WordPress got a bad rap when it first came out. Somehow WordPress became known internationally as simply “blog” software. That is soooo limiting to the true power of WordPress. We use WordPress for the entire website…including the blog part.
The website you’re on right now is using WordPress. Sure, this is the blog section, but go to any of the main pages you see on the left column and that’s just main website content. Still WordPress.
WordPress websites offer much more than the few five or ten benefits you usually hear about. A blogging software-based website is the new evolution of how Web sites are constructed.
Before we get into the meat of the actual reasons why WordPress is so great, let’s clear up another myth while we’re at it: A blog is a Web site…a Web site is a blog. There is NO difference.
It’s just that blogs have a few more cylinders under the hood, if I were to use a metaphor. In fact, I wrote a blog post a few months ago that suggested your WordPress website is the very heart of ALL of your Internet marketing efforts.
I don’t know why the power of WordPress is being so under-rated, because I believe this beloved software has paved the way for a new evolution of websites.
Here are 35 reasons why WordPress websites are better than traditional websites for authors, speakers and business owners today in a very trying economy.
- Save Money – No longer do you need to send the most basic text changes to your designer or even have your designer add new pages for you. Make the edits yourself whenever you want and save the money you would’ve paid your designer for more important things by adding new pages on your own. Times are tight and managing your own content for your Web site is a great way to contribute to saving costs.
- Greater Accessibility – Make changes or add content from any computer in the world with Internet access and a browser without the need for additional software or fixing firewall settings.
- Speed of Communication – Since you don’t have to wait a few days for your designer to make those basic changes, the content on your Web site and be altered immediately by you, thereby giving your Web site visitors the most timely and current details possible.
- Consistency - No matter how many pages you add in page template format makes visitors less confused
- Better Time Management – Add content and then schedule those posts to publish on your site on whatever day and time you want. You could write an entire 12-week e-course, for example, break it up into 12 pieces and have each automatically post to the site at the same day and time each week for 12 weeks.
- Ease of Membership Site Rollout – With the addition of a few plugins, a WordPress blog can evolve into a full service membership site with as many levels as you would like.
- Social Networking Friendly – Automatically integrate your blog posts with social media like Twitter, facebook, Linkedin instead of having to go to each one, login, and make a post that you’ve just added something new to your website.
- Engage with Current Media – Easily add audio and video to posts and pages.
- Creative Welcoming – Integrate any design within an hour or two in comparison to other CMS (Content Management System) tools that all look alike because of their stringent design constraints.
- Ultimate in SEO Friendliness – The construction of WordPress blog code is consistent and streamlined without excessive HTML code that Google finds very inviting for indexing. Plus, with the right setup, you’re able to customize every page or post you make to give you the highest possible probability of getting your pages in high search results positions.
- Inspiring – Participating by adding posts and pages and managing your own content becomes “fun.” When you see the results from your OWN efforts instead of farming out everything, you become fueled even more to add more content.
- Search Engine Magnetism – As a result of your inspiration to post content more often, your frequency of contribution will attract Google robots and other search engines like magnets. The robots will search your entire site every day looking for new content and new pages and changes they can index. New pages get indexed in hours or even MINUTES when you commit to adding new content over time. Many of our HereNextYear posts and WebsiteWaves.com pages have been published and displayed on Google’s organic search in under 30 minutes! Try that with a traditional Web site!
- Growth potential - No need to update navigation when you add pages; links to new pages will be added automatically based on what “category” or categories you assign your posts and pages to. This all happens in the admin area instead of manually editing javascript menus and complex PHP include files.
- Insanely Fast Learning Curve - Learning to edit content, post new pages, add photos and images is as easy (maybe even easier) than using MS Word. Figuring out these simple procedures on your own would only take a novice a few hours. With initial one-on-one training by phone from an expert WordPress trainer like we offer at HereNextYear, all of these functions can be performed by YOU in under an hour…even if you have no design or programming experience. There are two and three FULL-day classes just to learn the BASICS of Dreamweaver or FrontPage. I know…I used to teach them! WordPress blog software is by far, the easiest tool to learn how to maintain content on your Web site.
- Improved Security – One of the subjects “against” WordPress or other blog software that use plugins (plugins are small add-on programs to enhance the capability of the blog software) is that hackers can break in to your Web site. But, the exact opposite is in fact true: If you have the right people involved in the setup of your WordPress installation, your blog site can be hacker-proofed even more securely than a traditional Web site. How can that be true? Because there is an actual process to “hardening” a WordPress installation. But, you just don’t hear designers or developers hacker-proofing traditional Web sites. See the difference?
- Inspires Repeat Visitors – The fact that you are inspired to add new content frequently will also encourage and increase your repeat visitor numbers. When people like what you contribute to the Web, they want to know when you add more. That’s where RSS feeds (Real Simple Syndication) come into play along with automated notices by email that new posts have been made. These announcements trigger former visitors to come back to read the rest of the article, or in the case of RSS, visitors can subscribe to receive the entire post through their RSS reader or mobile device. This is not just the “future” of how communication will evolve in a few years, but this is NOW, TODAY. If you are not experienced with how RSS works, having a blog site will introduce you to its importance for sure.
- Two-Way Communication with Visitors - Through the use of blog comments, you are no longer restricted to one-way “outbound” communication with visitors like you would be with a traditional Web site. Sure, you can always have a “contact us” page on your traditional Web site, but blog comments allow for anonymous two-way discussion between you and your readers. And, every time someone makes a comment to one of your posts, the inclusion of their content full of keyword phrases helps you to build better search positioning. It’s like getting free SEO help from the general public!
- Increase Your Perceived Industry Authority – Making frequent posts and sharing your opinion on what’s happening in your industry offers so much more potential for establishing rapport with your audience than a traditional Web site could offer. Why such a difference? Because traditional Web sites just take too darn long to format. Even if you open Dreamweaver and copy an existing page to create a new one, you still have to format all that content, upload it to the right directory, assign page permissions, add the page manually to navigation….UGGG! A WordPress blog will allow you to add new pages in as little as five seconds! Period! And, that page can be set to appear in navigation on every other page on on your entire Web site in the click of a button. You just can’t afford to spend that much time to make that many additions of content pages in such a short amount of time with a traditional Web site. And, when you’re “reporting” on industry happenings, and giving your opinions, speed is of the essence. That’s the difference.
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- More Brand Awareness – Since the common approach with a blog site is to build out the site into an industry-specific authority resource with hundreds or even thousands of pages of content, the number of opportunities for the general public to see your brand identity is multiplied exponentially over and above the traditional 10 to 30 page Web site.
- Immediate Identification of Hot Topics Among Your Audience – If you make 10 posts and get one or two…or even no comments at all, and then all of a sudden you post a topic that brings 20 comments, you learn immediately of an interest. This is a highly valuable opportunity that you normally don’t see with a traditional Web site, unless you pay for a bunch of custom programming to create some forms and surveys. The utility to allow blog comments is included with every Blog installation automatically with no custom programming required.
- Better Anchor for Original Articles – When you publish articles to directories and blog networks, you first want to post it to your blog site. Why is a blog site “better” for this than a traditional Web site? Because of the automatic archiving feature within every blog setup.
- Automated Syndication – Blog posts can be automatically converted to RSS feeds and syndicated to blog directories and other peoples’ websites.
- Backdoor FREE Entry to Yahoo! Search Addition – When you submit your RSS feed manually to Yahoo! you don’t have to pay their $299 listing fee as your site will be indexed for free.
- 24-Hour Listing in Bing/MSN – Adding the RSS feed to Bing/MSN is the fastest way to have your site indexed and it is common for even new sites to appear in Bing/MSN within 24 hours using this method.
- One-Step Posting – It might sound like I’m repeating myself with “ease of use” or “ease of learning” already listed as a benefit, but this one is different. How many ways are there to add content to a Web site where you truly only click a single button to make the content appear live online? Only one that I’ve found and it’s through blog software. There are no 10, 5 or even 3-step processes to publish content live. It’s one single step.
- You Control the Discussions – With traditional Web sites, the “old school” way of communicating with visitors was to add a forum or chat room. The problem with those was the need for maintaining the posts from spammers and removing discussions and predatory accounts that could threaten the integrity of your business. Blog sites changed all of that. You begin the topic of discussion. Your visitors make comments to the discussion you started. But, the comments people make are approved by you before anyone ever sees them on your Web site. It’s the best of all worlds without the worry of defaming your business with unacceptable posts.
- Re-Ignite Your Ideas – By having the ability to add content to your Web site in a way that is easy, fast, and requires no technical skill, you will be amazed how ideas for “what to add” will no longer be a problem. In fact, you’ll be more worried about what to write about….first! Create content about industry happenings, product reviews, or educational steps. The limits are truly endless. You’ll never run out of things to add to your blog.
- Increased Functionality with Lower Cost – Thousands of pre-written programs called plugins can increase the functionality of your out-of-the-box blog software. Traditional websites require everything to be programmed. Even if you find an available PHP or ASP script to work with a traditional website, there is usually significant integration work and customizing required, whereas WordPress plugins are usually a 3-click install process.
- Multi-User Capable – WordPress offers multi-user capability so that larger companies with marketing departments, for example, can offer editing power exclusivity or even read-only mode to others.
- Free Upgrades – Unlike traditional Web site software like Dreamweaver, PhotoShop or Flash, upgrades to WordPress blog software is free.
- Universal Platform – With the economy the way it is, designers and Internet marketing service providers are closing their doors and disappearing even more quickly than when I got started in this business in 1996. You’ve got to be careful these days. With traditional Web sites, very rarely will a new service provider agree to pick up where the old designer or developer left off. The result is that the new provider will want to charge you for starting from scratch. Conversely, almost anyone with basic PHP and MySQL experience can jump into your WordPress blog site project in a moments notice if something was to happen to the helper(s) that got your blog site setup for you in the first place.
- Safety – Add images and media by uploading to server from within your secret admin area instead of through traditional ftp and risking deleting important files or uploading to the wrong directories
- Freshness – Easily change your site layout and appearance by swapping themes. Great for temporary changes for holidays or seasons.
- Reduced Loss of Work – Your work is automatically saved as you type even if you haven’t published your blog posts live to the web yet.
- Mobile Readiness - No need to produce a second Web site just for mobile users. WordPress automatically recognizes if a person is viewing the site through a Web browser or mobile device and configures the content to be viewed appropriately on either.
- Ease of Printing – Designers are notorious for creating Web sites that are too wide to print. With a simple plugin, all your WordPress blog site content can be easily printed in easy-to-read format…without creating duplicate “printable” versions of pages. No need for sacrificing screen view design just so that people can print the pages.
Okay, so I just couldn’t stop at 35! There are just so many reasons why WordPress is a great fit for practically every situation.
Did I miss any benefits of WordPress blog sites over traditional sites? Let me know and please contribute to this important post.
If you have been wondering how converting your traditional Web site would be of benefit, this post was made for you! If you would like to talk more with someone about how you go about converting a traditional Web site to a WordPress blog site, contact us at HereNextYear immediately at 303-743-0832
Post Author: Marty Dickinson
Thanks so much for this info. It was just what I was looking for to make a decision about a new blog site.
Thanks for sharing this information for us and resources its really help full for me with the help of this we can improve our ranking in google and other search engine
Excellent article about wordpress and has convinced me to give it a go…again..
Thanks so much Camillus for your comment and yes give WordPress another try. It’s worth it!
This article was the one I was looking for. It’s the best analysis of WordPress that I’ve read. I’ve been trying to decide whether a website or a blog is the way to go for my project and now I know…… it’s going to be a blog using the WordPress.org platform. I had a website for 3 years that was built by an excellent designer. I was very happy with it, but as you said, I had trouble contacting him and getting my new ideas implemented after he had completed the application, as it was all built with code. I’m an admitted procrastinator, but now I have no excuse not to start right away. Thank you.
Thanks for the comment Larry and I’m sure you’ll be very happy with a WordPress website.
Why WordPress rather than Blogger.com?
Hi John. Good question! If you have a blog setup at blogger.com, keep it, that’s fine. I have a blog at blogger and one at wordpress.com as well. BUT!! My main website where both of those external blogs point to….is HereNextYear.com. Have your main company or “the most important” website for you hosted at a real hosting company like ours or hostgator or rackspace or wherever. Why? Because YOU will have full control over your main website that way. Keep in mind that Google owns Blogger. They can shut you down whenever they want, whether their reason is justified or not.
Concur, this is an excellent explanation of the pros and cons. Thanks!
We’ve been teaching people about the benefits of WordPress as a Content Management System since 2005 in our Websitetology seminar.
One of the other points to make- is your content is highly portable. Since everything is stored in a database, it can be ported to sites using other data structures- like Joomla or Drupal if you decide to go that way (not recommended) or- if you are one author on a site with many- you can take your data and put it on your own site easily.
Our main reason for using WP is the Google love- almost any of our clients have automatic SEO- to the point that their site indexes on hundreds or thousands of key phrases without any extra work at “optimization.”
But this list is one of the most comprehensive I’ve seen.
Thanks
Overflowing with reasons why to move to WordPress. I was converted 4 years ago. I used to be a .net developer and build websites from scratch for clients.
In the information age you have to move fast and be more agile. WordPress and it’s vast array of themes and plugins enables business to do that.
I am trying to figure out whether Google Analytics tracking is possible on wordpress or not?! Furhtermore I would like to know your oponion on the possibility to build a shop on a WordPress based plattform.
Hello Eva and thanks for the questions. GA tracking is certainly possible….and I’ll even add the word “essential”…on WordPress. Go download the Google Analyticator plugin. Then go into your analytics account and get the one line of code you’ll need as described by the plugin and add it to the plugin’s settings area. Each time you login to WordPress admin after that, you’ll be able to see a snapshot of visitors. Plus, the plugin will install the analytics code on all the pages of your website so that you can login to your GA account and see all the goodies for all of your site pages.
On the topic of making a shop on WP, there are several cheap plugins for this feature too. Although, I will say that I’ve been steering away from basic $20 or $40 store/shop plugins as we wind up spending 15 hours to customize them and another 10 to fix their functionality. Also, PCI compliance has become a HUGE issue in 2012. So, I’m recommending to all my clients to use a 3rd party hosted cart so you don’t have to jump through the PCI compliance hoops. My suggestion for a 3rd part cart is PremiumWebCart. That’s an affiliate link there by the way, so if you sign-up through it for their $4.95 30-day trial, be sure to send me an email letting me know so I can send you a “getting started” document I created for my cart clients.
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 .
Anyone can make changes to the “content” of a WordPress website. Most people can invest a little more time to learn how to make changes to their own graphics and theme elements. But, that’s where it makes sense to start finding people to help in those areas. Probably the biggest “demerit” to wordpress as you called it is security. WordPress installations are a big target and easy to break into….unless you have someone who knows what they’re doing to secure your WordPress install. Here’s a blog post I wrote about WordPress Security.
Wow, very interesting article. We currently have an asp website, but now you’ve definitely got me thinking. Thanks for all the information!
Was wondering if there is a way to integrate a lead capture, then follow up campaigns as well. Any input is helpfull.
Hello David and thanks for the question. We prefer using 3rd party systems for lead capture and then rolling them into either automated or manual follow-up campaigns. You might have already heard of 1ShoppingCart but I’d like to suggest the alternative which we’ve been hooking up with clients for a year now: http://herenextyear.com/1shoppingcart-alternative.php
I would agree that wordpress is best for SEO especially for beginners. You don’t need to be a programmer or web designer to be able to optimize your website well.
really help,
i think WP has more best technology that is needed now
Very interesting post. My site is a WordPress site and it is nice to not have to call someone when I want to post something or just change a sentence.
as a developer i agree thar wordpress is much more effective in all the above mentioned comments and article and because is self tested back and front from million users !
I also beleive that you can do everything with wordpress … even websites that are very complex and require lot of work.
But i have 3 questions :
a) why big Companies use normal html/php websites ?
b) Why your client is not happy when he finds out that his website is made in wordpress ?
c) what do you thing is the best way to explain to your clients using wordpress is the best solution ?
other companies when they watch your sourse code thing that you are not a serious company
a) Job security for the developers – As you are in the same group, you know how much you hate to jump into other developers’ work and would rather code from scratch. Big companies have developers on staff and most corporate coders I know stick to their legacy beliefs that they are less limited and more valuable if they code their own sites in php. This is actually more true I believe when you see custom .asp sites.
b) Your clients that are not happy when they discover their site is in WordPress is because they are not up-to-date on current functionality and still think of WordPress as “blog-only software.” Your job is to get them EXCITED that they have additional cylinders under the hood that they didn’t even know existed! Point them to 5,000 page websites and other big company websites that are in WordPress. Best of all, show them their competitors that have WordPress websites! Pump ‘em up!
c) The “not-a-serious-company” perception is changing among top IT guys how they are looking at WordPress these days. I would rather have produced such an amazing leads-generating machine of a website in WordPress so that your CLIENT is overwhelmed by its success than to give up that potential just to make code monkeys happy by producing a less powerful website with custom-written html….or worse yet, Flash. The best way to “sell” WordPress to ANY client is to hammer ‘em with my list of benefits as written above. But the most convincing line you can say is “Go with WordPress because there’s something Google just loves about WordPress. Your increased traffic will be all the convincing you’ll need.”
Good luck and hope all that helps.
Marty Dickinson
Hi,
Thanks for the article. We are just doing a comparative study for our new website and I wondered whether WordPress websites look different depending on the browser. Our current website looks different in IE as compared to Firefox.
Hello Jessica and a great question in deed! A different CSS file will need to be created for each browser type and possibly each browser version depending on the complexity of your design and layout. Many WordPress installers overlook what’s called “cross-browser” compatibility by making the site look right for whatever browser they use. For some reason, this is most especially true when the developer uses FireFox as his primary browser. I even had one guy tell me one time, “I’m only making this for FireFox because if someone isn’t using FireFox, they SHOULD be!” I would suggest building compatibility at minimum for IE 7x to current, FireFox, and Chrome.
Hi Marty, I’m so glad I found your list of reasons to use WordPress as I’m due to talk to a group of start-up business ladies next week, and I need the answer to why WordPress!
My question is are you referring to WordPress.org or WordPress.com ? i.e. self-hosted and more costly, or WordPress hosted and much cheaper?
Many thanks,
Rachael
Many of these benefits will be included with WordPress whether you use a self-hosted platform or WordPress.com. But, if you go the WordPress.com route just to save a buck, be ready to find several restrictions that WordPress.com does not allow you to do (Good topic for another blog post). I’m all for having a second site (or 3rd, 4th, 5th) and I fully endorse hosting those secondary sites at WordPress.com that are meant to drive traffic to your Core site. But, your main site, what I call your “Core” business website, should always be hosted with a true website hosting company where you will have full control and ownership of the content, files, images, and everything about the site. You do not truly “own” a website that is on WordPress.com and they can shut your site down without warning. You must get the WordPress software from WordPress.ORG, download it to your computer, then upload it to your hosting account. So, when I bring up the 35+ benefits of WordPress, I’m definitely presenting those as a whole from the standpoint of using a self-hosted installation of WordPress on your own hosting account separate from WordPress.com.
I’ll add a caveat in there too that WordPress.com is a terrific place to host a non-profit website. If you’re part of a Toastmasters club, for example, WordPress.com is a GREAT place to host your WordPress website. Once you start making money with your website as a for-profit, that’s where the restrictions start making themselves known.
I am one of those “skeptics” on the whole wordpress is better train. Yes I lump it in as blog software but I am willing to change that view to some extent. Some of your points above are valid and make very good sense but alot of the points above are “marketing” strategies more than anything.
But that’s neither here nor there… my real concern is that I see this approach as just another avenue of churning out invalid code and code that fails miserably when it comes to WCAG. Just like Frontpage did and MS Word “Save as HTML” did, many many MANY pages are being produced that have bloated and invalid code and no attention to Accessibility and the WCAG guidelines.
Even this page fails both of those sets of guidelines.
Every example site I look at fails these basic “requirements” to good web site coding.
Massive customization aside – which takes knowledge and experience, how can anyone in the web developer field endorse this approach without worrying about the potentially serious consequences – especially when it comes to accessibility (Section 508 and WCAG) – not to be confused with availability.
I know how to fix the issues in my own code, but many don’t, so default code generated by wordpress should be compliant and should in some manner prevent errors. I know this is not your problem, but that of the developers of wordpress.
This is absolutely false. All these can accomplished without wordpress you just need a developer that actually knows his job not jost how to install a blog, the only good about wordpress that it is free, besides that it has security issues and slow, and absolutely needless for smaller websites. I happened to be living from breaking apart wordpress websites, and recreating them to seo frienly XHTML CSS websites for companies who has been struggleing with wordpress, bacause someone thinks web developement is all about downloading a template and installing a free cms like wordpress. If you are a student or playing with a website yes it is for you. If you want something serious or have business plans, hiring someone who only knows wordpress not actuall coding is your first step to loose money.
Free, security, slow, needless, downloading a template, just for students, lose money…These are all arguments I’ve heard a thousand times about the INvalidity and desired death of WordPress. Readers, pay attention, because this ongoing debate is what you might be faced with as opposition. I’m really not disputing these claims either. John is exactly right. A WordPress website poorly assembled will make all of these nightmares come true. Trying to shoe-string budget your website by hiring inexperienced help, attempting to get everything for free, cutting corners with bottom of the barrel website hosting will bring nothing but problems your way. Done properly, WordPress can reverse all of these claims as well…including fast Return on Investment, Ft. Knox security, fast, essential, custom branded and unique, makes even more sense for established companies than for hobby sites, MAKE money…and a whole lot more. All depends on who’s doing the work I suppose.