Add WP Blog Software vs. Site Pages

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1.6K followers

I was wondering if anyone can answer a question for me. I’ve got a website that I’ve spent a lot of time on, as far as the design and content, affiliate links, and a minimum of thirty well-written articles on external sites with links pointing back to the site. The site was built with Dreamweaver, and not with Wordpress, so it does not currently have blog capability.


Recently, a very generous WA member took a look at the site and offered suggestions as to how I might improve it. I am extremely grateful for her time and effort in helping me see a path forward with both my layout, and the marketing strategy, and I intend on making many changes based on her thoughts.

When I initially developed the site, I thought that when I was ready to add new content to the site, I would typically add it as one-page articles, adding a single webpage per article to the site. Each article-webpage would be optimized for a single keyword phrase, and the meta title and description tags would reflect that. Perhaps these article-pages would be organized within an article section of the site. Each article-page would have the full navigational menu as any other page, providing links to the rest of the site and the Amazon Affiliate links sprinkled throughout it.

Even though I hadn’t created my site with Wordpress, I now know that I can add the WP blog software to the site. Instructions I’ve found look fairly straight forward. My question is whether it’s better to add this Wordpress blog software to the site, or organize on-site content as I had originally planned?

I do pay attention to setting up meta title and description tags in the head sections of every page, and optimize the content for that. I also have added Google Analytics code to every page, and have created and submitted an xml sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools, so I don’t think that I’m missing out on any benefits to having WP in that respect.

The one main benefit that I can see to having a website built with Wordpress is having a Ping plugin, such as cbnet Ping Optimizer, or WordPress Ping Optimizer, so as to auto-ping the long list of ping sites that many recommend, rather than having to manually ping each one.

At this point, I’m NOT going to rebuild the site in WP, that’s not the point of this post. I’m wondering if anyone has any thoughts and insights around the pros and cons of adding blog software to the non-WP site versus just adding pages to the site. If anyone does, I’d surely appreciate some feedback.

Thank You! -John

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Recent Comments

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Hi Bob (Movieman303), Thanks for replying with your insight. I love the idea of your Organic Gardening Site! Organic gardening (anti-GMO, anti-pesticide) is something that I am very interested in too. Yes, there is so much to write about with that, even with just the groups you mentioned!

My thoughts were that, if I have a website/blog such as Wordpress, I can add meta title and description tags for each page, and for each blog post. Visitors can use the sites navigation menu to get around. However, I can alternatively create html web pages and add that important meta title and description tags in the head sections of each page instead, and make the content relevant of course.

Now that I've built a site with html, instead of with an integrated blog, like Wordpress, I have two options when adding fresh content as articles. I can add blog software to my non-blog website, or just add pages in the normal fashion. It sounds like you've struggled with this decision too, and may have come to the same conclusion, especially since you didn't get a definitive answer from the WA community.

I think many folks go the Wordpress route, and WP is heavily promoted here because most people are not interested in learning the code, or interested in buying expensive web-building software like Dreamweaver, I understand this. I have built a few sites both ways. My first sites were hokey and not very professional looking, but my more recent ones are rather nice looking.

Anyway, I know there are many benefits to using Wordpress. There are so many plugins that will automatically perform certain tasks for the user, and that is great. There are however, idiosyncrasies with Wordpress that I have discovered and are frustrated by. The first one is the lack of design flexibility when working with it, although I suppose if I were more familiar with it, I might discover more ways to manipulate the design more to my liking. I've seen very few tutorials regarding design and layout options with wordpress, and they were vague at best. I just haven't found the resources that detail in-depth design options.

Another, more serious problem that I discovered when working with Wordpress, is that certain code, particularly schema and authorship code, is stripped from the file when clicking back and forth between Visual and Text editing modes. This is an extremely disturbing behavior. I don't know how pervasive it is, if it is indigenous to only certain themes, or if it is a problem with Wordpress overall.

Have you decided to organize your posts as pages, rather than a rolling blog? Allowing your visitors to find information easier is what Google is all about, isn't it? I agree with you there. Have you started this effort? I'm about to with my site. I think that I'll probably add pages to the site, an article per page, seo'd for one keyword phrase per article-page, and organized, similar to what you had in mind.

I wanted some feedback from the community. Hopefully others will jump in with a thought or two, and give you and I some food for thought.

Thanks for your thoughts Bob, I really appreciate it. I wish you great success with your site. I'll see you around WA of course, -John *

jdehaan001, if I am understanding you right, I have asked the same question and never got a clear answer.

I am building a organic gardening site, what I was thinking was indexing my post into groups, such as, Vegs, Fruits, Flowers, Lawn, Containers, and so forth. Rather than a normal rolling blog.

This would allow my visitors to find what interested them easier, which would translate into them staying on my site longer. And that would benefit me with Google.

So in this aspect, I would think that adding pages would be better, but more work than a rolling blog, like most blogs are.

Just my thoughts.

Bob

Thanks for the link to the article Rich. I just read it, and it was news to me. What the article did not touch upon though, is how to specify a ping list if 'cbnet Ping Optimizer' was never needed. Do you know if 'WordPress Ping Optimizer' by masdiblogs is obsolete as well? Did I miss something in the article?

Anyway, I still have the burning question of the pros and cons of adding WP Blog software to my non-Wordpress site, or is it better to just add a webpage per article on my site.

Hey John,

There's no point in having a ping plugin anymore. You might want to read the info by the devs. of cbnet Ping Optimizer here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cbnet-ping-optimizer/

Rich.

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