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website design and SEO using wordpress.com

  1. clamdaddys
    Member

    background info: I am a small business owner wanting to get a website primarily to get our name, phone number and information available when people are looking for our product; (not to sell online) Of course everyone's goal is to come up at the top of a google search; someone suggested to me since I have no website design experience to use WordPress.com. I thought it was going well, but I am concerned and confused regarding SEO and static pages, categories and tags. Also, it seems to me that wordpress.org has many more helpful plugins, etc that would help with SEO much more than wordpress.com for a website. That being said, I am afraid the .org version will be to complicated for me and was not planning on self hosting. Here are my concerns/questions: from what I read, tags and categories are good to have for SEO, but I can't include them unless I have posting, which is for blogging. I do not intend to have a blogging portion/comments on my website, so does this mean I'll have a very difficult time getting traffic to my site? Should I be looking elsewhere to build a website since I am aware that wordpress.com is the place to be for blogging? What are the best ways to design a website using wordpress.com that helps with SEO? I appreciate any comments and suggestions to set me straight on the subject. My website (blog) is set to private since it's a work in progress, but if anyone would like to see it and add their critique, It would be extremely helpful and I would be very grateful to invite you to look at it. Thanks.

    The blog I need help with is clamdaddys.wordpress.com.

  2. raincoaster
    Member

    The short answer here is the best answer: As a social media professional, I can tell you that there is no combination of SEO tricks, plugins, or tools that will ever make a WordPress.org blog as good at SEO as a WordPress.com blog. There are tons of technical reasons for this, but you don't need to worry about them. Just go with WordPress.com; I speak as someone who has been known to outrank every media site on Earth including CNN.com on certain stories. WordPress.com is the best.

    The reason you hear otherwise from consultants is, they can't bill you for "design and SEO work" with a WordPress.com blog. They don't make any money from them, so they don't promote them. But I have both kinds of blogs, I don't get paid by WP, and I just know, having proved it over and over, that WP.com is better for SEO.

  3. clamdaddys
    Member

    Thank you, that helped tremendously, your answer gives me back confidence in my choice to continue with my site. Not to dwell on this, but just so I understand, are you also saying that even without postings, tags or categories, I'll be ok regarding SEO using static pages?

  4. raincoaster
    Member

    No, of course not. It'll be VASTLY inferior, practically invisible. If you want SEO, you want blog posts with appropriate tags and categories. But you have made the choice not to have blog posts at all, so it's a matter of succeeding at horseracing when you've decided to ride a donkey. Might as well pick the fastest donkey.

  5. badassbunnyjewelry
    Member

    Hey Clamdaddy - try this. It does explain everything.
    http://selfpromotion.com/

  6. clamdaddys
    Member

    Raincoaster: thanks,I like your analogy. If you have the time to comment again, I was just wondering about other websites that I see that do not contain blog posts and come up at the top?

    Badassbunnyjewerly, thanks also, great website with a lot of information that I know will be helpful. Are meta-tags built into wordpress.com themes? Since I have not upgraded, I am not able to alter the CSS. I don't mind paying for the upgrade, I'm just not sure if I should since I have read that you need some knowledge of editing the CSS, which obviously I don't have. But if its something that's worth me doing, I can try to teach myself.

  7. clamdaddys
    Member

    Raincoaster: thanks,I like your analogy. If you have the time to comment again, I was just wondering about other websites that I see that do not contain blog posts and come up at the top?

    Badassbunnyjewerly, thanks also, great website with a lot of information that I know will be helpful. Are meta-tags built into wordpress.com themes? Since I have not upgraded, I am not able to alter the CSS. I don't mind paying for the upgrade, I'm just not sure if I should since I have read that you need some knowledge of editing the CSS, which obviously I don't have. But if its something that's worth me doing, I can try to teach myself.

  8. raincoaster
    Member

    What websites?

    That site the other poster gave you is useless if it includes advice about Meta-tags. Google said a YEAR ago that they are no longer relevant.

    The CSS upgrade does not allow you to do base-level theme hacking. It's only appearance changing, you can't add functional invisible code to your blog with it.

  9. clamdaddys
    Member

    I didnt realize that about the upgrade. thanks.

  10. clamdaddys
    Member

    ok, had some time to think..one last thought for now, I'm ready to move on one way or another and never thought putting a website together would be so involved; at this point I have really learned a lot so far and have much more to learn, I do have pages, info, images, menu, widgets, I think I'm heading in the right direction..hopefully it will all work and flows correctly and I didn't mess something up; part of me wants to go forward; but would I be better off purchasing software like visual designer (coffee cup) that looks like it would be easier? or should I stay put?

  11. raincoaster
    Member

    Purchase software if you want, but you will be unable to use it with a WordPress.com blog.

    My advice is just to start blogging. People are terrified of making a mistake, but there are very few mistakes as damaging as not getting started in the first place. The web is a surprisingly flexible place and change is the norm here.

  12. clamdaddys
    Member

    thanks. I am taking our advice and going ahead, would like to know if you would take a look at my blog and tell me what you think. I was thinking that I could add a comment/discussion section to my recipe page-would this be helpful?

  13. auxclass
    Member

    Tough to look at a Private blog

  14. clamdaddys
    Member

    try now auxclass if you want; its still a work in progress, images will be added and changed, dont know if you read the above, but its a site primarily to get our name and number out there. thanks.

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