I took some time off my freelancing site. But I am back now. As a WordPress Developer, and having worked in the industry as a freelancer and full time developer, I was looking for changes and was able to land a great role with one of the local giants in the finance sector.
As any hobby SEO enthusiast, I do keep an eye on my previous work as well as my portfolio site and how it is doing in SEO. Though most of the sites I have built are doing great in SEO, some of them have lost rankings after going as high as page #1 for highly competitive keywords. And same with my portfolio site too, I have lost some rankings.
So, hereby I am sharing how websites lose rankings when they have built good momentum.
1. Not updating content regularly
Google loves regular content. I knew this before I decided to take some time off. To my surprise, even though I have lost some rankings, my site still ranks reasonably well.
But here back again, I will be writing more and will try to get my rankings back.
2. Choosing bloated themes
Nothing beats the well written custom themes.
Main reason why custom WordPress themes rocks are:
- It’s pretty light weight
- It’s optimised for SEO, speed and web vital scores
- Adding schema data structure can be really easy and to the point
On other hand, bloated themes do just the opposite.
3. Hiring a web designer for development
These days anybody can build a WordPress website. You can pick up a free theme and build a website quickly.
But building a good website that ranks well in SEO and returns for investment takes planning, good web design and coding skills. Hiring a designer to do a development job is like hiring an unlicensed tradie to do your job. It might have some benefits in the short term, but over long term problems outweighs the benefits.