5 reasons why you should merge your website and blog

Towards the end of last year, after one of my few visits to my main website, I had what seemed to me to be a revolutionary thought.

What if I could do something to make my website more appealing?

I had already dabbled with a few blogs – as both a passive consumer and an active participant, and it wasn’t long before I found the answer to my question.  Merge the website and the blog.

Many website owners I speak to these days are thinking of doing the same thing, if they haven’t done so already.

Content owners are now realising what bloggers have known for a very long time: blogs are the perfect way to connect with others, share valuable information and insights and build a following.  And websites that are twinned with blogs benefit from this in many ways.

Are you thinking of merging your website and blog?  Or are you still undecided?

Here are five reasons to get you started:

1) Enjoy easy updates

Merging your blog into a blogging tool like WordPress gives you the best of all worlds.

WordPress has both blog features – for your blog post entries, and content management capabilities that allow you to easily create, publish and manage your web pages as well as store and re-use other types of content such as images or downloadable files.

Using a blogging tool means you can update and add pages yourself without having to be an HTML or PHP guru, and depending on the WordPress theme you use, you can customise your pages to accommodate anything you like.

WordPress is free and has a huge and active community of users and developers who readily share tips and tricks online.

2) Receive more traffic

As you add pages  (of high quality content with keywords that are relevant to your website and blog), your website will benefit because the more of this type of content you publish, the more there is for search engines to index.

The combined effect of the keywords you use on your web and blog post pages can help to boost your ranking for those keywords – and bring you more traffic.

3) Establish yourself as an authority

As you publish more quality information on your specialist topic, and attract a growing following, you will achieve a greater number of links to your site.  These links will in effect ‘stamp’ you and your site as an authoritative source of information on the topic(s) you write about.

Such links will help to boost your site’s PageRank, and your site will appear higher up in search engine results pages, giving you even more traffic.

4) Consistent image and branding

Housing your website and blog together on the same platform and theme means that they will automatically share a common look and feel.

This is important if you want to build a brand image and ensure your site and blog share consistent colours and page presentation.  It is also easier to manage consistency when both are stored and managed using the same tool and theme.

5) Give your professional website a ‘voice’

If your website is a business one, merging it with your blog can deliver one important benefit.

While your site pages present a professional, corporate image, your blog posts are what will give your business added shape, colour and tone.  People buy people, and that personal angle can speak volumes to your audience.

A static website that stands in perfect isolation can only stand to benefit from the new life that regular quality content, visitor comments and traffic flow can breathe into it – in the form of a blog.

My new, merged Simply Write website/Content Matters blog will be available from 4 March 2011.

Post written by DEBBIE THOMAS on 25 February 2011.