With so many options available, what do you see as the advantages or disadvantages of designing your website on a blog platform (Wordpress), as opposed to a traditional static site with a blog link only?

Not questioning the need for blogging, just separate or all in one?

The overwhelming majority of search results are static sites.

Do the search engines favor static sites or are the millions of blogs still vastly outnumbered by static sites?

I think it's critical to keep everything tied together under 1 domain name (i.e. your blog and static site content), I say this for 3 reasons.

1. search engines like to see a site that's frequently updated, a blog solves that

2. blogging makes it easy to target long tail keywords automatically and without you even knowing it

3. blog posts are the most likely to attract and get backlinks, more juice to your site, the more that can overflow onto other pages

RT, so linking a blog to a static website doesn't accomplish the same thing?

Is absolutely right. Search engines like to see websites that are regularly updated... providing good content and commentary. For many projects I happen to think wordpress is great - the platform is very flexible, with a properly designed theme and layout you can "have your cake and eat it too" - ie. have a static website, using the pages and a running commentary with the blog / posts....

Ken

Linking to a static website from a separate blog can help to pass link juice, but nowhere near as much as would be passed and shared if the blog was 100% integrated.

Like Lime Light Power mentioned, using Wordpress makes the whole process very seamless and easy.

There aren't millions of real estate blogs, and the static sites vastly outnumber the ones that there are. Most real estate sites that are highly ranked are established, and their age, size, and backlinks help them stay that way. After a well optimized blog is around for just a bit, with a decent amount of good SEO, the frequent updates make it a great candidate for being highly ranked as well.

Also - unless you look at the underbelly of a site, it's often hard to tell if it's a blog or static. For example, check out http://www.crazyvivhomes.com . That's a Wordpress platform (blog) site that looks like a static site.

Wordpress is well optimized in SEO for the beginner. Its a great starting point.

The rest is Content Content Content and be sure to add it often.

Whether you want to do it as 1 site or 2 is fairly straight forward and generally lies on whether or not you have time to manage 2 sites. I actually watched a video clip of Matt Cutts the other day saying something about managing multiple sites over 1 site and he preferred the latter (1 site). I think 1 site is a good idea if they are relevant in nature - if not then 2 sites would be better.

I believe in separating both, I have a website which I want to market and I have a blog which I use as a means of marketing. My blog updates comes on my website. My website comes on my blog in form of backlink. If I am getting a chance to backlink for free, why should I not go for that? Another reason for having separate blog and website is to do static and dynamic marketing simultaneously.

I think a Wordpress site is the best of both you can have static pages and blog post. Blog post are better in some ways because of the categories and tags. Just the thought of going to a web site that has a menu 12 inches long is enough to scare anyone. That is the main advantage to a blog the way the information is sorted and found by users. I would never go back to a all static site... boring...

Hi,
What I have noticed is that Wordpress is well optimized in search engines for the beginner. Its a great starting point for a website.
The second factor is 'Content' and be sure to add it often. Frequently updates make your site alive and active which invites crawler to the site.

I don't know why people think wordpress is well optimized for SEO. You have to work on it like any site. Back links, key words, etc. What is does though it gives you the chance to have 100s of blog post all with their own seo. Instead of a one long page. Either way you have to add content.

I guess one thing wordpress lets you do is to get easy to work with plugins like all in one SEO, google site maps and an easy to do google analytics plug in.

The other cool think is you can post up blog post from you iphone, ipad, blackberry and soon android. That is cool. Snap a shot, write a post, send it up, tweet about it all from your phone. All to a mobile friendly site if you plug in WPtouch pro.

Ya good seo but look at how easy and fast it would be to make a post. If it is easy to make content while you are sitting at an open waiting you will probably do it.

Did I mention Wordpress camps.

I am 100% with RTChris, he is correct