What is a blog? What is a landing page? What is a website? When to use a blog, when to use a landing page?
Almost no one answers you this question AT THE SAME TIME, so newbies to MMO often get confused. You cannot maximize the power of each type or combine them to create unexpected effects.
To avoid the “one side is important, one side is not”, you need to know everything or at least have a general idea of what it is. Because this is basic knowledge but it is not easy to understand, it takes time to experience.
To help you, I will share these three concepts in the most understandable way through two different lenses, Blogger and Marketer.
What is a blog?
A blog is a collection of articles that are highly shared with the community. The content of blog posts often exploits a certain topic, you can call it a niche, and each single article presents a narrow topic serving that niche.
Obviously this is the most powerful SEO weapon, the content that Google favors the most because it creates a large number of useful article pages for SEARCHERS on Google.
Blogging goes hand in hand with SEO.
For bloggers, a blog is considered a website. That’s not true, a blog is a blog. However, affiliate networks still consider your blog as your website because they know that blogs convert much better than so-called real websites.
For marketers, blogging is considered an expensive marketing channel (that's right, more expensive than advertising if invested correctly) but sustainable with many great opportunities from SEO.
P/S: Blog is a special term, no matter what language you translate it into, it cannot replace this word. So, just call it blog. The whole world understands.
What is Landing Page?
A landing page is a standalone web page that always has a mission of focused conversion. Every word, every element, every image wants the viewer to take a certain action according to the creator's wishes.
Can landing pages replace blogs?
In fact, it can replace a blog when needed, but most people don't do that because landing pages are not convenient for blogs when blogs need to be able to manage content easily.
Blogs often update their content (add or add to it to suit the time) and this is also a weakness of landing pages. Even if you use WordPress Page Builder plugins, it still exposes this weakness.
Can landing page replace website?
Of course, this is also one of the common uses of landing pages. You can use it to create a website. But the weakness of landing pages will be revealed during the process of creating a website, which is the function of the website.
Website functionality is often created “site-wide” and each page on the website may not be purely conversion-generating. But landing pages are still “website-able.”
We will learn more about the website in the next section.
For bloggers, landing pages are used to convert blogs into websites. Increase credibility and create professionalism for bloggers.
For marketers, landing pages are sales, a platform for marketing advertising. Conversion is the strength of landing pages, and sales conversion is the ultimate goal for marketers to use landing pages.
What is a website?
When you talk about a website, you are emphasizing a certain brand and it is tied to the domain name.
Website domain name is very important.
A website is a collection of different web pages with different purposes and features. But they have the same domain name, target a particular brand and have a uniform design.
A large website can have thousands of different pages and it also includes blogs and landing pages. Landing pages act as small sub-pages to promote the website's brand.
For bloggers, a website is a blog that is added to a landing page. Since blogs require quantity, converting a blog into a website is much simpler. A website is a big project for bloggers.
For marketers, a website is a landing page with the same design. Creating multiple landing pages on the same domain will create a website. A blog is better but not a priority from the beginning because a landing page is enough to build a brand and initial reputation.
Real-world analysis of blogs, landing pages and websites
To make it easier to understand, we need a real example and find out what is a blog, what is a landing page, and what is a website.
Take a look at the website GetKeyWords.io, you will see the home page is the landing page but also plays a major role in creating the website.
On the homepage, GetKeyWords provides a quick introduction to the keyword research product and in an all-in-one PAGE style.GetKeyWords.io (website) homepage
However, the home page was not enough to generate strong conversions, so they created two higher converting pages: a pricing page and a features page.
These two pages are true landing pages because they serve one purpose, which is to convert sales.Landing Page Features GetKeyWords.io
GetKeyWords split blog in subdomain blog.getkeywords.io
for easy content management.Blog GetKeyWords
- Website:
https://www.getkeywords.io
- Landing Pages:
https://www.getkeywords.io/features
- Blog:
https://blog.getkeywords.io/
They combine all 3 for maximum effectiveness with Blog for free traffic, landing page to support conversion from homepage traffic and website for brand promotion backlinks.
When they need to advertise, GetKeyWords will create a dedicated landing page for paid advertising to attract users. The home page itself can still run ads when they need it.
Conclusion…
Technically, blogs often use various CMS platforms to build because CMS helps you manage a large number of articles.
Landing pages can also use CMS (WordPress for example) but will be less popular, instead using static or similar because it gives perfect performance and more streamlined source code.
Websites are technically similar to landing pages and in fact you will see blogs separate from the main website domain because blogs use CMS while websites are mostly static.
The modern trend of websites today is to merge sub-pages and create a website with only one page “Onepage Website”. Therefore, many landing page builders can still create a website for you. However, blogs still have to use CMS like Ghost or WordPress.