WordPress is used by 37% of all American websites…and for good reason.

Web Development in Philadelphia, Des Moines, Buffalo, Honolulu

We Are WordPress Experts

If you wish to be able to update your website without incurring costs every time you need something, you will make the right choice by choosing WordPress and web design experts Purplegator.

WordPress Content Management System (CMS)

Since its release in 2003, WordPress has never stopped growing. In fact, today WordPress is the CMS used in over 61% of all of the websites on the web that use a CMS interface. 

Your Site Needs WordPress

1. Universal — With more than a third of all websites using WordPress, it’s easy to see why more people know how to operate a WordPress site than any other. 
2. Easy to Use — You don’t need to know html to update a WordPress site. Plus, when Purplegator finishes your website, we will provide you with documentation, and even a video, so that you, or the person that takes your place later, can easily update the website without any unnecessary costs or additional training. 
3. SEO — There are so many great plugins available on WordPress and they have the search engine optimization process nailed. We recommend the Yoast plugin which allows for easy input of title tags and meta tags to enhance your search engine results and drive traffic to your site. 
4. Image Optimization — Site load times are critical for both your SEO and user experience, especially with more Americans accessing websites via mobile while on the go and away from wi-fi. WordPress makes it easy to restructure picture sizes so as to show bright and powerful images without unnecessarily weighing down the site. 
5. Fast Load Times — WordPress loads quickly if you do things correctly. One amazing plugin we love for site speed optimization is WPOptimize. It caches the site, clears the database, and compresses images for faster loading. 
6. Responsive Design — The site will use responsive design and this should address any issues with the site loading properly on mobile, tablet, desktop, and even watches! 
7. Mobile-Friendly — All modern WordPress templates come with responsive design technology included. 
8. Social Media Enhancements — A social media campaign will indirectly have a positive impact on your website. It will drive traffic to your site and improve your rankings. With WordPress, we will add custom social media buttons for your blog so it’s easier for readers to share your content. Since Google BOT will visit your site more often if there’s new content, we also recommend adding a social media feed to your site. 
9. Customization — The primary criticism of WordPress is that all of the sites look the same. That is true, but only if you don’t provide customization. Think of a WordPress template as a starting point that we will use to begin the process of customizing your website so that its appearance is unique to you, and only you. 
10. It’s FREE — If it’s free, it’s me! 

Our staff works mostly on WordPress. We regularly attend WordCamp training to network with others and learn the latest innovations with the products.

Looking to create a new website and need some advice on the best way to proceed with the site structure? Consider Purplegator web development. At Purplegator, we’ll develop your new website and include the SEO building blocks during the design process. 

Bob Bentz is the author of Relevance Raises Response: How to Engage and Acquire with Mobile Marketing.

Which Works Best For You Depends on Your Product Line

There was a time when almost any web developer with knowledge of SEO would automatically choose a subdirectory. Is that still the case today?

The Definitions

• Subdomain — With a subdomain, the defining characteristic of the page or pages appears before the top level domain. An example might be: philadelphia.yourdomain.com.
• Subdirectory — With a subdirectory, the defining characteristic of the page or pages appears after the top level domain. Using the same example, a subdirectory would be: yourdomain.com/philadelphia. Sometimes, subdirectories are referred to as “subfolders.”

The Debate: Subdomains vs. Subfolders

Years ago, most developers and SEO’s would have thought that the automatic answer to this question was to use a subdirectory. That’s because it was thought that subdomains created a situation where Google looked at it as almost a completely different website for ranking purposes. But, that all changed a few years ago when John Mueller of Google made this announcement:

 “In general, we see these (subdomains & subdirectories) the same.…There are lots of really strong opinions on this so, from my point of view, this is something that could go either way.”

Which is Best for SEO?

Now the issue of how Google treats subdomains and subdirectories for SEO purposes. I agree that if Google is comparing a website that is 100% subdirectory to that of one that is 100% subdomain, the rankings would be nearly identical. And, that’s what I believe Mueller is referring to.

But, the SEO game changes, in my opinion, when you have a site that offers both. A subdomain remains distinct from a root domain that only uses subdirectories. This also means that the keywords of a subdomain remain separate from a root domain. This may be advantageous to using a subdomain if ranking for it is more important than ranking for the entire site and the backlink juice to the subdomain is significantly better than to the root site. Therefore, a subdomain may rank well, but the overall site does not and vice versa.

Subdomains dilute the overall backlink juice power. A backlink from CNN to your website is going to help that subdomain immensely, but not the overall site as much. If that backlink went to a subdirectory, it would benefit the other divisions in the company. 

On the other hand, let’s imagine that your company is on the verge of inventing the newest and greatest innovation in the history of widgets. And, because of this innovation, you believe that widgets will represent over 95% of the company’s revenues next year. It is going to get immense media coverage and backlinks from all over the world. This is your ticket to financial independence. In this instance, you might want to keep widgets on a subdomain, because the other products are significantly less important and you have a short window before you get competitors offering competing products.

When A Subdomain Makes Sense

There are numerous instances where a subdomain might make more sense than a subdirectory. Most commonly, it would be a situation where the products and services sold by the same company are completely different and not necessarily inter-related. It could also be a situation where there are different geographic markets or countries where legal requirements or the marketing message to the consumers is different. In such a case, Google would treat them as different websites that just happen to be under the same domain. 

Google’s Mueller recommends only using a subdomain when it has something different to offer compared to the rest of the site. I think that is sage advice. So, if that is the case with your website, perhaps a subdomain strategy is best.

On many sites, the customer service or ecommerce parts of the site are formatted as a subdomain. This makes sense, because the customer service aspect of a business doesn’t contribute to the overall website’s domain authority much. It’s the same with an ecommerce portion of a website if ecommerce is an add-on and not the primary purpose of the website. 

You will also often see that a company’s blog is on a subdomain. Like other options, a subdomain for the blog should not be an automatic choice. Like everything else, it depends on your personal situation. If the goal of your blog is to dominate rank for a specific keyword, a subdomain might be a good choice so as to not spread the backlink wealth over many more pages.  You may end up ranking higher for specific keywords on the subdomain as compared to the root site.

When a Subdirectory Makes Most Sense

For most businesses, a subdirectory is the preferred methodology and will perform best for the overall performance of the site. Why? Because people are more used to navigating a subdirectory site.

Most businesses sell multiple products. And, most are extensions of the original product they sold. So, it makes sense to use subdirectories in this case. After all, they are selling to the same person at the same company. And, it’s always easier to sell something to an existing customer than to find a new one. Therefore, subdirectories make more sense, because the products are inter-related and potentially sold to the same company or person. They are also easier to navigate for the user, because they recognize the pages to be a part of the same website.        

Subdomain & Subdirectory: A Smokin’ Example

One of my business colleagues owns a recreational cannabis shop. Naturally, it makes sense for him to also sell smoking paraphernalia too. These products should be set up as a subdirectory, because they are interrelated.

Interestingly, though, the legal restrictions surrounding cannabis sales in his state do not allow for large signage to be placed outside of the retail cannabis shop. So, he did something genius. He bought the car wash next door and gave it the same name as his cannabis shop to allow for a large sign adjacent to the two businesses. If I were advising him on the subdomain vs. subdirectory conundrum, and he wanted to keep both businesses on the same URL, I’d recommend that he use a subdomain for the car wash on the website.

Cookies? Now that might be a different recommendation.

Looking to create a new website and need some advice on the best way to proceed with the site structure? Consider Purplegator web development. At Purplegator, we’ll develop your new website and include the SEO building blocks during the design process. 

Bob Bentz is the author of Relevance Raises Response: How to Engage and Acquire with Mobile Marketing.

The Advantages of Single Domains vs. Multiple Domains

If your company has multiple products, brands, or divisions, you may need to decide whether to put all of those entities together on one large website or create multiple websites for each. There’s no one size fits all answer to this conundrum. It really depends on your unique business and its goals.

Definition of Single Domains & Multiple Domains

Before we get started on addressing this long-standing debate, let’s first define each strategy.

• Single Domain Strategy — If you choose a single domain strategy, all of your focus for each of your products and services will emanate from one URL. This is true regardless of what brand is doing the selling.
• Multiple Domain Strategy — A multiple domain strategy is just the opposite. In this case, your entire product line, all of your divisions, and each of your geographic locations, might be represented by its own unique domain.

Let’s look at the benefits of each possibility.

Benefits of a Single Domain Structure vs. Multiple Domains

• Domain Authority — DA drives rankings. It’s easier to gain domain authority when employing a single domain strategy. Single domain websites tend to have more pages, images, accesses, and more quality content, thus improving the strength (authority) of that domain.
• Home Page Authority — The home page authority for a single domain will be much higher given the greater number of pages on the site. Also, that authority from the more popular home page will be passed to the other pages within the site.
• Link Building — Backlinks are a major ranking tool. On a single domain strategy, the effect of inbound linking will resonate across the entire domain, rather than being separated across communities on multiple domains. Link building is often the most challenging aspect of SEO and a single domain is certainly of benefit to making your life easier.
• Old Domain Forwarding — If you have multiple domains now, you will benefit from the links that are already built on the old pages by simply forwarding them to the single domain. So, if you decide to make such a change, at least the backlink aspect will not be hindered.
• Older Domains — Older domains tend to rank better. This is more prominent on BING and Yahoo! than it is with Google, but it’s a factor to be considered. So, when your business started, you probably only started with the original domain. That domain will naturally be most beneficial from a SEO standpoint.
• Improved Branding — If you market all of the divisions under the same company, it may be better for overall branding to keep a single, larger domain.
• Stronger Company — People want to work with strong and viable companies. By showing multiple product lines and projects, this is better portrayed to the visitor.
• Content Marketing — Google doesn’t like to visit stagnant domains. It prefers domains with consistently new content. By having new content over many brands or divisions, you’ll be more likely to be getting more visits, more often, from the Google BOT. This will result in greater indexing of your website pages.
• Cross Selling — There may be some customers that know you for a particular product, but don’t know that you are involved in another vertical. Keeping all of the products on a single domain helps with this. Customers like dealing with companies they know and there’s nothing more frustrating for a salesperson to hear from his client: “I didn’t know you did that?” Ugh!
• Expenses — Why pay for additional domains, hosting, SSL certificates, etc… when you can coordinate it all within one domain?
• Recent Changes — Many SEOs (including me) used to believe that having keywords in your URL was an SEO advantage. John Mueller of Google announced recently that keywords in the URL have no significant impact. This has made me consider a single domain strategy to be increasingly more important, because it takes away one of the long-held beliefs of SEO’s that keywords in domains was a significant ranking factor.
• SEO — Working with a single provider to guide your SEO and other website marketing efforts allows for a more cohesive overall business plan.

Benefits of a Multiple Domain Strategy

• Corporate Sale — If you were going to sell a division or brand, it would be easier to transfer a domain to the new purchaser.
• Different Products — The key differentiator here is “do you sell to the same customer base?” Procter & Gamble, for instance, uses a multiple domain strategy for its products, because Gillette razors and Tampax tampons are likely not purchased by the same person. If you are not talking to the same customer or vertical market, a multiple domain strategy is probably better.
• Ranking for More than 1 — The biggest benefit of having multiple domains would occur if you had two or more sites ranking on the first page for the same business. I successfully performed this strategy in a previous business by having several different brands in the downloadable ringtone business ranking on page one. That’s like owning all three oriental rug stores in the same town!
• International — If you sell internationally, or need different languages on a site, a multiple domain strategy is best. It allows you to use specific country code top level domains (ccTLD) such as “.co.uk” instead of .com. There’s also the issue of being divided by a common language; American English often uses a “z” where British English uses a “s” in the same word. Think global. Act local.
• Niche Products — If you have a product that is very niche, it may get “lost” on a larger website. As part of a bigger site, it may attract less backlinks as well.
• Products with a Short Shelf Life — If you have a product that may not be around for a long time, a dedicated site might be better than including it on your larger site since you know you’ll be disposing of the information soon anyway.

So Which is Better?

Is a single domain strategy or multiple domain strategy better for your business? I think it comes down to a few factors.

• If you own a small business, are you really going to have the resources to maintain multiple domains? It’s probably going to be best to have a single domain strategy for SMB’s unless you are in the e-commerce field.
• If SEO is your primary consideration, a single domain strategy is going to win every time.
• When your business serves various target markets, a multiple domain strategy is likely the better choice.
• If your business is multinational, especially where different languages are involved, a multiple domain strategy is going to be the better option.

Looking to create a new website, or many websites using a multiple domain strategy? Consider Purplegator web development. At Purplegator, we’ll develop your new website(s) and include the SEO building blocks during the design process.

Bob Bentz is the author of Relevance Raises Response: How to Engage and Acquire with Mobile Marketing.