Should a business blog be on a separate site or on the ecommerce site itself?

[Devynn]

Hey there. I'm a new Pro member and this will be my first question on the Q&A. Thanks in advance for your responses.

I'm the owner of an ecommerce site that sells custom candles. www.prometheancandle.com in case anyone wants to take a peak. I've become somewhat of an expert on all-things-candles over the past 4 years and I am thinking about starting a candle related blog.

My question is this. Should I build this blog on the ecommerce site itself, say @ www.prometheancandle.com/blog.php, or should I devote a separate site to answering candle related question, history of candles, etc?

At first, I was thinking that the blog should remain on the ecommerce site so readers would have easy access to the shop to be able to purchase products. But then it occurred to me that people who may be interested in reading up on candle history, candle making, meditation & candles, etc., may not want to go to an obviously ecommerce site to do that. I know Google values informational sites more than ecommerce sites (at least I think they do), so that encourages me to lean towards the separate site.

Well, I may have just answered this question myself, but I'd definitely be interested to hear feedback and opinions. Thanks so much guys and I look forward to hearing from you.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Mark and Francisco are both providing valid reasons to keep it part of the main domain.  There are other reasons to split it out as well though, beyond "in case you want to sell the blog at some point".  First and foremost if the primary objective is to build additional paths for potential customers and related to that, establish yourself as an authority on the subject matter in a broad sense, that's great - the blog belongs in a /blog folder of the main site.

Be sure however, that you really do write content relevant enough and "on-topic" enough to keep it highly related to your target market and your product vision.  Too often I've seen blogs end up meandering into "related" topics that aren't truly related enough to be a very good match - they become diluted.

If the possibility exists in a big enough way that the subject matter could grow beyond your primary market, in that scenario, it's much better to have a separate unique domain for the blog, because a diluted blog will ultimately dilute the main site's topical focus and intent of visitors.

IF you split it out OR keep it in a /blog folder, either way, be sure not to over-link from blog content into the main site.  So don't just make blog articles that talk about new products and duplicate product descriptions, don't put more than one link in articles that point to the main site's products. Be sure each article has very high quality content that really does offer valuable information in its own right.

[Francisco_Meza]

But what I'm wondering is would it make more sense to build an authoritative blog with a unique url, gain subscribers and flow traffic through the blog to the website?

/ index

/blog

That's the way I would go. Your statement above basically says "I want to get people from my blog to buy on my website". Build an authority blog on your main domain. I wouldn't do it any other way unless I planned on selling the blog.

[Devynn]

Thanks for the reply Mark.

I suppose in the end I would have to say the main objective is to bring customers to the ecommerce site. However, the goal of the blog would be to position myself in the industry as an expert by answering relevant questions regarding candles.

I realize that if the blog is directly on the site, than links to the blog will increase the overall authority of the ecommerce website. But what I'm wondering is would it make more sense to build an authoritative blog with a unique url, gain subscribers and flow traffic through the blog to the website?

Or would it be make more sense to focus on SEO and build the blog on the site, even though the blog would be obviously associated with a product, and perhaps be construed as biased information only meant to sell the product. I know personally I would trust the information on wikipedia.org as opposed to the information in an article on an ecommerce site. This is my biggest qualm about having the blog on the website.

I can definitely appreciate arguments for both sides, but can't see to pick one. I seem to be running around in circles here.

Thanks for the input and I would appreciate any other pointers if you have any.

[Mark_Ginsberg]

My question to you - why do you want to blog about candles? Is this as a hobby, passion, or is this a method of bringing in customers to ecommerce site. You have to look at your goals for blogging - branding? Customer acquisition? Positioning yourself in the industry as an expert?

If customer acquisition is important to you, I'd recommend building the blog on the site itself, in a folder called /blog - this way, as an expert in your niche, you've positioned yourself in that manner, and people will want to buy from you due to your expertise.

From an SEO perspective, your high quality blog should naturally gain links, and can certainly be promoted through outreach and gather links in that way. This will help your ecommerce site's visibility and reach in the search engines, and will strengthen the domain as a whole. You don't get this if you blog offsite on a different domain - you won't be gaining this link strength for your site, which should be an important consideration.

Mark