Business Blog Website – Should I Start Over?

Monday, November 9th, 2009 newcorridor

Once we help our clients understand the power and leverage a blog offers their business, one of the first questions that comes up is “I already have a web site for my business. Should I start over with a blog?”

To begin with, many of our small business clients are struggling with their website. That’s why they come to us in the first place. When it comes to solving their SEO problems, increasing targeted traffic, solving their website structure and navigation issues, creating better community and stickiness with their website, and providing a more user-friendly content management system to facilitate a fresh supply of ongoing content, there’s no question that a small business blog is an ideal solution.

But what if the small business already has a website? And it’s not a blog?

A Separate Blog for my Business – Or Start Over with a Blog as a Primary Website

To incorporate a blog for your small business, here’s a a good rule of thumb we suggest you follow. If you already have a website and it’s working for you, there’s no reason to blow that up and start over with a blog.

Most small businesses will fall into one of two categories.

Your current website is working for you, and you would cause more harm than benefit by blowing up your website just to move to a blog.
Your current website isn’t working for you, and you have little to lose by starting over with a blog

What we mean by “your current website is working for you” is …

You already have a domain with some age on it (at least 6 months or more)
You’re indexed and ranking well for your primary keyword and at least a few more secondary keywords.
Most important, you’ve already established a number of off-page backlinks pointing to your website.
You are seeing consistent traffic coming in, at least 1,000 unique visitors per month or higher.

Now don’t get hung up on precise numbers, thresholds and cutoff points. These aren’t meant to be hard-fast rules. Rather, these are guidelines to help you make a good decision.

In the case where your current website is working for you, then we recommend you add a blog as an addition to your online presence, either as a separate site (on a separate domain or subdomain), or integrated into your current website (plugged into your current website’s navigation with a similar look and feel).

On the other hand, if you already have a website up and running for your small business, but it’s not really working for you yet, then you don’t have much to lose by scrapping your existing website and starting over.

Again, to be clear, what we mean by “your current website is not working for you” is …

You haven’t achieved much if any ranking in the search engines for your main keywords.
You’re not seeing any measurable traffic coming in.
You don’t have many off-page backlinks established for your website.

It’s not necessarily about all the time you may already have invested in your current website. In many cases, your current investment in content, images, and graphics for your current website can be re-purposed and leveraged as pages, posts, graphics and content for a blog if your choice is to make the move. Much of this work can often be re-usable.

The other question that comes up frequently is “why the push to move to one website and make my primary website a blog?”

Fair enough, and good question. Here’s the thinking …

As a small business, you have enough challenge keeping up with one website, let alone two sites (a primary static website and a separate blog).

If possible, we want to simplify your life and have you operate a single website platform that gets the job done. Remember, a blog as a primary website (what we like to call a blogsite), is fully capable of providing most or all of the functionality of a traditional website plus the blog functionality and advantage. And a blog is easier to manage and support than a static website.

In addition, we’ve found in enough cases that for cost and effort to whip a non-performing static website into shape to resolve issues with SEO, navigation, on-page and off-page linking, content management overhead, traffic generation and look and feel, the customer would be better off going with a blog. The blog will often provide a better solution for less money.

The one exception is a scaled up eCommerce site. If you’re selling a large catalog of products from your website, you’ll need a capable shopping cart to handle the number of SKUs (thousand+ products or more). Lighter weight shopping carts are practical on a blogging platform, but for more scaled up solutions, it’s best to go with a dedicated website that integrates a full featured shopping cart solution.

Bottom line, you should leverage a blog for your small business. You have a choice whether you make the blog your primary website or you compliment your existing traditional website with a separate blog. You can make either solution work well for your small business.

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