This question is a part of my Free Q&A Series where I answer questions posed by entrepreneurs around the world on sites like Quora, Clarity, and various freelancing forums.
Great question! Content marketing (the use of content to attract a targeted audience) is a powerful and effective tactic for successful ecommerce. And blogging is one of the most effective methods within that tactic.
As you are aware, the more detailed and targeted your blog content, the more likely you are to rank higher in the search engines for your chosen topic or product. The higher you rank, the more human traffic will come to your site.
All that said, there is little to no difference between maintaining your blog content on a sub-domain versus a sub-directory.
EXAMPLE:
- subdomain.yourdomain.com
- yourdomain.com/subdirectory
The key is to host your blog on your domain and not elsewhere:
EXAMPLE:
- yourblog.blogspot.com
In the above example, the content is hosted at Blogspot, giving them the search engine “credit”. It is always best to host your optimized content on your domain.
For some entrepreneurs, the technical considerations of setting up their own blog may be too daunting to attempt (that is why sites like Blogspot and WordPress.org do so well, they make it very easy for folks to get their blog up and running quickly, with very little technical know-how). The drawback is the search engines are not sending traffic to your site, but instead to a third-party.
There is a lot of value in having a domain with quality, original content. If you want to have traffic going to your ecommerce site, I highly recommend you blog on that same domain. Keep in mind, your blog content should be interesting to the audience you are hoping to attract.
All the best,
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