Small companies are increasingly seeing the competitive advantages that come with blogging. According to aggregated data from a ContentPlus infographic, blogs on company websites result in 55 percent more visitors, companies with blogs receive 97 percent more inbound links than others, and blogs are 63 percent more likely to influence purchase decisions than magazines.
Because of this, WordPress – a personal publishing platform – has experienced an astronomical influx in adoption rates. According to WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg’s annual “State of the Word” presentation, the platform received 46 million downloads over the last 12 months – an incredible 126,000 downloads per day. WordPress enables small businesses to easily create and share content that is Google-, mobile- and media-friendly, a significant help for those who need to blog to stay competitive.
As small businesses sharpen their WordPress strategy, though, they should evaluate their WordPress hosting environment. As WordPress explains on its website, there are currently hundreds of thousands of web hosts out there. For the small business, the perfect hosting option will be hassle-free, hacker-proof and offer exemplary customer support.
Is it Time to Move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org?
WordPress.com is the publically hosted version of WordPress’ blogging platform, which is hosted by WordPress itself. Meanwhile, WordPress.org requires users to register their own domain name and to find their own web hosting firm, who will install the program. As small businesses begin to use WordPress more and more, they must assess if it’s time to move from a shared hosting option to a dedicated server or cloud for their WordPress site.
Because a shared hosting environment does not afford full access to the full landscape of WordPress features, a dedicated, cloud-based server boasts an extra incentive. Dedicated server options are flexibly priced and can help lift your small business’ WordPress initiative to previously unattainable heights.
But how do you know if your business should move its WordPress hosting to a dedicated server? Here are a few tell-tale signs:
Frequent Outages or Performance Glitches: An outage usually occurs when a company’s shared server, virtual private server (VPS) or database gets overloaded. Performance glitches can also be a result of this, causing one’s website to nearly stop to a crawl. Research shows that American consumers don’t have time to wait for companies’ slow servers. In fact, one in four people abandon a webpage that takes more than four seconds to load, according to data from a recent infographic. Keep this in mind when measuring the performance of your existing server.
Influx in Traffic: A shared hosting platform can only handle so much traffic. Once your blog starts experiencing traffic spikes, you’ll need to support that growth with a server dedicated specifically to your company. WordPress acknowledges this on its own website, explaining that such things as processor and network limitations can prevent sites from functioning under a high volume of traffic. Click here to check out some of the company’s default requirements as well as network transfer speed examples. Individual sites may require additional resources.
Need for Customization: A common reason companies move to a dedicated server is for customization purposes. There are plenty of perks to going dedicated for meeting unique WordPress needs. For example, shared web hosting plans do boast a defined list of software; however, users need to wait for the web host to add an updated version as the change impacts every website on the server – not just yours. This can cause downtime and latency which customers don’t have time for. A dedicated server enables users to customize their sites on their own time to meet their specific needs.
Company blogs secure customer loyalty, boost brand awareness and—seeing how the average person digests at least 10 pieces of online information before making a purchasing decision—can make a lasting impact on revenue. It’s time you support your blog with the right hosting platform.