The Difference Between a Blog Post and a Page

Most business owners at least know what a website is...hopefully. They can usually tell you what navigation is, a banner/slider/rotator, usually a footer, and sometimes even more specific things on a website. One thing that is not always easily understand is the difference between a website page and a blog post. Because this is a fairly common question, I thought it would be good to address it here.

A Website Page

Website page about search engine optimization.

A page on your website is something that is there indefinitely. The content probably doesn't change all that often (even if it probably should). It's often times part of your navigation so visitors can easily access the information. A page on your website is usually about your business, products, or services. Or if you are a non-profit organization, your pages are probably about your organization, your mission, fundraising, and the benefits you provide. Hopefully every single one of your core website pages is indexed in search engines and generates traffic.

A landing page is also a website page, though usually not part of your navigation. The landing page is specific to one thing and should help capture a conversion. These, like your main website pages, do not change that frequently and are usually focused around you or what you offer. Sometimes a landing page will be indexed in search engines, but at times they are also purposely not indexed to track the marketing effectiveness of a specific marketing initiative.

A Blog Post

Blog post about inbound marketing.

A blog post, while technically still a page, is a bit different than your core website pages. A blog post is more like an article. It should be about one specific topic, but it's not necessarily "you focused". A blog post will often be about something that is relevant at one point in time such as news, an announcement, or an event. Even after it's relevancy is passed a blog post is usually archived and it can be accessed indefinitely, or until it is deleted by the owner.

That brings me to my next point. Blog posts are often dated. This allows the reader to know when the blog post was written so they are able to use their own judgement on whether something is relevant or not. For example, if I see a blog post about search engine optimization from 2009, it may have some good information in it...but I may have to take the information with a grain of salt because it is now 5 years old and so much has changed in the search engine optimization industry in the past 5 years.

A blog post usually has a specific author, while a website page is "from the company" itself. The author of the blog post is often times someone from the company, a writer for a specific website, or a guest writer from somewhere else.

Blog posts are usually categorized and sometimes tagged. This allows readers to find blog posts related to a specific topic easily.

Blog posts are often times informational or educational. While standard website pages also does this, they tend to be more focused on just giving the details.

A blog post can be much more opinionated, humorous or edgy than a core website page, especially if we're talking about a B2B company where website pages tend to be somewhat cold and robot like.

Commenting is also a common occurrence on a blog post, but very few people accept comments on their core website pages because they are one way communication telling it like it is. Blog posts are more excepting of back and forth dialogue.

This is not an all inclusive list, but these are the core differences that stand out to me when comparing blog posts to pages.