How important is it to have a “standard” website anymore?

I’ve been helping a friend of mine launch a blog for her new career as a marriage and family counselor in Heathrow, Florida (near Orlando). She had no idea what a blog was, and shortly after I explained it to her, she was still perplexed. I asked her to trust me on this, not because I’ve conquered the search engines with my blog, but because I knew she would do better with her desired search terms.

Sure enough, within 3 weeks, her blog appeared on the first page of Google! (Great for her, a little frustrating for me, since I’ve been working on mine longer…granted, my desired search terms are much more competitive.)

I then wondered why anyone would even need a “standard” website anymore? And this morning on Solosez, an attorney asked a question about website design, which wasn’t really on point, but had me thinking about the true need for a “standard” website.

Wordpress, Blogger and now Typepad all offer “pages” which need to be distinguished from blog posts. A page serves the purpose of showing static content such as contact information, a description of your business, background info on your education, experience or credentials or anything else you’d want to put on a rarely changed page of your site.

If you think of a blog is a constantly scrolling page of stories, advice and thoughts where you constantly append new blog posts. If you were to start your first blog post with a description of what you do and your contact information, that blog post would eventually get buried down at the bottom of a long string of blog posts.

So a “page” would allow you to have easily referenced static information for your audience, rather than requiring them to browse through your entire blog or search for it.

A “standard” website is just a collection of pages, which are difficult for the average joe to keep up to date with fresh content.

A blog with a “pages” feature is a one-two punch that would allow you to keep adding fresh content (which is what all the search engines are looking for!) and simulataneous maintain static pages of information for quick reference.

Fresh content draws high(er) search engine placement, which draws more readers and hopefully, more clients.

I’m not going to run and dump my current “standard” websites, but I’m certainly not putting anymore time or money into them. Blogging is cheap (often free) and more effective for SEO. EVERYONE who is interested in internet marketing should have a blog.