WordPress Is the Ideal Platform for
Small Business Websites
- Here Are 5 Reasons Why
By
Chris Cree
Chris Cree
Level: Basic
New Media Speaker and Systemizer - guiding real businesses to
increased influence and income through current technologies.
Professional Navigator: in Planes, Ships, and on the ...
I've long been an advocate of using WordPress
for small business websites for lots of reasons. There were some folks
that would argue WordPress is a great blogging platform, but not so good
for "serious" websites.
Well, with the recent addition of custom post
types and fully customizable navigation menus, those old arguments
against WordPress fall by the way side. WordPress has grown to a
full-fledged Content Management System.
It's just one more reason to pile on top of the
great juicy features that make WordPress an ideal platform for small
business websites. Here are 5 of those reasons.
Easy to Use
The first reason why WordPress is such a great
web publishing platform for small business is that it is easy to use.
WordPress was designed to be easy to use for people of modest technical
means. Which is to say, you don't need to be a mega-geek to manage your
website with WordPress.
Once it is set up, average users can add content
easily. This can include text, images, audio, video, or just about
anything else you can think of.
Basically I tell people, if you can use one of
the web-based email systems like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail then you
pretty much have all the technical skills you need to run your WordPress
site. That said, there still can be some technical know-how required to
get things set up for maximum performance.
But once everything is set up correctly, adding
content and managing the site day-to-day is very simple. Much more so
than with other website platforms out there.
By the way, this is doubly true if the person
who manages your website content changes regularly. I got a call just
yesterday from someone who just inherited updating a website for an
organization and they were stuck because the website was hand coded in
Dreamweaver. If it had been built on WordPress in the first place taking
over would have been a simple affair.
Powerful SEO
WordPress has pretty good Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) right out of the box. Then when you configure some
settings, add in a great premium theme like Genesis or Headway, or add a
solid SEO plugin like the All-in-One SEO Pack or the Platinum SEO Pack
you've got everything you need to rapidly climb up to the front page of
Google for your keywords.
Of course, if you are intimidated by what it
takes to have good SEO you can simply subscribe to the Scribe SEO
service. They make improving your SEO as easy as clicking the mouse.
(They even offer a great little free SEO e-book so you can learn the
basics of good SEO.)
With all the options available to you, WordPress
makes powerful SEO a breeze!
Dynamic Content
Since its roots are as a blogging platform
WordPress makes creating sites with dynamic content easy-peasy.
Uploading images, adding audio and embedding videos is simple as can be.
Plus WordPress has a built-in commenting system
so you have everything you need for interactivity already included. That
coupled with the ease with which you can add blog posts and other
content makes it easy for you to produce a dynamic website that keeps
people coming back time and time again.
Inexpensive
Anyone can download the software for free at
WordPress.org. It doesn't get any less expensive than that!
Sure it takes a little expertise to get things
set up correctly so that you get the most from your WordPress site. The
good news is there are tons of WordPress designers and developers out
there so it's possible to find the expertise you need at almost any
price point.
For a small business that's just getting started
and is on a tight budget, WordPress makes it possible to have a powerful
website that can compete head on with sites from much larger companies.
That way the business can see a much bigger return on their web
marketing resources than when going with many other platforms.
Powerful Social Media Tool
The WordPress Plugin Directory has over 10,000
plugins to add functionality and features to the core WordPress
capabilities. Over 250 of them help you add social functions to your
website.
With all those plugins you have options to
integrate your site with your pollination points out on all sorts of
social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn,
StumbleUpon, Flickr, or even Last.FM.
So as you can see, WordPress makes an ideal
platform for small business websites.