Hi everyone. My name is Laszlo. I enjoy reading your educative threads on the topic of SEO. I own and operate a NEW printer supply website. Besides that I sell inkjet cartridges and other related products I also write many articles for my site. Not the sole purposes of boosting my site’s search engine ranking but because I would like to help people to find the right information on the topic. I already wrote at least 25 articles and put them on my site. However, recently I am thinking to start a blog because I heard it might help improve the search engine ranking. I know that “fresh, constantly updated content gets a special spot in Google's heart†but I am wondering why should I start a totally new blog with zero PR when I can just write articles to my existing website that has a PR4? I mean what advantages a blog can offer besides that visitors could post comments on my articles? I just could simply write the article to my site and wait until the search engines index it. That would also improve my ranking overtime and I should not have to mess with a totally new blog (that is oftentimes painfully primitive) and hope that some day it will have good pr?!? I know that some blogs automatically creates rss-feeds, which could be helpful in indexing my new pages,(if there are links to my site). Right, but I could also create an rss feed and an XML sitemap on my site and I wouldn’t have to hope for the good rank for my new blog. I signed up for wordpress and wanted to create a few posts but it is unbelievably slow, looks primitive and has lots of errors. So make the long story short I just would like to hear your opinions on why should I write my articles for a blog and not for my WebPages? Sorry for the long story. Any opinion will be appreciated, Thank You Laszlo Sztancs www.1printer-supply.com
I think the reason people choose to use wordpress and say its good for the search engines and such is just because its SEO friendly (or can be made that way easy). If you have an exsisting site that contains all these articles then I would continue to build on that site and not go to a blog. Updating a site is just like updating a blog. No difference. Well there is some because its easier. But if your site is SEO friendly then there is no reason to switch at all. Actually it would be a bad idea.
You can add a blog to your exisiting site. Which i have found to make it easier to add new content to m site - which means i will add new stuff more often. So, adding a blog to your site might benefit you in the long run.
I wouldn't think of blogging purely for SEO reasons. Keeping a blog has plenty of marketing benefits. Mainly in that it is a way to present your side of the story. A way to keep your customers informed and updated, and a way to put character on you business. Google keeps blogs for the PR (public relations, not the other PR). Brilliant marketing, IMO.
To me a blog is just the same as a web page, only that its nature of getting update often gives it an advantage in terms of "freshness". So if I were you, instead of creating a blog from scratch (and PR0), I'd rather continuously create new articles on that existing web site because I think it is more appropriate to be classified as an article about your business. A website content can be structured same as a blog (with title, content, RSS feeds) for easier management. It should be fairly straightforward to continue what you are doing now instead of starting over again on a blog.
EWC, I think there is a big difference between websites and blogs. Blogs engage the reader in a conversation, whereas websites are just one-way. It's about conversational marketing.
I agree with Scott and would add that blogs are a great networking tool. With RSS feeds, usually allready provided by a blog, you can increase your sites visibility a lot. And if your feeds content is interesting, you have good chances of being quoted by other bloggers, which multiplies your readership.
All of the most succesful websites these days allow for user intersction with the site ~ In my opinion, that's what SEO *is* now. Developing a site that really makes people want to come back and interact with. I agree that blogs are awesome marketing tools, and I also agree that blogs and websites do differ, but in reality, the 'nornm' of a website is moving more and more towards the way a lot of blogs work, simply because of the number of easy-to-use, search friendly publishing systems available today.
no reason why you can't have both, keep your existing website and all its wonderful PR, then in a sub-folder start your new blog and link back to your main pages when you need to. Over time your blog pages will gain PR, you'll develop a community, and your static pages might even gain PR becasue your site is so much larger.
Agree, but I did not talk about the content. I was trying to address the question which asks whether websites or blogs have influence on SEO results as posted by Laszlo.
Regarding SEO since that was the original question although I agree that blogs are great marketing tools as JohnScott points out. But talking about SEO only: IMO you could either start a blog with a new domain or use yourdoamin/blog (or blog.yourdomain.com). A lot of businesses seem to be going for the blogspot hosted blogs. That does give them links from another class C IP (but only one) so I'm not sure there's a big advantage there. One thing that makes those links important is that they'll point to some of your deep content pages with whatever anchor text you choose. If it were my business I would certainly set up a blog on my own domain name. Yes, Google will love the fresly updated content, and the comments help too. There's some more unique content for the search engines. If the content is really good, your blog will start getting links. This, in turn, helps your main site since your now powerful blog links to your main business information. So in the end, the blog should help you link wise (1. as you link to your own stuff and 2. as people link to your blog), and conent-wise (1. your blog entries and 2. reader comments). You'll be investing something (most likely time unless you can hire a good blogger) but I think the rewards are worth it.