Can small businesses use WordPress.com to build their website?

People ask me this question all the time: ‘Can I use the free version of WordPress.com to build a small business website?’ The simple answer is ‘Yes, you can’. WordPress.com is easy to set up (as part of the Starter training course it takes about 10 minutes) and offers over 340 themes (layouts) for your site, many of which are free. There are some premium themes for which you pay a one off fee, however have a look at the free themes first, as you could well find something suitable there.

What type of business is WordPress.com suitable for?

If you are in need of a website to offer a service to people, such as:

  • Electricians
  • Mechanics
  • Hair dresser or beauty salons
  • Chemist or pharmacies
  • Nutritionists, businesses about health, lifestyle and wellness
  • Walking tours
  • Heritage sites and visiting centres
  • Crèche, childcare facility or schools
  • Pet grooming facilities
  • Any type of training or training centres
  • Lawyers
  • Gardening experts
  • Or any type of event (there are a couple of themes available by Eventbrite)

To just mention a few, I think you get the idea 😉

Or if you are in need of a portfolio as an:

  • Artist
  • Writer
  • Teacher
  • Photographer

Pretty much any business who ‘just’ needs a website to offer their services, to be found on the web and to be able to blog about their experience and advice. You can set up your entire site (including a blog) in a few hours and then update its content in your own time.

What about my domain name, I don’t want a site with the name ‘mywebsite.wordpress.com?

That’s no problem either, once you are happy with what WordPress.com can offer you, you can upgrade your site to Yourdomain.com for $26 a year. You don’t have to purchase your domain beforehand, you can register it (assumed it’s available) with WordPress directly and it can be done in 10 minutes! If you have purchased a domain already, you can still transfer it over to your WordPress.com site, it’s a tiny bit more complicated but I’ll explain how to do it in our WordPress Advanced Course or I can send you instructions via email.

And if you do decide you would like to move to a self-hosted WordPress.org site one day (I explain the difference in detail in the Starter Course), that’s no problem either, you can move your entire content pretty much with a click of a button.

The advantage of using WordPress.com for your site would be that you don’t have to worry about any technical stuff such as backups, security and software updates – all this will be taken care of by Automattic itself – the guys behind WordPress. You can concentrate on your business, build your site and add content by blogging.

What about SEO, will my WordPress.com site be found in google?

It’s actually quite simple, the most important factor to ensure you get indexed in Google is your content! If you have good, interesting content on your website Google will index you. However the platform you use is of course very important too – let’s have a look what head of Google’s web spam team Matt Cutts says about WordPress.

So there you go, as Google Engineer Matt Cutts says, “WordPress automatically solves a ton of SEO issues.” So a good starting point.

Well, I hope this helps you a little with deciding whether WordPress.com is the right tool to build your website, however if you have any questions please feel free to contact me or leave a comment.

 

 

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