To Blog or Not To Blog? That is the CMS Question.
Many companies make the SEO decision to add a Content Management System or Blog to their eCommerce site. The rationale seems pretty straightforward: One can add keyword-rich, long-text pages to a site without interfering with the design of the eCommerce section of the site. Done wrong, however, and a CMS can be more of a disaster than it's worth.
To Blog, or Not To Blog. That is the CMS Question for eCommerce retailers. The benefits are:
- A rich collection of content pages that will attract visitors to spend time on the site.
- A rich collection of keyword-rich text that Google can index.
- Texture and vibe to what might otherwise be a boring display of products.
It seems like an absolute no-brainer that every eCommerce site should be paired with some sort of CMS. Coveted keywords? Articles to make the site 'sticky'? There's no downside, right? What could go wrong?
Plenty.
Do it right and you reap the benefits. Do it wrongly, however, and you'll have introduced a marketing disaster to your site that will be hard to recover from. If you threw an ad up on Craig's List looking for a web developer to put a CMS on your site because you heard that it would be good for 'marketing', then please read on. The fact is that it could be good for marketing, but I see the majority of sites doing it so wrongly and in so many ways wrongly, it's a wonder that anybody sells anything at all. Maybe most sites don't.
Before you think about CMS, think carefully about your business.
Whatever your business was before the addition of a CMS, please understand that your business will have changed, after the CMS is installed and designed. You will now be the proud owner of a publishing business in addition to whatever retail business you were trying to improve. Whether your CMS is helping you post informational content, articles or blog posts, yours has become a writers' site.
Are you a good writer?
Are you a good content writer with SEO skills?
Are you sure? I would guess that about 75% of small business owners are horrible writers and the same 75% think they're fantastic at it. That confidence in their abilities, misplaced or not, is what makes small business owners good at what they do... but what they do is not writing.
Are you willing to pay for the talent of a writer, or will you be looking to 'fill pages on the cheap'? Before you answer that, or think you know what a 'reasonably priced' writer might be, please consider the difference between the advertisements you usually see on the television and ANY lawyer ad you've ever seen. Most lawyers who pay for advertisements also like to micro-manage the copy to the point that it sounds horrible... and, frankly, I've never hired a lawyer from an advertisement precisely because I've never seen a good lawyer advertisement.
But that reaction away from the lawyer ad is exactly the reaction people exhibit toward bad copy. Only about 10% of all copywriters that respond to a help wanted post seem to know how to write for commercial copy. Oh, they might be good writers and I would love to read a book from them someday, but commercial text copy seems to elude many of them.
Of them, only the newest and greenest of them are so inexperienced about valuing their work that they will agree to work at the prices I see most clients willing to pay... which leads to the conclusion that most small business owners don't want to pay for good writing.
For the critical mass of content a site needs for the CMS not to look like an afterthought, one should expect to launch, at a bare minimum, 30 - 40 articles on launch day and at least 3 - 4 articles per week, every week, week after week... for the life of the CMS. Every single article should concentrate on one keyword string and should lead to one product or category on the eCommerce section of the site. No more, no less.
In 2006, according to AIGA/Aquent's Salary survey, the lowest 25th percentile of copywriters earned $49,000 per year. That's about $1,000 per week. For a 40 hour work week, that's $25.00 per hour.
These are the rates for the least expensive in-house copywriter. Freelancers cost considerably more because they bear the burden of their own overhead and a higher tax rate.
Can you get much cheaper copy? Yup. Will a cheap writer make your business look good? Well ... you could get lucky, I suppose.
Let's take a look at what it takes to make a CMS work with an eCommerce site.
The DO's and DONT's of CMS when integrating with eCommerce.
- The CMS needs to be contiguous in design to the rest of the site. Because the CMS has different functionality, certain navigational features might be needed in one section of the site, but not the other. However, the global navigation and general layout should be pretty much the same. If you have a two-column layout in the eCommerce, mirror it in the CMS. Make it look like part of the same site. If you can maintain the navigation menu of the categories from the eCommerce section within the CMS section of the site, do it. In any case make sure the navigation doesn't completely change from one section of your site to the next. You have no idea how many people that ends up confusing.
- Keep an editorial theme and mission to the CMS. A random, disorganized collection of pithy articles picked up for free from GoArticles.com is not going to win you a following or convert visitors. Nobody likes to feel like they fell for bait created only so that they'll hand over money. Not you, not them.
- Always ask: Does the content lead to a sale? Random information, even if it is directly about a product on your site, is not enough. 'Industry news', unless you lead the industry, or it helps establish the basis for a direct sale, is crap and visitors will recognize it as such. If I want industry news, I'll go to a news site about that industry. If I'm on your site because I think it is an industry news site, then it's a pretty good bet that I wasn't in the mood to buy anything other than shares in stock. You're not selling shares of stock? See ya!
- Don't create a CMS so that you can spam your own site. It makes you look like a money-grubber.
- LINK, LINK, LINK.... to your products, to other articles, to non-competing outside resources. Do not over-link and do not under-link and do not forget that an effective inter-linking strategy is your best friend with Google.
- If you can't write or afford a writer, don't start a CMS or a blog. Period.
- Understand that your business model has to change to incorporate publication. The benefit is that there is some low hanging fruit with regard to additional revenue streams. The objection is that it distracts you from your core business... and you don't want to do either part of your business in a half-asked way.
- Only concentrate on one keyword string per article and have that keyword string linked to only one relevant category or product... and make sure the link is obvious and textual and in the body.
Hope this helps.
Write a comment
Posts: 22
Reply #22 on : Tue May 06, 2008, 22:19:51
Posts: 22
Reply #21 on : Tue May 06, 2008, 15:28:36
Posts: 22
Reply #20 on : Tue May 06, 2008, 02:47:10
Posts: 22
Reply #19 on : Sun May 04, 2008, 14:27:28