Create a business-generating website in just moments. We'll show you how, step-by-step.
This is a question that we get asked from time to time. “Which one should I have — a website or a blog?”
Blogs are easy to create once and then can be left alone. They are static and they help to inform customers consistently. Blogs are dynamic, changing over time.
Static content can be indexed but Google favors constantly changing dynamic content. On the other hand, dynamic content can be time consuming.
With Wordpress, you don’t have to decide. You can have both. Every easily. Not sure where to start? Here’s what we would advise:
If you run a service-selling business, start with a blog to generate some search engine optimization and then slow add in other website-style pages (such as “About”, “Services”, “Contact”, etc.)
If you run a product-selling business, start with a website with an initial, compelling landing page and individual pages for each product. Later, add a blog to talk more about your products and how your customers are using them.
(This advice might not work for every business in every situation, but we find it to to be a good rule of thumb if you’re not sure and need to do something… and there are companies that break this “rule” and do very well). Eventually, a combination of a blog and a website is ideal. The website helps to sell products and the blog helps to engage customers and offers more SEO benefits.
The most important thing? Don’t let not knowing hold you back. The unknown can cause inaction and inaction is the biggest disruptor to business success. It’s better to start your business’ site and go back to make adjustments than to wait until you’ve got the “perfect” plan.
This is my story: When I started my freelance writing/consulting business years ago, I started with a fairly traditional html-based website. Over time, the site became bloated and unwieldy and I sometimes had a hard time making sure links were live and went to the right place. (This was before any really good content management systems were invented; heck, I was hand-coding my site in Notepad!)
Then Blogger came onto the scene and I bought into blogging big time. I loved the idea of posting regularly. It was a great way for me to build my online presence but it also looked good and the links were fairly easy to manage. On the other hand, I gave up the ability to create website-style content (which was appropriate for selling ebooks and such). Still, I stuck with Blogger for a while. Then my site stopped being indexed. I’m not sure why, and with all due respect to the good folks at Blogger, I think it was because they changed a template and it just fell apart. I ran some diagnostics and got back HUNDREDS of errors. Yikes! A few attempts at making hand-coding repairs failed miserably. I loved a blog but couldn’t have a site that didn’t index!
Then I switched to a hosted solution — and back to static html. It was an admittedly temporary fix until I could figure out what to do with my blog. Once again, I found the same problems to those that I had encountered the first time: Dead links, constant updating to make changes on every page, etc. The need for a content management system — which I had temporarily forgotten while using Blogger — became a reality again.
Then I decided enough was enough. I had to fix the problem! So I listed my needs:
Once I knew my primary needs (and there were a few secondary ones, too), I went out in search of a solution. I was willing to pay and, because it was my business, I was willing to pay thousands.
However, the solution I found cost nothing. And it provided me with a solution to the needs I had outlined… plus a lot more:
I jumped on the Wordpress bandwagon and haven’t looked back!
You want an awesome website. Here’s what you need to do:
Pick a look and feel that reflects who you are and what you do. Don’t try to be something you’re not. Embrace your identity and make sure it’s reflected on your site.
Make your website work easy on yourself. Find a tool or system that works for you so you can engage your audience and spend less time on the technical side of your site. (That’s why we work with Wordpress but this is true for anyone, even if you choose another content management system).
Produce content. And then produce more content. Search engine love content. So do people. If that combination doesn’t alert you to the importance of content, I don’t know what will. Just create stuff that will engage your readers.
Stop it with the SEO “trickery”. Keyword stuffing, buying back links, it’s all nonsense. The real value of a website is in how much it sells for your business. By focusing on value first and SEO second (and avoiding SEO “tricks” altogether), you’ll decrease your overall readership but you’ll increase the value of the people who get to your site. Decreasing readership might seem counterintuitive but it is very important.
Freely add value. Add value for your audience. Freely give that value away and people will clamor to you for paid service. (Oh, and search engines love it, too).
Be consistent. If you blog. Blog regularly. If you have a page-based website, add content (or pages) frequently. Make sure all of your content reads the same and looks the same. If you refer to yourself as “I” on one page, don’t refer to yourself in the third person on another.
Don’t be afraid to link out. Some website owners don’t want to link out to other blogs because they are afraid someone will click away and not come back. Wake up call: If they click away, fine. If they don’t come back, your content wasn’t compelling enough. You are diminishing your value by not linking out. There’s a reason it’s called the “web”.
Engage your audience. Your website should engage people. It should make people want to come back again and again. It should stop people in their tracks. It should make them want to bookmark your site. Your audience should love to read what you have to say and should go back again and again to read more. They should forward it to their friends and relatives. They should talk about it on their websites. When you engage your audience, you will be rewarded.
How will this change your idea of running a website in 2010?
1. Keep costs down. The platform itself is free, available for http://wordpress.org. You’ll save money by NOT having to work with a designer to create a great looking website. The only thing you’ll need to pay for is hosting, which is usually pretty cheap. (You can set up hosting yourself through a site like GoDaddy.com or contact us for hosting packages).
2. Forget the details. WordPress is designed to give website owners easy-to-use interfaces without having to know any complex code. You can forget the details (or not even bother learning them at all) because WordPress takes care of everything.
3. Get your site up quickly. There’s a reason why we’re called “WordPress IN A SECOND.” WordPress is blazingly fast to get set up. You can start a business in an evening with WordPress!
4. Stay flexible. Smart businesses don’t put all of their eggs in one basket because they know that their business might change because of the economy, the industry, or the evolving needs of the market. WordPress allows business owners to be flexible – they can create a blog on week, they can turn it into a website the week after, they can completely change everything the week after that!
5. Scalable. You might start out as a one person operation but you probably want to grow your business. WordPress scales with you so your tiny business can be served by the same system that serves your future multinational corporation!
6. Extensible. WordPress also has a HUGE amount of easy-to-use plug-ins so that you can grow your website and your business the way you need to. Need to add a shopping cart? Need to integrate Twitter? Whatever you need, there’s probably a plug-in for it.
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