Enhancing SEO Between WordPress Blog and Company Website

[LMcLaughlin]

My company has recently launched a new and improved website within the last couple months. Unfortunately, the web developers that we'd hired to build and create the site work very little with SEO, thus leaving me in the dark on where to direct any questions regarding the optimization of our web content.

Along with the new website design, we've also rolled out a WordPress blog related to our firm. We do have the blog embedded onto a page of our website, and clicking on any title will redirect the viewer to our WordPress blog, hosted separately from our website. My question is this--how do you suggest I drive viewers from our blog to our website, rather than vice versa? Are there any applications, widgets, etc that you could recommend that would help me better associate the blog with our company?

Any advice would help. Thanks!

[FrankDawg]

This is something we went through several years back.  Our blog was on Wordpress and hosted separately from our main site.  After years of trying to figure this out, we ultimately just moved the blog under our primary domain, moved all the content over and 301'd the URLs..

While this is a pain, we found that it created a much more pleasant user experience.  We're an ecommerce company, so ultimately we wanted it to be as easy as possible for customers to bounce between our content and our products/cart.  This has also resulted in longer and deeper sessions as well as more overall traffic to both our blog and our ecommerce site.

Hope this helps!

Mike Feiman

[gowebsol]

The easy answer here is integrate the blog into the website because it's the best case scenario, but I get it - you are trying to work with what you have. I am wondering though how much you can move towards best case scenario. That raises some questions:

1. You say "clicking on any title will redirect the viewer to our WordPress blog, hosted separately from our website". How separately? Is it on the same domain, or does it have a totally different URL? This matters a lot.

2. What's your capacity or willingness to make changes here? If it's on a different URL, can you move under the same URL and at least integrate it into your menu etc?

Ultimately, a good goal would be integration. I'll jump of my soapbox now and answer your real question!

Ideas for driving views from blog to website:
1. Theme the blog to look like your website. Branding is very important. I'd also consider replicating the website menu on the blog to drive folks back to the main site.
2. Blog with the intent to open the door, and then get them to your website for the additional info, resources, downloads, etc. Think of it like a good email newsletter that pulls you in but ultimately drives you to the website.
3. Every post should end with a call to action that drives them to the site
4. I'd have a consistent sidebar that has a broader call to action, again, driving them to the site

It's not optimal, but that's where I would start until you can make the bigger fix.

Joey

[LMcLaughlin]

Joey,

Thanks for your response. To answer your questions, the blog has a totally different URL. However, as I mentioned, a snippet of each entry is embedded into a page on our website, followed by a "read more" link that directs the viewer to our separate blog.

As far as integration, I agree that it seems like the best choice here. However, I'm fairly new to this and don't have full control of the final changes made to the website, blog, etc. To my knowledge, our decision to host separately in the first place was because we wanted the ability to individually share/publish posts via LinkedIn.

Again, thanks for your feedback. It is much appreciated!

Lauren