That’s what I told, you shouldn’t have a website.

You should have a blog instead.

Now that you’ve found a web host for your business / recruiter website you have just one question - "What the heck do I put up on my web site?"  My very best suggestion is is that you put up a blog and not a regular web page, at least at first.  I’d suggest that you use WordPress as your blog software. Here are my 7 reasons you shouldn’t have a website but should use a blog for your website:

Blog software is no cost - there is nothing wrong with wanting to do things economically, and free is about as economical as you can get.  You can go to WordPress.org and download blogging  software for no cost.  You can also get them to install it for no charge on your web page.  If you use HostGator as your web hosting provider (as I suggested in my article on where to host your site) then you can install WordPress yourself with the click on one button on the control panel.

Blog software is robust - there are several million installs of TypePad and WordPress each, and both have large communities that support them.  You can discover forums and groups all across the internet just by doing a Google search.  With millions of users, the software tends to get bullet proof nice-looking quickly.

Blog software manages content - actually most people use blog software as a CMS or content management system.  What that means is that the blog software takes care of the structure of the website handling most of the coding complexity of building a website, allowing the owner of the site to concentrate on content.  Basically the blog creates a framework of static pages and post pages (pages displaying articles) that hold your content.  Content creation is about the only work you’ve to do, and mostly it’s about as simple as writing an email.

Blogs are attractive to Google - when it comes to indexing sites and ascribing value to ‘em, Google thinks highly of blogs.  At least if they contain original and fine content.  The reason is that blogs tend to have fresh, new, exciting (OK maybe that’s over the major), original, and useful content which is published on a every day basis.  That’s a lot more frequently than the content changes or additions that happen on most websites.  Since they change more often, and Google is in the business of being the best search engine - which means they got to have the best index of sites, naturally Google will index blogs more often than they do a static unchanging site.

Blogs have built in promotion features - most people don’t realize that blogs contain two important features that help your web site / blog gain notoriety and importance in Google’s eyes, if not in the eyes of your readers and the features work automatically.  These two features are pings / trackbacks and RSS feeds.  I won’t go into great detail here because these are large enough subjects to have their own posts, but suffice to say that those features help drive your website to the big of search engine rankings.

Blogs help display your subject matter expertise - if you build a static website chances are very valuable that you will be limited in the number of pages you can publish.  All of the pages together got to say something about your business, your products and services, and your team.  There is a limit to how much information can be digested in one reading, and a limit as too how much time any of your website visitors will spend reading one page or group of pages in one sitting.  Static websites, therefore, can only dish up a limited amount of information about one topic.  Not so with a blog.  The model is different .  You publish bite-size articles about topics in posts (articles) that can be served up on a regular basis.  You’ve the ability to tailor each of the posts to fit the intended audience and their attention span.  For longer topics, you can do a series of articles -as I’m doing here - that are connected and get your readership engaged.  Because you can dole out information in diminutive chunks on a regular basis, you have the ability to show the depth and breadth of your subject matter expertise without boring the audience.

Blogs develop fine traffic - as you create content you build value for your readers.  You should be providing information to your audience that they will find useful in their every day lives.  As you continue to provide information / value then these folks will continue to return to your blog to discover more.  When they return, you will have an opportunity to present to them propositions that involve sales generation.  It could be that you provide interview tips that candidates find useful - making them feel comfortable with signing up for outplacement services.  It could be that you give tips about resumes - driving candidates to you resume writing / review service.  You might also provide staffing / recruiting consultancy, and your status as a subject matter expert in staffing might convince a client customer that your working style would be better suited to them than one of your competitors.

These are my 7 reasons why you should have a blog instead of a static website.  If you have queries or would like to investigate how you can get blogging websites set up that integrate with your ATS / recruiting software contact us at the Job Board Engine.

Article courtesy of  Carl Chapman - Founder CEC Search, LLC dba
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