Key Word Press Benefits

Once upon a time, in the not so distant past, if you wanted a website you’d either….

A. Call a webmaster and then call for the EMS with the shock paddles because you had collapsed on the floor when you heard how much money they wanted to set up your website (usually a number with several zeros attached to it).

B. Pay to use the website builder from your hosting company, and then tear your hair out because you couldn’t figure out how to use the “easy” website builder.

Today, there is a new sheriff in town when it comes to website building, and it’s called WordPress.

Now I’m not talking about using the free blogging platform hosted on WordPress.com.  Rather, I’m talking about using WordPress as the platform for your own website, hosted on your own hosting account.

Wikipedia definition of WordPress is this:

WordPress is an open source CMS, often used as a blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a plugin architecture and a templating system. Used by over 12% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites, WordPress is the most popular CMS in use today.

So what are the benefits to using WordPress?

1. WordPress is cheap.  All you need is a good hosting service with a Cpanel, and you are ready to upload your site.  Within a matter of minutes, you can have your site live on the web for everyone to see!  There are thousands of free themes available that you can use to change the look of your site with a few clicks of your mouse.  Even if you were to pay for a premium wordpress theme (which is what I recommend doing), you will usually pay less than $100.

2. WordPress is easy to use.  If you can type a Word document or send an e-mail, you can learn to use wordpress.  And with the tutorials found on this site, you will be up and running in no time.

3. No special software required. Gone are the days of buying an expensive html editing software such as Dreamweaver.  You can edit your WordPress site directly from your web browser, from anyplace in the world that has an internet connection.  Think of the possibilities!

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Google and the other search engines love WordPress sites for many reasons.  The structure of the site is very search engine friendly.  In fact, if you just put up your site and do absolutely no promotion of it – no link building, no submissions to search engines, etc., Google will usually find and index your site within 7-14 days.  Isn’t that awesome?

5. Plugins. WordPress uses plugins to increase the functionality of your site.  Because WordPress is open source, there are hundreds if not thousands of developers around the world that create wordpress plugins that are often free.  Do you want to add a shopping cart?  There’s a plugin for that.  Do you want to add your latest Tweets to your sidebar?  There’s a plugin for that.

These are just a few of my favorite WordPress benefits.  As you begin to use WordPress, I’m confident that you’ll come up with your own favorites.