This post was submitted by Richard @ No More Compromise. :)

It’s easy to see the similarities between blogging and content sites. After all, they are both content heavy, tend to attract plenty of visitors from the search engines and make money from affiliate links and private advertising sales.

The only difference, you could be forgiven for thinking, is that blogs require more frequent updating than content sites.

But this similarity subtly hides a huge chasm of difference between the two models.

And here is the biggest one – succeeding with a content site can be largely a selfish act, while blogging tends to be quite the opposite.

How come?

Content site publishers, attracting the vast majority of their visitors from the search engines, jealously guard their PageRank like their life depends on it. Try asking one of these sites for a link if you don’t believe me – you can be in for quite a ride.

Stipulations may include that you must link back to them, that you must use the exact code they specify, that you must not have more than x links on your page, that you must have a certain PageRank yourself (often equal to or even higher than their own site), that your links page is no more than 1 click from your homepage and on and on.

Content site publishers make it *hard* to get links.

Basically, content site owners (myself included) are loathe to “waste” a link out of their sites that may devalue our own rankings. We expect something in return for a link – such as a link back from an equally good quality site, a fee in the form of paid advertising or the chance of a commission in the form of an
affiliate link.

But you ain’t gettin’ nuttin’ for free.

Nor am I knocking it. That’s the nature of the game. A fact of life. People who give out links left, right and center really *can* suffer – and why risk that?

Blogging, on the other hand, is far more “community based” and “link happy”. The very nature of blogging is being able to share your ideas with a community of likeminded individuals.

Even most blogging platforms like Blogger or Wordpress are free.

Wrote a great post? It’s likely you’ll find a number of other bloggers linking to you – drawing attention to you. Why? Because that’s what blogging is all about – and they know you’ll likely link back to them anyway because that’s what (polite) bloggers do.

This “linkability” factor can make quite a difference to your business results when you think about it. These days it’s easier to generate links from blogs than content sites – and to do so simply create fantastic content and network with bloggers in the same field as you.

Also, you can build PR to your own site – and hence benefit in terms of SEO by starting a separate blog, getting involved with the community and then linking back to your main site.

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