Is my Company Blog Causing issues?
-
We have a company blog. IE companydomain.com/blog/. Much of the content is unrelated to what we do.
So why do we do it?
-
Cover local topics that our customers may be interested in and searching for. Get them in the back door so to speak.
-
Link bait, social sharing etc
-
Develop a marketing culture that's engaged always learning.
-
Customers get to know the people behind the company.
Here's my Pickle
If i sub domain or separate the site entirely, i won't benefit from all the juice we're generating.
If i keep the status quo, since much of the content isn't directly related to my "category", logic tells me that i could be diluting my website in Googles prying eyes.
Feedback PLEASE.
-
-
It's really hard to speak in generalities, but my gut reaction is that splitting to a subdomain is going to cause you more harm than good. You'll likely fragment your links and could very well harm your root domain. If the blog was clearly harming you somehow, that would be one thing, but to do this preventively is, IMO, a very bad idea.
I'd really rather see you focus on improving the quality of the blog and better integrating it into the main site. Keep the posts you have that have solid links and traffic, but work on cleaning up the rest. Especially focus on duplicate content and any issues that may be easy wins. Meanwhile, maybe make a move toward quality-over-quantity in 2013 and reappraise how the blog fits your broader business.
-
Hello Peter,
Thanks for the feedback. I've been working on pruning for a week now. The blog is huge in terms of content compared to the main site and will only get bigger. That's my concern. There are only so many blog posts you can write about screwdrivers right?
My gut is to limit the categories we write about and focus on quality, keeping it on the same domain BUT i'm nervous about dilution.
To Subdomain or not to Subdomain....THAT is the question.
-
What kind of content volume are you talking about? It's true that more content isn't always better, and you can dilute your index, but if you've got a main site with hundreds of pages and a blog with a couple hundred pages (and that blog is attracting links that strengthen the domain), I wouldn't worry too much. If you've got a 10-page main site and a blog with 10,000 posts then, yeah, that could cause your trouble. In that case, though, I'd bet content quality is also a problem.
If you separate the blog out, you're going to lose the impact of those social shares and links. Whatever you're losing now from dilution is going to be a fraction of what you lose if you split one of your main sources of links, I strongly suspect.
If your content is spinning out of control, is there a way to prune it down? Could you drop some of your oldest or least relevant content on the blog (with no links, shares, etc.)? Could you focus on more product-relevant content moving forward? There may be some happy mediums between just splitting it off or not splitting it.
-
Hi there, looking at the very purpose behind hosting the blog on the domain itself, it is good that the blog matches the theme of the domain not going completely off the track. As you said, if you make screwdrivers and your blog talks about home improvement, its perfectly alright as you are discussing about the topic that your product is intended for or can be used for and also you are discussing about a problem or an issue that your product can address or solve.
To conclude, you do not need to worry about anything regarding the blog till you don't get distracted from the theme of your domain. Having a forum or a blog hosted on the same domain is to talk about topics that are directly or indirectly related to the theme of your domain.
Regards,
Devanur.
-
Sorry again for disagreeing. I think the blog should be on the domain – yourdomain.com/blog
_And the blog should show some characters. I mean the blog should have Google Authorship implemented and should provide enough information about the author and active participation of the author. This is not a hit and run game. You need to write content that appeals targeted audience directly. And links will automatically come to you if the content is great, however needs a marketing push from your side; no need to chase the links by creating another domain. _
-
yep, i would stick to a particular subject matter for a site and focus on it.
-
Our blog does rank well. My concern is overall subject matter. If i look at webmaster tools...screw drivers are nowhere near the top works used. I'm afraid the blog may be diluting things....but it gets links to the domain, provides good content and traffic.
-
not necessarily, if you make the page specific to that keyword/topic and provide quality info you stand a chance to rank for it. Sites like about.com , ehow and wikipedia cover different topics and rank quite well . If you do address broad keywords in your blog, depending on the competition , you will have to build links specifically to that page for that specific keyword to rank high.
A downside to this : you might confuse the visitor if they land on that page and find out that your site covers a broad range of other topics that are of no interest for them . They will bounce off your site impacting your conversion rate.
-
So you feel a subdomain or new domain would be best.
What if you make screw drivers and your blog covers topics such as home improvement, architecture, insulation, home decor, paints, fabrics.
Is that too broad?
-
My thoughts would be to separate that blog from the main site or only have related content and posts in the blog to your subject matter. If your idea is to rank high for the site related to the Genre that your site is focused on, then that blog content is not helping. You can still blog about different topics as long as they resonate with a single theme for example home improvement, home renovation, home repair etc.
If the intent of the blog is to just engage the community and spread your brand as you mentioned then it's ok but you wont really be getting any SEO benefit from the blog. Your rankings would basically be impacted with the on and off site optimization done for the site related to the keywords. If your competitor has a site ranking well and also a blog related to that topic, he should outrank you in this instance.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
UK company not ranking .com domain in UK
Hi, we have a slight issue with our website. We have been proactively doing SEO for the past year, but we have run into a slight issue. Our website is ranking for search terms everywhere except Our local area (UK) We have tried creating separate sections of our site targeted just at the UK In search console. As well as targeting the whole site as UK preferred and setting the hreflang tags to en-GB. Nothing seems to be working, any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODale1 -
Changing title tags - any potential issues?
Hello all, I am planning to change the title tags throughout a site and am vaguely aware (perhaps wrongly!) that changing title tags across a site is a risk factor - can be a spam flag if changes (to a specific title tag) are implemented too regularly, for example. Would you change title tags across a site in one go, or implement changes gradually - to avoid any risk of upsetting Google. Do you have any insights/tips on the implementation of title tag changes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart1 -
Should I NoFollow Links Between Our Company Websites?
The company I work for owns and operates hundreds of websites throughout the United States. Each of these is tied to a legitimate local business many times with specific regional branding and mostly unique content. All of our domains are in pretty good shape and have not ever participated in any shady link building/SEO. These sites currently are often linking together between the other sites within their market. It makes perfect sense from a user standpoint since they would have an interest in each of the sites if they were interested in the specific offering that business had. My question is whether or not we should nofollow the links to our other sites. Nothing has happened from Google in terms of penalties and they don't seem to be hurting our sites now as they are all currently followed, but I also don't want to be on the false positive side of any future algorithm updates surrounding link quality. What do you think? Keep them followed or introduce nofollow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens0 -
JavaScript Issue? Google not indexing a microsite
We have a microsite that was created on our domain but is not linked to from ANYwhere EXCEPT within some Javascript elements on pages on our site. The link is in one JQuery slide panel. The microsite is not being indexed at all - when i do site:(microsite name) on Google, it doesn't return anything. I think it's because the link's only in a Java element, but my client assures me that if I submit to Google for crawling the problem will be solved. Maybe so, but my point is that if you just create a simple HTML link from at least one of our site pages, it will get indexed no problem. The microsite has been up for months and it's still not being indexed - another newer microsite that's been up for a few weeks and has simple links to it from our pages is indexing fine. I have submitted the URL for crawling but had to use the google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url/ method as I don't have access to the top level domain WMT account. p.s. when we put the microsite URL into the SEOBook spider-test tool it returns lots of lovely information - but that just tells me the page is findable, does exist, right? That doesn't mean Google's going to necessarily index it, as I am surmising...Moz hasn't found in the 5 months the microsite has been up and running. What's going on here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jen_Floyd0 -
Am I missing an issue on my website?
Are there any glaring issues that I am missing with my site? I am building links, and growing the profile but had seen a drop in rankings a couple of months ago. Is this do to a site issue or am I just missing something? www.wallybuysell.com Any help would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CKerr0 -
Blog URL Canonical
Hi Guy's, I would like to know your thoughts on the following set-up for blog canonical. Option 1 domain.com/blog = <link rel="canonical" href="domin.com/blog"> domain.com/blog-category/general = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com/blog"> domain.com/blog-article/how-to-set-canonical = no canonical option 2 domain.com/blog = <link rel="canonical" href="domin.com blog"="">(as option 1)</link rel="canonical" href="domin.com> domain.com/blog-category/general = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog-category="" general"="">(this time has the canonical of the category)</link rel="canonical" href="domain.com> domain.com/blog-article/how-to-set-canonical = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog-article="" how-to-set-canonical"="">(this time has the canonical of the article full URL)</link rel="canonical" href="domain.com> Just not sure which is the best option, or even if it is any of the above! Thanks Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dan1e10 -
Redirect posts from a wordpress.com blog over to a self-hosted blog
Hi All I started a wordpress.com blog with a few posts on it, and these have been shared using social media so links to these exist on Facebook and Twitter. I've decided that its going to be better and more effective to have the blog on my primary domain. How would I setup a redirect from the wordpress.com blog to my self hosted blog? Normally I'd write a .htaccess file but I'm unable to do that over at wordpress.com. I can't even see an option to install plugins, otherwise I would have used the "Redirector" plugin.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blacey0 -
Duplicating an article I wrote on an external blog
Hi, I wrote a blog article on another site. I would like to add the article to my site as well and would like to know the best way to do it. If I duplicate the article that I wrote would I then risk getting a penalty for duplicate content? If so, then what is the best way for me to include the article on my site for the benefit of my readers, but not lead to the duplicate content problem? Would it be better to use a canonical tag? Or to noindex the page? If I use the canonical tag, am I helping to make the article on the external blog stronger? Where is I use the noindex tag I am not helping my site nor that article I think, is that right? Last question, if I offer the copy of the article on my site and use the canonical or noindex tag then my site does not receive any direct benefit from the article for SEO. In other words the article wont appear in the search index with a link to my site. What about the comments that people write on the article on my site? That is unique content which may have great questions or points. I want to ensure those can be indexed properly. If I noindex the page I lose out. If I canonicalize (is that a word?) the page then I don't know if will send search results based on those comments to the external blog where that information (the comments from my site) does not exist. Thank you for any help to better understand this part of seo.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikkiGaul0