WordPress Website Design Archives - Oregon Web Solutions

There are two things we consider to be true about Wix and their website building abilities:

They make it pretty easy to build a “good” looking website
They make it REALLY easy to build a poorly performing website

So, if Wix makes it so easy for beginners to build their own website, why aren’t Wix websites showing up in Google and why shouldn’t you use it? Read below for our take on Wix, and why you should avoid using this uncannily popular website platform.

We get it, designing a website is no easy feet, and paying someone to build one for you is typically expensive and out of most small-business owners budgets. That’s why a platform like Wix.com is so appealing to those looking to create a good looking, well performing website without breaking the bank, or their brains, in the process. Wix.com promises easy to use templates, and “Free” website building services. While this is a very effective marketing tactic used to get people on their site, and signed up, Wix is in fact not free. Yes, their base offering is technically $0, but with that free price tag comes Wix branding all over your website and absolutely no analytics tools available to you. Beyond the “Free” package, you can start with their basic package for a whopping $4 a month. So while it is not free, it is cheap enough that you can skip one coffee a month and pay your Wix bill in full. Beyond this their most expensive plan is still only $24 a month – so, more expensive than free or $4, but still pretty affordable.

Where the real kicker comes in is when you have no choice but to connect “apps” from their app store to help your websites overall functionality. The largest cost when using Wix is essentially hidden from users. Wix and their offerings appeal most to inexperienced people who want, or need a website and don’t know where or how to start. Wix knows this and, in our opinion, takes advantage of people who don’t know what they’re doing. The reality is, in order to have a well functioning and searchable website, you’ll either need to skip Wix all together, or spend some cash for a subpar website at best. Like we said before, you can build a good looking website using Wix – that’s not the issue. The issue is that websites built using Wix are nearly impossible to actually find on the internet. In most cases, you would need to type in the exact URL in order to even find a specific website built on Wix.

In the digital age, your websites online visibility is crucial to your business’s success. In order to rank in search results, you need to implement SEO strategies in your businesses marketing plan. For those that don’t know, SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and is the process of using different tools and tactics to boost your websites rank in search engine results. SEO and SEO strategies are not “hard” to implement, and are actually really easy to tackle when building websites through a content management system like WordPress (our preferred website builder.) With a site built through Wix, it is nearly impossible to implement any SEO strategies killing your websites SEO. They don’t offer the option to download an SEO boosting plug-in, and instead leave you to use the on-page SEO that they offer. Yes, their on-page SEO can cover the very basics, but it won’t do you any favors. Additionally, their link structure is served through javascript and is essentially unreadable by search engines.

To boost your websites SEO and rank in search engine results, you’ll need to build quality links and create/distribute SEO rich content. Essentially, link building is the process of getting other quality websites to link back to your website. This is important not only because it directs traffic to your website you might not get otherwise, but it helps establish and build your sites “authority” – a factor that Google pays attention to when ranking websites. No matter how much or often Googles top-secret algorithm changes, quality backlinks remain one of the biggest factors in determining what websites rank for what keywords. So, how does this tie into Wix? Websites built through Wix will always includes a # in their URL meaning that Wix’s link structure is served through javascript which, like we said, is essentially unreadable by search engines. Even worse? If someone has javascript disabled in their browser, they will never even have the chance to stumble across your website, let alone seek it out. What does this mean? Backlinking to your Wix created website is pointless, and most definitely isn’t serving you, or your SEO efforts.

Additionally, you will want to create SEO “friendly,” or “rich” content to help boost your websites rankings. SEO Friendly Content or SEO Based Content is content that you create and distribute with the purpose of attracting search engine traffic. It is called “SEO” content because the content should be based on/around keywords you are trying to rank for. Heads up – before diving into content creation, you will have wanted to identify your keywords already so you’re not wasting time creating/promoting content that isn’t going to help you rank in the long run. So, how does this also tie into Wix and why we hate it? If you dive really deep into Wixs page structure, you would find that all pages are “canonical,” or, simply put, they are just tabs of the homepage meaning they could never rank on their own. And, if you remember correctly, Wix only offers the most basic on-page SEO meaning any seo strategies you implement on your site won’t work, and your website wont be ranking high, if it ranks at all.

We could go deeper, but we’ll leave it at this – Wix essentially kills any chance of implementing any kind of SEO, therefore killing any chance you have at ranking in search results.

Instead of going on all day about why Wix is possibly the worst choice for building a website, we’ll discuss what site you SHOULD use, and why.

Our #1 recommendation for website newbies and veterans alike is WordPress. WordPress is by far the best and most accommodating content management system, or, website builder. We will point out that WordPress isn’t exactly… “beginner friendly” BUT your investment will be worth it because a high-ranking, well functioning website will only make you more money in the long run. If you want to learn more about how valuable a well-ranking website is to your business, check out this breakdown here.

Launched all the way back in 2003, WordPress is now used by more than 74 million websites across the globe. Aside from the sheer number of people that use it, WordPress is (in our opinion) the number one Content Management System available on the web for a multitude of reasons. Some of these reasons include…

They are extremely flexible and customizable

No matter what you’re using WordPress for, whether it be a website, a blog, an e-commerce site, etc. their offerings are extensive enough that they can meet virtually any need through their extensions and other features.

They are extremely search engine friendly

Search engines prefer sites that are built via WordPress because their structure is so easy to crawl compared to other site builders.

Unprecedented support

You get the sense that WordPress really cares about its users. They take their site safety extremely seriously, and the extensive WordPress community can troubleshoot just about any problem you have. Check out their WordPress Forums to get an idea of how helpful this community is, or troubleshoot your own site problem.

Extremely mobile-friendly

With more than 5 billion people now using mobile devices, website being mobile-friendly is more important than ever. It sounds like Wix has resolved their previous problem of not being mobile-friendly, but WordPress never had the problem to begin with.

Powerful integrations and e-commerce solutions

WordPress integrates with some of the most powerful platforms on the internet. Their extensive list of plug-ins and extensions can solve virtually any problem you may have.

It is the best platform for SEO

Editable permalinks, automated metadata plug-ins, super fast site speed, and so much more. Trust us on this one – WordPress is the best platform for SEO. Hands down.

It just keeps getting better

Because WordPress is so widely used, you can guarantee they are employing only the best developers in the biz. Better yet? They are open source meaning any developer can enhance the user experience so WordPress can continue to be the best CMS available.

If you are interested in learning more about why WordPress is your best option for SEO purposes, or more about SEO in general, contact us here.

WordPress user base is ever growing, with thousands of new sites being launched every single day. This has contributed to the steady growth of best WordPress extensions such as plugins and themes which add to the visual beauty of any site build mainly on WordPress platform.

This development has also presented money making opportunities to many web designers and developers who design these themes and plugins. With that in mind, developers and designers have been really working hard to serve us with the best and quality themes for 2017 & 2018.

If you are planning to launch a new site, or just simply considering an upgrade on your current website, I am going to show you the best themes son that you can choose one that suits your needs and use it to beautify your site and to represent your brand image. So let’s dive in.

1. Realty space theme

Realty space is an excellent choice for real estate firms and agents. It comes with features that enable you to showcase your services such as renting, selling and managing.

It allows you to also to put your best-performing properties on your homepage for maximum visibility. Support translation, custom currencies, and measurement units.

2. Kingdom theme

As the name suggest, it is best suited for affiliate marketers and e-commerce stores. It allows you to showcase your products while promoting affiliate products from sites such as Amazon.

Kingdom comes with a visual composer plugin that makes it easy to customize the theme. Kingdom is also highly optimized for speed and is very mobile friendly.

3. Peak theme

Peak theme features a nice grid layout which makes it the best choice for photographers, showcasing portfolios, and writing blogs.

It has a mega menu on top and slide-in sidebar widgets.

4. One page theme

One page WordPress theme is easy to use, comes with drag and drop feature making it newbie friendly. Has Twitter feed section, an option to animate counters and pricing table among other elegant features.

These makes it most suited for service companies such as email marketing companies and other online companies.

The one-page theme is extremely optimized for maximum loading speed.

5. Alpha theme

Alpha is a multipurpose WordPress theme that comes with a couple of color schemes. Therefore, giving you an opportunity to choose the one that matches your preference.

Has a breaking news ticker, a customization slider and an elegant video widget to present your videos on the homepage.

6. Enfold theme

Enfold is an easy to set up theme thanks to pre-made content that makes it possible for you to design an exact match site like the demo; if that’s your preference.

Makes it easy picking a layout and you can as well fill it with the pre-made content if you like.

It has a very powerful drag and drop page builder and easy to use sliders.

This theme, unlike others, comes with its sidebar manager that makes customizing the sidebars an easy task.

Enfold theme also support translations and woo commerce, mega menus and portfolio publisher among other features.

7. Magazine Theme

The magazine is a very responsive theme with lots of amazing features. It has 42 layouts and its builders, content sliders, sliding menus, mega menus among others.

Has six colors you can choose from, numerous sidebars, customization widgets and tons of shortcodes that make it possible to add the widgets to pages and posts.

8. Salient theme

Salient is a very popular WordPress theme maybe due to its ability to fit into different niches. This feature makes this theme the best for most site builders.

Comes with tons of customization features and pre-made templates which appeal to complete beginners and those seeking to upgrade their sites.

Salient has a visual composer tool that enables you to build your pages easily by drag and drop model and a portfolio publishing section to build your credibility.

It also offers a landing page template for easy leads capture for follow up or email marketing. I have used the Salient theme for many years and really like it, but recently I have noticed that it has fallen behind other developers. Looking forward in 2018, I’m not sure the Salient theme can keep pace with the look and functionality of some of the other themes on the market today.

9. Kalium theme

Kalium is a theme that encourages creativity; it enables you to showcase your work through portfolio section and in case you want to tailor it to suit your needs you can do so with its easy customization options.

If you are worried about your coding skills, then worry no more, Kalium theme comes with a visual composer that makes page building an easy task, requiring little or no coding skills.

It also features pre-made color schemes making it easy to represent your brand with the colors.

10. Uncode

Uncode is a developer friendly theme that’s easy to use and customize. It is highly responsive to various devices and exhibits professionally designed graphics.

Uncode is a multipurpose theme that answers the needs of each level in site building process. This theme comes with powerful premium WordPress plugins such as revolution slider, drag and drops visual editor among other amazing features that help your site to represent your brands sufficiently.

Uncode also incorporates the beautiful feature iLightbox that helps you highlight your media files in a unique and outstanding way. It is a responsive theme and loads faster across all devices and browsers.

As you have seen above, these themes come with different features, enabling you as a site owner to pick the best theme that represents your brand’s image. On the other hand, there are lots of customization options, making it possible for you to pour your whole creativity.

While most of these themes are free others can be obtained at a small fee. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for, so make decisions based on your desired outcome. I hope you enjoyed our list of the best WordPress website themes for 2018. The new year is just around the corner and it’s never too early to start thinking about upgrading your website.

If you are looking to create a new website for your business and would like some help, visit our website design page and see how we can help. Don’t ever hesitate to call and ask as well (503) 563-3028.