Why It’s a Great Idea to Have an Article Directory or Blog on Your Website

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No matter what type of website you have it’s a good idea to have an article directory or blog on the site, either in a subdomain or folder of the site such as: yoursite.com/blog or articles.yoursite.com. This can easily be achieved with a CMS (content management system), like WordPress, and theming it to match your site. Once you have a super-easy way to post new content and articles to your site you can really take off with it and pump it up with a ton of fresh content. Adding unique articles to your site gives the search engines something new to look at or and “index,” which basically means cataloging the new pages in their cache or page repository. This allows Google, Yahoo, and Bing (MSN) to stay on top of your content and serve it up quicker to searchers, which increases the chance of your content being found in the free traffic search results. The more unique content you have on your site, the more possible searches you can have a matching page for. So if you have 1000 pages of original content on your site, you can leverage that content to get a ton free traffic. And there’s no better traffic than free traffic, I’m sure you would agree!

Another good reason to have a blog on your site is it allows you to having an “RSS feed” of your articles or content, which most blog platforms like WordPress have by default. This allows you to submit or add your RSS feed url to what are know as RSS directories which can gain you actual RSS subscribers to your content. When your site’s RSS feed is added to a user’s Feed Reader, your content is pushed to them immediately once published, which creates repeat visitors to your site and therefore more opportunity to monetize that visitor with affiliate banners or Google Adsense links, as well as getting them to like your Fan Page or follow you on Twitter, so you can interact with them later.

Make sure to have the Facebook Like button on every article and every page of your site, as well as other social sharing and bookmarking plugins that allow visitors to share your content quickly and easily across social platforms. The Facebook comment box is another must-add to your site, so people can comment on your pages directly on your site which post to their Facebook Wall and all their friends see it. This is an integral part of capitalizing on your website’s traffic and making all your hard work posting content pay off.

When you publish a blog, or other form of article directory to your site, you are reaping all of the benefits that the content on those pages with bring you in the search engines. An excellent way to build rapport with your readers and the search engine spiders is to post frequently and consistently. If you only have enough time to post once a month, do that. Never let your site stagnate. If you can post once per week be consistent with it. Ideally, you should post to your blog multiple times a daily to encourage the search engines to come back more frequently looking for your fresh content and also value your site higher as being a source for fresh content. Post as much original content to your site’s blog as frequently as possible to get the best results. At the end of the day it’s a volume game, the more pages of original content the better.

Each time a user comes back to your site you will have another chance to monetize them or get them as a Fan or Follower. A very simple way to get users back to your site frequently is to post frequently. Allowing your users to receive your content via feed readers as mentioned above, or see the posts through social networking, are excellent ways to get them back to your site. You should also cater to your users who do not use this technology. There are many resources to deliver your posts to your readers other than RSS. You can use the free Feedburner service from Google. FeedBurner can help you with a tool called Email Subscriptions. What this free resource does is allow your readers to enter their email address and receive an email every time you post to your blog or site. This can be a valuable way to stay in touch with more people and create the repeat visitors and new visitors you seek.

If you have a Twitter account and Facebook Fan Page (and you should have at least one!) you can use a wide variety of tools to automatically announce every time you make a new blog post. Some of these tools are Twitterfeed, HootSuite, and Ping.fm. You can post to multiple social networks at once which saves a lot of time. Make sure to respond right away to any interaction you get on Facebook or Twitter to build a loyal following. Once you post articles on your site you can share them on Facebook and Twitter with your fans and followers and give them something great to read!

These are but a few reason to have an article directory on your website and the benefits it can yield. Let me know what you think of these ideas. Thanks!

CEO and Founder

Evan is the CEO and Founder of Experience Advertising. He has more than 20 years experience and background with ecommerce website marketing. His skill sets include: search engine marketing, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, conversion rate optimization, and other traffic driving and community building strategies.