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Thanks for the reply Mark.

I suppose in the end I would have to say the main objective is to bring customers to the ecommerce site. However, the goal of the blog would be to position myself in the industry as an expert by answering relevant questions regarding candles.

I realize that if the blog is directly on the site, than links to the blog will increase the overall authority of the ecommerce website. But what I'm wondering is would it make more sense to build an authoritative blog with a unique url, gain subscribers and flow traffic through the blog to the website?

Or would it be make more sense to focus on SEO and build the blog on the site, even though the blog would be obviously associated with a product, and perhaps be construed as biased information only meant to sell the product. I know personally I would trust the information on wikipedia.org as opposed to the information in an article on an ecommerce site. This is my biggest qualm about having the blog on the website.

I can definitely appreciate arguments for both sides, but can't see to pick one. I seem to be running around in circles here.

Thanks for the input and I would appreciate any other pointers if you have any.

Hey there. I'm a new Pro member and this will be my first question on the Q&A. Thanks in advance for your responses.

I'm the owner of an ecommerce site that sells custom candles. www.prometheancandle.com in case anyone wants to take a peak. I've become somewhat of an expert on all-things-candles over the past 4 years and I am thinking about starting a candle related blog.

My question is this. Should I build this blog on the ecommerce site itself, say @ www.prometheancandle.com/blog.php, or should I devote a separate site to answering candle related question, history of candles, etc?

At first, I was thinking that the blog should remain on the ecommerce site so readers would have easy access to the shop to be able to purchase products. But then it occurred to me that people who may be interested in reading up on candle history, candle making, meditation & candles, etc., may not want to go to an obviously ecommerce site to do that. I know Google values informational sites more than ecommerce sites (at least I think they do), so that encourages me to lean towards the separate site.

Well, I may have just answered this question myself, but I'd definitely be interested to hear feedback and opinions. Thanks so much guys and I look forward to hearing from you.