Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Right away I can suggest that your blog has menus and looks and feels like a commercial website. A blog is suppose to be less commercial and more content based. You can certainly plug your products but do it so more discreetly.

The blog seems more like advertising then what I think of when I think blog. The trick is to write articles that your customers might be interested in, but don't go for the hard sell.

What are topics that people would be interested in. Perhaps special uses of one of your products that customers submitted. How about special hints about snow plowing, guidlines or how to guides? What about profiles of some of your customers and how they used your product. The idea is to steer people to your site without really trying to sell them something. You may need to scour the web in search of content that your customers would enjoy. Are you customers involved with any particular activities or hobbies? If so write about those. It needs to be an article that people find valuable and would like to interact with.

I do think you want to shoot for new content at least every other week. Give people a reason to visit often.

I would not put pricing and contact info in the blog article. I would just put a link to the item in your online store. If people really like it they will click on it. Including that info in the blog makes it feel much less like a blog.

Hope this helps,
Mike

Let the blog be about your customers. Encourage them to upload photos/stories featuring your products. Have different areas for different uses: business, camping, sporting, snow, etc. Consider contests for stories featuring a product mention.

As you initially mentioned the goal of your blog is to "improve SEO." Is this just your goal, or is it a stated goal of management?

If it's the latter, you have an argument for switching the content of your blog from a hard sell, promotional tool to a content focused, relationship building vehicle.

Explain to your bosses that the most important part of SEO is the number and quality of links pointing to your website. The search engines use links to measure how interesting your content is, since the more interesting content tends to get more links. The people who will give you these links are also bloggers and writers, unfortunately they won't link back to your blog because it's overtly promotional. To get those links you need more educational content, with personality and unique perspectives.

This argument should sway management to your view, plus it will allow for measuring inbound links and reporting back to them on the success of your efforts.

Even better, track how inbound links lead to direct sales.

Cheers,

Jesse Kanclerz