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The answer is ... it depends.

If you're going to be writing blogs, then Wordpress is hands-down better because it has a ton of plugins that make writing blogs (and all the tasks related to them) super easy.  It also can be integrated into a "regular"site transparently.  Here's an example of a WordPress blog embedded into our main site:

www.morningsiderecovery.com/blog/

On the other hand, if you do no blogging at all, then Joomla has much to offer and is also pretty easy to use.  You can find many templates online and build a perfectly lovely looking site quite easily.  Here's an example of that approach:

www.maccimizer.net

All of that having been said, there are companies that run very large sites that have almost zero blog features but are built with WordPress as the underlying structure.

Another aspect to consider is who will be managing / maintaining your site.  If you anticipate hiring for this, you might want to see where the labor pool is more plentiful and where it is easier to get skilled staff who can maintain your site.

Best of success to you in your new effort.

You mean aside from the fact that I've been writing web pages for 15 years, do I have an article somewhere that someone who "discovered" the internet 5 years ago wrote to "prove" the point?  No.  Don't have it.  However, I dropped a brand new, nicely optimized page on my website yesterday afternoon, and before midnight it was #4 on Google.

Here's the query: "Morningside Recovery Complaints"

You'll see the page sitting fat and happy at #4.

So basically what you're saying is that Web Design Group, which is a trusted resource on internet coding since 1999 is wrong.  Here's more detail about entities:

http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/

The ampersand is the first character in an entity.  Entities are well respected and widely used, at least as long as I've been coding web pages (since about 1997).

Page rank of 1 or 2 is quite minimal, and it's most likely due to your on-page seo.  Sometimes brand new, well optimized content can rank on Google if it thinks it's unique enough.  That's why blogging and creating content is so important.

Jim Y.

Ampersand is used as a delimiter for an entity in standard HTML, so inserting it could lead to a validation error and failure to load the page.  If you absolutely must use it in your URL, use the code: & which won't mess anything up.  It's just text, so there's no reason for Google to penalize it.  Under the concept of topic modeling, Google will recognize & as "and" but usually doesn't pay attention to connectors like that, so it's a non issue.

My bad.  I thought since you said it was a full-time job for you that money was somehow involved.

I hate to push back on this, but making a site accessible for the disabled is not considered "volunteer work" ... it's the law.  The Americans With Disabilities Act requires businesses who make their services available to the public to make "reasonable accommodations" so that disabled members of the community can access their services.  Those requirements apply to websites.

And if you think you can just ignore them, wait until someone sues you for an ADA violation (or several).  Like it or not, if you're selling to the public, then you are a "public accommodation" and bound by the law.  Consider it part of what you have to do to run a public business.

Here's a resource about ADA accessibility requirements and websites:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6974795_test-ada-compliance.html

Yeah.   What she said.  Well done.  Good point about a keyword per page.  Something not to lose touch of is that as people move more towards mobile search that search is changing and becoming more "long tail".  That's where good quality content comes in.  Good quality content on your site tends to capture the "long tail" search traffic.

One thing I would disagree about ... analyze your competition.  If they are "stuffing" keywords to an extent, then I would stuff keywords to the same extent.  Even though It's not popular, the fact is that keyword density can be the low-hanging fruit you can pick off to get quick results.

Jim

Include everything. You want Google to spider everything.

Let's take an example:

Two pages which talk about Llama Grooming, one which focuses on Llama Fur Enhancement, and the other that focuses on Llama Fur Lustre.

The content for both pages really is the same, just the SEO is a little different for each.

Your main page: www.llamas.com/lfe.com (Llama Fur Enhancement) has all the copy SEO'd for Llama Fur Enhancement.   Your "alternate" page has the same copy, but optimized for Llama Fur Lustre with a Canonical REL tag back to the original page.  If you omit the second page from the Sitemap, it doesn't get spidered, then what's the point?  Both need to be spidered, but the Canonical REL tag tells it which is the "official" page so you don't get dinged for duplicate content.

Capice?

Jim

I think you are so focused on SEO that you're losing the purpose of what the ALT tag is for.  The ALT tag is to operate as a "stand-in" for the actual image.  This is part of making your site friendly for people with disabilities, such as vision impairment.  Someone comes to your website, and they can't "see" the image, they mouse over the image and the screen reader reads the text to them.    What is going to be more useful to them?

ALT="A picture of sun shining in the sky and a quote: 'Laughter is an instant vacation.'"

OR

ALT="Laughter is an instant vacation"

Which does the best job telling the visually impaired person what is appearing on the screen?

Jim

Marie:

Sorry, but I couldn't resist responding to this one.  It's not the answer that's confusing, it's the situation.  I like to compare modern SEO to fixing Macs (what I did in my previous lifetime).  Sometimes you have to get out the goat entrails and burn the incense.

Sometimes there isn't an easy answer.  Strangely enough on my site (which I inherited 3 months ago), the "bad" links don't seem to have really damaged it, as we have a Domain Authority of 63.  Go figure.

Jim

There is another approach to this and that's to "embed" the blog within your site.   I don't know Big Commerce, so I don't know how terrible it would be to do, but I did it on my PHP site and it wasn't terribly painful.  I actually have two Word Press sites embedded within my overall site structure and it's all pretty seamless.

Instructions on how to build the "template" to match your site can be found here:

http://www.nubaria.com/en/blog/?p=14

(I can't remember exactly where I read my instructions but it seems pretty spot on).

My embedded blog(s) (there are 2 separate Word Press blogs) can be seen here:

www.morningsiderecovery.com/blog/

www.morningsiderecovery.com/news/

Putting Yost's SEO plug-in seemed to really get me some quick rankings, so I'd Google "best SEO Word Press" to find recommendations on what to put in your Word Press installation.  I think there are about 10 plug-ins that are definite recommends.

Best of success to you.

Jim

Ok, here's the dope.  Your best shot is local listings.   If you enter your search term in Google, notice that after the first 3 listings on the top, there is a list of local providers, with addresses?  If you have a local address, then you need to use snippets to mark it and point to them with your free Webmaster account at Google.  Snippets really do work, especially for local search.   What I can tell you from my 10+ years of SEO is find the "big dogs" and meticulously examine what they do.

Look at what they're doing in their header, H1 tags, use of strong/emphasis, copy, keyword packing, everything.  And despite what you hear about "keyword stuffing" being bad, you need to have a certain amount of keyword density to rank highly, and that's just a fact.  The other elements that will help you rise in the rankings are all the tried and true SEO methods: get links, and lots of them.  Quality matters more than quantity, although if you can blend both you're going to be in much better shape.

Check out the local "watering holes."   Where do folks in your local community gather online to chat?  Be the expert.  Pitch in to help with opinions and knowledge.  And, of course, link to your site.  Also, ask your happy customers (you have many of those, right?) to like you, Google + you, etc.  OK, fine, bribe them with discounts and free things like fridge magnets and calendars if you have to, but those ratings will do much to keep you in that coveted spot with all those delicious local listings.

There's no magic bullet here, but if you work at it consistently, getting good links, getting good references, doing your social work (Facebook, Twitter), you can eventually get up there.  It's like the old story of the two guys in the woods who come upon a bear.  One starts running, and as his buddy starts catching up, he yells "what are you doing, we can't outrun a bear?"  And his buddy shouts back: "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you."  You don't have to be the best SEO in the world ... you just need to be better than the other snowplowing firms in the area to get traction.   You're asking questions here, and that's a really good start.