Effect of Publishing Blog Posts Resembling Classified Advertisements
-
Our site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) markets commercial real estate for lease in New York City.
Any potential negative impact in terms of ranking and traffic by using our blog post in an unconventional manner? I am considering publishing a weekly post describing the latest commercial listings for lease. The post would be formatted and resemble classified advertising appearing in such newspapers as The New York Times. The ads are concise and appealing.
Property listings drive a high click thru rate, so I believe blogs posts based on property listings and formatted like old newspaper ads might really improve visitor engagement. Each add could have a link to a corresponding listing page.
Would using the blog in this manner every week have a detrimental effect or could prove beneficial?
Thoughts???
-
I'm not personally aware of anything that would make it inherently bad, but I do think you should take some time to consider why people visit your blog, and who you'd like the audience for your blog to be. If your blog is mainly for content that's reasonably "evergreen" and that will draw repeat visitors, then using it for this sort of promotional material might not be the best idea. If you're just looking to draw one-off visitors or fill your funnel, it might be fine.
For example, take the Moz blog—the vast majority of our posts aren't about Moz products at all, and when we do post about our own products and events, the posts are in addition to our regularly-scheduled, educational posts. Our blog has a large readership who are generally looking for information they can apply to their own marketing. If they saw posts that serve as little more than advertisements for our products, they'd have no reason to come back. Running the sort of content we run helps us keep our position as an industry thought leader, and keeps us front-of-mind when members of our community are in the market for tools like ours.
You note that property listings tend to draw a lot of clicks, but those clicks are coming from folks who are actively looking for property listings. Those types of visitors strike me as pretty likely to see the listing on your blog, consider whether they're interested, and then bounce along to the next search result. I don't see them sticking around to read and engage with your blog. If you're fine with that, go ahead. If you'd like your blog to be a knowledge source for your visitors, though, maybe leave the listings to the listings.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What's more valuable, a Blog or a Forum, and how to integrate?
We want to start a blog or forum (maybe eventually both) and are unsure what is the best way to publish it from an SEO standpoint. If the blog is published on our domain, like domain.com/blog then that obviously helps the site but if the base site is a for-profit business wouldn't it get less credibility, eyeballs, links as opposed to if you started the blog as it's own separate community on a separate domain and then just strategically linked to the for profit site (sponsorship links)? Essentially the question is, if I'm the Lucky Soday Company, do I start a Blog on the Lucky Soda website, or do I start a separate website to grow a soft drink enthusiast community blog / forum? I would guess a blog has more SEO potential than a discussion forum?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MrSem0 -
Links / Metadata around Recent Posts etc in Wordpress / Blog - Good SEO Practice?
Hello In a Wordpress blog ( or part of an ecommerce site that runs under wordpress ) it is good to show recent posts in the sidebar on most pages. Obviously the posts aren't going to be relevant to every post , so my questions are: Is having these on the page hurting SEO for the page? Is there good metadata structure to put in there? ( like rel="nofollow" or similar ) Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear
Thanks for your time
Marty0 -
Article section on site or blog?
So, I've just started using MOZ since I've decided I wanna be an "expert" in SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KasperGJ
I run a couple of successful websites in Denmark and I've had some SEO guy do some SEO a few years back, but now I wanna learn this myself. I've already read a lot of books, blogs on the subject and talked with several SEO "experts". Anyways, I have a concrete "problem" which I need some help on deciding what to do. Its the same issue / dilemma on all my sites. Dilemma
On my site i have a menu-section called Articles and tips. As the name implies it's basically articles and tips on subjects related to the site.
The articles are both informal for the users and I also use these to attract new users on specific keywords.
The articles are not "spam" articles or quickly made articles, the actually give good information to the users and are wellwritten and so. I've hired a girl to create more articles, so there will be a good flow on articles, interviews and so on soon. Some SEO guys tells me, that I should create and use a external blog "instead" and post the articles there instead of on my site. (ex www.newsiteblog.com) And another SEO guy tells me that I should run a blog on my own site (ex www.ownsite.com/blog) , where I post the articles. I have a really hard time deciding what is the best way, since I hear all kinds of ideas, and really dont know who to trust. My own idea is, that it seems "stupid" to take content from the site and put on external blog.
Then I would also have to create a new blog, and point links from that to my site and so. Any of you guys have any ideas? Sorry for my bad english.0 -
NAP - effect of adding a word to the name of businesss
Hello, I'm faced with a decision which requires some feedback from experts like you. My client has a business which has inconsistent citation submissions out the ying yang. For examples sake their business is called "brand all types body repair", where "brand" is the parent company who owns my client's company, and "all types body repair" is my client's company. In most of their existing citations the phone number and address are all consistent, but some citations contain the name "brand all types body repair", and others just "all types body repair". The name used on their website's NAP is "all types body repair"; however the name used on the larger directories like the BBB and yellow pages is "brand all types body repair". Also since they are registered in the BBB as this, "brand all types body repair" is their legal business name. Since they are registered in the BBB as "brand all types body repair" my thoughts are to ensure every citation uses this as the name. Three questions come out of this: I'm not really changing the name, only adding a brand word in front of the existing name. Will this have less of an effect than changing the name completely? If I change the name on their website from "all types body repair" to "brand all types body repair", will that have a negative affect on search rankings if some of the citations are already using "brand all types body repair"? What would you do about the name issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | reidsteven751 -
Should I Remove Dates From My Old Posts
I have a web site that has content about home improvement topics but the site has no new content since 2010. All the posts on the wordpress site have the date which are all 2010 and prior. Is there a downside in terms of search engine rankings to remove the dates or changing the dates? What are the risks to removing the dates? Could I lose rankings if I do this? Do you have any personal experience with this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alpha170 -
Same article published 3 times--do we still benefit from the links?
Hi, A reporter recently mentioned us in a leading publication, and that article was picked up by two other big publications. Do we benefit from all three links, or do we only benefit from the link once since it is the same article?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Opinions on Building Own Blog Network (Private Use Only)
With the lose of buildmyrank and many other services like this on the verge of extension I was looking at building a small blog network of my own for private use. Adsense and also 3 way linking. I'm wondering if anyone has experience with this? I know this takes a ton of time to build but if anyone who's done something like this and wouldn't mind sharing some of their tips I would greatly appriciate it. Quick Question
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | upick-162391
Is it safe to register say 30 domains under the same person? Or would it be wiser to use whois protection to guard the names? Anyone else want to contribute their 2c to this strategy please be my guest.0 -
A Question for all Link Outreach Guys (Especially Blog Outreach)
Our SEO agency is considering hiring a new SEO consultant, specifically for outreach, with a strong focus on (quality) blog outreach. I know how many successful posting I expect to get per month doing the work myself, but I wanted to make sure that I expected realistic amounts from a new (already experienced) staff member (just to be fair to them!), Soooooo... I thought I would throw a question at other folks, and try to come up with a rough average number, to make sure I don't expect too much (or too little) from the new guy! Now, obviously this varies depending on niche etc, but I am just asking for an approx. average, using search queries like: _"blog posting guidelines" "[niche here]" _ (Plus using feedburner searches, etc... usual blog outreach tactics!) Also bear in mind that the outreacher will be based in the office, and content will be written for them by professional writers. The question is... As an experienced blog outreacher, based on the above info, how many successful posts would you expect to get per month, assuming a 35hr to 40hr work week (Mon-Fri). Cheers guys! I look forward to your opinions... I think it will be interesting to see how much the answers vary! UPDATE: - So far only Casey seems willing to share 🙂 Nobody else willing to chip in?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeGracia0