There will come a time as a website owner, where you will ask yourself the question, do I need a blog or a website? And what’s the main difference?
This question may often be sparked by a frustration you have with managing your website. You, as a business owner, or website owner, want to focus on what’s important, you don’t want to become bogged down with the peculiarities of internet technology.
So figuring out the basics of what a blog is, compared to a website, will help you determine the easiest path forward for your business or organizational needs.
So What’s The Difference?
In many ways both blogs and websites are very similar. Both display content(video, audio, text, pictures, etc) on multiple pages, that the search engines can connect to individuals who are looking for that information.
But there are some basic differences.
Blog 101
A blog is organized by dates. And each posting can be grouped by categories. Check out these blogs for examples:
Website 101
Although you will have content on a website, they tend to be updated less, and are structured
Advantages to having a blog:
Easy to set up, add content, and publish.
You don’t need to be a coder, or deal with a bunch of html, css, php, etc
It can be difficult to make large scale design changes.
Not easy to customize, unless you decide to spend the time to learn html, css, and other design languages.
Although blogs are easy to set up, it’s going to take hard work to maintain it.
Advantages to having a website
If you learn programs dreamweaver, or just raw code, you have an unlimited amount of flexibility when it comes to design
Although you can update a website with new content often, the pressure to do so, is not as great as what a blog structure implies.
Disadvantages to having a website
There’s a large learning code. It’s gonna take you a longer time to become proficient.
Which One Should You Pick?
Well..It depends on what you are going to do with your content.
In fact, you can use both, and probably should.
A blog is best if there is a topic you plan on writing about on a constant basis. Think about magazines, when you think about blogs. People subscribe, and are expecting to be given new content from time to time.
No matter which way you go. Website, blog, or both, you will need to consider what setting it up will entail, and what maintaining it will require.
If you already own a website, then here are some ways to easily manage your content, and a one click solution to setting up a blog as well.
There are literally millions of websites that exist on the world wide web today. The spectrum of how effective they are run the gamut from world famous websites like YouTube, Wikipedia, and Facebook, to sites that your 9 year old may have just started to blog about how he doesn’t get enough freedom from his tyrannical parents.
And somewhere in between those two extremes, you have the many small business websites. Some who realize that just designing a great website to represent their business, is just the beginning of their web success. While other small business websites, think that a successful website serves as an extension of their business card. Handed out and soon forgotten.
There’s much more that goes into creating a successful website. The Web Development Blog outlines 10 Tips that not only begin with the creation of a great website, but also succinctly touch on editing your own website, and also the need to better understand online marketing. Check it out.
Here are also 3 quick tips you can do right away to improve the success(i.e more traffic, leads, or sales) of your website.
SEO – People are searching for what you have to offer, and a growing percentage are using google.com to find it. You need to clearly understand the search terms people are using to describe your product, and make sure you are optimizing your website, with those terms. This process can be a lengthy, but rewarding process. Begin learning the basics of Search Engine Optimization, but for starters commit to adding some new content to your website once a week. Blogs are perfect for this. (Ambid Update can help you add a blog to your existing website, and also help you improve your SEO.)
If people are coming to your website, and leaving without you knowing, that is very unfortunate. Why not offer them a sample of your product, or service, and grab their email/contact information to stay in touch. A tire kicker today, may be your best customer tomorrow. Install an optin page, or form on your website today in order to establish a better connection with your website visitors.
Register for an email service. Once you have your customers email, you can continue the communication process with your prospect. Many may be interested in what you are offering, want to stay in touch, but the timing has not yet arrived for them to do business with you.
In some ways, comparing these two softwares is like comparing apples to oranges.
In other ways they tackle a similar issue – making it easy for website owners to create and edit their website.
Dreamweaver is a powerful software that allows you to both generate and edit code.
Many web designers use it to create websites, and it also works as a great visual HTML and code editor.
So for an advance coder, or webmaster, who is looking for an easy to use software, this is probably your best best.
For the rest of us, there’s Ambid Update. Ambid Update is an online html editor. This allows you to log into the service, and make changes to your website virtually.
Ambid Update is much more geared to the non technical individual, who simply wants to make changes to an existing website, without the hassle of learning a coding language, or dealing with much code at all.
There are various ways website owners tackle the subject of editing their website. All range from simplicity w/ limitations, to difficulty w/ unlimitted possibilities.
I think it’s great that there are a million and one tutorials on how to improve your SEO optimization, but what often derails website owners, is just being able to make simple changes to their website.
Before they even get to value advise like this: 3 guidelines to improve SEO ranking, they have to deal with some fundementals, like gaining control of their website.
Once you’ve figured out a simple way for you, a non-technical person, to get on your website, upload some new pics, videos, change some text, or a number of simple changes that often involve a heap of code, then, and only then can we begin to tackle the subject of SEO.
Here’s a quick video, showing you how you can easily edit any of the pages on your website.
You simply stick this [Edit This Page] button in your toolbar, and whenever you visit one of the pages on your website, that you want to make a change to, simply click on the [Edit This Page] and begin editing your page.
A Zero-Tech Way to Update Your Site
Yourself…Easily! Start in 3 Min
If you can type, YOU can update your site.
Ambid Update is an easy-to-use web-based service made for regular people that allows YOU to make quick and EASY changes to your existing website by typing directly on your website. You can:
- Use it with your EXISTING website regardless of where it’s hosted!
- Get Instant Help 24 hours a day from a carefully pre-screened, RELIABLE web designer!
There will come a time as a website owner, where you will ask yourself the question, do I need a blog or a website? And what’s the main difference?