Blog or Website?

I will be setting up my first website for weightloss and will be promoting affiliate products. I was thinking of setting up a regular website, I feel I can manage the editing and stuff. But I see that most people suggest a wordpress blog over a website. Is it really true that search engines prefer blogs over regular websites? If that is the case I wouldn't mind using wordpress, it's very easy to work with as well.
Now, this may seem silly, but if I were to use Wordpress I'm not sure as to how my blog should be set up. I don't know where my product review page should be. As for articles I just have to post them as 'posts' right? And whatever products I'm trying to sell, should I create a 'page' for them? With a blog, my homepage will show all my recent posts. So is it ok to just have a small page link at the top for my product review page? Anything else that would attract people to go to that page? Or is this sufficient? I will be having a couple of banners in the side bar.
As you see I'm confused here. An example would be of great help.

 

You can have both. Build a site then put link for a blog. So you have nice looking site with few pages & separate blog with fresh content updated regularly. Just an opinion.

 

hi viralbug,

if you do your seo-homework and your cms or Blog-Software support all needed seo-relatet points it is not dependent to use a special Blog or CMS. The primary advantage of Wordpress ist that you get good seo-plugins to start fast with it. You can also setup a Drupal-Site fast to be very SEO-friendly. I would prefer to go with Drupal. It is easy to setup and you have much more flexibility and expandability than Wordpress. Drupal is a real CMS and not a pure Blogging software with hacks and plugins to imitate a CMS, like Wordpress do.

 

Agree that it is a good technique to set up your main site that has product pages with affiliate links, and then also add a blog that will contain regularly updated postings. Whether you use Wordpress or some other CMS is another decision you need to make ... but Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, etc. can all handle both blog sites and regular web sites.

 

Its up to u, u can have wp blog and can customize the blog as looking a website. Or u can use any other portal site script.

Blogging needs daily updates becoz ppl need content and they will come if u will offer quality content on weekly base in blog. Site will also lose ranking and visitors if u will not update the site.

 

If you will add fresh content on a short basis and looking for a best seo results then I recommend you to use Wordpress and not a normal website.

 

My preference is custom website if you are in it for the long term. No question Wordpress will achieve what what you need and a lot quicker but (IMHO) for something truly unique nothing beats a homegrown website.

 

Website is better than blogs surely i can say. domain helps in many ways. one of best thing is you wanted repeat visitors to your site then remembering blog is not a good idea. If its .com then remembering it is easy and it also looks profetional.

 

i would suggest create a blog but make it professional quality with your own domain-name. its easy to sell it too if you are thinking in that direction. i do create lot of blogs myself...i use a CC wordpress plugin. its sets up the blogs in minutes. let me know if you have any questions.

-D

 

as long as you have the traffic, you can have both. it is not important you choose blog or website. Without traffic, everything is nothing

 

Thank you all for your suggestions.
I have set up a blog and trying to work on it. I just need to keep updating it now and hope traffic comes in.
The only thing I'm not happy with is my current theme. Although it isn't too bad, but I wish I could have found a better one.

 

I will prefer website over a blog, because it gives more flexibility. Use a CMS like drupal instead.

 

You could pick up a decent theme that makes a wordpress look and act like a normal CMS-driven website. You have the benefit of quick deployment, quick configuration and easy admin interface (yeh I know some other CMS' do too).

 

u can make a good blog compaire to website and write some good content. it will better for seo engine

 

I acctualy use blog (wordpress) to promote affiliate product, cause blog get more faster index at search engine and of course easy to customized.

 

i rather u spent some $ to buy a ready made health blog. It will take u at least a few months before u can start any affiliates products or $$ earning.

Unles u already hv a big customer base or visitors ready to visit ur site. Or u could buy over a site, ripped its content and let the domain die off.

 

A website or a blog anything can be better than the other, it just depend upon the way how you manage and promote it.

A proper management make both of them great.

 

yes.. it depends only on how you promote ur blog/website. if u start promoting ur blog/website, traffic will come automatically.
and one more thing, u can customize the blog easily.

 

This must just be a pet peeve of mine... I run both Wordpress & Drupal... and they are BOTH CMS's!

A CMS (Content Management System) is merely a web framework that is the skeleton upon which you hang your content. Generally, although not a requirement, it consists of HTML/PHP and a MySQL database backend.

It frees you from the complexity of putting together a complete site (and I've handcoded HTML websites, it's not pretty!) - and allows you to pay more attention to the content itself.

Tis true that Wordpress was originally designed for blogging, and still functions best as a blogging platform... while it can do other website functions, it does them poorly compared to (as merely one example) Drupal.

On the other hand, Drupal would not be my choice were I to put up a blogging site - it would be a bit of stupidity on my part... you should chose the best CMS for the goal you're aiming at. Why would you pick up a screwdriver to pound in a nail? Why would you chose Drupal or Joomla to blog? Why would you chose Wordpress for a community oriented website?

Just because Wordpress is not a 'general purpose' CMS does not delete it from the list of CMS's... it does the same thing any CMS does - it separates the function of the website from the content of that website.

Just my two cents worth of rant...

 

I prefer Blog over a website. But if you can have both then well why not!!!