Key Differences & Similarities Between a Blog And a Website

Website VS Blog

When you look at a regular website versus a blog, you might ask yourself “What’s the difference?”

“I have always wanted to know the difference between a blog and a website” – Achenyo

“I have come across people who told me that a blog and a website is the same” – Funmi

“Wait o, I was told I don’t need a website, I only need a blog because a blog is better than a website”- Cosmas

Does any of the thoughts above sound like you? This article will clear all the confusion and doubts you may have.

I’ve also wanted to know the similarities and major differences between a blog and a website. I hope this will add to your knowledge.

Key Similarities Between a Blog and a Website

Both a website and a blog exist on the internet with web addresses each. Both of them are hosted on similar hosting services to make information remain online

A website and a blog target a specific audience and they both contain links, pictures, videos etc.

Both of them requires hard work if you’re going to make something real out of it.

Key Differences Between a Blog and a Website

To get it straight, I’ll take it one after the other, based on some criteria:

In one of my posts 5 Insightful Reasons Why You Should Consider Starting a blog, I mentioned what a blog is.

A blog is a list of posts or contents arranged in timely order i.e the most recent posts/articles shows up first.

A blog is a type or part of a website because it can also be called a ‘web-log’ while a website is a general term

A blog is a created in most cases to write about just one topic (e.g a blog about African celebrities), while websites are used in most cases for contents that are timeless.

Here, contents that are timeless are contents that don’t necessarily need to be updated frequently.

For example, a website is used to represent a business or organization online with contact information, headquarter address etc. or to give a tutorial on how to do something).

Dynamism

Blogs are updated frequently (bloggers keep posting fresh information in the area of interest i.e topic they choose to blog about),  while websites are static in nature.

In essence, contents on websites are not updated from time to time like blogs although the webmaster can add some pages, fields etc. Blogs are far more dynamic than websites.

Also Read: The differences between building a startup and building a small business

Design

Blogs are easy to build as compared to websites. Tools like blogger.com or wordpress.com can be used to set up a blog in matter of minutes.

If you are not skilled in web development or you know nothing about coding and HTML whatever, blogs are perfect.

Websites require more tech skill to build, so you may have to get someone whose is vast in web development to help you out.

Features

Blogs show around 7-10 recent posts on the main home page while there’s nothing of such in a static website.

Unlike websites, blogs include such features like comments and links to increase user interactivity and that’s why they get more popular than website when.

Websites and blogs are searched the same way on the internet through search engines.

You get to the static page with the best information about the topic you’re searching for but blogs present the information in a different dimension.

Related: 10 Interesting Facts You Didn’t Know about Blogging

Another interesting fact is that blogs get crawled by search engines than websites because blogs are updated almost every time and since everyone’s on the search for latest information, websites don’t usually get crawled by search engines.

Now that you know the differences and similarities between a blog and website, what about the differences between bloggers and journalists?

Bottom line:

You can have a blog and a website at the same time.

A blog in this sense will be an extension on your website. If you notice websites like wistia.com or any company’s website, they have a blog feature to post about recent activities on-going or completed by their company.

So, it depends on what you want to do. If you want to share or post about one big area of  interest  to you (e.g European soccer leagues, Ladies cosmetics, technology in villages, etc.), then a blog will be the best choice.

This will necessitate creating new posts and sharing your thoughts as soon as you have new information.

Like most people, you may really want to start a blog but knowing where to get started may be difficult.

Truly, starting may be difficult if you don’t have an easy right path to follow, learn how to create and start a blog in 5 steps

Do you have questions or other points to add to the ones above? Please use the comment box below.