Having worked for several years as a Freelance WordPress Developer as well as WordPress Developer, I can tell you that there are more bad developers than good ones. This is one of the main reasons why WordPress gets a bad reputation.
Lets come to the point and discuss why WordPress niche is misinformed and what are things people lie within industry. And why WordPress Developers aren’t upfront.
Here are some of the main things that WordPress Developers won’t tell you:
- You aren’t even working with WordPress Developer
- WordPress dominates SEO industry
- Consequences of Premium themes
- Well built website is SEO Optimized
- Outsourced work
- Implication of bad websites
- Results
- Career growth
You aren’t even working with WordPress Developer
One of the misinformed topic in WordPress is that everyone calls themself as WordPress Developer. Even the ones who mainly use pre-built themes for WordPress web design and development.
There is nothing wrong in using pre-built themes. In fact it saves time and effort and can get your website live in a short time and limited budget. But this approach completely destroys the website's primary focus in SEO Services and lead generation. High ROI driven websites suffer when it’s built in premium themes and with developers with limited skills. Mostly I have found these cases as website designers who pitch them as WordPress developers.
A lot of developers using cookie cutter templates for websites won’t even tell you their skills. This is especially hampers the website owner paying reasonable amount and hoping for a high performing website.
WordPress dominates SEO industry
WordPress dominates the SEO industry. There isn’t a competitor close to WordPress.
My past experiences dealing with Digital Marketing with various business owners running their own businesses, almost everyone uses WordPress. WordPress has so many built in SEO features along with some amazing WordPress plugins, have been a benchmark of SEO.
The point I am making here is that if your business’s critical investment is in SEO or lead generation, WordPress websites can be a key to your success.
Consequences of Premium themes
As mentioned above there is nothing wrong choosing premium themes of your business’s critical target in SEO or lead generation. Choosing premium themes in these cases can be a good choice.
But on other hand if your business is highly dependent on lead generation or SEO rankings, going with a premium theme is a deal breaker. This is where you have to go with Custom WordPress Development or custom themes. Your cost to reward ratio is a lot higher in this case.
Here are some of the worst consequences of premium themes:
- Bloated code
- Slow loading websites
- Hard to manage and maintain
- Yearly recurring fees
Premium themes work great for websites that don’t expect high traffic or conversion. But, developers looking to make quick profit and willing to take projects on bulk, don’t let clients in front about the consequences of using bloated premium themes.
Well built website is SEO Optimized
Ever heard an SEO Consultant saying On-Page and Technical SEO? These are just the punch words for sales.
In my personal opinion On-Page SEO and Technical SEO should be part of website design and development, and should be free if the websites are built from scratch.
A well built website is SEO Optimized.
Outsourced work
It’s pretty common if you are paying a lot less than local market rates for your website, good chance is that your website is outsourced.
Outsourcing jobs is normally not an issue. Outsourcing to dodgy service providers will be an issue in future. So if your service provider is charging way below local market rates, there is a good chance they are taking shortcuts or even outsourcing. Very few developers will be upfront about it. Like the business cutting costs, developers want to make profit too.
Let me tell you good companies or freelancers no matter where they are based will charge according to their experience and quality. Just because it is outsourced does not mean cheap. I have been in touch with top freelancers abroad and they know their value and charge as much as local developers here in Australia.
A lot of developers won’t tell you they outsource their work especially with the projects with lower budget.
Implication of bad websites
As WordPress Developer, I had to overtake or redo some of the websites done by previous developers. And, trust me when I say this is the worst job that a developer can take. Most of the time it had been the worst experience.
My point here is that when the website is done badly, its implications exist until it is fixed. Not only the performance and revenues drop till it is operational, it does take the hit on investment until it is fully replaced.
Most of the dodgy developers prefer to take shortcuts when building websites to increase profit and you won’t even know it until the consequences hit hard.
Results
A good WordPress developer developer results. As mentioned above, well built websites are SEO Optimized.
Based on my experience, I have seen websites with no SEO have ranked well within a few months. This shows the versatility of WordPress as an SEO powerhouse when built by an SEO Specialist like myself.
Career growth
When you talk about career development as WordPress Developer, you often get developers saying as WordPress Developer, there isn’t much career development.
All they say is anyone can build WordPress using premium themes and tons of plugins. This is partially true. As mentioned above, WordPress is top CMS when it comes to SEO. Most agencies doing SEO and digital marketing prefer WordPress as their CMS.
In my personal case, I started as a Front-end developer and then moved to WordPress Development. Since I always focused on performance and optimization, moving to work as WordPress Developer and SEO Expert wasn’t hard for me. Currently I am working as a Digital Developer looking after development, SEO, social marketing and CRM integration. WordPress development is still an integral part of my job.
So if you are willing to go a step ahead, there is plenty of opportunity to grow as a WordPress developer.
