Forum Moderators: buckworks
Also has anyone had any experience adding a blog to their e-commerce site? I would be interested in hearing any valuable lessons that were learned. Also was it worth it? Thanks
As for whether it is worth it? Depends what you want out of it. If you want to directly monetise the traffic I think you may be disappointed. If you wish to network with other bloggers and industry people then that will work well. If you write very well you may even get some reasonable links (though the links don't remain very powerful for long). The problem with blogging is that, to do it well, takes a massive amount of time. Do not believe anybody who tells you you can blog in 1/2 hour or an hour a day because you can't.
I do have my blog on a separate domain (that I bought to be a content site but never had the time to do) and I have been getting traffic to my commerce site from it, more, actually, than from Adwords or from a huge site where I pay to advertise. Is the linking why you wish you had put it on a separate site, Jack_Hughes?
If you use Wordpress: I'd also consider just doing a blog at Wordpress.com. You can get some decent traffic from within Wordpress, and you don't have to do or worry about Wordpress.org software upgrades etc.. If you want to "own" the blog then definitely do it on your own site. I've done it both ways and found advantages to both.
[edited by: MisterT at 7:04 am (utc) on Feb. 6, 2009]
1) Effectively a news/newsletter approach telling people about your specials, new products and such information;
2) A genuine industry voice offering insight into your particular domain with insightful posts about trends, interviews with key players and the like;
For blog type #1 I'd go sub domain or sub directory. It won't be very successful, virtually nobody will read it but you'll be creating some indexable copy in an easy way so at least you may get some searches for it. Of course it will compete with your e-commerce pages in the SERPs so you'd better have a good way of passing people interested in buying over to your selling pages...
Blog type #2 is where the real value lies because it is going to get you known in your industry. People you'd never have been able to contact yourself will start contacting you. I've been able to network with people I'd never have been able to without a blog. Of course, this kind of blog is a bitch to create because it needs to be laser focused and brilliantly written by an authority in the domain and have a massive amount of time poured into it over an extended period. This blog I would suggest should be on its own domain separate though linked to the main e-commerce site. Of course, you may still end up competing with your own site in the SERPs if you interlink heavily...
it needs to be laser focused and brilliantly written by an authority in the domain and have a massive amount of time poured into it over an extended period.
One thing a brilliant writer does _not_ have is a massive amount of time...
