Merging Blog and Website

by SansomChris

Posted: 11 years ago 12 replies

Hi Guys,

New to the forum but great to see such an active community. Looking forward to getting involved!

I've been doing all of the SEO on our sites for quite some time now. We started with Chris & Verity Sansom | Industry Leading Wedding Photographers Leeds | Destination Wedding Photographers which we targeted Leeds based keywords with. We then set up a blog which also served as a fully self sufficient website (Chris and Verity | Destination Wedding Photographers York | UK) to target York and Yorkshire keywords. The website is built on a flash platform and the blog a WP site.

Both websites rank well for their target keywords and both have a page rank of 3 which in our industry is pretty decent. The blog is much easier to SEO and responds really fast when we target new keywords. My only concern is we'd really rather direct people to our main site.

So I'm wondering if I merge the two, or more precisely incorporate the blog into the website either using a subdomain (ie - blog.sansomphoto....) or tagging it on as '...photo.co.uk/blog' what impact is this likely to have on our SEO?

My worry is that we won't be able to target as many keywords, on the other hand I'm wondering if Google will actually quite like us consolidating the two sites.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and any advice!

#blog #merging #website

yukon

Banned 11 years ago

Originally Posted by SansomChris

Here's why your Flash site is difficult to rank (text version of webpage). Some of your links don't even show up on the text cache version of the Flash page.

Flash on it's own is terrible when it comes to SEO.

The only real way to SEO flash pages is to pull plain text data from a self hosted .xml file & display that data in the on-page flash. Where Google is really reading the .xml file content. It's very time consuming to pull that off which equates to being very expensive. It's much more inexpensive to use jpg/png images & plain text.

You need to overhaul the site/theme. Simply use an HTML5/CSS slider on the Home page to show jpg/png images, that way the images can also be optimized for SEO.

Thanks
1 reply

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patadeperro

11 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

The only real way to SEO flash pages is to pull plain text data from a self hosted .xml file & display that data in the on-page flash. Where Google is really reading the .xml file content. It's very time consuming to pull that off which equates to being very expensive. It's much more inexpensive to use jpg/png images & plain text.

DO you mean that your sitemap.xml should include plain text in each one of the urls that have flash? so Google can "read" the flash? or is this an entire different xml file and I am referring into my html as a script?

Thanks
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yukon

Banned 11 years ago

Originally Posted by patadeperro

XML is plain text, they can even have a Google cache & PR.

Examples:

PR6 = hxxp://golfweek.com/sitemap.xml
PR5 = hxxp://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/sitemap.xml
PR4 = hxxp://guardianlv.com/sitemap.xml
etc...

I'm not suggesting rank an xml file because traffic would only be confused & bail.

What I meant earlier is xml files can hold authority just like any other page, there's usually already URLs inside of typical xml files, they're not hyperlinks like an HTML page but Google is smart enough to parse out those URLs as If it's a regular link.

Google isn't going to read flash, they're basically looking behind the curtain (ex: xml sitemap file) to find relevant data to the search query back on the SERPs.

Google can also use xml file data directly in the SERPs for both SERP titles & descriptions, I've seen it happen with this forum thread (Problem with my wordpress website).

A lot of folks underestimate file types, basically any filetype that Google can index (File types indexable by Google) will hold authority (ex: PR).

So... say you have a box (ex: xml file) full of authority/PR, you can use that to your advantage out of sight to average competition & boost a page in the SERPs.

To answer your question, think of a flash slideshow, alone it sucks for SEO. Instead of typical Flash, If you take that Flash slideshow & pull 100% of the data (images + image caption text) from an xml file, Google will read that data/xml all day long & associate the data with the URLs inside of the xml file. The URLs inside the xml file would point back to the matching live HTML page that's running the Flash slideshow (example).

I'm rambling, but that's the basics, pulling data from authority file types (ex: xml files). I could probably fill a pdf file on the subject, but I kinda doubt there would be enough people interested because it's more of an advanced topic & few people use Flash.

Thanks
2 replies

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SansomChris

11 years ago

Thanks for the reply Yukon, I appreciate you taking the time to look at the site but that's not really what I'm querying. Don't get me wrong, I realise a flash based website isn't great for SEO (to say the least!) that said for as long as the site continues to rank highly the advantages of the flash site far outweigh the disadvantages. We're fortunate enough that a large chunk of our business doesn't come from Google and in an aesthetically driven industry having a really nice looking site is paramount.

I do completely see your point though which is one of the reasons I'm considering merging the two. I guess I wasn't very clear before so I'll reword a bit! On the basis that the main .co.uk site is the way it is because of looks, and the blog is there for SEO purposes (a useful resource for clients but on our end it does do a lot for SEO) what do you think the knock on effect would be to our overall SEO to incorporate the blog as mentioned in my first post? We use a flash based website builder for the main site but that does have the ability to incorporate a WP blog. Everything about the blog would stay the same but we'd remove some pages and the domain would change to a subdomain of the .co.uk site.

Thanks
1 reply

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yukon

Banned 11 years ago

Originally Posted by SansomChris

Anytime you mess with URLs (ex: moving sites) there's a risk that all/some of the currently ranked pages will drop in the SERPs. Even 301 redirects don't guarantee Google will retain a SERP position for ranked pages.

Bottom line is, your gambling messing with the old URLs.

The reason I brought up the Flash issue is to point out there's no magic ranking factor on your blog, the Flash site could be optimized to rank pages just like any other site.

Thanks

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patadeperro

11 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

Google isn't going to read flash, they're basically looking behind the curtain (ex: xml sitemap file) to find relevant data to the search query back on the SERPs.

Google can also use xml file data directly in the SERPs for both SERP titles & descriptions, I've seen it happen with this forum thread (Problem with my wordpress website).

I have seen this happening before, and I have even seen some pages ranking because they were in the XML file even they were not the ones declared as canonical in the HTML, that leads me to believe that the XML file gives the definitive answer when Google cant pull it out somewhere else in your site.

Originally Posted by yukon

To answer your question, think of a flash slideshow, alone it sucks for SEO. Instead of typical Flash, If you take that Flash slideshow & pull 100% of the data (images + image caption text) from an xml file, Google will read that data/xml all day long & associate the data with the URLs inside of the xml file. The URLs inside the xml file would point back to the matching live HTML page that's running the Flash slideshow (example).

I'm rambling, but that's the basics, pulling data from authority file types (ex: xml files). I could probably fill a pdf file on the subject, but I kinda doubt there would be enough people interested because it's more of an advanced topic & few people use Flash.

I would like you to expand in to the issue if you dont mind and I am sure this is relevant to many other people, not just Flash lovers and here is why:

- Now we are into a very visual environment, full of places have pics, video, live video streams and you need to add more info somewhere to help Google to know what your site is for.

- Many sites use iframes to insert videos, furtheremore you need to explain to Google what is within the iframe and I think the technique you explained above can be easily used for this.

- Same goes for sites streaming live video, this technique can be a "simpler" solution for the issue of Google being unable to "see" video.

- Sites like pinterest or any other image board (or clones for this sites) I think will benefit greatly from a solution like this.

- If you want to take it a step forward even a software that could create an XML file that will help the above mentioned sites....

Anyway I think this is an extremely relevant topic.

Thanks
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yukon

Banned 11 years ago

Originally Posted by patadeperro

Looks like your talking about xml sitemaps for images & videos.

About a year ago I was ranking video thumbnail images via xml sitemaps pretty easy in regular Google text SERPs (not Google Video tab on SERPs). Google did an update & switched all the video thumbnails from regular text SERPs to the video tab at the top of the SERPs. I stopped messing with ranking videos after that, just got busy with other things.

The video xml files still work, the problem with that situation is not much traffic clicking the video tab on the SERPs.

Thanks
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patadeperro

11 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

More than specifically talking about sitemaps for images and videos I wanted to expand on the idea of adding text on your XML file in order to better explain to Google what you are trying to display, in the video sitemaps you use a field called "Video description" that it seems to basically be the text you are talking about and I wanted to go further in that topic.

Many people dont use this field because when you Crawl the sites there is no description whatsoever, so I was thinking to add some plain text in the XML file (as you were saying) in order to help Google decipher what is the content of the page and at the same time use it as metadescription and possible an "on site" factor to defeat the other sites, what are your thoughts?

I am thinking even as going as far as to add a "slideshow" of video related images.... that can work very well in livestreaming pages or in iframe related environments thoughts?

Thanks

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johnfsander 11 years ago

Blogging is really good method to get popularity and quality backlinks for a particular business or website and having a good company blog is really a blessing in SEO field. So i will say it is good to use blogs for SEO purpose and it works.
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SansomChris 11 years ago

Thanks Yukon, that's actually a great point as I'd completely forgotten about all of the individually linked blog pages! I think we'll stick with two separate domains on that basis alone!

Back to the website, it sounds like unless we get a website designer in or something similar the whole process of improving the SEO beyond what we do already will prove pretty pricey? Google does rank the site fairly well which may well be down to links and age but obviously we're always keen to improve.

I'm going to have a bit of a google and look into your suggestion now but if there's anywhere you know that will have some info I'd love to find out more
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- yukon Banned 11 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by SansomChris
  
  I'm going to have a bit of a google and look into your suggestion now but if there's anywhere you know that will have some info I'd love to find out more
  
  My advice on the Flash site is go back to basics. Swap that Flash out with an HTML/CSS slider to show jpg/png images with a plain text image caption. Do not use a javascript image slider.
  
  In the end you'll have image alt-text & plain text showing up on your Google cache (text version) which can be whatever text/keywords you want to rank for in the SERPs.
  
  Here's an example/tutorial for a simple HTML/CSS image slider with plain text where the text shows up on the Google cache (text version). The important part as far as SEO goes is the text version of the webpage. You could also add internal links inside those image captions.
  
  HTML/CSS slider tutorial
  
  Image slider demo
  
  Google cache (text version) of image slider
  
  The tutorial (link above) includes a downloadable demo that you can practice on offline.
  
  You can use a Firefox browser plugin to simulate a Google cache (text version) offline:
  
  Download the browser plugin.
  
  Disable all javascript
  
  Disable all images
  
  Disable all styles
  
  Code the top/right site navigation links as regular HTML hyperlinks.
  
  Thanks
  
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SansomChris 11 years ago

Thanks for the advice guys, I'll definitely look into that and other things I can do to improve it. As the site is built using a site builder I don't think I'll be able to swap out the gallery but I'll see about taking on board your advice to improve what we have!
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