I remember when I was first getting into internet business. I wanted to make money! But first I knew I needed to make a business. And to make a business, I’d need a website. Fortunately for me, there was WordPress, and it’s done for me what it can do for anyone – provide the ability to make top-quality websites without being a tech geek.
In today’s article, we’re going to be addressing five distinct reasons that make WordPress—hands down—the best option for people getting into the world of online business.
It’s important to say that WordPress isn’t just used by “beginners.” No, it’s used by everyone – from everyday Joe to Fortune 500 companies. Really.
A Level Playing Field
The greatest benefit to WordPress is its simplicity. Before WordPress, if you wanted a professional website, you had to pay for it – big time. And let’s face it, people who want to start a business rarely have the kind of capital needed for a custom-built, top-level website.
WordPress came along and leveled the playing field. Now if you have an idea, even if you have NO CLUE on how to program or work with HTML or CSS, you can still put up a website. Sure, it might not be 100% customized for your business, but it’ll look nice and function exactly how you want it to. And what more can you ask?
The internet has been incredible at destroying “gatekeepers.” These are organizations and industries that make money off of giving people “permission” to succeed in their industry. One such example of this is the music industry, where you’ve needed a record deal to make it to the big leagues.
And what the internet did for the everyday person, WordPress is doing for the internet. No longer are top-tier business and personal websites reserved for those with five figures to blow on a website.
Anyone can have a gorgeous modern and top-performing website. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it does get your foot in the door.
Not “Just a Blog Platform”
It’s almost mind-boggling that some people still feel WordPress is just a blog platform. That may have been true five years ago. But today, WordPress is a completely different beast.
The genius is found in the way WordPress works. Of course, there’s lots of complicated code going on in the backend, but on the front, you have themes and plugins. Themes control how your website looks, plugins control how your website functions.
And anyone can make a theme or a plugin. This is why WordPress is so incredible – over time, with more and more people using it for their websites, plugins have been developed that will do just about anything. Seriously.
The amount of sites you can now make with a “simple” WordPress website are virtually limitless:
- Membership Sites
- E-commerce Sites
- Social Networks
- Portfolios
- Squeeze Pages and Sales Pages
And these are just a few examples of the possibilities. If it can be done on the web, it can be done with WordPress.
Now, that isn’t to say WordPress will always beat out a custom site job. If you need a massive web app, you’d probably want a custom job. But not because WordPress couldn’t do it. Technically, WordPress can do anything.
But for some jobs, it’s more efficient to get a custom site than build your site on to WordPress.
If you’re just getting into the game though, realize that 90% of websites can be done more efficiently on WordPress.
And, of course, not only can you get themes and plugins, you can also customize those themes and plugins further if you have HTML, CSS, and PHP knowledge. No, this definitely isn’t a must to work with WordPress.
But if you are a designer or programmer, you’ll find the number of sites you can make with WordPress explode exponentially when you know what you’re doing behind the scenes. Essentially, you can install plugins and themes which you can then tweak to drastically increase their functionality. By doing this, you can make an incredible and feature-intensive website incredibly quickly.
Built with SEO in Mind
Of course, we couldn’t fail to mention SEO. This is a HUGE reason why you should use Wordpress.
For most SEO’s, getting a website ranking is about off-page optimization. This includes backlink building and getting more social shares. But too often, we SEO’s forget about how much we can do on-page.
Just for starters:
• Site architecture
• www vs non-www duplicate content issues
• rel=author and rel=canonical
• image optimization
• caching
• CSS sprites
It goes on, and on, and on. If you have a custom site, you need to build it from scratch with all of this in mind. And boy can that be a headache. In most cases, developers skimp out on the on-page optimization.
This makes ranking for your main keywords much more difficult. Especially when you consider “New SEO.” We’ve talked about this before (a lot), but traditional SEO methods are going down the toilet.
No longer can you compensate for bad on-page optimization by building more backlinks. As the Penguin Update showed us, building backlinks is a sure-fire way to get your website penalized. So the key is to optimize your site to the best of your abilities on-page, then let your content get links and social shares.
It’s not that cut-and-dry, but we have hundreds of articles on this site that talk about it more in detail.
Where am I getting with all of this? Well, Wordpress takes care of the vast majority of on-page optimization for you. And what it doesn’t take care of, guess what? There’s a plugin for that!
Simply having a Wordpress website puts you above competitors who don’t have one. Why? They usually skip out on the most difficult and complicated aspects to on-page SEO. Using Wordpress, you don’t even have to worry about these aspects.
I’ve had WordPress sites rank on page #1 for competitive keywords with no backlinks whatsoever. This happens consistently.
It doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to rank on page #1 with just a Wordpress website. But it does mean you’re giving yourself the best chance right out of the gate to rank above less prepared competitors.
Fantastic Community
Wordpress is massive. We put out a stat at the top of this article, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are BILLIONS of Wordpress page views every single month. BILLIONS.
Since so many people are using Wordpress, the community already contains answers to almost every single question you’ll have. Sure, you may have an issue with a plugin or theme that hasn’t been asked before (it does happen very rarely). In that case, a simple visit to the Wordpress.org support forums will usually sort you out very quickly.
We will admit, sometimes outdated or obscure plugins and themes don’t have the best support. But really, that’s due to the plugin creators – not Wordpress.
And even then, the issue is likely code-related, so you can post any errors or bugs to the main coding section of the Wordpress support forums and still get an answer.
Using Wordpress, you can literally do everything yourself. If there’s ever an issue, you have a community of MILLIONS backing you up. Millions of people are having questions every day, and the vast majority of them are getting answers. So when you have a question, chances are it’s already been asked AND answered!
Oh yeah… it’s free
Before we forget, Wordpress is incredibly affordable. And by affordable, we mean free. There are thousands of free Wordpress themes and plugins. It’s very easy to get an incredible website up and running for $0.
Now, that being said, if you stick to free themes and plugins exclusively, you may not reach the absolute top-level of web design. But you’ll get awful close. And with more and more free themes coming out every day, you can almost always find one that will get you close to what you’re looking for.
But if you really want to explode your Wordpress experience, we recommend messing around with some premium options. You can get Wordpress themes that are infinitely customizable for $50 max.
With this $50, you’re getting the same look and functionality of a site that would cost $10,000+ just a few years ago. It’s absolutely insane, and to be frank, we’re shocked some web development companies are still charging five figures for sites that look much worse than sites built on Wordpress.
There are also premium plugins, which for under $100, you can create massive membership sites and e-commerce stores. Really, the door is wide open with Wordpress. Anything is possible. And AT MOST, you’ll end up spending $150 for a Wordpress site that can do just about anything you could ever hope for.
Closing Thoughts
Wordpress has really kicked down the barrier of entry into the world of online business. We really can’t recommend it enough.
If you’re just getting into online business and don’t want to spend five figures on a website, look to Wordpress. Not only will you get a top-quality website, you’ll also get some great experience setting it up and working on the web.
Trust us – it’s easy!
Thank you for reading. Continue your journey of learning through our site SEOSiteCheckUp.com. Don’t forget to take advantage of our free SEO tools!
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