What is WordPress and Who Uses It?
At its core, WordPress is one of the most common and simplest ways to start a website or blog. According to W3Techs, 31% of all websites on the internet are WordPress sites. Furthermore, it is popular among businesses, professionals, and bloggers for its user-friendly creation and maintenance methods.
WordPress is an open-source website content and creation management tool, which makes it optimal for blogging and website creation. Conveniently, it can also be used for self-hosted websites and as a hosted service.
Many well-known brands and Fortune 500 companies use WordPress to publish on the internet. Among these are The City University of New York, Houston Zoo, The Walt Disney Company, and The New York Times, to name only a few.
Origins of WordPress
WordPress began after the downfall of existing blogging software called b2/cafelog in 2003. The b2/cafelog software had about 2,000 users, was written in PHP, and used with MySQL.
After the development of b2/cafelog ceased, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, who were both users of b2/cafelog, decided to build a new platform on top of b2/cafelog. They created WordPress, which is also made on PHP and MySQL. In 2003, WordPress made its first appearance. The name was suggested by Christine Selleck Tremoulet, a friend of Mullenweg.
Since those early days, WordPress has evolved progressively with the help and active participation of skilled developers, designers, bloggers, users, and others. Even Michel Valdrighi, the original developer of b2/cafeblog, is still a contributing developer for WordPress. Today WordPress is used by millions of websites around the world. Its development continues to directly address the needs of its users and make improvements.
Boost Your Rankings on Google With WordPress
From its humble beginnings in 2003 as mainly a blogging tool, WordPress now has a staggering 60% of the market share. However, being accessible and user-friendly are not the only reasons why it has reached high popularity. It is also essential in website creation that the site becomes visible and easily searchable by users. WordPress enhances your chances of ranking because it is superbly suited for Google. Here are some reasons why:
- Content marketing. With its roots as a platform for blogging and content marketing, WordPress makes it easy to create content. Creating relevant content is paramount for Google searches.
- Easy search engine optimization. WordPress has several search engine optimization options available for users. It has default features as well as plugins that make optimization easy.
- Site Speed. For Google, site speed is as important a factor as page optimization. A basic website created on WordPress with standard themes will load quickly and efficiently to meet this requirement.
- Mobile-friendly. If a website is not adaptable for mobile devices, it will not obtain high mobile search rankings. WordPress makes it easy to create a responsive website that automatically adjusts to different screens.
Bottom line: when it comes to Google searches, WordPress is a major player. It is user-friendly and ideal for the SEO of any website. Even Matt Cutts, a software engineer from Google, calls it “a fantastic piece of software”.
