Ten Reasons to not use Wordpress.com for a Dealer Blog
Wordpress.org as a blogging platform is awesome. This blog uses it as well as most of the blogs you see in the blogosphere. Wordpress.com is good for joining a blogging community to publish your thoughts and to share ideas with others, but it is not suitable for a car dealership blog.
The top 10 reasons to avoid wordpress.com for a dealership blog
- Lack of flexibility - You cannot use plugins that help your blog become truly SEO friendly. No custom title tags or Google sitemaps.
- Siphoning traffic is against their TOS - If your blog at wordpress.com is only designed to send traffic to your website and not to provide real information to the visitor it will get DELETED.
- Unprofessional - A blog hosted on a free hosting site says to your visitors that you are not serious enough about what you are doing to be a person they should trust to spend money with.
- No real customizations - You can add a few custom headers to blogs at wordpress.com but you cannot use a completely customized wordpress theme there.
- No custom html or .js - You can only use their stats and cannot add form tables or other useful html.
- “Hey go see my blog at www.imanidiotdealer.wordpress.com” - Get your own domain.
- Advertising - Wordpress.com displays ads on your blog to certian types of visitors. You may never see them, they code it that way, but your vistors may.
- Space - The limits at wordpress.com are generous on their free blogs but if you need more space you gotta pay for it. Which you should be doing anyway.
- You are placing your content in someone other peoples hands. You are already doing it with your dealership website, you should own something that belongs to you in your virtual space.
- By the time you pay to remove adds, add a domain and the extra space you are still subject to their TOS and you can do it yourself and have complete control of your content.
Bonus - Wordpress.com does not index your individual post just your home page all keyword indexing is via tag clouds which can be shared by your competiton.
Domain at godaddy - $7.55 a year for .com
Your own hosting account $4.95 a month
Owning your content and not having to appease others: Priceless
If you need help setting up a blog using the software from wordpress.org subscribe to my feed or email subscribe as I am preparing some tutorials to help you learn to set up Car Dealer Blogs.
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12 Comments
Ryan G on October 30th, 2008
Paul,
This post is a bit misleading. I hope you publish my comments.
People not familiar with the difference betwee Wordpress.com and Wordpress as a user platform are going to be misled by this.
You need to clarify the difference in what you are suggesting here.
-Ryan
Paul Rushing on October 30th, 2008
@ Ryan - Wordpress.org refers to the software. Wordpress.com refers to the free hosting service that uses an adaptation of the software found at wordpress.org.
I did not spell it out line by line but if people go to the links the differences will be crystal.
Gary Grant on October 30th, 2008
Paul, Ryan brings up a good point….to a point.
Yes, anyone with half a clue about the online world will understand the difference by following the links. The problem is that car dealership types usually aren’t inclined to understand subtle differences when it comes to web tools.
Was that a PC enough statement?!
I’m not a regular reader, so I’ll pose the question: Are you aiming this at web guys working with dealerships, or at dealerships looking to set up their own blog?
As a 20 year dealership type who is also a problogger, I get the challenge from both sides of the fence. Most of my peers in the industry are ignorant to the importance of seo tools to their web marketing and would like to stay that way. They think the web should work for them, but they are frustrated that it doesn’t. The web is free, so they don’t see the value of spending money developing an online property.
I could go on and on here, but that would make me seem negative!
Paul Rushing on October 30th, 2008
@ Gary - If it helps one person from making the mistake of setting up a commercial blog at wordpress.com only to see it get deleted it is worth it.
There is a market for guys like Ryan to sell their blogging services but if dealership personnel decide they want to do it themselves they should not be inhibited due to cost or make needless mistakes in doing so.
As you well know the cost of entry to setting up a wordpress blog on your own hosting is very minimal. A well designed template at the top end around a grand? Personally I have spent $25 on this one in addition to hosting and an aweber account, which I already had.
To many free or low cost tools for people to do it themselves if they are so inclined. If showing others the way ruffles feathers so be it!!!
CS on October 30th, 2008
there’s an exception to every rule!
even if someone impulsively starts a blog on wordpress.com, migrating to a self-deployed .org version is not impossible.
here’s a post of mine from june 2007 about the switcheroo
http://tinyurl.com/66hcrp
Paul Rushing on October 30th, 2008
Thanks CS it is very easy to do. Just export and repopulate. 
Hopefully though people reading this will never start there..
Jeff Kershner on November 1st, 2008
Believe me, importing from one blog to another is a PAIN!! Especially if you’re importing from typepad. I just migrated http://www.dealerrefresh.com over from typepad to a self hosted wordpress and it was a lot of work. Get it right the first time and go with Wordpres.org.
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brianpasch on January 2nd, 2009
I just wanted to add that there are a number of third party companies that provide great skins for WordPress so that when you host your own WP blog, it can be dazzling and not the typical dull format that comes by default.
brianpasch on January 2nd, 2009
Another tip. When you host your own WordPress Automotive Blog, make sure you load the “All-In-One” SEO plugin as well as the Sitemap Plugin.
Scott Young on October 30th, 2008
Awesome! I look forward to your tutorials on setting up a self-hosted blog!