1 blog or 2? That is the question.

Academy Study Groups Study Group: Content Marketing
,
1

Hello content comrades! I come seeking your thoughts on my quandary. I’ve been managing our two blogs at my company for the last few years. While they both serve the same audience, they target different journey segments. One is entirely reputation-level content that doesn’t really mention our company or its products (by design), and the other is more lower-funnel, targeted content with heavy emphasis on deepening usage of our products. Having separate blogs, and leveraging tagging functionality within, has allowed us to use the blogs to promote different initiatives across our company. For instance our reputation, product-agnostic blog is used very heavily to promote our professional development webinar series, where our product blog often promotes like product pages, catalogs and related events. Recently there’s been some talk internally about combining the two blogs, but I have reservations. Aside from the massive lift it would take to migrate all the content (over 1000 posts) onto one blog, retag, create new categories, etc. I’m worried about not having this top of funnel content live independently, and generating trust in our brand without a sales pitch.

On average, each blog sees about 1500-3000 page views per week, with organic being the biggest traffic source. Our product-agnotic blog traffic typically falls on the lower end of that weekly range, but has a lot more organic traffic than our product blog.

I’m wondering what people’s thoughts are on the pros and cons of combining. I want to do what’s best for my company, but despite my research it’s feeling more like a gut call at this point. Interested in others’ thoughts and thanks in advance for sharing!

2

Hi @klmontgomery80 happy to offer a few things to consider so you can make a more informed decision rather than having to make a gut decision.

- are the blogs currently on the same domain? if not, are they on different subdomains?

having all of the content on the same domain, and preferably not on a subdomain so that it flows up to your website is better for SEO overall

- are there structural differents for the blog post templates that differentiate the two? how would this impact the content migration process?

- do both blogs have about the same number of posts? or are you worried about one ‘topic’ outweighing the other?

- how many tags do you have in each blog? is there overlap? could they be combined and/or simplified?

- what do your blog subscribers look like? do you have more for one than the other? is there overlap? are you worried about how combining the blogs will impact your subscribers (cause unsubscribes, etc.)

- will combining the blogs help your customers? will it make it easier for them, or more difficult?

- who benefits?

My inclination is to combine the two blogs, especially since they have the same audience, it’s ok to have blog posts for different stages of the buyer’s journey (or funnel) in the same blog, it would actually make it easier to gain exposure for your product related content when someone finds you organically. My main hesitation would be around managing the subscribers and how you transition their subscriptions, communicate the change, etc.

Tagging my friend @danmoyle to share his thoughts :slightly_smiling_face:

3

Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. Answers to your questions below:

- are the blogs currently on the same domain? if not, are they on different subdomains?

having all of the content on the same domain, and preferably not on a subdomain so that it flows up to your website is better for SEO overall CURRENTLY ON DIFFERENT SUBDOMAINS.

- are there structural differents for the blog post templates that differentiate the two? how would this impact the content migration process? THE BLOGS ACTUALLY USE THE SAME WORDPRESS BLUEPRINT, SO HOPING ANY MIGRATION MIGHT BE SIMPLIFIED BY THAT FACT.

- do both blogs have about the same number of posts? or are you worried about one ‘topic’ outweighing the other? HADN’T THOUGHT ABOUT THIS. THERE ARE AT LEAST TWICE THE POSTS ON THE PRODUCT BLOG, BUT I BELIEVE ALL OF THE CATEGORIES ON EACH OF THE BLOGS HAVE A DECENT SHOWING OF POSTS. THOSE THAT DON’T WE WILL BE RETIRING ANYWAY, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER WE COMBINE.

- how many tags do you have in each blog? is there overlap? could they be combined and/or simplified? WE HAVE 5 CATEGORIES ON THE PRODUCT BLOG AND ABOUT 18 ON OUR OTHER BLOG. SOME MINOR OVERLAP BUT I WAS RETHINKING THE CATEGORIES ANYWAYS, RETIRING A COUPLE, ADDING A COUPLE OTHER NEWER TRENDS.

- what do your blog subscribers look like? do you have more for one than the other? is there overlap? are you worried about how combining the blogs will impact your subscribers (cause unsubscribes, etc.) WE ONLY HAVE SUBSCRIBE OPTIONS ON OUR NON-PRODUCT BLOG ACTUALLY. MOSTLY B/C WE DON’T HAVE THE RESOURCES TO DO THE SEGMENTING NEEDED TO MAKE OUR PRODUCT BLOG CONTENT RELEVANT TO EVERYONE. IT’S POSSIBLE THOUGH, WE COULD USE THE SAME PROCESS ON A COMBINED BLOG WHERE WE ONLY POINT TO THE CONTENT THAT’S RELEVANT TO EVERYONE. OTHERWISE I DO FEAR WE’D BE LOOKING AT UNSUBSCRIBES.

- will combining the blogs help your customers? will it make it easier for them, or more difficult? I DON’T TOTALLY KNOW HOW TO ANSWER THIS. AND IT’S THE BIGGEST QUESTION FOR ME. IN THINKING THROUGH IT, I’M WONDERING IF IT WOULD IMPACT THEM MUCH AT ALL IF THEY CAN STILL SELF-SELECT THE CONTENT THAT INTERESTS THEM. IT CAN ALSO HELP THEM MORE EASILY DISCOVER THE PRODUCTS WE HAVE THAT CAN MAKE THEIR LIVES EASIER. I THINK ORGANIZING THE CONTENT SO THEY’RE NOT BOMBARDED WITH PRODUCTS AND MESSAGES THAT DON’T PERTAIN TO THEM WILL BE KEY.

- who benefits? WE DO. BECASUE IT WILL GIVE OUR VISITORS MORE CONNECTIONS TO OUR PRODUCT CONTENT AND THEREFORE MORE EXPOSURE TO OUR PRODUCTS. IF OUR PODUCTS CAN BENEFIT THEM, THEY’D BENEFIT TOO.

THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME THINK THROUGH THIS. THE MORE I TALK ABOUT IT, THE MORE I FEEL LIKE COMBINING MIGHT MAKE SENSE.

4

And I’d love to hear what @danmoyle thinks :slightly_smiling_face:

5

@klmontgomery80 is part of the reason you’re considering combining them because you’re moving them from WordPress to HubSpot?

I was trying to understand what triggered the initial question, and that would certainly make a lot of sense if it were the case.

I think @danmoyle offered a lot of good insights from the “why” side of things (as always!), and while he has a fair point about blog.hubspot.com not causing an issue for SEO being on a subdomain, I would argue that it’s also not likely that your domain authority is comparable to HubSpot’s and that every decision should take into account the potential gain or loss related to SEO.

Here is a helpful article on subdomains and SEO that I think will be a good resource, whether you combine or keep separate, hopefully it helps clarify why I asked the question.

6

Hi Jennifer, no we are stuck with Wordpress for now. To answer your question about why we are considering it, my manager and the leader of content strategy at my company is the one who raised the question and is hoping we can combine. I think because she feels one blog vs two would be less likely to confuse a visitor, since they both serve different journey segments of the same audience. And also because she thinks that the thought leadership blog posts should integrmingle with the posts that promote our products to enable more awareness of what we do and invariably more opportunities to convert visitors into eventual buyers.

Thanks for sharing the article. I will definitely check it out!

7

Thanks for the tag @Jnix284 :blush: A lot of great questions and prompts in your answer to spark depper analysis. Love that!

@klmontgomery80 what is driving you to consider combining the two blogs? I’m probably coming at it from a little different POV than my friend Jennifer. I’m not as concerned about subdomains vs. top level domain (TLD). I use HubSpot as an example here: they use blog.hubspot.com and I’d challenge anyone to find a better SEO performance for HubSpot’s targeted keywords. However, I don’t think it’s wrong to advise folks to go to a TLD if possible. It’s just not a major concern I’ve personally seen.

As for combining them, if I were in your position and happy with the performance (including conversion rates), I wouldn’t fix what’s not broken. Especially if the lift is big (which it probably would be) and the payoff wouldn’t be that significant, therefore not a positive return on effort.

I’ll wrap it up though by revisiting the “why” question. That could inform my advice, including maybe a different solution to solve what you’re looking for.

8

Hi Dan, thank you for your reply! To answer your question about why we’re considering it - it actually stemmed from my manager, who leads content strategy at my company. She’s the one who raised the question and is hoping we can combine. I think she’s feeling like one blog vs two would be less likely to confuse a visitor, since they both currently serve different journey segments of the same audience. And also because she thinks that the helpful, product-agnostic blog posts should integrmingle with the posts that promote our products to enable more awareness of what we do and invariably more opportunities for visitors to become customers.

I think the subdomain vs TLD conversation is somewhat separate from this one, as I’m not sure the ultimate plan is to move it to our main page from their existing subdomains. But I’d argue that that would be the only reason it’d be worth it to combine. I agree, it would be a massive lift and I’m not sure one that will yield juice worth the squeezing. But if it’s an investment of time for a future proof blog that offers a more cohesive experience for our users, I can certainly get behind it, lift and all.