Longterm wordpress blog not providing seo benefit to main site - help needed please

[Warren_33]

Hi

I have a bigcommerce ecommerce store, with a Wordpress blog on a subdomain. The store and blog have been active for four years, the blog is regularly updated with original content, has many links to the store, is promoted regularly via my brand's social media channels and mailing list, and has the simplest SEO basics covered via a Yoast SEO plugin.

But the store sees very little, if any, SEO benefit from the blog.

My question is: based on this information, and the details below, is there an issue with the connection between the blog and main site in SEO terms? And if there is, how can I start fixing it?

Further info:

1 In my Moz dashboard for the store site, the blog does not show at all as providing any inbound links or linking domains

2 Google Analytics also shows zero referral traffic to the store site from the blog since April 2015

3 Moz crawl issues is flagging ‘duplicate page content issues’ for pretty much every page of the blog, and the analysis provided suggests this may be related to tags but I have only basic SEO knowledge and am fast getting out of my depth here.

4 I have today altered the settings within the Yoast plugin on the blog to ‘noindex’ for Tags, Meta Robots, based on advice I have found in this section but am already well over my head and unsure even this is correct.

An agency have been running SEO for the store since 2012 but since uncovering how little they have done in this time for the money paid, I am now taking matters back into my own hands. However I am on a very steep learning curve and this one is beyond me right now - please does anyone have any suggestions where I can start looking to uncover the root issue?

Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated

Thanks very much and hope to hear from someone!

[EGOL]

I would spend a lot of time learning before you hire anyone.  It is really easy to hire SEO people if you don't know what you want.  Then you will get what they want to sell instead of what you need.  So, learn and learn because it will make you a better buyer.

When I started, I couldn't afford to hire anyone.  Just didn't have the money.  So, I spent a lot of time and a lot of money on education and then came to the conclusion that I should just do things myself because every SEO would do things a different way.  Today, most work and all SEO decisions are made in house and we only hire when we specify how the work will be done.  That way we bet on ourself and take full credit or blame for how things turn out.

[Warren_33]

Thanks again for the help here

In the longterm it seems a new website build for ecommerce and blog in one SEO-friendly arena, as opposed to the compromises we currently have, is a good idea. But that's beyond budget for now.

With a team all expertly versed and current in our niche, many of whom are former journalists, filmmakers or marketing creatives, content we can honestly do! SEO is the elephant in the room we are all now getting educated about so we can grow way faster, and employ good folks when we need them. Looks like our next stop is scouting out some expert help so we'll start here in Moz Q&A - are there any other places you recommend we look beyond here and Moz's own curated list?

Many thanks again for taking the time to help out, as I said before, this is a steep learning curve and without help from folks like you we'd still be at the bottom of it!

[EGOL]

My concern with the subfolder is this would mean the blog would have to be run through BigCommerce's inbuilt blog platform which has a fraction of the SEO tools or layout options of a Wordpress blog. Do you think this loss is outweighed by the benefit of having the blog on a domain which has links already and is actively being developed to attract more?

This is like being told by Satin to pick Door A or Door B.  Neither of them is a good choice.

So, I would be looking for a way to have my content on the website where it can have good optimization and good structure.  We rejected ecommerce systems that did not allow us to build extensive websites on the same domain.  We don't use blogs because we don't like their structure.

But, the bottom line is... is your content top quality?  It needs to be very valuable to customers or have the ability to attract links - or better yet, both.  That is harder to solve than the website problem.

[Warren_33]

Hi, thanks for the answer

I had never known that without inbound links to the blog on a subdomain it would be all but dead in the water. Wow. Very useful to know.

So I am guessing you would recommend moving the blog to a subfolder?

As a small company we do not have the resources to actively drive links, etc to two sites. This means all activity in this area is focused on the store domain only. Moving the blog into a subfolder there would solve the issue of not having to boost two domains.

My concern with the subfolder is this would mean the blog would have to be run through BigCommerce's inbuilt blog platform which has a fraction of the SEO tools or layout options of a Wordpress blog. Do you think this loss is outweighed by the benefit of having the blog on a domain which has links already and is actively being developed to attract more?

Thanks very much for your help and if anyone else has any suggestions I am all ears - I have a lot to learn here!

[EGOL]

The quality of the blog is extremely important to the amount of benefit that it can produce for a website.  Also the location of that blog is important.  Regular updates, original content, many links to the store, regular promotion, and SEO optimization don't do anything unless that blog is able to attract genuine inbound links from other websites.  Without that the blog has no power to pass to the store.

So, I would examine the quality of the blog and determine if it has generated an genuine inbound links from important websites in your product niche.

Also, if the blog is on a subdomain, links into it will not help your root domain very much.  Google treats them as separate sites.  So, moving the blog to a folder on the root domain will do a better job of make the blog a contributor to your main website.