Website vs. Blog (Steve please comment ...)

[brooksr]

I came to this website because I'm really interested in PD. Then I read the articles: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...rom-your-blog/, http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...-site-or-blog/ & http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...evenue-growth/.

I've been looking for a way to earn income as I travel fulltime and use my programming background. So, I learned some Wordpress and created Early Retirement Wisdom (www.erwisdom.com). I started getting a little traffic, but not enough and had a number of difficult technical issues with Wordpress.

Somewhere along the line I stumbled upon Site Build It (SiteSell.com, E-business Success. Simple. Real.) and was impressed with the program. Their approach made a lot of sense (http://videotour.sitesell.com/). "Keyword Focused Content Pages", "Content, then Traffic, then Presell, then Monetize". Going through their program made me realize that I had 2 major topics on Early Retirement Wisdom early retirement and full-time rving. I needed to pick just one. Also, I wasn't building my pages around potentially profitable keywords.

So I started a new website: RV Wisdom - advice on buying, equipment, motorhomes and towing and am on Day 7 of their 10 "day" program. I've created 30 content pages and am working on bringing in traffic.

Yesterday, I was re-reading some of Steve's thoughts on traffic building and was surprised to learn that he attributes very little traffic to the major search engines (Google, Yahoo) and attributes most of the traffic success to bookmarking sites like www.del.icio.us, Digg / News, reddit.com: what's new online, etc.

While SBI covers all traffic building strategies, including bookmarking, it occurs to me that their whole design and philosophy is built around receiving most traffic from the SEs. This is not what Steve has done as I understand it.

www.stevepavlina.com: PR (page rank) 6. Alexa traffic rank 5393.
Anguilla Beaches, Villa Vacations In Caribbean Paradise (main SBI example): PR 5. Alexa traffic rank 56,423.

Not sure if this is an apples-to-apples comparison because PD would have wider audience/appeal than Anguilla beaches.

Makes me wonder what's best -

A blog type website or a 3 tier website in the SBI fashion?

Are keyword focused content pages important?

What's most important for traffic - SE sites or bookmarking sites?

Appreciate others thoughts.

Brooks

[Savage]

Most of my traffic doesn't come from social bookmarking sites. They helped at certain times, but they're not a big part of sustainable traffic. The main thing that brings traffic to this site is just having links from tons of other sites. It's very decentralized, with no single source being hugely significant. Every day many new links are added, so there's always a flow of new visitors and word of mouth referrals. It's the long tail at work.

I would not suggest that anyone add the bulk of their content as static HTML pages. Use a blog instead, even if you don't want to be a blogger per se. RSS feeds, pings, and trackbacks are important traffic-building tools. If you go with static HTML, you're seriously missing out. For example, when you post a new blog entry, it will ping other sites to let them know your content has been updated, thereby helping to create some instant traffic. Static HTML pages don't do this, so nobody even knows when you've added content.

Without the use of blogging technology, there's no way my site would be getting as much traffic as it does.

[MartialDev]

Do you want more traffic or more income? These are not the same thing. Sites like Digg provide traffic, but these people generally do not care what you have to offer; they visit because other people are visiting. You can count on them to leave a snarky comment, but they won't click an ad or buy a product.

SE traffic, in contrast, is highly targeted. This is a good thing if you want to monetize.

[bluedragon]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Most of my traffic doesn't come from social bookmarking sites. They helped at certain times, but they're not a big part of sustainable traffic. The main thing that brings traffic to this site is just having links from tons of other sites. It's very decentralized, with no single source being hugely significant. Every day many new links are added, so there's always a flow of new visitors and word of mouth referrals. It's the long tail at work.

I would not suggest that anyone add the bulk of their content as static HTML pages. Use a blog instead, even if you don't want to be a blogger per se. RSS feeds, pings, and trackbacks are important traffic-building tools. If you go with static HTML, you're seriously missing out. For example, when you post a new blog entry, it will ping other sites to let them know your content has been updated, thereby helping to create some instant traffic. Static HTML pages don't do this, so nobody even knows when you've added content.

Without the use of blogging technology, there's no way my site would be getting as much traffic as it does.

I'm building an SBI site and was wondering just this : I'm missing out on trackbacks and blog-pinging. SBI doesn't support this unless you integrate a 3rd party blogging platform through their tool Infin It! - but then I see no reason to stay with SBI. Plus - I learned a lot - hmtl, css. I have 2 SBI packages and I wonder if I should get a refund for my second one and start a personal development wordpress blog instead of SBI.
They say something about their Content 2.0 capabilities doing "most of the stuff" that wordpress does - but does it really? I would really need the advice of someone who understands SBI better than me. I was glad you answered this thread, Steve, but I'm still not sure what to do about SBI. After all, you do recommend it.

[SimonaRich]

Originally Posted by bluedragon

I'm building an SBI site and was wondering just this : I'm missing out on trackbacks and blog-pinging. SBI doesn't support this unless you integrate a 3rd party blogging platform through their tool Infin It! - but then I see no reason to stay with SBI. Plus - I learned a lot - hmtl, css. I have 2 SBI packages and I wonder if I should get a refund for my second one and start a personal development wordpress blog instead of SBI.
They say something about their Content 2.0 capabilities doing "most of the stuff" that wordpress does - but does it really? I would really need the advice of someone who understands SBI better than me. I was glad you answered this thread, Steve, but I'm still not sure what to do about SBI. After all, you do recommend it.

Yes, you can have separate blog and then integrate it into your SBI site. You will have to purchase separate hosting and the blog will be located at blog.youdomain.com.

[bluedragon]

The question was why have it in an SBI site when I can have a domain name for 9 dollars? I want to build a second site, fro, scratch, When I started, SBI helped me cause I didn't know anything, but even then, I decided I must learn css and I did, in a day (and basic html). I don't feel that the complexity is too much for me anymore. So I want to know, what does SBI do so wonderful to be worth 300 dollars, when I already know enough to do everything it does AT THE SURFACE of things. Are there so many things that I don't see that SBI does for me? Except for pinging SEs, offering me 2 RSS feeds, the complex traffic statistics and the great e-mail with virus and spam blast-it etc, what else?