I am a small company owner. Until 1 year ago (February 2009), almost to the week, I could not build my own web site or blog.
After doing some research, I figured out I was missing out on some big opportunities by not having a much bigger web presence. Hence, I started researching how to build web sites.
My first foray into online marketing was before Feb./09 when I actually paid for two sites. The results were awful; I received no traffic to my sites. I lost money.
After researching the site building options and trying several services, I decided building sites on the WordPress platform was best for me. I’ve since built numerous websites for my businesses.
In order to make my decision for WP, I articulated why WordPress was best for my small business needs. Here are my reasons.
1. Take control of your online marketing. I quickly tired of counting on someone else to get my web sites right. If you can develop internet sites, then you can plan your entire online campaign.
2. You will save tons of money if you can build your own sites and do your own search engine optimization. I’ve built 4 sites for my offline business and I’ve done the Search engine marketing on all of them. I do Website optimization every month and my traffic is in trajectory right now.
3. The future of almost every business is online. Once I grasped that, it was a no-brainer for me to learn how to take my business online in a way that I could do it myself.
4. WordPress practically free. The WP software is free. Many themes (i.e. templates) are free. All you need to pay for is hosting, which costs less than $7 per month. That $7 each month with good services will let you host a limitless number of websites and blogs.
5. Speed. Once you are familiar with WP, you will be able to make sites very quickly.
6. Cutting edge development. Because there is a huge WordPress community contributing to its development, WP is constantly improving enabling better and better sites. It is not constrained by private ownership.
7. Unlimited capability. You want a contact form, pick from numerous free designs. Want twitter widgets – start shopping. The point: you can add in every kinds of cool functions that cost you nothing or very little. There are plugins for almost every need.
8. It does not get much easier than WP. Seriously, once you get it installed, you are looking at a very simple user interface within which you control the development of your web site. Of course if you know coding you can do some additional customization, depending on the theme. However, to get a decent website up, you don’t need to know coding.
9. SEO. WordPress gets great search engine results with Google. Also, there are excellent free SEO plugins that can really give your site an Website optimization boost.
10. Unlimited Site styles. Whether you need a corporate internet site, e-commerce website, a news web site, etc., WordPress delivers. Again, it’s every in the WP theme you get that will help with your website style, layout, and functionality.
11. Content Management System. What this means is it’s easy to add content. Without a doubt, WP is one of the easiest site platforms for adding content – whether images, videos, articles, etc.
12. Spectacular premium themes available for clean, high-performance, and fabulous looking websites. Even though these themes cost money, it is fraction of other web site builders and hiring web site designers.
After less than a year of building internet websites for my business, these are my 12 reasons why it was important for me, an entrepreneur, to learn and build my own WordPress websites.
Check out the best WordPress theme reviews here where you can read the latest StudioPress Genesis Theme offering – a real 2.0 template for amazing social media and community building websites.