There are many blogging platforms that can be used through your web hosting company to get content onto your site quickly and efficiently. That said, there really is only one best choice and that is WordPress. While their competitors may try to steer you away from WordPress, it truly is the best of the best when it comes to blogging and website creation. These are the main reasons why:
Free and Open Source
Open source software means that the source code or the actual programming is available for everyone to use. This allows developers of plug-ins to have free access to the code of the program so they can create an add-on easily.
Large software firms typically charge quite a bit of money and require extensive legal documents before allowing anyone outside of their company to see the source code. These costs, legal documents and even pre approval process for creating add-ons makes it prohibitive to small coding teams. By allowing anyone the ability to access the source code easily, a small upstart company or individual can craft a plug in that addresses a need. That need may be something tiny that most people won’t even want or need or it could be something that everyone ends up using.
Open source software also means that the software and the plug-ins are free to the end user. WordPress offers a GPL or General Public License for use that means they won’t charge and the plug-in creators cannot charge either. The support for WordPress comes from the coding community itself as well as donations from that community.
Easy to Use
Setting up and using WordPress is easy. The software is designed to be a full blown end user web based software application. What this means is that if you can use the basic functions of a word processing program, you should be able to easily use WordPress. Once you have created a theme for your site, adding content is simple. You just have to click “Write a New Post,” add your content and then click publish. The text editing can be done within WordPress, including adding formatting and multiple fonts or you can simply copy and paste from your word processing program to WordPress in your browser.
Completely Customizable
Through the use of theme’s, a user can setup their blog to look like a basic blog or a full-featured website. You are allowed to have columns for separate content aside from your blog posts and can have backgrounds, foregrounds. WordPress supports Java scripting, allowing your blog site to have a clean, professional look. This is all easily setup through WordPress once it is installed and active on your web server.
WordPress has several advantages as a blogging tool and content management system. However, one of the greatest advantages is the SEO considerations. Search engine optimization (SEO) is important so the website has a higher ranking in search results in the primary engines such as Google or Yahoo. Many webmasters spend a lot of time and even money in order to increase their web ranking but with WordPress there are many built in tools available to make the process more efficient.
New Content
Search engines place a premium on sites that have continual new content. Using WordPress makes it easy to update the site on a regular basis with new information. Each time the site is crawled by the search engine, new content is searched and the natural ranking of the site increases with very little effort.
Meta Tag Generation
With WordPress, meta tags are automatically generated which saves time and effort. Meta tags will help when users are searching for a particular term or phrase. Added to a naturally high search engine ranking, this can be highly beneficial. In addition to automatic generation, you also have the ability to add any tags you want.
Title Optimization
WordPress also automatically optimizes titles for SEO. So, when you create a blog article the titles work in conjunction with the tags and your SEO will increase. Whether a person is searching for a particular term or phrase, the post itself will show up high on the search results.
Permalinks
You can automatically change settings in WordPress to use permalinks. Permalinks are a URL that points to a specific post on the blog. So, instead of going to the main page and searching for a post, you can have a URL of http://yoursite.com/category/post-name. This makes it easier to find in search engines and the links do not become irrelevant.
Social Networking Sites
Social networking sites are an important part of increasing SEO. When you post new material to these sites you garner additional exposure to potential customers and you have the opportunity to increase SEO by having relevant incoming links. WordPress has a function that allows new posts to automatically post to various social networking sites such as Twitter, FaceBook and MySpace.
The reality of a business adding a blog is there is a very good ROI or return of investment on the time and money spent on adding a blog and keeping it updated. A business with a blog can use the blog as a tool for generating new business, keeping existing customers, improving their status on the web all at very little cost of time or assets to start and keep it running.
New Business
A blog can very easily bring in new customers. If you provide good blog content on your site, customers will visit your site, possibly more than once, then purchase from you because they like your blog content.
For example, Company X sells widgets as do a number of competitors. They create a blog that goes in depth into why their widgets are the best. The blogs are rich in search engine optimization which gets them top placement on the search engines. Their blogs truly have good content as well. They increase sales due to their top hits. More importantly, they also get customers that were hesitant about widgets in the first place due to the content contained in the blogs. Company X’s blog was able to turn what would have been tough sell customers without the normal budget or effort required to get to those customers.
Keeping Existing Customers
A blog also helps keep existing customers and helps keep them buying from the company. A site that provides new content on a daily or even weekly basis is going to get more traffic from people that have bookmarked that company’s site. Even if a site gets regular hits from returning customers, the blog is a way to keep them on the site longer and engaged in content related to the product.
By writing engaging but short articles about the product and including personal notes from the company’s leadership, the company that blogs creates a culture of openness, innovation and honesty with both new and existing customers. In other words, it helps make customers loyal to your company because you are being open and honest with them.
Improving Web Status
One of the most important things any business can do is strive to get the top non-advertised spot in the major search engines. When a potential customer wants widgets, most of the time they are going to click what is on their screen and not delve deeply into pages and pages of links to things widget related. A blog is a great way to improve a company’s status in the eyes of the search engines and get their company’s website to be the top listing which will improve the hits to the company’s web site.
