Should Your Business Have a Blog Attached to the Site?
When I talk to people about this idea a lot of them ask me something like, “But aren’t blogs just for people that have nothing better to do? I thought they were all junk!” Well, yes, there are a lot of junky blogs out that that aren’t going to do us a lot of good. But what are the benefits to having blogs? Well, part of this answer depends on how you have your blog set up. For this you have two different options: a blog attached to your site, or a blog on a separate domain name. Today we’ll talk about the first option.
Content
The first reason to have a blog attached to your site is for content creation. Search engines like to see that your site is constantly changing. One of the problems with regular website is that they tend to be somewhat static, meaning that they don’t change very often. Well, if you site never changes, why would the search engines need to come back? Having a blog can definitely help with this problem.
Link Building
This is especially true if you have the site setup like blog.sitename.com. There is still some benefit if you have a setup like www.sitename.com/blog, but it tends to be better the other way. Basically, when you add a post to your blog, you should use one of your main keyword phrases and link back to the main site. When you do this you are adding to the links that you have out there, and you’re using key phrases!
Interaction
One of the great things about blogs is that they give your customers a chance to interact with you on a different level. You can use your blog as a newsletter of sorts. It also gives you a chance to perhaps create some good link-bait articles that others will link to as well.
So in short, yes there are many reason that you might want to consider having a blog for your e-commerce website. Blogging is not just for those that are bored. Lots of businesses are starting to get involved in the blogosphere because they’re finding that it can help affect their search engine rankings.
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Great post. I’ll be back again.
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I agree. Blogs help increase traffic to your site. Aside from providing advantages to the website owner, blogging is also a great way of making extra money.
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Having just found your blog on Google, I’ll be back many times.
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Blogs certainly increase traffic in one’s website. In addition, it is also a great way for freelance writers to earn extra cash.
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I have been considering adding a blog to my site for a while. I think it would be fun to connect to my userbase like that, but at the same time, I’m afraid that it may seem unprofessional. Do you have any tips for ensuring that my blog doesn’t just become more of the “junk.”
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Hey Johnny,
Great question. Basically just stick to your topic. A blog can become “junk” if it has a lot of “junk” on it that isn’t related to the content of the main site. The blog is a tool that should build on the main phrases and content of the main site.
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I agree that blogging is a great tool to keep search engines coming back. I currently blog for a company and all they care about is that I blog consistently: how often I make a post (every day for them), what I write about, and that I include a specific keyword phrase in the title of the post and also in the content as a direct link to a specific sub page on their main website.
Good work!
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The reasons you have mentioned are true. Don’t tell everyone
The sites using blogs understand the facts about search engine optimization with the blogs. We have added a blog to our website recently.
Good information.
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There are a lot of ecommerce sites without blogs. The business owners expect traffic to magically come in. But the best way for the search engines to find you out is if they have content! THese shopping cart websites have no content and the pages are dynamically made wich the search engines do not like…
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Boris,
Very well said. Dynamic pages cause all sorts of problems for search engines.
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Any business that has a website (which they all should by now) should definitley have a blog. If it’s not on their actual business site there should be a very visible link to the site with the blog.
All of the reasons you listed are great reasons to have a blog, especially interaction. A blog allows you to talk directly with your customers and is a great way to control what people think about your brand.
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I think that any blog should. It helps them to direct traffic better. Plus its a way to get on a more personal level with your customers.
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Excellent article! I’ve been trying to set up a blog for a domain I own, but I have found the Blogger.com configuration with GoDaddy to be very complicated. It almost seems like the process is unnecessarily complicated, perhaps because Blogger/Google’s goal is to have as many blogs as possible using subdomain.blogspot.com.
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Some of what was writing confirms I am moving in the right direction.
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by now blogs are pretty much mandatory for every professional business
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I have a forum attached my site. Does this have the same effect?
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Great Post, the internet has revolutionized how we do business, with so many avenues to promote, it is important to be where our prospective customer would be, let it be social media, (the myspace and facebooks), entertainment portals and directories (citysearch, and others) blogging and more
http://gewdir.com Information on Loans with Bad Credit Blog
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Dan Reply:
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:43 am
It’s true, there really are a lot of options out there. In more ways than ever before companies have the opportunity to really interact with their customers.
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Yes, all self-respectful business should have a corporate blog attached to a their company’s website. It is a great way to connect to its customers on the more emotional level. Plus that level appears to be the most efficient and effective rather than the other media communication channels.
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Dan Reply:
December 30th, 2008 at 9:23 am
It’s good to see that more businesses are starting to do this. The ones who don’t do it yet are missing out on a big part of internet marketing.
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I think a blog is a great idea, however it needs to be bound with a strategy. Just having a blog filled with worthless material is even worse than not having one at all…
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I recently heard that 2 million new blogs appears every second - so in order to survive you in the blogging world you have to really keep your focus on traffic and good content.
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Great post. I have to get a blog of my own. Thank you
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Great post..at the moment I’m trying to integrate a blog to a site that I didnt really see a benefit to it till I understood the links.
thanks for the post.
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Its a definite “yes” for me. Why? Having a blog for your main site let’s you interact with people in a more casual way. Unlike static pages of a website, blogs allows viewers to post comment, input opinions and ask questions. In terms of SEO, site owners will be able to promote keywords more efficiently by posting articles and contents rich with keywords and links.
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I would imagine that it’s a good idea. That way you’re able to talk to people and reply to them easier without having to open a lot of emails.
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I would think it would be more effective.
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it really helps me.Thank you.
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