The static websites of today aren’t the boring, old-fashioned static sites of yesteryear, with their hideous fonts and disorienting banners. Today’s static sites are sleek and chic. Most people who create a static site are doing it to save money on web hosting. (Your WordPress website is lovely, but it can quickly outgrow the storage space in your web hosting package. This can cause you to incur all sorts of frightful penalties.) But there are lots of other reasons to go static.
One of the less obvious reasons to use a static site generator is that it’s a ridiculously easy way to boost SEO.
What you should know about SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search engines work by connecting web users with the information they’re looking for. When a user enters a keyword, the search engine scours through all the websites on the internet and produces a page of search results, ranked in order of relevance (among other things).
Most users never go past the first six pages of search results, which is why, if you want your website to attract web traffic, you need to optimize it for search engines.
Some things search engines look for when deciding where to rank your WordPress website are loading speed, security, and reliability.
This is why FLATsite static website is a great way to boost SEO.
What is a static website?
A static website is a website that stores its webpages as static HTML pages and delivers them to visitors exactly as they’re stored. You might think that all websites do this, but that’s not how most websites work. With your WordPress website, for example, when a user requests a webpage, the server doesn’t deliver a pre-built webpage to the user’s browser. Instead, the server assembles all the webpage’s files and combines them to create the webpage that’s delivered to the user.
In the early days of the internet, all websites were static. But as CMS platforms like WordPress became more advanced, it became easier for people to create more interactive dynamic websites. In fact, these websites have become so prevalent that most people assume that a dynamic website is what’s best for their brand. But there are tangible SEO benefits to switching to FLATsite static websites.
5 SEO benefits of choosing FLATsite static websites:
1. Speed
Dynamic websites build each webpage from scratch every time they’re requested by a user, but static websites store pre-built webpages on a server. This makes static websites load unbelievably quickly, which is amazing for your SEO.
People on the internet are used to getting information quickly. If your website takes ages to load, they’ll click away and find a website that’s similar to yours. Because page-loading speed is an important factor in user satisfaction, it’s also an important factor in search engine ranking. So, the speed boost you get from switching to a static website is also a great way to boost SEO.
2. Security
Dynamic websites (like your WordPress website) rely on their database to function, but this database is also a beloved target of hackers and other cybercriminals. With SQL database injections, cybercriminals can cripple an entire website. But static websites don’t have a database, so SQL database injections simply won’t work. Other attacks that rely on the existence of a database (like XSS attacks, for example) are rendered similarly impotent.
And unlike dynamic websites whose content can be changed by users, the content on static websites can be changed only by someone with access to the website on the backend. This makes static websites far more secure than dynamic sites.
And because security is an important factor in search engine ranking, a more secure website is an easy way to boost SEO.
(Click here to learn more security benefits of having a static website.)
3. Content production
Static websites are sleeker than dynamic websites, because they take up less storage space. Because static sites take up less space, you can pack more content into them than you can with dynamic websites.
If your dynamic website gets too big, you’ll find your site outgrowing the parameters of your web hosting package, which could cause you to have to pay a penalty or to need a bigger (and more expensive) hosting plan.
In the world of SEO, content is king. The more high-value webpages your site is able to produce, the higher your website will rank in search engines.
4. Reliability
Because static websites are more secure, they’re also more reliable than dynamic websites, because they’re not as vulnerable to hacking. The compact nature of static websites also means that they don’t guzzle server resources, which means they’re unlikely to face downtime from needing more resources than the server is able to give them.
A website that is more reliable will rank higher in search engines than a website that is constantly experiencing downtime.
5. Customisation
WordPress is great, but your WordPress website is bound to a single template. With a static website, you have much more flexibility in terms of page design. More customisation means more opportunities to create engaging content for your visitors, and more engaging content means you’ll rank higher in search engines.
How to get a static website
If you already have a dynamic WordPress website, you can easily use a static site generator (like ours!) to change your site to a static website.
The Takeaway
A static website is a great way to boost SEO. If you love using your WordPress website, you don’t need to abandon it to get the SEO boost of having a static website. If you use a static site generator like ours, you can enjoy all the benefits of using WordPress on the backend and all the SEO benefits of deploying your WordPress website as a static website!
