7 Reasons For The Skyrocketing Popularity Of WordPress For Small Business Websites

Which of these choices would you prefer?

A basic site and design that can run you $3000 plus, requires that you are a computer programmer to make even simple updates to your site’s content, and would have to be completely redesigned if you decide it’s looking a bit outdated?

Or a website built on free software that has thousands of free add-ons available to make it do pretty much anything you want, an easy-to-use interface that you can use to update the content yourself without any programming knowledge and hundreds of professionally designed, quality templates you can use to change the appearance of the site at the drop of a hat?

I thought so!

If you aren’t familiar with it, an introduction to WordPress is in order.

WordPress, while orginally developed for blogging, is now an amazingly powerful Content Management System that you can use to a design highly functional and professional website for your small business.

Here are 7 reasons why using WordPress for your small business’ website is such an appealing option:

1. Cost. How about free? Yep! Just go to WordPress.org and download the software at no charge (heck, you don’t even have to provide an email address!). You will need to find a web hosting company to host your WordPress website. Hosting should only set you back between $5 – $10 per month and there are a number of quality hosting companies to choose from. A lot of these hosting companies include software called Fantastico with your hosting plan which allows you to install WordPress with just a few clicks – no software download necessary.

2. Ease of Use. Using WordPress is really quite simple. Yes, especially for the technically-challenged among us, there will be a little bit of a learning curve. However, there’s no shortage of quality WordPress tutorials online to help you get up to speed quickly. Once you get the hang of things, adding content is a snap. It’s no more difficult than using a word processing program. And you don’t have to know how to write code or do anything vaguely technical in nature to maintain your site.

3. Themes. A theme is kind of like a template that will change the appearance of your WordPress site (themes may also change some “behind-the-scenes” functionality of WordPress). There are thousands of WordPress themes available for download – some of them are free, some aren’t. You can even have a designer create a custom theme for you to get your WordPress site to look exactly the way you want it.

Using themes you can pretty much get whatever look and feel you want for your WordPress site. And if you get tired of one theme, simply install another and you can instantly and completely change the look of your site – without having to touch the core content already on the site.

4. Plugins. A WordPress plugin is software that extends the out-of-the-box capabilities of WordPress. Plugins, which are extremely easy to install and update, can do things like improve site security, fight spam, let you track visits to your website, automatically backup your site, improve search engine optimization, and much more. And the vast majority of plugins won’t cost you a penny!

5. Search Engine Love. Google (and the other search engines) love WordPress. Using WordPress can give your search engine optimization efforts a big boost. And if you take advantage of some of the SEO-related plugins available for WordPress, the searc engines will really think your site is the bee’s knees.

6. Tech Support. While WordPress itself doesn’t have a tech support crew you can call or email, don’t worry. There’s no shortage of places to turn to for help with your questions. WordPress.org has a very active forum where you can search for answers to your questions or post questions to the community. There are also plenty of other sites, blogs, message boards where you can go for advice. Or, you can hire a WordPress expert to help. Bottom line, whatevery issue you have, an answer is not far away.

7. Control. When you host your own WordPress website, you are in the driver’s seat. You can easily update content, add new pages or posts, give the site a facelift and much more without being at the mercy of a web programmer. And if you did want to hire someone to assist you in updating your website, there are plenty of qualified people around who can help.

So there are seven strong benefits to using WordPress for your small business’ website/blog. Without a doubt there are reasons why you may WordPress may not work for your situation and hiring a programmer to develop a custom site is the best option.

However, for the needs of most small businesses, WordPress provides a combination of functionality, flexibility and cost-effectiveness that is tough to beat.

Adam Kreitman is a St. Louis internet marketing consultant. While he is not a designer, he got tired of seeing small business clients with overpriced, poorly designed websites so he started helping clients develop sites using WordPress. To get the word out to a larger audience he started a website which provides tips, video tutorials and resources for using WordPress for small business.