Why you should not separate your blog and your website
Today I received an announcement of a new website and blog. When I went to check them out, I was surprised that the website and blog were actually 2 separate websites and were not integrated into one. This really is a missed opportunity as an integrated blog can do wonders for your website’s traffic and popularity.
Not surprisingly, this wasn’t the only thing that was wrong with the website.
What could have been better:
- The website was written with outdated code using lots of tables
- The website was newly designed but is using frames
- No attention had been paid to search engine optimisation, making it very unlikely that this site will be found in search engines
- Conversion seemed to be a low priority as there were no sign-up boxes for email newsletters and hardly any links that went directly to the contact page
- There is not even a mention (or it is very hidden) of the blog
- The blog was wordpress.com hosted blog which means that it doesn’t have its own domain name
- The blog looked completely different from the main website and it was difficult to find any connection between the 2
Why is it so important to include your blog into your main site?
Including your blog into your website can dramatically increase the number of visitors to your website but it also helps with search engine optimisation, which is the process of improving the likelihood that your website gets a prominent position in search engines for your chosen keywords.
Benefits of integrating your blog into your main website:
- It tells Google (and other search engines) that your site is active and frequently updated. This will cause Google to come back to your website more often to rank your pages
- Your blog posts will get picked up by online alerts and spiders and will direct traffic directly to your main website
- If someone links to your blog posts this will increase the link popularity of your main website which will improve your search engine ranking and your page rank
- An integrated blog will look a lot more professional
- You will only need to maintain one website rather than 2
So how can you you get an integrated blog?
Both systems that I now mainly use to create my websites come with automatic integration of the blog.
Wordpress.org
Wordpress.org is wordpress.com’s big sister, which allows you to run Wordpress on your own server. Wordpress was setup as a blogging application but it is increasingly growing into a full fledged business CMS. You can create a website that seamlessly integrates the blog into your main pages. Check it out at Wordpress.org. If you need our help setting this up for you then contact us.
ProntaCMS
ProntaCMS is content management system that includes a blog into your main website. You can seamless integrate the feeds into your design. You can try this easy CMS for free.
I wish you good luck with your new website and if you need any help then please let me know. If you find these posts interesting then don’t forget to subscribe to the article updates by email or RSS.
