Advice with wordpress

kronos

Dormant account
webmeister
Joined
Aug 3, 2011
Location
UK
Iam looking to start my own site but have no technical experience.Iam being offered advice to use Wordpress but this appears to be blog building and not web site building.Does a blog as opposed to a site have a diverse effect on seo?Also, Wordpress.org looks fiendishly difficult to install.Does the easier option of wordpress.com ultimately have a diverse effect effect on seo and the quality of the site?

Advice would be very much appreciated.
 
Wordpress started life as blogging software but it's moved on and is now widely used as a CMS system for standard websites. A trained eye can still spot a site that uses Wordpress but that's of little consequence. There are upsides and downsides to using it and although I no longer use it much myself, that's only because technically I can do what I need by hand. Otherwise overall I think it's a great starting point.

PROS
  • Easy to use and much less techie than CMS systems like Drupal
  • Very versatile in terms of getting templates to make design easier
  • Lots of very good free plugins to do interesting stuff available (SEO ones are worth a look especially)
  • So popular there's generally an answer for any problem you come across (or help you need) already out there somewhere
  • Google likes it from an SEO perspective as long as you use a decent SEO plugin and keep the site content fresh
  • Install is a breeze as long as you have a host that supports the database aspect of course. But you need that for any off-the-shelf package.

CONS
  • If you want to get really techie on stuff like implementing databases and things WP is restrictive
  • WP (and any off-the-shelf package) is a more obvious target for hackers
  • If you don't keep the site fresh, it drops faster in Google
  • Google could decide it doesn't like Wordpress so much at some point.
  • Bit of a PITA having to constantly update versions and finding some plugins then don't work

Overall I would recommend it for someone starting out on a limited budget for sure. The easiest to use of all similar softwares I've come across.

Cheers,

Simmo!
 
Thanks Simmo,

Is it critical that the wordpress.org version is used instead of the free and easier .com version?

How critical is the ability to use plugins with regards to promoting an affiliate site?
 
It's been a while since I used it so I am not sure of the difference on the first question I'm afraid. The plugins help but to be honest if the content is quality the plugins are secondary. In fact, the recent changes to Google and the fact that filenames are no longer important for ranking mean that the hierarchy of the site is more important and Wordpress handles that itself.

SEO is mostly just common sense and logic (mostly!). If in doubt about anything, choose the route that is best for the user or usability. Don't ever prioritise for Google - prioritise for the visitor. Changing stuff for Google might sometimes have a few short term benefits but rarely any long terms one and in fact, they are more likely to come back and bite you.

Away from search engines, don't use plugins for promoting the site. DIY :)
 

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