Why You Should Write Informational Articles Instead of Blog Posts

To build sustainable value for your website, your informational content should be in the form of comprehensive, researched articles instead of web blog posts.

This is the view of website usability expert Jakob Nielsen in his article Write Articles, Not Blog Postings. 

Nielsen notes the distinctions between authoritative web content and blogs as:

• in-depth vs. superficial
• original/primary vs. derivative/secondary
• driven by the author's expertise vs. being reflectively driven by other sites or outside events 

The Business of a Business Blog

Blog software or content management systems work well for online publishing--in some cases too well.

There are millions of blogs on the web.  Much of this is written as first-person narratives in the form of superficial, quick blog posts.

However, for online content marketing that has business development goals, this type of writing is going to have little value. 

Instead, as Nielsen points out, a business that wants to draw attention to their website needs to publish comprehensive, researched article content that has high usability value for website visitors.  This may be done using blog software--creating a blog article--or it may be a page on the website.   

Similar to a white paper, this content anticipates and answers the consumer's questions.  The content is comprehensive, researched, and objective.  As informational marketing 
this content introduces products and services and engages people in the buying cycle.

However, because this is web page content, it is focused, concise, and broken-up into specific topics that can be covered in short-article format.  It is also optimized for keyword phrases and niches to provide SEO value.

At SEO Book, a leading online search optimization resource, they state that "noisy" parts of a website like blogs and forums are becoming more difficult to get indexed by search engines like Google.   They note how the web is becoming a series of "incomplete thoughts" and that Google seeks to index richer content because it improves the value of search results.  In fact, SEO Book recommends segregating superficial noise to a subdomain away from higher quality editorial content.  

Blog software makes it easy to publish a lot of content to throw on the web.  It does not, however, make it easier to write. 

An excellent website provides information for the user experience.  In the case of online business content marketing, that means fresh content needs to be comprehensive, researched articles with real informational value.  This content attracts backlinks, stands out as legitimate for search engines, and demonstrates the authority and professionalism of the business. 

Business "blogging" requires high quality article writing.  Otherwise, the content is will get lost in the Internet ocean and end up serving no practical purpose.