Other than having great relevant content, is there any real advantage of one web provider than another? I hear that the way a site is "framed" makes a difference.

I have heard some "tech saavy" folks say that "Wordpress" makes a good blog site, but not a good website. If you have a great looking, content rich site, and have the exact same layout, look, etc. using several different web providers, will there be any difference in the ability to be found by the search engines?

The term "web provider" is a little bit vague...are you referring to a hosting company, MLS/IDX provider, or content management system?

Do you have any reference that would support what you just said about wordpress being not a good site?

Because personally I really love wordpress plugins I think they provide the very best plugins to help all webmasters

I've heard similar things, but I've been shown wordpress and joomla sites that rank very high compared to their counterparts. I'm considering having a couple landing pages built on wordpress

Becky, can you expand on what you mean by a couple of landing pages? Are you saying that you would like to have a couple of pages of your site (which is not WP) to be built on WP?

Well, I've been told that landing pages are useful for targeting specific areas, such as a neighborhood. You create a wordpress blog or listing service for a specific area or neighborhood.

I was going to have two pages created for two smaller cities I work in. These would be independent of my main site but link in to it.

Wordpress makes a good site, Drupal makes a good website, Joomla makes a good website, a regular html website makes a good site. The point is that it is not the platform that makes a good website, but the content of the website. You should focus on the content not on the platform.