“I can’t update my website!”
“I’ve got to get my webmaster to do that, but it’s going to cost me…”
“Nooooo, I just hosed my website!”
If you talk to enough small business owners, or friends that want to have a website but don’t spend evenings and weekends tinkering around on the web, you’ll hear frustrations like this a lot.
And that’s from the ones who have figured out how to get a website up and running in the first place. There are many who are still trying to figure out where to start. But wait, there is hope!
WordPress to the Rescue
WordPress is one of the most popular blogging tools available. But what many people don’t know is that it is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that can be used for more than just blogging. With WordPress you can build a blog, a website, or both. This is the first article in a series where we’ll explore why WordPress is a good choice for small business websites, and how to install, configure and use it for your small business.
Web Content Management Systems
A content management system is a tool that helps you manage the creation and updates to web pages on your web site. In 1998 I was one of the early members of a Silicon Valley start-up called Interwoven. Interwoven provided Web Content Management solutions for large enterprises like Ford Motor, FedEx, Cisco and eventually thousands of others large and small companies. I learned a lot about web content management by meeting with hundreds of companies – ranging from the Fortune 100 to smaller companies - and digging into their web site architectures. The web was exploding at that time, and there was a tremendous demand for managing the ever expanding amount and types of content. During that period, our software sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Using WordPress as a Website
Fast forward to today, and now we have WordPress – an amazingly powerful content management system that is FREE. And it has a lot of power under the hood for a small or medium business looking for an easy way to manage their web site.
WordPress was designed as a platform for blogging, but you don’t have to use it as a blogging tool. With a few tweaks it can be used to run your website, with or without a “blog.” The fact that WordPress was designed as a blogging platform gives it some compelling advantages.
It is optimized for easily publishing and changing content. And getting good search engine rankings requires fresh, unique content. You need a system that does not get in your way when you want to update your website with a new article or newsletter.
So why is WordPress a good choice?
Top Five Reasons to Use WordPress for Your Small Business Website
- SEO – WordPress provides good search engine optimization (SEO) right out of the box. There are a few tweaks you need to make, but there are many seo benefits that WordPress provides for free. In fact Google’s own Matt Cutts says WordPress is “made to do SEO well” in this video: Matt Cutts gives tips to small business owners.
- Content – it is easy to update content on your website without knowing HTML. Do you hate the idea of having to learn to use a complex HTML editor tool like Dreamweaver? Do you have to “ask” your webmaster every time you want to make a small change to your website? Well no longer – once WordPress is set up for you, you can easily create new pages or edit existing pages using a simple rich text editor.
- Extensions – There is a thriving ecosystem of developers creating themes and plug-ins – imagine free design themes, or the ability to extend your website with polls, contact forms, ratings or hundreds of other cool features without having to hire a web developer.
- Support – If you do have problems, or want to add very custom features, it is easy to find support and developers who can help you. There are literally thousands of WordPress developers out there. And there are so many people writing about WordPress that help is only a Google search away!
- One-click-installation – Quick installs are provided by many hosting providers, including Bluehost and 1and1.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing tips and tricks we’ve learned by using WordPress for a bunch of small business websites.
More WordPress Articles:
See my WordPress for Small Business Series websites for links to more WordPress articles on topics like: How to install WordPress, should I use WordPress.org or WordPress.com, How to make WordPress look like a Website, and more.
Are you using WordPress for your Website, or stuck with something that isn’t working for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
If so, please join over 10,000 people who receive exclusive weekly online business and blogging tips, and get a FREE COPY of my eBook, 10 Steps to Free Website Traffic! Just enter your name and email below:
Article by » Don Campbell
Don is an entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. He founded Expand2Web and is the publisher of the Expand2Web Blog and the SmallBiz WordPress Theme.
Don has written 247 articles on Expand2Web
Author Connect » Twitter | +Don Campbell | Facebook |
If you're building a business website these days, you're in luck.
WordPress has revolutionized the ease and power of what a website can do and be. Now you can quickly create a website that is optimized for top search results, and update it yourself whenever you want.
As you'll see in a moment, the SmallBiz Theme is much more than a mere WordPress theme. It's a complete solution for your business web presence including a Website, Blog, Facebook Page and Mobile Website.
Let's take a look at each of these, and how they help you generate new business from the web…
Click to continue...See my disclosure about advertising and affiliate links
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I always advise my clients to start a business website with WordPress. Not only does it have all of those outstanding features you describe, it lends itself well to social integration. There are plenty of plugins to help with the all important social signals that we now need for SEO.
Absolutely agree. Thanks for sharing your perspective Steve.
Hiya
I know this isn’t me. I read it on the net about how hard Wordpress is to use.
Example I wanted a static home page and a blog. So theres a link (like where the categories links are) saying Blog… two hours later and many google searches/forum support still can’t get it to do it…
I would like to change the font. But Wordpress have’t even bothered to supply a font editor… so I google/research/forum it… 20 mins later I get the typekit plugin installed. Can I find it anywhere is edit/dashboard/on the menus? Of course not…
How do people put up with Wordpress it absolutely useless to use…?
I agree as someone who isn’t tech savvy wordpress is much less user friendly then blogger and for some odd reason most of the instructions I find online are confusing and leave out steps for people like me who need EVERY step to figure out how to do it. But, I’m slowing figuring it all out and must say that wordpress is much better then blogger for this purpose, you just have to do more research and spend more time figuring out how to implement it all. For me, anyway.
I agree it may seem complicated to a newby but WordPress is a lot more than a blogging platform and given its current capabilities should be considered a CMS (content management system). The comparisons are then in line with other CMS frameworks such as Drupal and Joomla – when compared to these WordPress wins hands down in terms of it’s usability, addons and available support.
As for Question #2, if you have an established website, I would redirect the old URLs (at least the ones with backlins) to the new ones once you migrate to WP so you don’t lose any of the respect Google has for them.
I think WordPress.org is the best CMS out there. The biggest turning point I think is that it allows you to reach an advanced level of customization and optimization, through plugins, theme generators and in the code. By using a few must-have plugins and a flexible theme generator, like Lubith, I can have a fully functional and attractive site in no time.
After having a static HTML site for some time now, the improvements in wordpress now make it attractive to use for a new website and blog. Good CMS and a significant number of plugins.
I want to say that I dont believe Ive read anything so true in a lengthy time. Youve got a great deal of great ideas, a fantastic deal of perspective. I think which you absolutely have some thing critical to say and Im gonna back it 110%, man. Good job keeping this subject alive and fascinating!
I have not checked in here for some time as I thought it was getting boring, but the last several posts are great quality so I guess I’ll add you back to my daily bloglist. You deserve it my friend
Hello Don,
Thanks for all this info., I heard of WP before but never really tried to use it, now I’m helping a friend of mine to get his business online, but since he doesn’t know a thing about online business I’m the one in charge of the project (imagine that!).
I’m looking for a way to get him online without spending too much time on it, and learning too much technical skills since I’m the one that’s going to be doing it.
I think this article makes a clear understanding about it and I probably end up doing business with you soon.
Sincerely,
Federico
enjoyed reading the blog man…even i use wordpress for my website for same reasons..
i have my own business and was finding ways to promote it. thanks for the post . will use wordpress and let you know how it helps
Excellent post. We always try to advise client to use Wordpress purely due to the fact that it has so many plugins- Buddypress, All in one SEO and so on.
Although we do not use Wordpress on our main site, we do use it for our blog and definitely impressed how easy it is to add content.
Dynamic websites are the way forward!
WordPress is definitely a great CMS. It is very easy to learn and has many advantages. I started off my website creation days using Drupal as I felt WordPress was more for blogging. Since then I realised it can be used to create any type of website.
WordPress is a great CMS for both beginners and professionals alike, especially with all the available plugins.
I’ve been using wordpress on my blog, do not use it as a commercial site.
no website as of yet. Don how do I make my website contents downloadable? I am working on a music site as I am a musician and would like to have my beats downloaded by other musicians probably with a fee paid through Paypal. Your advice on how to do this would be very much appreciated thanks
Hi Ray,
The easiest way to do that is with a service called http://www.e-junkie.com. I’ve also seen some music artists use this site: http://bandcamp.com/
Either of these services provides the digital download capability which could be copied and pasted into your WordPress site.
Thank you for sharing nuggets of information here. WordPress is a powerful tool for online biz because it’s free however there are some technical task that I find unfriendly. Glad that you keep us updated. TY
I have a wordpress themed site and want to upgrade to another theme I didnt build the original, I was goung to change theme but have decided to just move everything across and start again, how easy is that ???thnaks elissa
Hi Elissa,
You can change Themes on your WordPress site without affecting your content. You content is stored in a database and is separate from the look and feel of your site.
Hi Elissa,
You’ll love the theme and Don has great tutorials on this site. If you ever need help give me a shout.
Enjoy!
Tim
Very nice article ,I am very new to this business I want to clarify few things .
I own a wordpress based free classifieds website and I have feature plan to start coupons,events listing and many more can I make all changes using wordpress like a Traditional Website Please let me know what are the demerits as well so that I would be more clear about it .
WordPress is more important for making websites because it provide some intelligent features means it is not necessary that you have much knowledge about programming languages.
I have been using WordPress for awhile now and can’t say enough good things about what it can do. I have found myself encouraging my customers to have me build their site with WP rather than the traditional method. When done some of my customers learn how to take care of it and some don’t. If not then I do and I still have a paying customer.
I found this site while I was trying to find whether it would be better to keep my blog as a sub-domain or to move it to my main domain, replacing my current main page. I have my blog hosted on blogger.com. Blogger offer a facility whereby you can re-locate the address of your blog from the default site (in my case, WaveCrestIT.blogspot.com) to a sub-address of your existing domain name, a sub-domain, ie blog.WaveCrestIT.co.uk.
Currently, due to some diligent posting on my part, I am getting more hits on my blog than on the main page on my website. Not only that, but I have set up my blog so that it strongly resembles the look and feel of my main website and has the same call-to-action functionality. I also have a summary of the text from my website’s main page in a side-bar on the blog and plan to completely integrate my blog into the site as a whole.
My question is this: Would it be better, with respect to search engine optimisation and other factors, to dispense with my current main page entirely (it is overly wordy) and just have the main domain (ie. http://www.WaveCrestIT.co.uk) point straight to the main page of the blog? The blog is not hosted on my site, it is hosted on blogger.com. Will this have any negative impact on the subsidiary pages of the site (which are hosted in my own space) or on the blog itself?
I have done some research into this but could only find articles on related issues and none that dealt with the question directly. Some of the more useful links are listed on my blog:
http://blog.wavecrestit.co.uk/2012/09/making-your-blog-sub-domain-of-your.html
The beauty of WordPress that is self hosted it allows for you to own the traffic you’re seeing on Blogger. It is important to know that people find our sites by searching for a given interest. And if they should stumble upon our article on a blogging site we don’t control all the related links, whereas in your own site you have total influence and can better match what they are interested to, not to mention the opportunity to subscribe to your mailing list and other related services.
So for most if not all, having your own site makes more sense and a theme like Small Biz gives amazing SEO results and is WordPress powered for ease.
In case you didn’t see that SmallBiz has a monthly host plan – check it out at Cloud Hosted Small Biz Sites
We’ve seen bumps in organic traffic just from a redesign from custom to Wordpress with NO content changes otherwise. Love it!
We ran an out of the box comparison against WordPress Drupal and Joomla using http://sitebeam.net/ (not my software btw) and found Wordpress to be about the best for SEO purposes from a standing start. You can also add some fantastic plugins to help get a real SEO edge. SEO isn’t everything though.
Wordpress is easy for me,just love it! thx for the post
We have just completed our Wordpress website, I would definitely recommend Wordpress although a professional designer is better than doing it yourself.
Great to hear – thanks for taking the time to leave a comment here ProCV Template
Certainly correct about having to contact a webmaster for every little change. My main money generating website is still in html and I haven’t a clue how to make changes. If I mess up in my new WP site I an restore with the autosave feature. It allows me to experiment to see what works without the fear of sabotaging my own website.
So right – that’s the #1 complaint I hear from business owners with HTML sites – they can’t update their websites. So frustrating.
Any one know of a theme or a gallery plugin that will make my photo slide shows work like these ones? I like the background loading and the ease to go from thumbnail to slide. Also love the way the thumbnails wrap. These are all from virb but I really want to use this on my own wordpress blog.
here are samples of what I am talking about…
http://www.jaimehogge.com/recent
http://justinhollar.com/
http://toddcolephoto.com/#/t/2
Great article on Wordpress. I wish all small business owners would read it.
Thanks Mike!
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Thanks you,
Michael Diggs
wordpress my first web experience
I always recommend Wordpress to my clients. It has been a huge time saver for me. I don’t get phone calls asking me to edit one sentence here and there.
WordPress is best for shairing comments i like this site
WordPress is a great tool for easy website creation. It has undergone alot of changes from a strict blog platform to one that is versatile enough for an ecommerce website.
I used it on my own site and on many of my client website.
I always recommend it when someone need to have a website created.
Great Article Don. I’m sharing this
Hi Don, WordPress has been the easiest and most functional CMS I’ve seen/used since I started freelancing. It’s become a true open source tools and should be used by many. It can do as much as any other platform out there ie. Drupal, Joomla etc. but so much more user friendly. I’m a huge advocate for WordPress because of it’s simplicity and ease of use. Ver informative article and great to know about it’s use of SEO.
Regards
Paul
If I build my website in WP, do I have to change my hosting company, or can I copy my WP site into my existing hosting company.
Thanks
thanks your for the information
I work as a web developer and this article has helped me how to explain to my clients why they must use Wordpress
Hi Don: I’m afraid I am going to be one of those who did not like WordPress. I followed your recommendations (10 Steps to Free Website Traffic). Had no problem with BlueHost, but WordPress was another story. Basically, I could not find any editing tools. Is it possible to create a document on Microsoft Word or Microsoft Notepad and then copy and paste it into a WordPress post?
Also, I received a log-in and password for WordPress, but when I tried to use it I was denied entry.
That’s strange – I wonder why you could not log into your WordPress site. Once you are logged in, the user interface for creating new pages is much like Microsoft Word, with buttons to help you format your text, pictures and video content.
Also, there is a “paste from Microsoft Word” button that you can use to paste content that was created in Word.
Hi Don, I am another who doesn’t like wordpress.org although I really want to! I have set up my own blog/website using wordpress from scratch knowing NOTHING about HTML or plugins or any of the other add ons (?) that frankly are meaningless to me. I dont even know if I’m using the correct words for things it might as well be in ‘Martian’. Currently my ‘facebook needs configuration’ and I am on the verge of throwing my laptop out of the window. I follow the set up help and look at the ‘screen grabs’ which bear no resemblance to the pages I am looking at and I am at my wits end. I have had friends who say they know about wordpress come to help and leave scratching their heads and saying they dont know what to do. I use just host and I have bought a domain name but I would like to transfer to a web host that is for complete dummies who just want a blog that can link to facebook, twitter, pinterest, etsy, etc, that looks classy, that I can individualise and that doesn’t give me high blood pressure. Any recommendations? Thanks, Sam.
Sam,
If you are installing WordPress I don’t know why it is asking you about Facebook configuration.
I’ve tried a lot of web hosts and recommend BlueHost for WordPress sites. Here’s why.
I’m confused – I just downloaded word press and do I need a host now to open it?
Hi Kathe,
Yes, WordPress is an application created in PHP. You’ll need a web server running something like Apache or some similar web server. BlueHost is a great provider of very affordable hosting and they have an install you can add Wordpress with just a single click (they call it simplescripts). Here is a link to get started on BlueHost ( http://www.bluehost.com/track/simple2web ) It is my affilate link and I get brownie points, but it is the service I use as do tons of others. You’ll find this blog a wealth of information, Don is amazing.
Can I download wordpress and install onto my hosting. How about can I remove wordpress bottom link ?
Create Toys,
Yes, you can install WordPress on just about any hosting provider. My favorite is BlueHost because they make it super easy to install WordPress with one-click.
To remove “WordPress” from the bottom link, that depends on the Theme you are using. With WordPress you can choose from thousands of Themes that change the way your website/blog looks. Some themes allow you to remove the bottom link, others you can easily edit if you want to remove it.
Hey there! Quick question that’s completely off topic. Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly? My web site looks weird when browsing from my apple iphone. I’m trying to find a template or plugin that might be able to resolve this problem.
If you have any recommendations, please share.
Thanks!
Great stuff ! Keep it up !
Nice article! I personally love to use wordpress with our clients but probably the biggest difficulty we have is when we say we use wordpress and they say “isn’t that just a fancy blog?”. Although we have gotten better at simpler descriptions do you have any tips or tricks on simple ways to convince people who don’t know the different between HTML and a rock on why they should use wordpress?
p.S. I’m going to try some of the descriptions you used in your article and see how it goes
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