7 Big Reasons To Create Your Small Business Website With WordPress

Which of these choices would you prefer?

A website that involves custom programming costing $3000 or more, requires a knowledge of complex programming languages in order to make even simple changes to the content, and requires a complete redesign (again costing thousands of dollars) if you decide the look is outdated?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?

No brainer, right?

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

WordPress, while originally 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 benefits to using WordPress for a small business website:

1. It costs nothing! Not one penny! WordPress is available for download at WordPress.org at no cost - you won't even have to give up your email address. To host a WordPress site yourself, however, you will need to find a hosting company. That's generally not free. But it's not expensive either. For just $5 - $10 a month you can host your WordPress site at any number of quality web host providers. Many of them include Fantastico with your hosting plan which is software that lets you install WordPress in just a few clicks without even having to download the software.

2. Ease of Use. Besides being easy to install, WordPress is very easy to use. Sure, if you're technically challenged, there will be a learning curve in using WordPress. But there are plenty of tutorials around on the web to help you. And once you get the hang of things it's quite easy to add or update content - it's basically like using a word processing program like Microsoft Word. You don't need to have a programming bone in your body to successfully maintain a WordPress site.

3. Themes. Think of a theme as a template. It will change the look and feel of your WordPress site. It can also change the behind-the-scenes workings of your site to provide additional functionality. You can choose from thousands of different themes - some are free, some you have to pay for. And if you can't find one that quite suits your requirements, you can hire a designer to create a custom theme for your WordPress site.

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. Plugins are software the extend the capabilities of WordPress to do pretty much anything you want. Using plugins, you can track site visits, add social bookmarking to your site, automate backups of your site, fight spam, create contact forms, improve site security and a lot more. And, with few exceptions, the plugins are absolutely free.

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If you want to get some major SEO-love from Google and the other search engines, WordPress is for you. The search engines simply love WordPress. If you add on a few of the available WordPress SEO plugins, then you'll really be cooking!

6. Technical Support. WordPress does not offer tech support for you to email or call with your questions. However, have no fear, there are still a ton of options for you if you have an issue you need addressed. You can turn to the forum on WordPress.org, which is a very active community of WordPress users who are always willing to help those having problems with the software. In addition, there are a bunch of other websites, message boards and blogs that you can turn to for advice. There are also plenty of WordPress experts for hire to assist you. Whatever issue you may encounter, help is always close at hand.

7. Control. Hosting your own WordPress website puts you in control of your web presence. Need to update your content, add new posts or pages? You can easily do it yourself. Want to update the appearance of your site? Find a new Theme, upload it, activate it and you're done. Don't like the hosting company you're using? Find another and move your site - there are plenty of good hosting companies around.

There you have seven reasons to strongly consider WordPress to power your small business' website. To be certain, there are definitely situations where having a custom programmed website created by a reputable, qualified professional is the way to go.

But for the majority of small business owners that I come across, a basic, professional looking site, maybe with a blog, maybe not will do the trick. If that's you, I'd check out WordPress. With it's combination of flexibility, functionality and cost, it's tough to match.