Thank you, Exabytes Malaysia Web Hosting for choosing me as Jury for Malaysia Website Award. Giving me the opportunities to give back the Malaysia WordPress Website Design industry.
Exabytes Network Sdn Bhd is a subsidiary of the Exabytes Group. In fact, Exabytes Group is the largest Web Hosting Provide in Southeast Asia. Its sister companies include Usonyx, Signetique, Exabytes Singapore Pte Ltd, Exabytes Indonesia, Exabytes Digital, easyparcel, easystore, etc.
Here is what I learn from the Malaysia Website Award submissions. These are my humble opinions, hope it could help everyone, including those web design agency and website owner.
WordPress Malaysia is glowing.
Glad to see 90% of the website is based on WordPress.
WordPress is glowing very fast in year 2020.
Due to COVID-19, every business owner take their website seriously, and WordPress is the number one choice for website building. Even Google suggest to use WordPress for better SEO.
According to W3Techs, 41.5% of all the websites on the Internet is based on WordPress. Corporate like Microsoft, Sony Music, NASA also use WordPress for their website / blog.
My Facebook group WordPress 马来西亚中文群组 also glowing with 114 percent of new member this year, from website owner to web design agency.
Malaysia WordPress Developer like to use Prebuilt theme.
Out of 90% of the WordPress website, 95% of the websites are using multipurpose theme from marketplace ThemeForest. Some Malaysia WordPress Developer are very well implement from the theme demo, impressive!
ThemeForest Multipurpose theme is bloat
These years, we stop using ThemeForest multipurpose theme for performance and security issue.
Example like the most famous theme Avada, the homepage it requires 150+++ of scripts to loads (My site load 6 scripts), if we minify the CSS / JS, the whole website will break. There are no better solutions other than rebuild the website.
When client require looks and feel like the multipurpose theme, we with reverse the engineer and rebuilt it from scratch. It gives you way better performance.
You may check out my post How to Convert WPBakery Page Builder / Visual Composer / Divi to Elementor page builder
With lightweight theme like GenereatePress, Blocksy or Kadence theme and page builder Elementor, you can create any type of website you want.
Or like my website, I use Gutenberg block editor.
Important of WordPress website security
Another reason is security, when there is a WordPress plugin security patch, you will need to wait for the ThemeForest theme developer to provide the latest theme update, sometimes it takes months.
Security patch should patch it as soon as possible, not waiting for days.
WordPress is prefer CMS compare to other CMS.
90% of the website is based on WordPress. Around 10 websites are based on Joomla, few are EasyStore / OpenCart / Shopify, about 5 custom code websites.
Marketing content for SEO
Not sure is the website owner know the website is build based on WordPress. But I do wish the agency could educate the website owner about it. So they can make use of the content management system to create content marketing , which is good for SEO.
Many websites still use slider.
On 2012, Google suggest not to use at page layout algorithm improvement. And based on research on 2013, only 1% of site visitor click on the slider.
Page Experience Ranking factor
With the Google suggest every to improve their website for Core web vitals, it because Page Experience be the ranking factor. Strongly not to use website slider to improve Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).
Why websites should use local hosting providers?
Yes, because everyone loves fast website. Google suggest loads under 3 sec. But 90% of participator’s website loads more than 5sec, some even close to 20sec.
Always suggest use Malaysia web hosting providers
Notice some really slow websites, using web hosting provider in US / Euro, not sure their intention of not using Malaysia web hosting providers.
If the target audience is local, always use Malaysia or Singapore web hosting providers like Exabytes or ServerFreak to cut down the latency. Imaging the website visitor need to travel all the way to US / Euro to views your website.
Please note that Google is taking website speed seriously as rank factor.
Site Speed: What SEOs Need to Know
You may check up my post WordPress Speed Optimization to score 100 on Google PageSpeed Insights
Website is built for Site Visitor and Search Engine.
Not for Website Owner or web design agency to Shiok Sendiri. Website with video header will make it looks good for yourself, but not for search engine to get your website rank better in search results.
I’m surprise there are couple of website is not secure with HTTPS or have HTTPS mixed content error.
Some agency / websites even use Facebook feed wall for their news and update. Which is NO NO.
Important of On page SEO and Technical SEO
Every website need to have proper site structure, keywords, marketing content for search engine and target audience. Without a good foundation, is impossible for you to rank higher in search engine.
Tips: Top 5 Things for the website for Better Ranking
These are the Top 5 Things for your website for Better Ranking from Google that can truly help your website get better ranking in search.
Learn WordPress in Malaysia
Due to Covid-19, I had stop the WordPress class with Exabytes. My own WordPress class is still under planning. But you may join these group to learn more about WordPress in Malaysia.
Join my Facebook Group WordPress 马来西亚中文群组 to learn more about WordPress.
Malaysia WordPress Community
WordPress Meetup is for all WordPress users from new to experienced to get together and discuss all things WordPress. Regardless of whether you use WordPress for business or pleasure, as a blogger, developer, or designer, our monthly meetups are sure to help you get the most out of this amazing open-source software.
Photo by Quincy Follweiler on Unsplash