For some time now I have been asking the question, "why would anyone choose to have a static website over a blog?"
The short answer, I suspect, is that the cost of a static site is money, whereas the cost of a blog is time.
A static site is rarely changed and very little new information is ever added. In fact most business owners I know have so little hands on connection to their own sites, that they have to call their web designer anytime they want to change or update anything.
Contrast that with a blog. Blogs are made to be easily updated. In fact, both owners and readers of a blog expect to see fresh, new content on a regular basis.
And as a blog owner, you have an easy place to post new information and ideas. A blog cries out for new content like a blank white board.
And because a good blog is regularly updated, it attracts not only visitors but also search engines as well. It has been proven over and over again that Google consistently ranks a blog with fresh content over a static site even when they both contain similar information.
This came to mind earlier today when I read an article called, How Can 10 Simple Articles Change Your Life? by Chris Pearson. Although he doesn't talk about blogs specifically, Pearson makes an excellent case for why content is so valuable for any site.
The point he makes is this: A friend who was doing well selling baseball cards on eBay, came to him about setting up a website so he could increase his business. In answering this problem, Chris makes a very strong case for writing articles.
He talks about how content adds "equity" value to a site. If his friend simply writes 10 short articles on collecting baseball cards or buying and selling baseball cards on eBay, he will have something none of his competitors have.
If, over the course of a year, he increases that number to 100 articles, he would not only probably have a high Google ranking, it would be a very tough job for any competitor to take his ranking away.
This is where my advice to his friend would be to choose a blog. To the average business owner, 100 articles in a year sounds like a huge task, but fortunately a blog does not always require that you personally write all of your own content.
Last week, for example, I was busy with some other projects and merely posted some YouTube videos that I liked and added my own short commentaries to them. Nevertheless I still added content that kept this blog on Google's radar. At the same time, I feel I added value to my readers because these were very good and informative videos.
While I still argue that you should post mostly your own articles on a blog, few of us have so much control over our work schedules that we can blog every day. But we can always add new, useful content that meets the needs of our readers.
In fact, if you read a lot of blogs, you may notice that there are a lot of excellent blog posts that are not entirely original content. In some cases these bloggers have drawn from other sources and added their own commentary. In other cases they have cited other articles and added their own spin (in fact this article would be an example of that - I had no idea what I was going to write about until I read Chris' article). You can even, occasionally, use articles that are posted on article banks like ezinearticles.com, but don't over do this, as it may diminish your standing as an expert in your own field.
There is one other compelling reason for adding new content. If you are using Twitter, Facebook or other social media platforms, new content gives you something to point links to. People will follow you on social media sites if you are a giver of good, quality content.
Fresh, informative content is the heart and sole of creating a personal brand online. It is what inspires people to read your blog and get you noticed by search engines. And what is more, having a sufficient amount of quality content makes it almost impossible for your competition to take your place.
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COPYRIGHT © 2009, Charles Brown
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