Why you should use WordPress and the right host for your blog: Blogging with WordPress #1

Summary: When it comes to blogging and creating your own online business the best platform by far is Wordpress. In today's post we are going to be talking about why you should choose Wordpress and why it's important to also choose the right host. There are several reasons why I recommend Wordpress over all other platforms. Customization and Plugins Wordpress allows the best customization of any other platform. Because of the overwhelming amount of people and developers using Wordpress there are endless amounts of plugins, themes and tools that you can use and install to make your site look and do just about anything you can dream up. For example if you want to be able to host a podcast on your site, there is a plugin for that. If you want to add an email opt in box to your site, there is a plugin for that. If you want have a poll on your sidebar, there is a plugin for that, if you want a banner slider on your site to show off all your newest post or products, there is a plugin for that. Not only is there an endless amount of plugins but there is also an endless amount of themes! Maybe your site is about weddings and wedding planning. Then you will have no trouble finding a theme that matches that particular niche. Same goes for a tech site or just about any niche that you can dream up. Wordpress also gives you the ability to go into the back in and edit the code to make the site look exactly how you would prefer but don't worry you don't have to know anything about html to create a great looking site because of all the great plugins and themes that are available to you. Most of the time you can find these plugins and themes for free as well! There is no doubt in my mind that Wordpress is by far the best option for creating your blog or your business website.   SEO Friendly Another very important reason to choose Wordpress is because it's so SEO friendly. Especially when you add one the many SEO plugins that tells Google exactly what keywords your are trying to win. When I first started out on line I actually used iWeb to create my blog. The reason I did this is because iWeb is so easy to use but I quickly found its limitations. One of it's greatest limitations was SEO. After posting about 15 articles and seeing that there was absolutely no search engine traffic, I then knew that something was wrong. The problem was that there were no good SEO tools for iWeb. After moving that blog over to Wordpress and adding my tags, categories and installing and SEO tool I nearly imminently starting see results! Wordpress makes it very easy and simple to let the search engines know exactly what keywords your trying for.   Hosting Now for you to enjoy the power of Wordpess you have to self host your Wordpress blog. Now I know that can sound very scary but I assure you that I am going to give you some cheap and easy recommendations for doing this and I am even including a video that walks you through exactly how to make this happen. Althought I love Wordpress I do NOT recommend that you start a blog at Wordpress.com and use there platform. You need to install Wordpress on your own host.  The reason for this is simply. When you host it yourself you have complete control and power over your site. If you have a blog hosted at Wordpress.com that really limits your abilities and especially your ability to monetize  For example you cant add Google adds or Amazon affiliate products to your site. This can really limit your ability to make money from your blog. You need to host it on your own host. Now I use Amazon cloud to host my site. Amazon has a great hosting service with great load times and it's affordable. The downside to Amazon is you need to know how to completely manage your host and your server. I don't know how to do that by the way. I have  a professional manage that for me, there for I don't recommend you do that to get started unless you are host and sever guru.