When you want to create a website, there’s often one platform that immediately springs to mind: WordPress. However, some people still question whether it’s possible to create an enterprise WordPress site.
That’s why we’ve created this complete guide to making this open-source platform enterprise-ready. With the right hosting, software, and security measures, you can create a world-class website using this free content management system (CMS).
In this post, we’ll discuss why this platform is ready for prime-time. We’ll then share six tips to more effectively use WordPress for enterprise websites. Let’s get started!
An introduction to enterprise websites (and why WordPress is the perfect choice)
An enterprise website is a site that’s associated with a for-profit business or company. These organizations often aim to generate greater revenue figures and operate at a global scale.
With the stakes high, these enterprises often have a long list of demands. This includes a reliable, secure, and robust CMS that can handle large volumes of traffic without impacting its performance.
When it comes to generating huge profits, a high search ranking is essential. For this reason, you’ll want to fine-tune every part of your enterprise site for search engine optimization (SEO).
Many enterprises have a large, distributed workforce. With this in mind, enterprise websites often benefit from collaborative features.
Is WordPress enterprise ready?
WordPress is more than capable of running an enterprise website, which is why you’ll find tons of big brands using WordPress including the following:
- Disney
- Ford
- Microsoft
- IBM
When you install WordPress, the platform already has a lot to offer large businesses. It’s built with core web technologies that are highly scalable. As one of the world’s most popular CMSs, you’ll also have plenty of WordPress providers to choose from. This enables you to shop around and find a hosting plan that meets all of your enterprise needs.
Big businesses often have a list of requirements. This is where plugins come in:
With thousands of plugins to choose from, you should have no problems enhancing the standard WordPress platform to provide exactly the experience you need. This can be an attractive prospect for even the most demanding of enterprises.
How to make WordPress enterprise-ready (in 6 steps)
Let’s ensure that this popular CMS is fully prepared for prime-time! Here’s how to make WordPress enterprise ready, in six steps.
Step 1: Choose an enterprise WordPress host
As an enterprise, it’s vital that your hosting plan can withstand heavy traffic. This includes unexpected spikes. Wherever possible, we recommend opting for a host that caters specifically to the needs of enterprise customers. For example, WP Engine and Kinsta both offer enterprise packages:
These plans typically provide the robust architecture, state-of-the-art hardware, and performance improvements you need to keep your enterprise site online, even during periods of extremely high traffic. When shopping around for an enterprise-grade provider, we recommend verifying that any potential candidates have the capacity to scale to a high volume of traffic.
If you do encounter an issue, then it’s vital that you resolve this problem as quickly as possible. For this reason, we also suggest finding a hosting provider that offers expert WordPress support with a guaranteed response time.
Step 2: Install advanced SEO plugins
SEO is essential for helping prospects discover your enterprise site.
However, it’s tough at the top. When it comes to climbing the rankings, you may be directly competing with other enterprises. To help you outperform the competition, it’s wise to install a premium SEO plugin, such as Rank Math Business:
Some enterprise sites may span dozens or even hundreds of webpages. The good news is that Rank Math Business can track up to 10,000 SEO keywords.
A well thought-out internal linking strategy can also increase the number of pages visited during an average session. This sends positive signals to the search engines regarding the quality of your content. To help you take advantage of every internal linking opportunity, you may want to invest in an automatic linking solution such as Link Whisper:
As you’re writing your content, Link Whisper will suggest relevant pages that you may want to insert. This is perfect for large enterprise sites with a huge back catalog of content. Instead of manually trawling through hundreds of pages, this tool promises to do the hard work for you.
Step 3: Make your enterprise WordPress site multilingual
As a successful enterprise, you may operate on an international scale. Although 60% of all online content is in English [1], 74% of internet users speak a native language other than English [2]. If you’re going to connect with a global audience, then it may help to offer your content in multiple languages.
In today’s competitive landscape, you’ll want to do everything in your power to outperform other enterprises. Studies show that 65% of consumers prefer to access content in their native language [3]. Adding multilingual support to WordPress may give your enterprise a significant advantage.
You can automatically translate your entire website, using TranslatePress. This powerful plugin can even translate the output from shortcodes, forms, and page builders:
If you plan to sell products via your enterprise site, TranslatePress is fully compatible with the WooCommerce platform. This software is hugely popular with big businesses, and powers 28% of the top one million eCommerce stores [4]. For online store owners, WordPress, TranslatePress, and WooCommerce may prove a powerful combination.
Step 4: Install performance-boosting plugins
As a world-class enterprise, your customers will likely have high expectations. If your site is slow to load or laggy, then you may struggle to impress your target audience.
Here, plugins can help you achieve enterprise-worthy speeds. On average, images make up around 45% of a webpage’s weight [5]. To ensure that your site’s visuals aren’t damaging its performance, you can use an image optimization solution such as Optimole:
This software processes your images in real-time. It’s also fully cloud-based, so it won’t put any additional strain on your server.
In addition to optimizing your images, Optimole can also serve them up from a global content delivery network (CDN) to improve worldwide performance.
Caching is another way to reduce the load on your server and boost your enterprise site’s performance. WP Rocket is a popular caching plugin that automatically applies key web performance best practices. This can deliver an instant performance boost for your enterprise site.
Step 5: Boost your enterprise WordPress site’s security
Security is a major concern for the enterprise. Unfortunately, WordPress’ popularity has made the platform an attractive target for hackers.
During the first six months of 2021, the Wordfence Web Application Firewall blocked over four billion malicious requests [6]. With this in mind, security should play a big role in making your WordPress site enterprise-ready.
If you’ve chosen an enterprise-grade hosting provider, then you’re off to a good start. However, it’s always worth reviewing that provider’s backup policy. Most enterprise hosting packages offer automated backups. Still, you may want to configure these backups to ensure that they’re running at the required frequency and that all of your important content is fully backed up.
It’s also wise to install some security plugins. For instance, Wordfence provides a web application firewall (WAF) that can block malicious traffic before it has a chance to reach your enterprise site. It also checks your site’s core files, plugins, and themes for malware at the WordPress initialization stage. In this way, Wordfence can identify harmful code before it has a chance to run:
You may also want to check out Sucuri Security. This plugin comes with must-have security features such as malware scanning, security activity auditing, and blocklist monitoring.
Step 6: Optimize the publication process
Few enterprises are run by solo entrepreneurs. Chances are you have a team of people creating content for your website. This may include marketers, copywriters, proofreaders, and even the occasional guest blogger.
To help streamline and coordinate the content creation process, you may want to invest in a publication optimization plugin. PublishPress is a popular option:
Using this tool, you can add multiple authors to the same WordPress post. This is ideal if you regularly feature guest bloggers. It can also help humanize your business, by enabling readers to learn about the people behind the enterprise.
When it comes to security, employees should only be able to perform the tasks and access the information required to perform their job. Global admin privileges can put your enterprise site at huge risk. The good news is that you can use PublishPress’ permission-based system to restrict access to specific areas of your site.
You can also use this plugin to create a content calendar. This is perfect for coordinating all of your authors. If your enterprise spans multiple offices, then this can provide a central location where distributed teams can collaborate with ease.
Create your enterprise WordPress website today
As the most popular way to make a website, WordPress is well-suited to the needs of both individuals and enterprises. However, if you’re planning to create an enterprise WordPress website, we encourage you to pay attention to a few key details.
To transform this free CMS into an enterprise-worthy platform, we recommend choosing a hosting provider that specifically caters to big businesses. It’s also smart to opt for premium plugins wherever possible, as these often provide the advanced features and firepower you need. This includes advanced SEO plugins such as Rank Math Business and the Optimole image optimization solution.
If you’re ready to get started with WordPress for your enterprise, you can follow our step-by-step guide on how to create a WordPress website.
Do you have any questions about creating an enterprise WordPress website? Let us know in the comments section below!
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[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/262946/share-of-the-most-common-languages-on-the-internet/
[3] https://csa-research.com/More/Featured-Content/Global-Growth/CRWB-Series/CRWB-B2C
[4] https://trends.builtwith.com/shop
[5] https://httparchive.org/reports/page-weight
[6] https://wpscan.com/2021-Mid-Year-WordPress-Security-Report.pdf
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