Why should I avoid publishing off-topic content on my website?
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As a fun project, my team wanted to build a mini-food blog based off the lunches we make here at our office -- but we're a software company and, topically, our product has nothing to do with food. Therefore, I suggested that we not publish this content on our website + create a Medium publication instead (this would also help us avoid the headache of creating an entirely new section of our website / potential 404 issues from non-technical editors / etc.) However, I struggled to articulate _why _it's a best practice to only publish relevant content on your website. Is it to help search engines understand what your website is about as an entity? Spam signals?
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If you do not want to "mess up" your blog with unrelated content, you can create Instagram or Tumblr to this content.
_This can cause an increase of fans in them and then use it favor in your blog._What do you think?
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I think that you could give this new blog a technology spin, mixing food with educational tech...
-- what code monkey's eat
-- phish and chips
-- water hole attacks
-- restaurant networks
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I think when you are looking at content for your blog, it is ok to have fun posts, staff highlights, etc every once in a while and it adds a personable feel to your blog, however if you are wanting to do a food blog with consistent posts being put on it, it should be separate as you don't want your website visitors confused about what you do or offer.
As far as search engine optimization goes, it shouldn't effect your rankings when doing just a post every now and then that is more fun or entertaining, however the vast majority of your posts should be industry-related and helpful. Doing the mini-food blog on a platform like blogger or wordpress, seperate from your website, would be a good idea for this in my opinion.
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