Think very carefully before you ignore the benefits of a blog-based site. Without question, you can make a site that simply does not look or act like a blog. But blogging gives your site business and search engine advantages that no other website format offers.

1. Because blogs are updated frequently, search engines love them.

Fresh, original content that’s organized clearly for human consumption is irresistible to search engines. There’s nothing a search engine likes more.

2. Keyword searches happen more naturally

That means people are more likely to find your site when searching by keyword. If your competitors aren’t doing this and you are, you’ll pull quickly ahead of them. And if they’ve beaten you to the punch, you’ll have no choice but to meet or exceed their efforts. The search engine juice is too important these days. Even if you think you’re not a news-based site, you’re probably wrong.

3. Event announcements get spidered faster

If you schedule events for the public, if you want people to learn about new features, if you want the community as a whole to know what you’re doing, or if you want to attract new customers, short news items make it easy for people to keep up.

4. People can subscribe to your site

Using RSS feeds people can subscribe to your blog and get notified automatically when new content is added. If your site is for a restaurant or store, this is a fantastic way to advertise specials and keep people coming back to your site. If your site is for a church or service organization, there’s no easier way to keep people informed of important goings-on. Try asking your webmaster to add a feature like that to a site built from HTML instead of WordPress.

5. Comments mean community

Blogs allow comments to be posted on them (although you can disable this feature, or control what comments get posted). Why is this important? First, it increases interest in your site and gets people to come more often. Second, it increases search engine results because those comments add original content to your site, with little to no effort on your part! How bad can it be to get free help developing your web presence? And finally, it is a brilliant way to network and to learn about new developments in your field that you may never have known otherwise.

Blow your competition away. Build great sites in minutes. Make the changes yourself, and do it without learning HTML, FTP, FBI, CIA or anything else. Just get the job done with your browser, no specialized tools, and be On The Web in an Hour.