Does Blog Look And Feel Have To Match Site Look And Feel?
-
For years I've run WidgetsAdvice.com as a standalone blog. It's done well, 4k uniques a day, 5PR site. But it's standalone.
I recently purchased Widgets.com, which doesn't get much traffic and is only a PR2. To help grow Widgets.com, my obvious desire is to move the blog (WidgetsAdvice.com) over to Widgets.com and have it sit there as: www.Widgets.com/blog so I can get the good google juice to start flowing to Widgets.com
Yes, I know it's important to do the page redirects properly, etc. That's not my question.
My question is: Do they have to look the same? The page design of Widgets.com is very different than the blog. When I move the blog over, do I HAVE to make it have the same look and feel as the larger site? Does google penalize you if your blog has a different page design than the site it is blogging for?
My preference would be to simply move the blog over and change nothing... maybe change the menus to point to the larger site, etc.
But will google not like it looking different?
(Widgets is obviously an example... my site name is different)
-
In which case go for it if that's all that matters. User experience may be affected, depends on the designs, though as SEO is your only concern here, you're all set to press ahead
-
It is indeed, I already answered that question though; you won't be penalised by Google purely for different designs.
-
All I care about is the google juice.
-
Ok. That's my thing. I can lead people to my main site... I'm just wondering if Google cares if the site look and feel matches. If not? Then fine. I can deal with that.
-
Right... but the question is... does Google care?
-
Exactly, a good answer from James. For a positive user experience, 'Familiarity' is key, many visitors don't like surprises and will leave quickly if they feel lost or unsure of what they are looking at, so keep the Blog's design and style similar to that of your main website.
Doesn't have to be an exact copy of style and design, just easily recognisable that your blog and your website are Your blog and your website, that the two are related.
This isn't for search by the way, you won't be peanalized by Google if your blog and website have different designs (only if the designs are poor and crawling, speed etc are an issue, could you be peanalized). User Experience is key here rather than Search.
Regards
Simon
-
It is advisable to match the style of the blog's with your main website.
From a design point of view it is always something I advise site owners to implement.
From a cross site branding point of view too it will look a bit funny if you do not use the same design.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Site structure and Visual Sitemaps
Aside from mind mapping software are there any tools ( recommended) to build a visual sitemap of the internal linking structure of a URL? I've been trying to 'show' clients the structure of a website as it pertains to internal and external links. Here is one I've tried it's "Close" - http://site-visualizer.com/ . I've been using the excel export function, import into mind meister and building it. It's a teeny bit time consuming for large websites. Site structure I feel is a valuable portion of SEO and a down and dirty visual explanation would be great. Don't get me wrong, it offers other benefits as well- it's just I'd like to free up the time it takes. Thank you in advance. Screen shots are available on the website of the organization.
Web Design | | TammyWood0 -
Does interlinking on mobile site helps in seo & improvement in rankings
Hi, Does interlinking on mobile site helps in seo & improvement in rankings. Our desktop site & mobile site has same urls. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
Hosting a Company Blog
What is the best practice for hosting a company blog for an eCommerce website? As a subfolder or as a subdomain or a separate domain entirely? Or some other option? There are articles recommending each of these approaches, but it’s difficult to identify which is the most recently preferred approach.
Web Design | | jkinnisch0 -
Sitemap Question - Very Old Ecommerce Site, Never Used A Map
I help manage a family website, that has about 10,000 products... It was top ranked since 1996, then got smacked by Penguin and recovered but its still receiving only a fraction of the natural traffic it used to get. Something we have never used... Is a sitemap. I'm curious if anyone knows reliable software that will generate a sitemap? My cart is custom built, website uses html pages across the board. Dynamic content and parameters are set up properly, onsite seo is in the excellent range. The only thing that I haven't been utilizing is a sitemap. Because the cart was hand built, it would a huge convenience to use a lightweight program thats compatible with any website, has parameter settings, exclusions and anything else useful to negate any duplicate content. I have a few highly dynamic pages as well... If anyone knows a product or a possible solution, it would be much appreciated. Working it up myself would be very time consuming. Thx
Web Design | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Site Doing Horrible After Redesign
Hello Fellow Forum Members: Thank you all for taking the time to read this. This is in follow up to one of my previous questions, but I now have more information. I will try to be as concise as possible and want to sincerely thank anybody who invests time in answering this. Around February 9, 2013, we launched our new site on the Bigcommerce platform. We moved from Volusion after 6 years. We had paid the Bigcommerce partner for an upgraded 301 redirect package as I was thoroughly concerned about losing rankings. By the end of February our rankings were diminishing. We expected a slight dip due to the new site. As of May, our organic traffic had dropped by 82%. Google WMT is showing 1500+ 404 errors. Many have to do with review page type URLs and some were just plain never redirected apparently. In May, we hired a wonderful SEO company that is a heavy contributor to the Moz community. They have been generous and wonderful to work with. By the end of this last week it was determined that most of the coding suggestions our SEO was making could NOT be implemented in Bigcommerce because Bigcommerce will not allow access to the PHP files by our developer, thus hindering the execution of these suggestions. Some of these were move the blog to the root, use canonical on the home page, use canonical for pagination, stop the indexing of https URLs and a few more. Today, June 25 we are at a complete loss and trying to just keep our business alive. The opinion of both the SEO and the developer is that my choice of Bigcommerce as a platform was not the best. So my main question is what are the odds our rankings have decreased due to the lack of 301 redirects during our migration to Bigcommerce versus the rankings decreasing do to Bigcommerce being a bad choice as a platform? We are being advised to redevelop our entire site on an Open Source platorm such as Wordpress or Magento, but if that's not needed I certainly don't want to have to do that. I hope I have provided a decent amount of history and information. Thank you for any help/advice you are willing to offer.
Web Design | | josh3300 -
Why do site links appear under one keyword and not another? Any ideas?
Hi everyone, I have a client whose website is doing the strangest thing. When I search the branded keyword (the company name), Google doesn't show any site links under the result. However, when I search for the company name plus Inc., I do get site links. Now, the website is ranking first in both searches, so that's not the issue. And, as near as I can tell, the site only contains one or two uses of the company name plus the word "inc." Most of the text on the page and all of the meta data only uses the company name, and most of the links that connect to the site use only the company name as well. Even the Who Is for the site doesn't use the term "inc." And ideas what might be going on? I know Google says that the process is still automated but for the life of me I can't figure out what kind of automated process would result in these results. Thanks! Megan (Rebecca's minion)
Web Design | | RebeccaRalston0 -
Image sliders & site speed
We are having a new website designed using WordPress and the Genesis framework. We wanted to include header image sliders on a number of internal site pages, but our designer says that sliders on more than just the home page will slow down the site significantly. How much could they slow down the site, and what can be done to minimize their effect on site speed?
Web Design | | GordyH0 -
Website Blog causes duplicate pages
Hello, I added a blog to my website, which is hosted at weebly. I was told this would drive traffic but I have actually fallen way, way down in Alexa rankings. When I ran a campaign here, the results show over a 100 errors, all to do with the website blog. It states they are duplicate pages and titles. I dont see a way to rename the pages. Am I better off getting rid of the blog? Thanks
Web Design | | Gardengirl0