Why WordPress blogs are better than normal web sites.
A WordPress blog is far superior to the average web site in many ways, especially if you're not an HTML or graphics guru. Here are the top 3 reasons why you should be building blogs instead of more traditional web sites:
1. WordPress blogs require no HTML skill, yet look great.
I personally use the Semiologic WordPress theme, which I love (I did an extensive review of Semiologic here, in case you're interested). It comes with some great skins and options to make a very clean, smooth looking blog with no HTML or web design knowledge.
This is more important than you might realize. People initially judge the quality of your content by the look of your site, even before they ever read a word. If the site doesn't have a professional look, they will assume you are not giving professional advice.
Plus one for WordPress blogs!
2. WordPress blogs include RSS feeds that automatically get included in dozens of RSS feed directories.
WordPress has built-in RSS feed functions so that each time you post to the blog dozens of RSS feed sites get notified (pinged) about your new content. These feed sites are frequented by tens of thousands of webmasters looking for good content for their sites. If they decide to use your RSS feed, you get free traffic from their sites.
Semiologic is even better, since it only pings when a new post is created, whereas WordPress will ping even when you are just editing a post (which can be seen as ping spam).
Plus two for WordPress blogs!
3. You can keep posting to your blog even when you're not in front of the computer!
No, I'm not losing my mind in my old age. You do not have to be in front of your keyboard to have your posts automatically sent to the blog. In fact, the post you're reading right now was posted when I wasn't in front of the keyboard.
I knew I would be going out of town this weekend and probably wouldn't be able to get online to post, so I post-dated a blog entry that I wrote a few days ahead of time. I just changed the Post Timestamp to two days later.
Once the post date actually came (two days later), only then did the post become visible on the home page. Voila, regular content even when I'm not around.
This is great, because creativity usually comes in bursts. So when you're really feeling creative and you're cranking out the articles, they don't all have to be posted that day. You can post date each subsequent entry a day or two later and have it automatically get posted then.
Plus three for WordPress blogs!
Summing it all Up
There are a lot of other reasons I prefer WordPress blogs over traditional web sites, but these are the three big ones: they are much easier to create, they have built in sources of getting traffic with RSS feeds, and you can post-date articles so they appear when you're not around.
All of those things can be accomplished with a normal web site, but to make them behave that way you would have to have a lot of extra software created and installed. And you know what you would have after installing all of that extra software? That's right: a WordPress blog.
P.S. I recommend that you read my full review of the Semiologic Pro WordPress Theme and see if it's not a fantastic tool for building your next web site.
