Sunday, June 26, 2011

Blogs vs Articles

Content is King. If you've spent any time reading about search engine optimization, you'll have read this sentence many times. What it means is that the key to long term rankings is quality content. When it comes to presenting that content, there are two popular strategies; blogs and article based websites.

Depending on what you intend to write about, the decision as to which method to use may be clear and obvious. However, many topics fall into a large grey area where you could employ either strategy. This is what we're going to try and clear up today.

Blogs have arrived as a means to get your message across in a personal way. Articles are usually considered to be more informative and accurate where details are concerned. From a search engine perspective, both are a great source of information. But which one to rank better?

First, let's look at the value each one brings:

Blogs:

Timely, personal, have "inside point of view" usually updated on a frequent basis

Articles:

Informative, Authorative, detailed, marketing driven.

From a freshness perspective, Blogs clearly win out over the articles.

Exposure:
Unless your blog is highly ranked, the articles will get more exposure, since there are more chances of your article being seen by more people. There are many sources on the internet that you can submit your articles to, here is a link for some: seoresources.seoforgoogle.com

From a business perspective, I can tell you that articles help re-enforce what you are selling. By writing an article instead of a blog, there is a perception that more care is taken to writing an article, therefore the information contained within is worth more.

People know that a blog will have a personal spin to it, whether the author is blasting a company, or promoting something that they have a personal or professional interest in.

From my own trials, no one has made any purchases for any product being pushed in a blog, but instead there has a distinguishable influx of sales that can be directly traced back to an article.

So what does this mean to you?

If you have a product or service you want to promote, use an article. If you need to get something off your chest, create a blog. While both are thought of very well by the search engines, you're ultimate goal is to convert the user, not confuse the search engines.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for making the distinction between the two. It will make me think about how I write from now on! Naomi

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