Many online as well as offline businesses these days are preferring to
make a blog instead of a website. What exactly distinguishes a blog from
a website? And which one is more effective? Read on to find out 15
significant differences between a website and a web log (blog).
A website and a blog can be distinguished from each other on the basis of the following.
1. Frequency Of Updates.
A
blog is updated and new posts are published regularly. Mostly bloggers
aim to write on trending topics. The posts or articles on a blog are
most of the times informative.
Whereas
a website is rarely updated. And it may contain information about
services or products. A website might have a static landing page.
2. Dynamic And Static Content.
Blogs
have dynamic content. Posts are displayed on the home page in
the reverse chronological order. Posts written on a blog may contain
date and time stamps. Design and functionality updates are frequent to
keep the blog new and fresh all the time.
Websites
have static home pages which are hardly updated. Once the site is
designed and developed, design and functionality updates are infrequent.
3. Search Engine Ranking.
Blogs
appear higher on Google search engine results page (SERP) than
websites. This is so because one of the most important ranking factors
for Google is “Freshness of content“. The more frequently a web property is updated, the higher the chances of it appearing higher in the SERPs.
Although
websites are rarely updated but they too have fair chances of appearing
higher on Google if they contain relevant and best content.
4. Which Is More Conversational?
Of
course Blogs are considered more informal and conversational. Blogs
have posts which are written in a conversational tone. Also many blogs
have commenting systems installed on them for the purpose of encouraging
discussions and conversation.
Many
business websites are adding blogs in order to avoid any kind of
communication gap between the visitors and the business owners.
Some
blogs as well as websites add forums to encourage reader’s/customer’s
feedback, discussion, support or help, collaborative tasks, inquiry or
complaints.
5. Communication Style.
As
discussed under the above sub heading, blogs have conversational tone
and they are meant for discussions. If blogs don’t contain any kind of
interactions they are considered as ghost house.
The
key to run a successful blog is to have quality discussions or create
interactive content. Whereas a website might or might not give
importance to engagement and discussions. But website owners must surely
take customer satisfaction seriously.
6. Information.
Blogs
contain extensive information about whichever niches they are concerned
with. The information on the blogs are regularly updated or changed
based on the recent happenings. Whereas websites may only contain
information about a particular company, business, service or product.
7. Marketing.
Blogs can
be marketed using inbound marketing as well as outbound marketing.
Inbound marketing is nothing but permission-based marketing. It relies
of getting customers attracted to the service. Marketers help, add
value, educate or entertain audiences. As blogs are interactive in
nature so they facilitate a two-way process. This is the reason why
almost all the blogs ask their readers to subscribe in exchange of their
content.
Whereas
websites mainly adopt outbound marketing. Outbound marketing is
forceful in nature. It is mainly done using paid advertisements, cold
calls or e-mails which rarely add value. If site owners wish to make use
of inbound marketing, they might consider adding blogs to their
business sites.
8. Money spent on Marketing.
Blogs
concentrate on providing value to the readers. Hence, blogs have
tendency to attract massive visitors without any money spent on
advertising. On the other hand, websites require adopting paid
advertising to sell their services or products as they might have no
value adding features.
9. Community.
A
blog might have a bigger and better community than a website. As
mentioned before, blog encourages interactions so blog readers might
also prefer interacting among themselves than to the actual author.
In
contrast to a blog, website visitors can only interact with the
owners. To stimulate community feeling, websites might add forums or
blogs.
10. Setup Cost.
Blogs can easily be created using free or charged services like Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, Typepad, etc.
A
website might require to be coded by a professional coder who can build
it as per requirements. Blogs have a pre-structured layout and
template. Major design chances may require installing new theme or
tweaking all the codes.
11. Expertise.
You don’t need to be an expert to maintain and backup your blog; thanks to the content management systems.
On
the other hand, websites might or might not be made using content
management system. So the level of expertise required to maintain a
website may differ based on the basic building blocks used to create the
site.
12. Blogs are websites.
All the blogs are websites but all websites are not blogs. Websites can add blogs to get readers and credibility.
13. Relationship Building.
Since blogs are based on the concept of permission marketing and adding
value, bloggers build great relationships with their readers.
Websites
fail to establish quality and dedicated relationships most of the times
because of the lack of commenting system and value adding capability
(other than by selling services or products).
14. You can add Widgets to a Blog.
Plugins
or widgets like Recent Posts, Popular posts, Recent comments, Top
commentators, Engagement widgets can be added to a blog. Different
plugins or Widgets facilitate different purposes.
For example:
Recent Posts widget arranges the blog posts in a reverse chronological
order (latest to oldest) on the sidebar or footer of the blog.
You cannot add such widgets to a website because there exists no posts.
15. Blogs have a RSS FEED.
Since
blogs are updated regularly (maybe daily, weekly or monthly) they
attract readers. Readers are asked to subscribe in order to receive
latest blog updates through an emailing system which is technically
known as RSS subscription.
Over to you!
I
hope you can now easily differentiate between a website and a blog. If
you have more differences or criterion on which websites and blogs can
be distinguished, do let us know in the comments below. Or if you still
have any questions regarding a blog or a website, feel free to ask your
questions using the comments box below.
