As a consultant people often ask me about their website: should they have one? What should it look like? What kind of site should it be?
I admit it. I am biased.
I have been doing web design since AOL came out with their personal web pages and a spinning gif felt like advanced graphic technology.
I have used a variety of web design programs and have always defaulted back to basic code editing.
Now I use blogsites. I still code, but I can do that in an easier interface. The tools are much easier to use and really help you create dynamic sites.
Most people think of a blogsite as a website for hosting a blog. It is actually a completely customizable website that is easy to edit and easy to update. It solves a lot of the utility issues presented by traditional websites and can save you a ton of money on design costs.
Updating your website…
The reason this is important is to drive repeat traffic to your site. If your site is static or unchanging then people have little reason to come back to it. To really drive traffic to your site you need to be a source of information. Give them a reason to keep coming back. This is where a blogsite excels! You can incorporate dynamic content through various widgets, making it easy to automatically stream content from sites such as Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. You can also easily update your content through blog posts and site updates.
It’s almost too easy…
You don’t have to be a web designing wiz to be able to set up beautiful blogsites. Themes are the easiest way. A theme is a preformed site that is installed on top of your blog. It comes pre-loaded with widgets designed to make your site dynamic and highly functional. For the most part you can drag and drop the widgets and easily customize your site. If you are wanting something a little more complex, the CSS style sheet is easy to edit and the web is full of support sites to help you learn how to edit the code.
SEO…
Yup, blogsites are making that easy too. With plugins like Scribe SEO, it is easy to optimize your posts. These plugins analyze your writing, identify keywords, give you tags and give you advice. It is like having a personal SEO consultant looking at your every post.
Back in the day of AOL Hometown, I spent hours scouring other people’s sites, pouring through hundreds of message boards, teaching myself HTML and learning to read source code. In the end I had a site with a pretty night sky background, some spinning gifs and text in blue writing that I now know is nearly impossible to read.
Blogsites are superior to AOL Hometown – and they are also much better than a lot of standard wesbites. If you want a site that is easy to update and gives you the option of having dynamic content, then this is the way to go.
The blogsite theme I use is Genesis by Studiopress. I find it easy to work with and easy to customize. It gives a great start to a beautiful and unique site. If you are going to get noticed on the web your webpage is your first impression.
