Don’t sell your website short

Hold on to your domain and hosting hat

You know that you need a website for your business, but make sure that you don’t sell your website short. Stay away from VistaPrint, Wix, Weebly, Square Space and other drag and drop website builders or subscription services. They may be easy, but they don’t work well for SEO, unless you pay more and even then they aren’t great.  In addition, if you ever want to move your site for any reason you are not able to take it with you as it’s a proprietary designer.  Even if you choose to rebuild your website elsewhere, some may even charge you an additional fee (i.e. like ransom) just to take your domain name elsewhere, if they let you keep YOUR domain name at all. Even companies that claim to design and build a site and host it for you should be avoided. Any company that holds your website hostage is bad news. You should always own your domain name and hosting plan.  You wouldn’t let someone else own your business name or bank account, don’t let them own your domain name or hosting.

Content Management Systems make it easy

There are many Content Management Systems besides WordPress, like Drupal or Joomla. Each has their pros and cons. WordPress makes it easy to setup and maintain your website and remain in control. You can always move your website to another host or a different web design company. WordPress is Open Source, so that means it’s not proprietary and therefore you are free  to go anywhere with your site as well as have an amazing selection of developers that offer plugins (both free and paid) to add additional functionality. There are plenty of professionals out there to assist you if you need it.  However, you shouldn’t have to be tied down to them. There is also a lot of free information to help you learn WordPress if you have the inclination and time. If you’re not tech savvy, you can still have someone help design and setup the site for you and then you can maintain the content yourself. If you’re on a really tight budget, you can even just use a basic theme straight out of the box and get started right away. Updating your content on WordPress is as easy as typing an email with their visual editor. And WordPress works well with SEO. Need to add functionality?  It’s a simple as clicking to install a plugin. Even if you want someone to manage everything for you, make sure you keep ownership of your domain and hosting so that you can move it if you decide to. Click to learn more about WordPress and what it can offer you as an option for an affordable website solution.