25
Apr
5 Reasons To Host Your Blog
In yesterday’s SEO webinar, I received several questions on whether it is better host your blog on your store’s domain or on a hosted platform like WordPress, Blogger or Tumblr.
So which is better? While there are some pros to using Tumblr like gaining in-site traffic through tags & networking, on the whole hosting your blog on the same URL as our store is better for your business’ branding & SEO. But why?
1. SEO
All blogs are great for SEO, but self-hosted blogs allow you more control over SEO. Hosting your blog allows you to add SEO friendly plugins and other SEO features that make your blogging efforts much more effective. Hosting your blog on your domain also tells Google that your site offers fresh content ( which it loves) where as your blogging platform would reap all of your fresh content benefits if you hosted it with them.
2. Branding
.Hosting your blog on your domain reminds users that you are a business not just a blog, and helps build brand recognition. Being a content creator gives your store credibility & authority with customers, but that connection is not as easily made when your blog is hosted on a separate URL than your store.
3. Content Control
When you host your own blog, you have full control over the type of content you publish but if you use free blogging platforms, you are restricted by their guidelines. If you publish mostly promotional content or only write about your products, you could be flagged as low quality or spam. You could even get banned which would mean all of your hard content marketing work would go to waste.
4. Functionality Control
If you host your own blog, the only limits to functionality is your imagination. Key branding tools like social media widgets & buttons, newsletter sign-ups and coupon-codes are hard if not impossible to implement on free platforms.
5. Design Control
Design is a huge part of brand recognition, you want your readers recognize the look & feel of your blog from your store and vice versa. Free platforms do not offer the same customization options as self-hosting does.
05
Mar
Why Content For SEO?
Merchants sometimes are a little timid about content marketing – does all the effort you put into creating quality content REALLY affect your SEO?
YES! And the folks at Brafton make a strong case for using content marketing to boost your rank in search engines in their Why Content For SEO” infographic. Here’s some stats and information that you might find interesting:
- 52% of consumers say that blogs have influenced a purchase decision
- 61% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase from an online merchant that offers custom content
- 92% of marketers say that content marketing is “very effective” or “somewhat effective” in SEO
09
Jan
Adding The 3dcart Shopping Widget To Your Blog
SEMSEOWizard.com is one of our favorite bloggers for ecommerce SEO and social optimization tips. The Wizard is a big fan of 3dcart and has some awesome tutorials worth checking out.
One of which is this awesome tutorial on how to add the 3dcart shopping widget to your blog like this:
05
Jan
Blogging For Keywords
2012 is a great year to start blogging for your online store. Blogging is key for any successful inbound marketing strategy as it helps build a loyal audience (that converts!), establishes your company as a thought leader and helps with SEO.
If you want an example of a store blogging to success, check out 3dcart client No Meat Athlete.
Like we said above, blogging is a great way to boost your site’s SEO. To make sure your blog goes the SEO distance, its important to think about the keywords for each individual post, but think about content first. We advise writing the entire post without thinking about SEO or keywords, just focus on your message.
