Does Blog Look And Feel Have To Match Site Look And Feel?
-
For years I've run WidgetsAdvice.com as a standalone blog. It's done well, 4k uniques a day, 5PR site. But it's standalone.
I recently purchased Widgets.com, which doesn't get much traffic and is only a PR2. To help grow Widgets.com, my obvious desire is to move the blog (WidgetsAdvice.com) over to Widgets.com and have it sit there as: www.Widgets.com/blog so I can get the good google juice to start flowing to Widgets.com
Yes, I know it's important to do the page redirects properly, etc. That's not my question.
My question is: Do they have to look the same? The page design of Widgets.com is very different than the blog. When I move the blog over, do I HAVE to make it have the same look and feel as the larger site? Does google penalize you if your blog has a different page design than the site it is blogging for?
My preference would be to simply move the blog over and change nothing... maybe change the menus to point to the larger site, etc.
But will google not like it looking different?
(Widgets is obviously an example... my site name is different)
-
In which case go for it if that's all that matters. User experience may be affected, depends on the designs, though as SEO is your only concern here, you're all set to press ahead
-
It is indeed, I already answered that question though; you won't be penalised by Google purely for different designs.
-
All I care about is the google juice.
-
Ok. That's my thing. I can lead people to my main site... I'm just wondering if Google cares if the site look and feel matches. If not? Then fine. I can deal with that.
-
Right... but the question is... does Google care?
-
Exactly, a good answer from James. For a positive user experience, 'Familiarity' is key, many visitors don't like surprises and will leave quickly if they feel lost or unsure of what they are looking at, so keep the Blog's design and style similar to that of your main website.
Doesn't have to be an exact copy of style and design, just easily recognisable that your blog and your website are Your blog and your website, that the two are related.
This isn't for search by the way, you won't be peanalized by Google if your blog and website have different designs (only if the designs are poor and crawling, speed etc are an issue, could you be peanalized). User Experience is key here rather than Search.
Regards
Simon
-
It is advisable to match the style of the blog's with your main website.
From a design point of view it is always something I advise site owners to implement.
From a cross site branding point of view too it will look a bit funny if you do not use the same design.
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
-
Thinking about redesigning site to reduce bounce rate - have a couple of questions
BACKGROUND Im looking at redesigning the website for a creative consultancy to improve the user experience. The website is mainly an image portfolio along with “press”, “our services”, “about us”, “contact” pages. I originally designed the website a few years ago and when we did, we wanted to make the image portfolio the most important feature. So we made it a full screen JS image slider with lazy loading of images, so that there are about 40 full screen images on the homepage that rotate. From a users point of view i still feel this is the best system as it very quickly allows them to browse the portfolio, which we looking for a creative consultancy is their UPS (unique selling point). The site has a very strong backlink profile compared to its competitors in the SERPS it has about 20-25% increase in PA and DA. But our site has been slipping down the rankings in recent years / months. From spot 1-2 to about spot 5-7. MY HYPOTHESIS I think that the reason the site may be dropping back in the SERP is that although its a very usable site, all its portfolio information is “too easy to find / view” and results in a user coming to our site, seeing everything they need to see, then bouncing back to the SERP. Our site has a bounce rate of 40-60%. Where as on competitors sites, their “portfolio” is a separate page off the homepage, so a users has to click through to a separate page, and even if they don't like the design content of the portfolio it doesn't get logged as a bounce. MY QUESTION Does bounce rate affect SERP ranking ? Could the sites SERP performance be improved by redesigning the site to put the portfolio on a separate page so a user would have to click through to it, if that would get the bounce rate down, would the site see a benefit even if people still clicked back to the SERP results eventually after seeing our portfolio, even though it wasn't a true 1 page bounce ? Dose time on site affect SERP ranking ? Is there a way i can see a competitor's bounce rate ? Would welcome any other thoughts inputs on this matter.
Web Design | | sl_pa0 -
Web Hosting and CDN for Wordpress Site Load Speed - Suggestions Needed
We all know that website load speed is more important than ever. While I love the look and feel of parallax and Wordpress, I want to do everything I can to keep the load speed down. I see a lot of conflicting information regarding web hosting services, CDN services and other service (Cloudflare for example). I am looking to hear from those with their own experiences to let me know what they think is the ideal setup for a parallax Wordpress site is as far as which services to use, including: 1. Web Hosting
Web Design | | Gauge123
2. CDN
3. Any other service or product that would help to provide and extremely fast site load time. Thank you!0 -
How does Google look at strings added to a URL
For example: http://localhost:3000/en-US/app/a-knsmtrhqrqs/personal where knsmtrhqrqs is a string Can Google tell this is a string and what's their policy? Will it hurt rankings? Thank you.
Web Design | | RoxBrock0 -
Is there a Joomla! Component For A Blog Page That Is Recommended?
A business partner currently has a page on a Joomla! website that is passing for the blog page. I am not a Joomla! guy so I dont' know much about it. I do know that I don't like a lot of things and prefer Drupal however making a change to Drupal on that site is not an option. We need to upgrade the blog page so that it is more like a blog and I know there has to be an SEO friendly component for a Joomla! blog page. Any ideas?
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO1 -
Anyone migrated a site from PHP into ASP? Anyone migrated into Sitecore?
We have a network of websites in Linux-based PHP and we may be switching them over to ASP.NET and using SiteCore CMS. Right now, we don't have a CMS. We would also be switching from using file extension www.site.com/file.php to no extensions www.site.com/file/ therefore altering our directory structure. We are aware of the potential impacts to traffic of the initial migration, but are now more curious about SiteCore CMS and SEO, performance and indexation/crawlability. Has anyone made this move before or considered making it? Can you offer any success stories, horror stories?
Web Design | | Eric_edvisors0 -
What do YOU look for when reviewing technical website criteria?
Wanted to get everyone's thoughts on this. One of my clients was asking me what they thought of a certain website design company. They wanted to use this company because their designs were very beautiful but wanted to be sure that contracting them would be the right decision. After I made my formal review and recommendation I thought this might be a great topic of discussion for the amazing SEOMOZ community. So, what factors do you look at when determining which design firms are worth their weight?
Web Design | | JusinDuff0 -
Alternatives to Wordpress for updating content of a static html site
I have a static html site which I cannot update myself. What solutions/ programs would you recommend for gaining the ability to update it myself? I'm reluctant to switch to WordPress because the sites that use any CMS that are hosted by my web hosting company get routinely hacked. Thank you!
Web Design | | translate0 -
Looking for an open source or wordpress designer that knows seo best practices
I have almost lost my patience in trying to find a web developer for our project. I have searched high and low from freelancers to us based firms. All I can find; freelancers that can't get the job done, but promise they can and us based firms that are currently getting away with murder charging through the nose on work that is not acceptable to say the least. US based Firms 1. Seem to give you as little work as possible to increase their margin. I get it we all need to make money. 2. Everyone knows how to do everything until you start telling them that you have a little education in the industry and will be testing their work. All of the sudden they no longer talk to you. 3. Got a few recommendations and they are all subpar performers. After asking them why their builds load so slow or have so many errors they have excuses that point to the customer Freelancers over seas. 1. I am not sure where to start with this. I have searched high and low in freelancer for someone that I can trust to build a site. Of course there is a ton of junk to look through. After countless hours of narrowing down the individuals I am thinking of giving a shot I find that they are not capable of the job. All I want is a new website from a firm that is honest and knows what they are doing. That is educated in seo best practices. That can build a quality website and actually has references of sites they built that are still up and running and test out alright. It is pretty bad when web development companies miss simple items like h tags. Really? Does anyone know of someone that knows what they are doing? That can work with someone that knows how to run a dvd player. Just disappointing to see all these web companies and freelancers that get away with murder. Who earns their keep in this industry?!?!?!?
Web Design | | forecastedinvestments0