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Should you have your biz blog separate from your website?

5/7/2012

8 Comments

 
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The Concept ~ Should you have your biz blog separate from your website?

No.

I was recently asked this question, and I promised I'd answer it in a blog post. Your business blog is an extension of your business as well as a marketing tool. It should definitely be a part of your website. If you happen to use a separate platform for blogging than the platform your website is on, then your blog needs to match your website in its design. Exactly. As much as possible, and then your website should have a link to your blog. It should look seamless. In fact, when someone on your website clicks on your link to your blog, they should not realize [at least not a first] that they aren't on your website anymore.

Plain and simple.

The purpose of your blog is to enhance your online presence so you can further your online goals. If your blog is treated like a separate entity, then [Yes, I'm gonna say it.] you're doing it wrong.

The Breakdown

Cousin Hunters ~ If your family website is separate from your blog, then you are missing out on potential cousin matches. Also, it makes it easier for your readers to refer to your tree or charts when they're reading your blog posts. Your blog posts are just a natural extension of your family website. No, you're not in a traditional business, but you are in the business of cousin hunting.

Genealogical Societies ~ The whole idea - the purpose - of your blog is to communicate with current members and to reach out to potential members. If you're blogging with purpose then your readers should naturally and easily be able to explore your site for more information, and you certainly do not want your blog looking separate from your website. You want it to look seamless. They shouldn't click on a link, and then wonder if their browser has been hijacked. Right? Right?

Professional Genealogists & Genealogy-Related Businesses ~ Your blog and website need to look professional. First of all, they are not separate entities. Your blog is an extension of your website. Second of all, you are branding yourself in such a way that when a person stumbles upon your site, they say, "Oh yeah. I've heard about this blog. I've gotta read it!" Wishful thinking? Maybe. Maybe not. Your blog is a marketing tool, and it's helping you to snag clients. How many times have you been on a site and you click one of their links and it looks totally different? That's not professional looking. It's distracting. The only thing a visitor to your blog should be distracted by is your writing [and in a good way]. They should be totally caught up in your blog post that by the end they want to hire you. Or by the end you've helped them out with a problem they were having in their research. And if they ever need to hire a professional genealogist or if they're ready to buy from your business, who do you think they're going to remember? The professional genealogist or company who has that awesome blog they read every week. That's who.

The Take Away
Your blog is a part of your website and if they're on different platforms, the visitor should not know it.

~Caroline

8 Comments
Andrew Martin link
5/7/2012 09:55:51 am

Absolutely! Seemless is best for business. Plus, having a blog as a subdomain (eg. blog.yourdomain.com) will help your search engine rankings.

Great article - hoping it helps a few societies to find the right path :)

Reply
4YourFamilyStory
5/7/2012 11:05:33 am

Andrew, yes a subdomain is extremely beneficial with search engines. And, yes, I hope more societies start making these minor tweaks to their sites to achieve their online goals.

Thanks for reading, Andrew! I really appreciate it.

~C

Reply
Kylie Willison link
5/7/2012 06:30:57 pm

Hi Caroline
I use the PHPGedview software for my family tree website so the look of the site is governed by this software and I use WordPress for my blog. How can I make the two seem more alike?
Thanks Kylie

Reply
4YourFamilyStory
5/7/2012 08:40:40 pm

Kylie, PhpGedview has fully customizable themes, you can also create your own theme. Here's the wiki page that shows you how to do that: http://wiki.phpgedview.net/en/index.php?title=Themes

Are you using the free Wordpress version? If you are, there isn't a whole lot you can change. Therefore, its design, including background color, the header image, and font will be what you want to match as closely as possible.

Before making any changes to your blog, make sure you save it to your computer. That way if something goes wrong you can always revert back to what you had originally.

Also, please thoroughly read up on how to make changes on each platform before making any changes.

The most important thing for the 'Cousin Hunter' really is a link on your blog to your tree & vice versa. Some platforms don't allow for much customization.

Thanks Kylie for reading & commenting!

~C

Reply
Kylie Willison link
5/7/2012 09:36:42 pm

Hi Caroline
I will have to look at the customisations possible in PHPGedView I thought there were only the supplied themes. Yes I'm using the free version of WordPress and it is installed on my own web site so I have lots of customisations available to me.
Thanks, Kylie :-)

Reply
Caroline M. Pointer
5/8/2012 12:23:20 am

Kylie,

Are you using your blog's RSS feed to pull in your blog posts from your Wordpress blog, or is your Wordpress blog embedded into your site? And are you saying you have 3 sites ~ a PHPGedView, a Wordpress blog, and a website?

If you have customization through your website and your Wordpress blog is embedded on it, then the customization capabilities are there so that you can get your PHPGedView and its customizations set so that they match and/or compliment each other in design.

~C

increase alexa ranking link
7/2/2012 06:57:20 pm

It is a conceptual blog post The concept you put here is really nice an effective. Thank you very much for it. This will really help me in future. I love to read it again and again.

Reply
ftina aeroporika eisitiria link
2/26/2013 11:35:07 pm

Actually, I cannot think why a blog should be set on a sub-domain. Incorporating it into the main site can help with rankings since content is updated frequently and social signals are transferred to main domain.

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