1. Maintain a professional image
Having your blog URL as part of your existing website domain e.g. www.yourwebsite.com/blog looks far more professional than if it’s hosted upon a 3rd party platform domain e.g. www.3rdpartyplatform.com/yourblogname.

2. Design consistency
It’s easier to control the look and feel of your blog if it’s hosted and developed within your existing website, so using associated templates and style sheets.  This will help maintain design consistency, and in turn assist with your brand awareness and overall marketing efforts.

3. Content management
Managing your blog through your existing CMS means you only need to learn how to use one piece of content editing software.  There’s also no need to log into two separate systems, as you’ll be able to edit both the blog and website content from the same place, using the same login details.

4. Boost SEO efforts
Hosting your blog on a separate platform, thus domain, doesn’t mean you’re doubling your SEO efforts.  You’ll be in fact halving them, as each domain will be competing against one another in search rankings!  Boost your SEO efforts by having your blog and all associated fresh content containing relevant keywords within the same domain as your main website.

5. URL recall
Maintaining a consistent URL structure, and so having your blog as being - www.yourwebsite.com/blog or blog.yourwebsite.com, is far easier for your audience to remember than www.3rdpartyplatform.com/yourblogname.

6. Categorised and related content
The beauty of managing your blog from within your existing website CMS is that it allows you to drop in blog post listings throughout your website.  By categorising your blog posts using the same category structure as other content, allows you to build up related content pages.  For example, by including a blog post listing tagged as “category 1” on a news article page also tagged as “category 1”, is likely to keep a user on your website longer, therefore increasing the likelihood of a sales / member conversion.

7. Cross selling opportunities
Having your blog within your existing website structure allows users to freely navigate between other areas of your site, without getting lost in alternative browser windows and/or navigation.  Integrated navigation promotes your services and products more prominently, and so in turn helps with cross selling efforts.

8. Security considerations
Managing your blog using your existing CMS removes the security headaches that are often associated with running online marketing efforts.  Rather than needing to police access to two different systems, you are able to instead manage all permissions from just one place – your CMS.  This way if you need to remove a user when a colleague leaves, or add one when a new member of staff joins it can be done just once for both the website and blog.

Thanks to this understanding, Pixl8 have developed a fully featured blog module that can be plugged into our WebConnect CMS solution.  A number of our clients are already benefiting from the advantages and opportunities it brings, and we are continuing to research and develop its functionality.

Please contact Pixl8 here if you’d like to learn more about our fantastic blog module or WebConnect CMS package.

1) Not recognising the benefits of a fully integrated website and membership database.

2) Underestimating the time it takes to create and tag all content prior to go live.

3) Not dedicating someone with the right skills and experience to manage the website.

4) Underestimating the cost and resource savings of moving services like renewals online.

5) Not budgeting for on-going investment to ensure the website evolves with the organisation and changing requirements of its members.

It’s also important that associations brief their web development partner fully on their background, philosophy, audiences and aims and business objectives.  “As web developers we need to know as much about the association as possible,” explains Gavin Thorne.

“It’s this knowledge that enables us to suggest new ideas for site design and functions that not only meet the organisational goals but will deliver the right benefits to members and other users.  “In addition to technical expertise and a flare for design and creativity the best web development partners will provide proactive advice and support on your online marketing strategies, search engine optimisation and e-mail campaigns to maximise effectiveness and revenue generation for the business.”

To ensure you provide your web developer with a comprehensive brief, contacts us to grab a copy of Pixl8’s handy checklist.