The Expand2Web Blog

“I can’t update my website!”

“I’ve got to get my webmaster to do that, but it’s going to cost me…”

“Nooooo, I just hosed my website!”

If you talk to enough small business owners, or friends that want to have a website but don’t spend evenings and weekends tinkering around on the web, you’ll hear frustrations like this a lot.

And that’s from the ones who have figured out how to get a website up and running in the first place. There are many who are still trying to figure out where to start. But wait, there is hope!

WordPress to the Rescue

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging tools available. But what many people don’t know is that it is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that can be used for more than just blogging. With WordPress you can build a blog, a website, or both. This is the first article in a series where we’ll explore why WordPress is a good choice for small business websites, and how to install, configure and use it for your small business.

Web Content Management Systems

A content management system is a tool that helps you manage the creation and updates to web pages on your web site. In 1998 I was one of the early members of a Silicon Valley start-up called Interwoven. Interwoven provided Web Content Management solutions for large enterprises like Ford Motor, FedEx, Cisco and eventually thousands of others large and small companies. I learned a lot about web content management by meeting with hundreds of companies - ranging from the Fortune 100 to smaller companies -  and digging into their web site architectures. The web was exploding at that time, and there was a tremendous demand for managing the ever expanding amount and types of content. During that period, our software sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

WordPress as a CMS

Fast forward to today, and now we have WordPress - an amazingly powerful content management system that is FREE. And it has a lot of power under the hood for a small or medium business looking for an easy way to manage their web site.

WordPress was designed as a platform for blogging, but you don’t have to use it as a blogging tool. With a few tweaks it can be used to run your website, with or without a “blog.” The fact that WordPress was designed as a blogging platform gives it some compelling advantages. It is optimized for easily publishing and changing content. And getting good search engine rankings requires fresh, unique content. You need a system that does not get in your way when you want to update your website with a new article or newsletter.

So why is WordPress a good choice?

Top Five Reasons to Use WordPress for Your Small Business Website

1. SEO - WordPress provides good search engine optimization (SEO) right out of the box. There are a few tweaks you need to make, but there are many seo benefits that WordPress provides for free. In fact Google’s own Matt Cutts says WordPress is “made to do SEO well” in this video: Matt Cutts gives tips to small business owners.
2. Content - it is easy to update content on your website without knowing HTML.  Do you hate the idea of having to learn to use a complex HTML editor tool like Dreamweaver? Do you have to “ask” your webmaster every time you want to make a small change to your website? Well no longer - once WordPress is set up for you, you can easily create new pages or edit existing pages using a simple rich text editor.
3. Extensions - There is a thriving ecosystem of developers creating themes and plug-ins - imagine free design themes, or the ability to extend your website with polls, contact forms, ratings or hundreds of other cool features without having to hire a web developer.
4. Support - If you do have problems, or want to add very custom features, it is easy to find support and developers who can help you. There are literally thousands of WordPress developers out there. And there are so many people writing about WordPress that help is only a Google search away!
5. One-click-installation - Quick installs are provided by many hosting providers, including Bluehost, 1and1 and GoDaddy.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing tips and tricks we’ve learned by using WordPress for a bunch of small business websites.

Upcoming articles in this series

Here are some of the topics we’ll cover in the coming weeks:

• The difference between Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org
• Hosting providers that make it easy to install WordPress
• How to install WordPress yourself
• Pages vs Posts in WordPress
• Top five WordPress plug-ins
• Avoiding the duplicate content problem

Do you run a chiropractic office? Take a look at our new WordPress templates for Chiropractors - build your search optimized chiropractic website in minutes!

Are you using WordPress for your Website, or stuck with something that isn’t working for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

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I just started noticing that when you view the Google Local Profile for a business, user created maps are now appearing.

User Map in Google Local Profile

If you click on this link it will take you to the user created Google Map.

User Created Google Map

This is a great reason to go and create a map in Google Maps for your business. You can add a little flair by customizing the place marker icon, adding photos and your phone number. I’m still determining if this helps your ranking in Google Local, but in general more complete profiles tend to do better.

I’d love to hear of your experiences with this - has creating a custom map in Google Maps helped you in the local search rankings?

Last month we talked about GOOG-411 service and getting your business to rank well in the local search results so you will be in the results when someone uses GOOG-411 to find local businesses.

Well, here is another reason to optimize your website for local search results - check this out - the new Google Mobile App for the iPhone allows you to search Google Local!

Google iPhone App Screenshot

As you’ve probably heard by now, the new iPhones have GPS in them, and the older iPhones can determine your location based on cell tower triangulation… [Read more →]

When I talk with small business owners who want to get their business found on the web, one of the first steps we go through is to find the search keywords with local intent that they want to show up for. What are their potential customers typing into the Google search box? Once they answer this question, we can start to optimize their site and inbound links to improve their rankings in the search results.

Google Reveals Secret Keyword Volume Data!

Google has just “cracked open the vault” and opened up an awesome way to accelerate this process - The Google Keyword Tool is now revealing their “secret” search volume number for any keyword or keyword phrase! This means you can find out how many searches occur in a given month for a keyword phrase, and related phrases!

This is HUGE!!

Say you are a plumber in Birmingham, Michigan and you are trying figure out what keywords you should optimize for. You type the phrase birmingham plumber into the keyword tool and find out that 170 people typed that phrase into Google in June. But you also learn that 1,300 people typed in plumbing birmingham. Good to know when you are deciding which keywords to optimize for. And another 390 typed in plumbers birmingham in June.

This is a trivial example but it illustrates the point - many times little changes in the keyword phrases can mean a huge difference in traffic. And now Google gives you the data to tell what people are actually searching for! You can do some amazing keyword phrase research now for free with this tool. These numbers have not been available anywhere until now!

So take your keyword phrases now and enter them into this tool. Find out what people are really searching for and improve your keyword phrases on your website. Let me know what you find!

Do you want some insight into how Yahoo Local ranks businesses when consumers search for local goods and services?

Local Search expert Matt McGee posted an excellent interview with from Brian Gil, Director of Product Management for Yahoo Local. Matt asked some great questions and Brian gave some very descriptive answers.

I highly recommend you read this interview (see link below) if you are a small business owner trying to get your site to rank well in Yahoo Local - and these principles should apply to Google Local as well.

I’ve pulled out a few quotes from Brian here to create a synopsis of some of the points that stood out for me. [Read more →]