Ward Goodman & WordPress - A Winning Combination?

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Small businesses should have as much right as larger companies to compete and win business on the internet. However, more often than not we are working with business owners who are hampered by the costs and technical knowledge associated with creating and maintaining effective websites.

Thankfully, there is now an application called WordPress which is helping businesses overcome some of these difficulties.

What is WordPress?

In our experience we have found that WordPress is an excellent piece of open source free to use blog publishing software that can be easily modified to power traditional (static) websites. Principal benefits of WordPress include:

• Simple but effective administration system that provide users with a full content management system. For example, users can create, edit and delete new webpages and articles
• Search engine friendly features that allow user to create unique meta data (keywords, descriptions, page titles etc) for each individual webpage or blog posts
• Full integration of news pages, image galleries and social media tools, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube
• Ability to support e-commerce and email marketing programs

Why are business owners choosing it?

According to WordPress.com they grew by over 6 million new blogs in 2010 which highlights its increasing popularity within the blogging and business community. A number of businesses have already embraced WordPress as a credible platform to build their company’s website. Large brands like PlayStation, Yahoo, Samsung and Blackberry are all using WordPress to create and manage their company’s blog.

We believe the main benefits of using the WordPress application are that it empowers businesses and cuts costs. Users are able to update content on a regular basis without the need to know HTML coding or to pay webmasters every time they need to update their content. With its one-click installation and support from thousands of WordPress developers, setting up a WordPress based website is easy and if you encounter any problems support is only ever a few clicks away.

We particularly like WordPress’ ability to support numerous free applications and the simple tools it provide for search engine optimisation. Free extensions and applications created by WordPress developers such as WordTwit an integrated Twitter platform, Zopim Live chat and WP osCommerce for online retail, have been created to allow users to build professional, user-friendly websites. WordPress’ SEO tools endorsed by Google themselves, ‘WordPress is made to do SEO well,’ allow users to create search engine friendly content with ease.

What are some of the results Ward Goodman Marketing have had?

The Ward Goodman Marketing team have created and continue to manage a number of websites using the WordPress platform, including the company’s own website. Since embracing the technology, Ward Goodman’s Marketing Team has experienced a number of successful results for themselves and their clients.
Examples include:

• An average growth across all managed websites of at least 30% in website visitors.
• 60% Increase in online enquires for Commercial Recycling Ltd.
• A cost saving of £1080 per year for Ward Goodman by managing the website internally using WordPress.
• 78% increase in news articles and blog posts on www.wardgoodman.co.uk.
• 35% increase in email update followers

If you feel your business could benefit from a WordPress based website or any of the online services offered by Ward Goodman Marketing, please contact Carl Wilson on 01202 875900.

To find out more about any of these stories or Ward Goodman please contact 01202 875900