I believe the time has come for me to set up a blog, to talk about the stuff I do with organisations around Sheffield as well as what's happening at More.

But before I do, I'd like to ask if any of you have any recommendations as to which way to go.

I could go for any of the free blog hosts - If so, which ones do you use/recommend?

Or I could add it to my current website.

At the moment I favour a separately hosted blog - for the SEO link benefits.
Do you think SEO should be my main concern? Will it make that much difference? If yes, are some services better for SEO than others?

Use wordpress, it's the best, this host..

varihost.net

Will set you a hosting account up for £4 a month, install wordpress and theme of your choice.

I use wordpress on my 2 main sites with a custom theme to match the rest of the sites. (Plus about 15 plugins on each...)
Long tail blog posts are central to my traffic driving strategy and it is relatively easy to get one to "go" compared to seo'ing static pages. The visitor doesn't know they are leaving static pages and going to wordpress. Wordpress is therefore installed at domain.com/blog

I think an established business such as yourself would look to do something similar. I can't imagine that you would have morecomputers.blogspot and some naff freebie theme

I just use blog spot, its pretty easy to use but the layouts and stuff arn't as origional as wordpress.

Yeah i use wordpress, you can be really simple with it or you can get quite in depth.. upto you really

Looks like wordpress is the popular choice -

From an SEO point of view is it worth doing a stand alone wordpress site with lots of keyword links to my main site

or

incorporating the wordpress site into my main site (similar to what Sharpend does).

Bear in mind that I want to drive traffic to my main site pages - not the blog pages

Wordpress linked to your site. Is the best way to go. I recommended this to a client and it actually not only brought in more traffic but actually help rankings for other keywords. (Google loves theme related new content).

You also need the all-in-seo plugin as this will help with search engine friendly url's (an absolute must). http://optimize-yorkshire.com/Blog/27/. I also just posted an article about my experience with a blog today and the importance of social media marketing in general here http://optimize-yorkshire.com/Blog/do-you-twiiter/.

Hope this helps.

Bear in mind that I want to drive traffic to my main site pages - not the blog pages

Which raises the necessary but obvious question of the function of the blog?

Thanks Optimize, that helps to confirm my thinking - Do you think it will work better if the wordpress blog is hosted somewhere different to our main site? Are a lot of links from one location really going to make a difference? (obviously it's not as good as lots of individual links from different sites)

and the function of the blog is to hopefully deliver some interesting views and information on what real people and businesses are buying (rather than the PR powder puff on most IT blogs). Plus talk about changes and developments at MoreComputers.com. I'm also doing some work with local schools and colleges, so wanted to talk about that.

So hopefully it will be of interest to some people - I just want to be sure I start off in a way that maximises the SEO potential. I can't really justify the time spent if it's not going to have a positive effect on traffic.

So any more advice before I start would be great.

Worpress is excellent, and you can edit the themes easily round your site.

Incorporate the blog onto your main site. http://www.yoursite.com/blog. Post regularly to the blog using rich key words. There's absoloutly no point having the blog external and linking to your site. Unless of course you want to spend years getting your blog site up to a PR5, then it might give your main site some sort of benifit. You should probably be spending this time on SEO for your main site though, not your blog.

Good luck!

I'll second that. I've often wondered about the merit of pulling loads of links to an article or blog site just so you can have a few from there to your main site. My blog is part of my main site. The only problem is finding time to write for it!

Incorporate the blog onto your main site. http://www.yoursite.com/blog. Post regularly to the blog using rich key words.

Thanks technohead - my understanding is this would work well if I wanted to concentrate on a handful of keywords, but I don't.

I want Google to rank my brand sub category pages and there's a couple of thousand of them.

So I'm thinking I need to have good keyword density on these pages and good links to them, hence having an external blog. I would use any content generated for the blog on the main site in the right area - so it would benefit the main site SEO as well.

I'm just not sure if one site (the new blog) with lots of links to my main site (morecomputers.com) will really make any difference.

Thanks technohead - my understanding is this would work well if I wanted to concentrate on a handful of keywords, but I don't.

I want Google to rank my brand sub category pages and there's a couple of thousand of them.

So I'm thinking I need to have good keyword density on these pages and good links to them, hence having an external blog. I would use any content generated for the blog on the main site in the right area - so it would benefit the main site SEO as well.

I'm just not sure if one site (the new blog) with lots of links to my main site (morecomputers.com) will really make any difference.

I read an article in the Independent yesterday regarding an online company which mentioned a guy named Darren Rowse on blogs he recommended not using the freebies sites but going to www.wordpress.org and paying for the hosting as it gives more flexibility any of you experts know why it would be better doing this.

Self-hosted WordPress is definitely the way to go on this. WP is by far the best blogging platform out there in terms of usability and flexibility, and incorporating your blog into your existing site will give you a much better chance of converting visitors to your blog into customers than hosting it as a separate site on, say, WordPress.com. With a self-hosted blog, you'll be able to create and use a custom theme that perfectly matches your current site, giving you seamless integration between the two, something else that using a free provider wouldn't let you do.

From an SEO perspective, your blog will give you an opportunity to write content that will attract links to your site that you wouldn't otherwise have got, pushing up the PageRank of every page on your site. You'll also have the opportunity to target new keyword phrases with your blog posts. Links from your blog to your main site will give you some benefits, but what you really want is to attract links from other sites.

A good blog can also increase non-search traffic by giving visitors a reason to return to your site to see what you have to say, increase conversion rates by building authority, and increase customer loyalty by helping you to connect personally with your customers (but a mediocre blog won't do any of these things).

If I were you i'd do the blog site as a stand alone project to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Then all inbound links are just that and are not insite (therefore irrelevant). Also you can then use the site as a free place to advertise yourself.

Another reason to separate the two is for the situation that someone had a grievance which was unsatisfied they couldn't use the blog as a direct platform to discredit the image of the main site.

Thanks everyone

I could still do with opinion on whether a new site (the blog) with no history or PR rating linking to my existing site (with good history and PR rating) will help my existing site rank higher.

I've read that Google rates links from blogs quite highly is that true?

For links from your blog to carry any weight, you'll need to get links to it.

Another reason to separate the two is for the situation that someone had a grievance which was unsatisfied they couldn't use the blog as a direct platform to discredit the image of the main site.

How so? A blog is not a democracy - You can just delete comments that you don't want and BAN the author:thumbsup:

How so? A blog is not a democracy - You can just delete comments that you don't want and BAN the author:thumbsup:

It's true, you can. But on a social site, content is content and word spreads about sites which remove and ban as being against free speech and the like. So as long as it doesn't contain vulgarities i'd be inclined to leave it, at least until recent memory has past, which is about two minutes in my case...

You can just delete comments that you don't want and BAN the author:thumbsup:


I'm disappointed in you Sharpend;) I thought you of all people would know you should use the grievance as an opportunity to show how good you are at putting things right - Seth Godin will be disappointed too;)

It's true, you can. But on a social site, content is content and word spreads about sites which remove and ban as being against free speech and the like. So as long as it doesn't contain vulgarities i'd be inclined to leave it, at least until recent memory has past, which is about two minutes in my case...

Also an inward link is an inward link when it comes to search engine parsed data, as far as I know no web crawlers parse for positivity / negativity. If they did i'd expect they'd like sites which had multiple honest opinions posted about them, however there should be a tipping point where it'd become detrimental. Also the posts would need to be considered for authenticity and uniqueness.

It's true, you can. But on a social site, content is content and word spreads about sites which remove and ban as being against free speech and the like. So as long as it doesn't contain vulgarities i'd be inclined to leave it, at least until recent memory has past, which is about two minutes in my case...

I'm disappointed in you Sharpend;) I thought you of all people would know you should use the grievance as an opportunity to show how good you are at putting things right - Seth Godin will be disappointed to;)

:D - Wordpress akismet plugin will weed out most spam but its a very fine line between spam and link droppers who leave on the face of it a legit comment.

Besides, I am sure that morecomputers doesn't have any unhappy punters...

I'd say we don't have many - I don't mind too much when our customers have delivery problems or faulty product. It gives us a chance to show we care and they tend to remember the good outcome. Most orders go so smoothly it's easy for customers to forget where they bought from.

and in the words of Hannah Montana :rolleyes: - Everybody Makes Mistakes

Can't believe I just quoted Hannah Montana :loopy:, must be time to go home

Thanks everyone

I could still do with opinion on whether a new site (the blog) with no history or PR rating linking to my existing site (with good history and PR rating) will help my existing site rank higher.

I've read that Google rates links from blogs quite highly is that true?

Not one little bit. As for google rating the blog links highly, this is untrue, it will rank the blog links the same as any other site. However google does love blogs as the content is (usually) rich and fresh and because of this google will index your site more often and visit it more. (This will also be another reason to have it on your main site.)

PR 0, No Links, No help. Nuff Said. Like I said before it might help (fractionally) if the blog had inbound links etc, however any link building efforts should be aimed at your main site. Unless of course you have all the spare time in the world to do both.

Put the blog on your mainsite.

Trust. Search for the question on SEO forum if ur still unsure.

That sounds like an informed opinion to me, thanks technohead.

Anyone agree or disagree?

I agree. Never did understand why people should put a lot of effort into providing content and promoting a site that links to theirs when they could be doing it to their site directly.

Investigate a lot of internationally known super brands on the internet and you'll probably find a link at the bottom stating that their a member of a group of sites all owned by the same parent. You'll probably have heard of each of the partner brands because they all build upon each others reputation and form a larger social network. All of your (positive) five a day in one go...

Anyone know of a SF affiliate group!

Cross-linking sites doesn't have the benefits that it used to, especially when the sites are obviously related (e.g. hosted on the same server). Going after one-way inbound links will get you much better results.

It also depends on what type of link too and not just any. Have it relevant to what your blog is about, to raise your reputation. Relevancy is important to google and it be more so in time to come.