Relationship Between Blogs & Websites - Blog Posts @ Articles

2 replies
Subject: The Relationship Between Blogs & Websites And Blog Posts & Articles?

I'm having difficulty getting my head wrapped around the relationship of a blog and a website in an affiliate marketing IM business model. I chose to post this in the general Internet Marketing Discussion area because I feel my question has more to do with overall marketing strategies than website design.

After a long hiatus from IM I've found an affiliate program that I'm motivated about promoting. Given my background as a off-line newspaper columnist with a large archive of business and personal development columns (articles) that have never been published online I'm leaning toward content marketing as a traffic source. It is my belief that with a little keyword optimizing my article archives which fall into the Personal Development, Online Marketing and Sales categories, and are highly relevant to the affiliate program I'm going to be promoting are highly syndicatable. If true it will be like having a ready made arsenal of marketing weaponry in tap.

My first mission after keyword optimization is to build a site to house/host my archives so the articles can get indexed before submitting them to EZA. Given the nature of the program I'm going to be promoting I'm building a personal branding website and blog as well as some personalized social media pages that will highlight me, (Ernie Mitchell), my story, my work and why I'm credible.

The area where I'm confused :confused: from a mind mapping standpoint is how the blog should interface with the website. I've always gone under the assumption that articles and blog posts are separate/different animals. Where should the article archives, (or links to the archives) be placed? :confused: On the blog's landing page or on the website's landing page? :confused:

I'm going under the assumption (perhaps a false assumption) that 800 word articles are a little large for ideal blog posts and the 1,200 to 1,500 articles that I will be writing in the future are indeed too large for blog posts?:confused:

Assuming the above is true I'm further assuming that the links to the article archives should be on a webpage other than the blogs main landing page.

I would appreciate a little insight as to the relationship between blogs and websites and blog posts and articles

Kindest Personal Regards,

Ernie Mitchell
#articles #blog #blogs #posts #relationship #websites
  • Profile picture of the author rooze
    Hello Ernie,

    There's a difference between an article and a blog but there's no reason you can't use blogging software like Wordpress to manage your website, your articles and your blog.

    Generally speaking a blog is an informative post inviting reader/author interaction. So there's a place at the end where readers can submit comments and the general etiquette is that the author would monitor and respond to the comments. Whereas an article might not have the need or facility for reader interaction. Articles tend to be organized on a website in more of a directory format categorized by subject and/or author, whereas a blog is categorized more chronologically with tags/categories available for additional categorization. The fundamental difference is that blog posts are pushed down the page based on the date sequence, where articles can be organized by different parameters like number of views, popularity or perhaps a reader voting system.

    But Wordpress is a smart dog and you can thrash it in such a way as to get the best of all worlds. For example, instead of users arriving at your WP site and landing on the default blog layout view, you can instead specify a static page to be your landing page. Then you can create a menu of additional static pages, so you now have the layout of a conventional website.
    Then you can post your articles as conventional WP posts, but use WP categories and hard-coded links on your static pages to categories, to organize your articles in a more article-friendly format.
    You can also install free wordpress plugins to create a directory layout which you can use for specified categories. So technically, your WP installation can look like a conventional website with home page and static pages, a full featured article directory, and a Worpress blog, all at the same time.

    There are also tools aside from Worpress to consider, such as Joomla. Joomla is a CMS like WP but is more friendly towards the article concept and less towards the blogging concept.

    I have a couple websites created in Joomla which function like an article submission directory - people register, submit articles, admin approves the articles, admin can assign Editor status to members who can then publish their own articles etc etc. And it all flows to the reader looking like a professional article directory layout. Then, WP can be installed if necessary in a sub-directory to handle the 'company blog' functions.

    So there are various approaches.

    If you need a more in-depth explanation or some examples of the technology being used in different ways, just ask.

    Good luck

    Rooze
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  • Profile picture of the author absolutelee
    There's no reason why a blog post wouldn't work well as something to use to publish your articles with. Especially with all the control you have over WordPress nowadays. If you've got some really signature articles, something that you think would be really important for your niche, then you might want to make that a page on your site as opposed to a post, then create some smaller posts that link back to it. But other than that concern, something like WordPress is probably your best content management system. Also, from an on site SEO point of view, you'll do a lot better with WordPress than with a straight HTML site.
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