Website Or Blog - Which One For Your Business?

One of the biggest dilemmas people face especially those who are just in the midst of knowing the ins and outs of internet marketing is the use of either a website or a blog for their business. Unfortunately the internet is full of misleading information about starting a niche website, starting a blog or starting a website that it can be really confusing for the average Joe. It is really difficult to ascertain which is more important.

One thing remains true. It remains a fact that to setup any e-commerce or online business of their own, a website or a blog must exist to inform people what their business is all about. But which is better? Let me explain to you in the next section.

Starting a website remains a very reasonable choice to explain what your website is all about. Let us assume that you have a wedding photography business where you work from home. You realize that you are new and that you really want to get the word out there and by far the easiest way to do this is to tell your potential clients what you are all about through a website.

As you might already know, a wedding photography website can include the wedding packages, contact, gallery photos and of course your biography. There are heaps more you can include on a wedding photography website but these are some of the most important things you need to include in your website.

But let me tell you the disadvantage of having just a website.

Getting The Eyeballs From Your Customers

Put it simply, getting more views for your website depend mostly on 2 things. One is search engine rankings and SEO.

1. Search Engine Rankings

There are many many ways to get your customer’s attention. One is through offline marketing, online marketing, SEO and social media sites. Let’s make it simple and narrow it down to just the SEO or traffic generation part of it.

The problem with having just a website is that it’s static. No matter how brilliantly designed your website is, it is still going to look the same unless you decide to do some design modifications which can really take up a lot of your time. Search engines no longer give priority to static pages, instead it gives more priority with ever changing content for example a blog. You might notice that pages that rank really well for most search phrases on the search engines include websites like article directories, blogs, and social media sites. These are the sites that rank well because content keeps getting updated and search engines love it. These days, search engines are adding social media presence as part of the ranking algorithm.

Regardless of what the search engine algorithm might be, you must realize that having a website with constantly updated content like a blog is a great addition to your static page or static website. And that is why, most websites these days have a blog of their own. Having constantly updated content will get the spider bots ( Google’s program to crawl for content) to index your website more frequently. Adding more content gives more weight to a website’s value and thus help it rank much better.

2. SEO

I’m not going to go into the intricate details of SEO because otherwise there will be no end to this topic. Basically, what you really need is to optimize your website for the search engines. Some key areas to look into are the keywords and keyphrases that you are aiming to rank for. Say you have a website call “ABC Wedding Photography”, you are only going to rank well for that search phrase if someone types that in the search engines.

Having a blog adds even more content and different blog titles help rank even more keyphrases on the search engines. You are no longer limited to “ABC Wedding Photography” on the search engines. Be it “Jack and Jill Wedding Photography” or “Jane’s Engagement Party” you are adding additional search phrases for the search engines to crawl for your website.

Of course you must bear in mind that you need to know how to do some very important on-page and off-page optimizations as well. An example is to write a good title for your blog posts and add keyphrases to the beginning and bottom part of each post.

If you would prefer to just setup a blog here are the reasons why its good for your business.

1.       Easy To Setup!

Seriously all you got to do is to register to Wordpress for a blog and the next few things to do is to write a post and hit PUBLISH! Compared to a website, you’ve got so much things to fiddle with, design, content, navigation. Blogs take away all the hassle of design and navigation (mostly) and all you got to do is write a blog post. Wordpess comes with heaps and heaps of themes and plugins to take the design headache off you.

A great place to start off with choosing your theme is from Elegant Themes of Woothemes.

2.       Your Personal Brand, Your Voice

It is really not fair to write about this in just one paragraph because there are heaps to talk about building your personal brand through blogging. You really need an entire blog post to explain this. Basically, blogging gives you your individual voice. The way you write and convey your messages is a reflection of your individuality. People relate more to a real person and people are far more likely to enjoy reading an article with the subtle nuances of character which you can’t pick up from reading articles from article directories or static websites.

3.       Blogs Build Relationships and Encourage Engagement

Compared to static websites, visitors are only able to interact with existing content there. Any content you see on static websites is there and that’s it. You don’t see a website updating on a daily basis don’t you?

Blogs also give you the ability to interact with visitors and readers through commenting, questions and blog posts. Blogs are really about conversation and it is through commenting that you can build a community of followers and establish trust. RSS subscription and email subscription extends the interaction beyond your blog and allows people to keep in touch with updates and blog posts. A lot of blogs are in fact a platform to start your business though some may argue that a blog is in fact their business.

4.       Blogs Are More Social Media And Search Engine Friendly

You’ll realize content retweeted and shared on Twitter and Facebook are mainly content from blogs. The reason is simple, blogs are a base for interaction while social media helps distribute this further beyond the blogosphere. Together blogs and social media go hand in hand with building your voice and personal brand.

If you’ve scrolled all the way down here and skipped most of the content, let me sum this up for you. It is much better to have a blog or a website AND a blog together for your business.

I hope this article has helped you in some way to decide between a website or a blog. If you do need help I will guide you step by step in starting a website for your business.

All the Best!