklist you’ll want to tick the entirety of if you want to be assured of maximum WordPress SEO optimization via Yoast:

  1. Install Yoast SEO
  2. Complete basic configuration setup
  3. Define the target query
  4. Choose a page title
  5. Draft the Meta Description
  6. Slug creation
  7. Determine content readability
  8. Add internal and external links
  9. Optimize images

We’ll conclude this entry by stating that Yoast offers many other possibilities that are not covered here. The Premium version does put a lot more in your hands in the way of SEO tools for WordPress, and that greater capacity can be the difference between very good and excellent site optimization.

But it is best to see masting SEO for WordPress as a big-picture task that is much more complex than just using an SEO plugin for your website. There are technical and editorial skills needed for good SEO that one can only build up through a lot of learning and practice. But Yoast is a great tool if you don’t have the time for that, or you’re not inclined to pay for the time of someone who is and having them optimize your website for SEO.

If you optimize each of the previous elements for your pages, articles and products, you’ll probably see your rankings in SERPs improve. And remember that it may take some time for changes to be indexed by search engines, so don’t be dismayed if you don’t see the improvements right away. To improve website SEO if often a long game anyways, and you’ll need to be revisiting your SEO optimization again in the future even if you are seeing good improvements now.

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WordPress 6.5 Arrival with New Features

4GHadmin | 15 July 2024
Reading Time: 6 minutes

WordPress 6.5 Arrival with New Features Twenty plus years and counting since WordPress made its arrival and quickly became the platform of choice for anyone who felt that what they had to say was worth sharing on the World Wide Web. The reason it caught on so thoroughly was because of the simplicity it offered for publishing content in a form that was doable for the Internet, and since then WordPress expanded its horizons to become a website creation and launching platform too. Here we are in the middle of 2024 and it’s now possible to upgrade to WordPress 6.5.

This new WordPress update is getting a good bit of fanfare, and for legitimate reasons as it has expanded those horizons yet again and is set to enable users to do even more with creating websites and publishing content online. For the first decade and then some of its existence the predominant value for WordPress was in its vast array of plugins that made customizing pages a cinch and really allowed you to add design flair to the site with no need for web design capability or savvy at all.

That part of the appeal of WordPress is still there, but the new slate of WordPress 6.5 features takes this appeal to a whole new level. And does so based on so much more in the way of accessible functionality for people who choose to build a website with WordPress. That’s a good number of people, and more all the time considering the way that it’s not just businesses or bloggers that need to have a website these days.

There are all sorts of creative ventures out there that need a website for promotion and visibility, and that’s just one of example of many where the growth and vitality of society and culture have so many people deciding they need a simple yet attractive – and inexpensive – website for themselves. We imagine they’ll be keen to get started with WordPress 6.5, and we’ll lay out why that is here with this blog entry where we go into dtail about the newest iteration of WordPress and what makes it so great.

Super Enhancements

The WordPress 6.5 release was the first major one for 2024, and coming loaded with multiple enhancements that have been designed to streamline your website design and management experience. It can be a good fit for either those building their first website without coding knowledge or for seasoned developers who build websites from scratch. Going with WordPress 6.5 is going to make the process maximum user-friendly and efficient.

There are so many standout features that can benefit your site that it is hard to know where to start in lauding all of them, but we’ll just go ahead and choose one and it is the new and expanded font library that is included in the latest WordPress update. It really is a standout addition with typography that is tailored to you. With it you have the ability to directly upload or install your favorite Google Fonts.

This provides so much more capability with personalizing a site’s typography without the need for additional plugins. That’s something that is in line with establishing brand identity nowadays, especially considering how visual detail is so much more of accessory part of brand identity building.

The fonts you currently have installed on your WordPress theme are displayed by default with this feature. Adding additional fonts from your computer is immediately possible by moving them to the Upload tab. And if you’d like to use Google Fonts for the site all you need to do is click on the Install Fonts tab to connect your website to Google Fonts.

Interactivity API: Upping User Engagement

Another of the WordPress 6.5 improvements that everyone is taking real notice of is the way users can transform your site with the Interactivity API. It’s a wonder of a tool that is designed to make your pages more dynamic and engaging. This API gives users the ability to implement real-time interactions without needing a page to reload. For example, you can make color changes such as color changes to a product. What this does is create a smoother and more interactive experience for your visitors.

If you go to the WordPress website you can view a demo website that showcases the new update’s capabilities and what is possible with these WordPress 6.5 tools. Smoother drag & drop is another one of them. It is so much easier to move things around with less friction and you’ll also receive visual cues when an object is displaced. If that happens you can properly reposition to any location within your workplace so much more easily now.

Pattern duplication is another one of the WordPress 6.5 features that’s worth getting excited about. With it you can easily duplicate patterns on your site, including the ability to have synced patterns. This is a powerful tool for simplifying the process of creating consistent layouts. Consider improved list view too. With this feature users can access block settings with a right-click and rename blocks directly from the list view, making for a more intuitive navigation and editing experience.

Next up with WordPress 6.5 improvements is the optimized site editor. With it you can enjoy a cleaner, more organized site editor interface with personalized presentation options. Take advantage of the options that include bulk editing capabilities, filtering, and sorting. It seems users that have already taken 6.5 for a spin are also quite enthused about the new aspect ration and box shadow for blocks features too.

With these you can customize the appearance of your cover blocks with aspect ratio controls and make images so much better with real depth. Columns with box-shadow support are visually superior too, and this is something that users will quickly agree with once they seen them. Gallery and social block updates are especially welcome additions too.

Benefit from the new randomize feature in the Gallery block and an updated icon for Patreon in the Social block that enhances visual dynamics and improves on the social connectivity that is possible for the site.

Simpler & More Insightful Updates

We’ll go even further encouraging an upgrade to WordPress 6.5 here. The new features that are rolled out with it make it so much more versatile, and that’s building on an existing WordPress platform that was pretty darn versatile to begin with. We haven’t talked about all the WordPress 6.5 features yet, so we’ll continue doing just that. The greater ability users have with site icon changes now is a big plus too.

They can update their WordPress site icon with ease and make the change directly from the General Settings. This applies to both block and classic themes. Lots to be said for enhanced link management with WordPress 6.5 too, With this improved feature you have immediate access to link settings upon addition, and this is hugely beneficial for streamlining content creation. The same goes for style revision insights, which increase the ease and intuitiveness that users have with deciding on design changes. Using the style revision feature you will see how it offers descriptions and timestamps for each modification.

Making the Move to WordPress 6.5

The reasons people continue to look to 4GoodHosting for the best managed WordPress hosting in Canada are varied, but a part of it is the way we don’t miss a beat in being receptive to the latest WordPress updates and making it so that our WordPress site host clients can take full advantage of them right away. We’ve made WordPress 6.5 available on our Web Hosting and Managed WordPress plans.

The one thing we’ll mention though is that for complex website with several plugins in use it may be best to stall a bit before upgrading because some are reporting that major upgrades may break some plugins or themes. Once it’s all systems go for an upgrade you can initiate it from your WordPress dashboard or cPanel.

Those who’ve opted to go with a Managed WordPress plans may want to try testing out the new version through a staging site. What this does i create a copy of your live website in a separate staging environment for testing and it won’t affect your production site. Another big advantage with the new WordPress update.

We’ll conclude by saying that WordPress 6.5 is so well put together, and it’s so easy to agree that it can and likely will take your website customizing experience to enjoyable new heights with new functionalities and design enhancements. This stretches from typography freedom with the Font Library to interactive user experiences via the Interactivity API. With 6.5 you are so much more empowered to make your site more attractive, functional, and much more inviting for those who want to interact with after choosing to visit.

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