In my last post I explained that I firmly believe that your blog should be hosted on your website. The reasons for this belief can be broken down into two main areas and in my last post we looked at the first area of Branding and Design. Let’s take a look at the second one below.
2. You should use your website as a “hub” for all of your online activity.
What do I mean by a “hub”? Well, in this case a “hub” is a central location for all your online activity. You want to think of your website as the central point to which all other external online marketing activity points back to the main hub (your website). Whether you have many multiple online activity accounts (and I’m talking social media, directory listings, networking groups, forums, etc.) or just one or two, you really want these accounts to point back to one central location – i.e. your website.
The reason for adopting this ‘hub strategy’, is that your target audience will come to know that your website is the first port of call for all online information relating to your business. The main benefit of incorporating such a strategy into your marketing plan is that you continue to highlight the content on your website to your target audience. This in turn means that your target audience remains on your website for longer, where they have access to all sorts of information that you want them to understand about your business (products, services, opening hours, contact details, video userguides, etc.) helping you to establish yourself as a valuable knowledge resource.
In addition to delivering great customer service through an informative knowledge base, all links that point back to the main hub of your website help with your website’s SEO and ranking in Google and other search engines. Link-building has had a bad reputation over recent times but this is down to the black-hat link-building techniques that were implemented by some not so favourable web experts and web companies. (In my experience, when someone calls themselves an “expert” or a “guru”, be afraid, be very afraid!) [NOTE: Link-building is still an important part of online marketing as long as the links are relevant and are of good quality. Think of link-building in the same way you network offline i.e. through relevant and appropriate business contacts – we will look at this in more detail in a later post]. No matter what misinformation you hear, SEO of your website is still important but it needs to be taken as one aspect of your overall online marketing plan – it isn’t the be all and end all.
In Summary
Just in case you skim-read the above information, and missed my first few sentences of my last post, at The SeedMill we always advise that you house your blog on your website. Your website should be the central point of all your online marketing activity and all other online activity should focus on this. Whether you create your website yourself or employ the services of a professional web designer, the rule should always be the same – include your blog on your website to ensure that you take complete control of your online presence. That way you remain in charge of your content at all times and you can create the online image that you want your target audience to see.
