Difference Between Blog And Website

Differences between a blog and a website are highly searched in today's online arena. Blogging/blog words are so intensely used around the net, that many newbies get stuck on the point here. So i thought why not to mention the basic differences between the two ways by which we can publish our content online.

To summarize, blog is a type of a website (Web log= Blog). Website is a general term. (site on web=website). You might have heard about those static sites and dynamic sites.

That idea supports the Blog vs Website theory. There are few technical differences, as to how the data is presented to the readers. We would also discuss couple of reasons due to which blogs are highly considered now days, to present data online.

Blog vs Website-Characteristics Match up

According to Wikipedia, a blog is as follows:

A blog (a blend of the term web log) is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time

Blogs are generally more informally presented to the visitors. The language used is often much simpler than on websites. (though its not necessary as many webmasters now have started to use simpler language, to make their view point clear to a wider range of people, around the globe.)

In blogs, there is a thing called posts, as what you are reading now. Every post have its own static page (as the url suggests), but the main page of the blog is dedicated to the
series of latest posts in reverse-chronological (latest to oldest) order.

Bloggers often prefer to show around 8-12 recent posts on their blogs main (home) page. Where as there is nothing such in a static website. Even if a website is about tutorials (like Lisa Arby's popular website, 2createawebsite.com). The website was launched years ago, when the blogging wasn't quite into the online world.

She did a pretty neat job with the sequence of the content. Interlinking was perfect. You could take a look to that site, in order to get to know the feel of a static website.

The major difference between the two types, blog and a static website is about the content refreshment. The major content of website remains the same. Though the webmaster could add additional pages to the website to increase the content, but the order by which the information is presented could not be later changed. (isn't changed).

Thats where blog have started to gain popularity. Have you ever thought about the way you search internet now days? You either follow a specific, popular blog right away (through bookmarks) or in most cases, you search search engines.

Search engines help you to get to a specific question (like how to add bla bla to blogger). It would take you to the static page, with the best information of the particular topic, either it comes from blog or website. So the content is basically searched the same way as before (through search engines), but blogs provide a different dimension to the way information is presented.

Another huge aspect of blogs due to which people have adopted them, are their ability to get crawled by search engines frequently. As the posts are updated on daily basis (sometimes many times in a day), so search engines crawl blogs many times a day in order to fetch new content.

To summarize a blog:

1. Blogs provide commenting system 
2. Updated almost daily
3. Articles appearing in reverse-chronological order
4. Frequently crawled by Search Engines
5. Often covers a wide variety of articles
6. You don't need to be an expert to maintain a blog. 
7. You can easily change the design and layout just by using a different template.

 

Consider a any static website, say on a topic 'Make Money Online'. So the general idea of the content would revolve around the said topic. Where as blogs are often vast in nature. Blogs publish them as e.g, Technology blog. So you would get to know about every unique/latest technologies through different posts.

Most of the famous organizations have their official blogs. Even Google, Microsoft, Twitter use blog to communicate with their consumers. As the contents of blogs are regularly updated with fresh topics, they can easily get higher rank in the search engines. An organization usually publishes new offers, news updates, notices for the customers through blog.

Right now, in 2013, the answer is simply that there is no difference. A static website is only a neglected blog, and it was a change in Google algorithms last year that lead it to be this way.