E-commerce site blog creating bad signals?

[redtalons1]

I have an e-commerce site with quite a large (subdirectory) blog attached. The blog is very successful, having attracted about 2 million visitors last year - almost 4 times that of our actual e-commerce pages. Although all content is tangentially relevant, the blog does not convert well directly (mostly because it attracts people at the wrong point in the funnel). Our average bounce rate on e-commerce pages is around 40%, while the blog is about 90% (it answers questions directly with some outbound links); and average page visits to e-commerce pages is 4, compared to 1.3 on the blog.

I am concerned that this 80% of my traffic that does not often convert and leaves the site quickly, is costing me in rankings on the pages that do perform well. We recently re-released the e-commerce section of the site and despite cleaning up our structure and content, fixing bad URL structure etc., we saw little  benefit. I am therefore considering taking the blog OFF our site and moving it elsewhere, linking back to the e-commerce site and allowing it to stand on its own two feet. Is this a bad idea? Thoughts?

[EGOL]

I am concerned that this 80% of my traffic that does not often convert and leaves the site quickly, is costing me in rankings on the pages that do perform well.

I would not worry about this.  That blog is pulling in the traffic and Google knows that some types of pages satisfy a visitor and result in a short visit.  So, if visitors are staying long enough to read, then you are doing great.

I am therefore considering taking the blog OFF our site and moving it elsewhere, linking back to the e-commerce site and allowing it to stand on its own two feet. Is this a bad idea?

I would do the opposite.  I would move it into a folder on your main domain.   Like maindomain.com/blog/  (I would not name it blog because that makes it a target of hackers, give it a more relevant name)

If that blog is attracting traffic, earning likes, links, mentions, etc. having it on your own domain will be better than having it in a subdomain or an outhouse.  If it is on your domain then your domain gets credit for the popularity.  The only reason that I would not put it on my main domain is if it was susceptible to Panda or Penguin problems.

Thoughts?

I would be showing Adsense to those 2 million visitors.   Will probably earn a five digit number annually and the first digit will not be a "1"..