Main Site and Blog

[David Lorti]

I have a main site, www.lortihomesarizona.com and a blog site, www.lortihomesblog.com. The first is with REW and the second is a self-hosted WordPress blog. As such, I am accumulating more traffic with my blog than my website which has been in place longer. As a result, I am wondering if by having two separate sites that I am hurting each of them by not having the content merged together as a single site (or at least the blog under the main site domain).

Any thoughts here on the approach here and if I should work to bring them together, if not stylistically together, at least under the same domain?

Any input is certainly welcome.

[Discover Davis Homes]

David, I think you should keep the two separate. Try to figure out ways to divert the blog traffic to your main site. Can you tell if most blog visitors are specifically looking for property information in your area or are they getting there from more general querries?

David you should change your signature here also to include your blog site.

[TheRealOBX]

You could start adding some links to interior pages of your site from your blog posts. Building links to interior pages offers many benefits.

An observation: I did not see one specific link back to your site using anchor text, in the articles. The only link I saw back was sitewide "Lorti Homes Arizona" great for building your brand but does little seo value for your mainpage. I personally would pick more keyword friendly text.

[David Lorti]

Thanks for the insights and recommendations! I will be keeping it in mind as I make changes and go forward.

[wpreality]

David, I think that you have done a great job with your blog and site, I especially put my two thmumbs up for usage of the thesis template! I highly recommend it even if it costs a few bucks. Ok, now back to the post..

I think that your blog should not only have more links back to your website but you should also add some featured property listings to your blog, one option would be a widget in the side bar + have at least one page with featured properties all linking to the featured properties on your main website.

By doing this you will achieve 2 objectives. first provide some points for seo and second let people now that you don't only blog... you sell PROPERTY!

Keep up the good work!

[David Lorti]

Sean and everyone-

Thanks for the compliments on my sites as well as the help here. I think you have really called out a weakness and opportunity that I hadn't exploited but should be able to relatively easily. I will be going through my content to add links and looking at the listings suggestion to implement that as well.

Thanks again for the great suggestions.

Dave Lorti

[jtgolden54]

Sites look great David!

We started out less than a year ago with a successful blog (Wordpress based) that initially used an integrated i-framed idx. This was our only site at the time.

To capture the SEO benefits of resident listings we added another site with a RETS client to sync a local database with the MLS.

We styled to the sites identically, much like what you have done, but we also did extensive cross linking; like pulling featured listings into the blog side bars. Building a quick search widget so no matter what page your are viewing you're a click away from a property search or a home listing.

We do a lot of neighborhood blog posts that provide hoa information and such, and we always add specialized links within the posts to bring up neighborhood search results, etc.

We even took the integration further by writing a simple php script that displays a link to relevant neighborhood blog posts when an article is available that matches the listings subdivision. It is anchored with something like: 'More About Neighborhood Name'

I can't tell you how many compliments we have had from visitors as well as clients that tell us how much they appreciated the close integration and having related useful information just a click away.

With SEO we target 'cityName Real Estate' as primary toward the blog and 'cityName Homes' toward the RETS site and are happy with our overall results. The blog is 9 months old the Rets site 6 months.

I don't necessarily think that your two sites are hurting one another. All I can tell you is: we were in a similar circumstance and feel our decision to merge the two was a good one.

Kind Regards

[MikeStewartRealtor]

I've followed the same pattern as David...

Its early days but I have been getting some traffic.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how I have organized my site and blog