Separate blog and separate website
Do you already share knowledge in the most effective way?
You have probably already been told that sharing knowledge is important. It is also known as blogging. Blogging is important for your (online) business for a number of reasons. One of these is creating an expert status and the other important is being found in search engines and a flow of visitors to your website. And it is precisely on this important point that a wrong choice is often made.
Share your knowledge
Many starting entrepreneurs – and also large companies – use a so-called Open Source system. Open Source gives a web builder and web owner a lot of freedom in making a web design and deploying functionalities, something that is often not possible with a closed system (made by the individual web builder).
One in ten websites today is built in WordPress. And because the roots of WordPress are a blog system – with which the most beautiful and advanced websites and webshops are built today – a blog is often set up separately from the website. This while most CMS packages nowadays support a blog function. Some well-known blogging platforms are – in addition to WordPress – BlogSpot and Blogger.
But what is the disadvantage of a separate website and a separate blog?
Giving and Selling
In basic share your knowledge on your blog. Your blog is a platform where you can show visitors and experience that you are an expert / specialist in your field. Blogging is all about sharing and giving knowledge. The people who read your blog will benefit. They get their knowledge and inspiration from this. And nowadays we also like to let our network – Social Media – know where they should be. A link that someone places to your blog in his or her social media is a warm recommendation to his or her network. So far great of course… All links to your blog, a lot of visitors to your blog. A place where you give and share knowledge, but.. often have nothing for sale. After all, your range of services and products is on your website. And often it is the case that on your website you only have something for sale and nothing to share / give away and that on your blog you only have something to give away and nothing for sale.
“Integrating the blog into your website ensures optimal findability and more visitors”.
Now I hear you think, yes but .. I have a link on my blog to my site and vice versa. But in practice this turns out not to work. Visitors who are looking for your knowledge in Google or who have been referred to your blog by others via Social Media have – in the first instance – no need for your commercial pages. Unless the environment in which the blog is displayed provides grounds for clicking through to your offer. However, visitors to your blog will rarely, if ever, click on the link to your website. After all, they have taken in the knowledge and every good blog gives rise to action to apply the acquired knowledge in practice.
Google zoo
In addition, there is also the fact that a blog separately from your website is bad for the valuation of your website. Over the past two years, Google has made some significant updates. These included the Google Panda Update, the Google Penguin Update and the Google Hummingbird Update in short: the Google Zoo. Updates that encourage website owners to keep their website moving. An active website. For a search engine like Google, standing still is by definition going backwards. A website must adhere to ARI: Current, Relevant and Informative . I often compare it to a newspaper. Suppose you are subscribed to a newspaper and the exact same newspaper falls every dayon the doormat. With exactly the same images and exactly the same texts. There’s nothing new… I bet you will soon cancel the subscription. Google does that too, which cancels your website’s subscription. And the period that Google comes to look again (indexing) is increasing. On the other hand, your blog is becoming easier to find, at least the supplier of the blog. For findability and the appreciation of Google, it is extremely important that your blog and your website are one. It then becomes a kind of cross-pollination of the site and the blog.
The best of both worlds in one
It will therefore not surprise you that we go for an integral whole. The combination of both worlds in one place. One place where knowledge is shared and services and products are offered. This has the great advantage that the website and the blog look the same in terms of corporate identity. And I don’t mean showing your blog on your site via a so-called iframe, but really one whole: website and blog are one. It is a consistent whole. And perhaps more importantly, by placing your blog articles on your website – which ensures a lot of traffic – this ensures optimal findability in search engines. Something you can’t take advantage of when the website and blog are separated. Almost no visitor shares a commercial page,
In short: bring your blog and your website together and enjoy optimal findability, the sharing of blog articles within Social Media – and thus indirectly your commercial pages – and an enormous flow of visitors to your website on which your blog is located.