Blog vs Website: What’s the Difference?
Many people have websites (for their businesses as well as for personal use) and many people have blogs. The issue is whether people truly understand the difference between a website and a blog. They certainly are not the same thing.
The following explains the basic differences between a blog and a website:
Website
- Content is static.
- Formal/professional.
- Interactivity does not exist. There is only one-way communication.
- Transactional.
- Communication about products and/or services.
- Almost everyone has a website. In fact, it is almost a requirement in business today.
Blog
- Content is regularly updated.
- Not formal.
- Interactive.
- Informative and educational.
- Interactivity about industry/customer issues.
- Some people have a blog.
Website
A good way to think about a website is in terms of it being a virtual store that sells products and/or services. A website is the perfect forum to self-promote and advertise. Promotion and buying and selling are exactly what people expect when they visit a website. When they are at the point of making a purchase of some kind, they go to a website that will satisfy their needs.
They can either purchase something online directly from your website or they can use your website to find out exactly where your bricks and mortar store is located so that they can come and purchase products and/or services from you in person. Once a customer has bought something from you, there is a very high likelihood that they will not return to your store again.
It is also basically impossible to build relationships with your potential customers and existing customers on your website because the website is static. Once a person has purchased something from you, there is no potential for interactivity so the relationship will never have a chance to develop and grow.
Blog
A blog; however, is constantly supplying potential customers and existing customers with interesting and useful content and the blog enables them to interact with the blogger and the discussions that they have together can be potentially unending. Not only can you and your customers have discussions but they can also ask questions that you can answer.
Also, a blog provides a dimension to the content that you can’t get from your website content. Through your consistent and regular blog content, you will eventually be regarded as a subject matter expert in your niche and people will turn to you for answers. This will promote more and more discussions.
What is really being done in this case is that relationships are being developed and strengthened. Some of the people with whom you interact on your blog will never become your customers. That is perfectly acceptable. They can interact with you as much as they like and do not have to worry about any pressure to buy anything. A very important fact is that the people with whom you interact are getting to know you as a person, which includes your level of integrity, your passion for what you are doing and offering and your knowledge, knowledge that you impart to them.
Blogs have a lot of useful features that are very helpful in promoting interactivity. Blogs enable visitors to subscribe to them so they can receive updates on a very regular basis. They will always be informed when new content is added or there has been some update to the social media profiles of the people with whom they interact.
In order to really be effective, blogs should have new postings at least once or twice a week. Fresh, original content is very important. The content is exactly what attracts and retains people and many of those people will eventually become customers.
The true purpose of a blog is to provide helpful, valuable, informative and interesting content that helps other people and that they find interesting. A blog’s purpose is definitely not to advertise or to do a hard sell on anyone. If you try to use your blog in that way, you will be very disappointed with the results. You will not be able to build relationships with anyone and you most likely won’t sell very much. People don’t buy from people whom they don’t trust. The only way that they will trust you is if they get to know you.
All in one
One approach that has proven very effective is building your website with blog software, such as WordPress. Blog software has the capability of providing you with both static web pages (pages) and blog pages (posts). Since both are necessary for the success of your online exposure, this allows you to design a web presence that contains a traditional website and a blog using one tool. Among the other benefits are:
- One homogenous look and feel.
- Ease of optimization for SEO.
- Sharing of add-on plugins between the pages and posts.
- Ease and speed of designing and developing the web presence.
- Ease of maintenance and updating of content since the entire web infrastructure is based on a content management system (CMS).
Conclusion
Blogs and websites work in very different ways, serve very different purposes and produce different short-term results. However, they are both necessary to increase your online exposure and to strengthen your online business reputation. It is important to have both as part of your online presence. They function well together and undeniably, you will see positive results over the long term if they are a part of your business online.
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Hey Michael,
It's great that you've gone to the trouble of outlining the difference between a blog and a traditional website. Most people outside of the whole internet marketing 'thing' are still a little hazy about the differences. Like you've already outlined above, wordpress is excellent because you can also create a bunch of static pages to make it act like a Hybrid of Static / Dynamic site. I've done a recent project for a local construction business in my area. It's got the traditional elements of a static website including a main sales page, and also a blog page that will contain his recent construction projects.
The primary differences are that a website is all about your business while a blog is about factors that affect your business.
Websites tend to place better in the search results because they are focused on one topic, your business.
If you have the proper content management system it is not difficult to SEO a website.
Blogs, despite all their seemingly superior options do not index as well or as often.
Look at this page. The title is unrelated to the content and there is a "tags" block that is basically keyword stuffing and mostly irrelevant to the content.
Blogs, due to their ever changing content cannot build a comprehensive image of your products or services.
Doubt this? Do a search, any search that does not have the word "blog" in it and see if a site or a blog turns up in the top 3.
best,
Reg
Reg,
I beg the difference.
Websites/blog that are build around a CMS infrastructure such as WordPress can be highly optimizied for Inbound Marketing and high utilization of social media channels.
On an average we see a 10:1 or more traffic to sites built using WordPress than regular static websites. Ofcourse this traffic doesn’t come just by building a site with WordPress. You need to put an Inbound Marketing plan in place to achieve success. Read the rest of our blog articles on CompuKol Connection to learn how this is done.
I started to write a log response to this article because I highly disagree with a lot of what it is stating. It reads as if it were written in the late 90s. In a Web 2.0 world, most of what is being said is really not on par with most of the ways websites are used today. I comment on web sites, I fill out polls, I push in information and I get information back. In fact, I'm doing two way communcation on a website (LinkedIn) right now. I'm also using a website that is not trying to sell me a product (errr – you are trying to sell me a product on LinkedIn's site), nor am I researching a product. I guess maybe LinkedIn isn't really a website…. <G>.
While I agree that there are differneces between what people expect from a blog versus many other types of websites or site features, I don't think this article hit it based on where websites stand today.
I do agree with your closing remark — of course with the disclaimer that the positive results are only truly positive if you present things appropriately.
"They function well together and undeniably, you will see positive results over the long term if they are a part of your business online."
Say the wrong thing on a blog or a website and it can hurt your business equally as bad….
Hi Michael –
It's interesting that you place websites in the "static" camp and blogs in the "interactive" camp. I think that some of the better websites today include live chat, polling and other features that allows visitors to well interact, engage, and ultimately convert to customers.
Thanks for the informative article.
Great topic for discussion, but I must say I agree with Brad and Julie, that a website can be dynamic and interactive. I immediately thought of Amazon. This is a website but you can recommend and review all the products sold on there.
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Group: NY/NJ Women & Minority Business Owners and Entrepreneurs
Discussion: Blog vs Website: What’s the Difference?
The best is to have a website that includes a blog. Many entrepreneurs are intimidated by the thought of having a website and blog because of the assumed costs involved in hiring a web developer. Take a class and learn how to build a blog and or website that would do the job.
Posted by David Smith
May I ask what the difference between blogengine and wordpress platforms is? I have been visiting a number of blogs lately and note that some are blogengine and some are wordpress. What’s the difference between these two and which platform would be better for a celebrity related blog? I am planning on starting one.
We have a website that we heavily promote through various channels and the while the page authority is higher for the homepage than it is for my blog (blog is part of my website), the blog which is only a few months old is catching ground quickly.
that true but i do much agree that website is one way communication, it depend on you how you going to design the flow of your website and the purpose. Blog mostly is more wording content which run by individual or a place that run to sharing their knowledge and experience. Website mostly is done for business purpose or a sharing portal.
A few serious mistakes. Websites are not interactive? Is this comment from 1998?, and everyone has them. Business have websites, Organizations have websites, this is the big difference. While blogs are more personal (for the people). It cost nothing to start a blog. The treatement of the topic could have been done better– sorry.
Hey Michael,
It's great that you've gone to the trouble of outlining the difference between a blog and a traditional website. Most people outside of the whole internet marketing 'thing' are still a little hazy about the differences. Like you've already outlined above, wordpress is excellent because you can also create a bunch of static pages to make it act like a Hybrid of Static / Dynamic site. I've done a recent project for a local construction business in my area. It's got the traditional elements of a static website including a main sales page, and also a blog page that will contain his recent construction projects.
Close… but to re-work what others have said, "interactive" is not based on a person interacting with another person. It means, at the core level, a person receiving information from another source by means of having to take action other than just reading. That's my definition, but it's fairly simple.
So, yeah, even a hyperlink is an interactive element. The data it leads to my not be dynamically updated/rendered, but the link was the interactive element because it took a person to interact with it in order to receive content.
Based on that, blogs and websites are really only different by purpose of information. Is it an opinion/theory/suggestion or is it concrete evidence/data on a person/place or thing (Product)?
Which of course begs the note that there is cross-over between the two. There are blogging features on websites and there are 'static' design aspects on blogs so I think the choice between the two is really more based on what ones purpose or meaning behind the information they have.
Still, a good overall article.
What is the different between website and blog is the same question from many of my friend to me, thanks good you have a good answer here that i will use to answer them.
a website was always set up to make money or for business exposure as to where blogs were more informative with no product. Now personal websites are being developed and will probably trend this way as more people will shy away from blogging.
Thanks Michael Cohn for this valuable post.
If you are trying to decide whether you should set up your own blog or use a website builder, the primary considerations are ease-of-use and cost.
If saving money is your main point and want to spent less time then I think making a Blog is much more better option then the Website. 🙂
We’re a bunch of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your website provided us with useful information to work on. You’ve done a formidable process and our whole community will likely be grateful to you.
I think everything composed was actually very logical.
But, what about this? suppose you added a little content? I ain’t suggesting your content is not solid., but suppose you added a title that makes people want more? I mean Blog vs Website: What’s the Difference? is kinda boring. You ought to glance at Yahoo’s front page and note how they create article headlines to get people interested. You might add a video or a related pic or two to grab readers excited about what you’ve written. In my opinion, it might make your blog a little bit more interesting.
I am sure this post has touched all the internet users, its really really good piece of
writing on building up new webpage.
But as I said earlier, the techniques used in these ebooks are now showing there age. Once your ads are set up and your weblog draws in ample viewers, you will be in a position to start out making funds. Here are 7 steps to guest blogging your way to more traffic and increased online visibility:.
very good article but I party disagree, nowadays many blog work as a host and you create your website, where the content is regularly updated as well
Great information on building up your web page and driving more traffic to your site. I will have to try guest blog commenting more. I have a new site up and working on building backlinks so these techniques will come in handy. Thanks for the advise! Cindra
If I create a website with a blog using wordpress, can the landing page be the ecommerce page or should it be the blog page?
Barb, when designing a website using a blog platform such as WordPress, a landing page is implemented using a Page not a Post and therefore is not part of a blog article. However, you can use a link to a landing page as a CTA (Call-to-Action) within a blog article.
Here is an example of a Landing page in a WordPress built website https://www.compukol.com/linkedin-training/
Micheal,
You just gave a good summary of the differences between a blog and a website. You don’t how many times I get asked this question which inspired me to write a blog post on the topic to clear the confusion.
I’m sure any newbie struggling to grab the difference between a blog and a website will find all their answers in this post.
Here is the bottom line: a blog is also a website but carries some features that cannot be found on a website.
Hi Michael, I would like to know what is the best. I would like to create a blog and website. I would like my blog as personal views of a particular topic while my website is for business porpuses. If I put it together, my worries are they don’t complement each other. Some say it’s better to put together for the best search engine. Please help me decide.
Hogy,
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