Article Hub or Blog Format?

[Nezzo]

I was doing SEO as a consultant and was recently hired by this firm full time to manage the site as well as improve their online visibility. The problem that I'm running into is that the site was built with very little SEO in mind. I continue to work with the original developer to make programming changes as well as layout and design changes. I don’t have the amount of control I would like to have because I don’t have the programming background required to make all the changes myself. So I would like to do what is best for the site with the least amount of help required from the design firm.

I would like to create an area for our customers to read articles or news about our industry and our company. Essentially, turning our landing pages into article hubs.

Would creating an article area using the LSI method be a good route to go?

Or should I institute some kind of blog format so that customers can comment on stories or articles? From what I've seen, blogs seem to be more effective than forums.

What got me thinking was if we were to go the LSI route (w/o a comment section, just posted articles) and then we decide to go to a blog format, would it be detrimental to our rankings? Is it easy to "recycle" previously posted/linked-to articles within the blog? Is it difficult to integrate a blog into an existing site?

I would appreciate any feedback you can provide or resources you can point me towards.

Thank you

[beu]

I was doing SEO as a consultant and was recently hired by this firm full time to manage the site as well as improve their online visibility. The problem that I'm running into is that the site was built with very little SEO in mind. I continue to work with the original developer to make programming changes as well as layout and design changes. I don’t have the amount of control I would like to have because I don’t have the programming background required to make all the changes myself. So I would like to do what is best for the site with the least amount of help required from the design firm.

I would like to create an area for our customers to read articles or news about our industry and our company. Essentially, turning our landing pages into article hubs.

Would creating an article area using the LSI method be a good route to go?

Or should I institute some kind of blog format so that customers can comment on stories or articles? From what I've seen, blogs seem to be more effective than forums.

What got me thinking was if we were to go the LSI route (w/o a comment section, just posted articles) and then we decide to go to a blog format, would it be detrimental to our rankings? Is it easy to "recycle" previously posted/linked-to articles within the blog? Is it difficult to integrate a blog into an existing site?

I would appreciate any feedback you can provide or resources you can point me towards.

Thank you

Technically, LSI or (latent semantic indexing) would be an action by search engines and not a method for creating an article. If you mean creating content with semantically related keywords, it might be hard to do with a blog.

Either way, if the site's architecture is not crawler friendly crawlers may not find your content.

If you want to integrate a blog, check out WordPress.

[Nezzo]

Thank you for the reply.

Maybe I used the wrong term. I thought that creating a hierarchy of articles used for categorizing them was referred to as LSI.

For example, creating a category (sandwiches) that had articles relating to sandwiches and each one links to another.

Hot Sandwiches (top level)> Subway Article > Quizno's Article > Blimpy's Article > etc. and the last article linking back to the next top level category (Cold Sandwiches).

[beu]

Thank you for the reply.

Maybe I used the wrong term. I thought that creating a hierarchy of articles used for categorizing them was referred to as LSI.

For example, creating a category (sandwiches) that had articles relating to sandwiches and each one links to another.

Hot Sandwiches (top level)> Subway Article > Quizno's Article > Blimpy's Article > etc. and the last article linking back to the next top level category (Cold Sandwiches).

I think what you mean is "breadcrumbing". Breadcrumbing is a navigational way to follow the path you have taken through a website.

Breadcrumbing is a good idea because it helps search engines determine more about your sites architecture. You may also consider a sitemap.

[Nezzo]

Ok so I found the original source that got me thinking about this concept.

The term I was referring to is called a silo. Basically a section of a website that is devoted to a single theme and does not link to content outside of that theme.

[Dan01]

One advantage to a forum over a blog with comments is that you can develop a community.

[beu]

Is it difficult to integrate a blog into an existing site?

No, make a folder called blog and put your blog therein.

(IE http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/)