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Posted by Rochelle in For several weeks I’ve been saying how I’m going to write about how to add blogging to niche stores. Well, consider this my first official post about it. Before I go into how to add blogging to your sites I thought it would be a good idea to start off with why it’s a good idea.
Note: I use Wordpress for my blogging so any references to a blog is actually referring to a Wordpress blog. There are other blogging programs but I haven’t used them so I can’t speak about them.
Advantages of combinging BANS with blogging:
- Build A Niche Store is a great product, but it’s not a good idea to use it straight out of the box. Several blogging posts this week have discussed the fact that Google doesn’t like thin affiliate sites (see Mark’s “Death of Thin Affiliate Sites” and JT Pratt’s “Why BANS Niche Sites get Banned from Google” for more details on this). Adding a blog to a BANS site means you are adding content. Content on a site means it is no longer a thin affiliate site.
- Google loves blogs. I don’t know why, though I’m sure someone reading this could give the details of why, but it is commonly known that Google (and other search engines) like blogs. This means your niche store has a better chance of being indexed (and quickly) when you add a blog to it.
- You can schedule your blog posts. Wordpress allows you to write posts and then set them to be published at your specified dates and times. This is great because you can write multiple posts but have them published whenever you want, instead of as you write them. This is also great because it allows your sites to grow slowly, which search engines prefer, instead of having a huge amount of content added in a single day.
- Wordpress has a huge amount of free plugins. Plugins are tools that allow you to do even more with your blog. There is a plugin for almost anything you want to do with your blog. This means you can customize your blogs to suite your needs/tastes. Plugins make customizing very easy. I’ll list the must have plugins I use in a later post.
- Mark at TheNicheStoreBuilder has created templates that easily integrate blogging and BANS into a single site. This means you can use the same template for your blog as for your BANS on a site. Cbeck out his Blog/BANS templates to see how easy it is to integrate blogging and BANS.
- There are hundreds (if not thousands) of free Wordpress templates. To find them just go to Google and enter ‘free wordpress (or wp) templates’. Mark at TheNicheStoreBuilder will convert ANY Wordpress template to BANS for a very reasonable price.
- You can create blog posts that link to pages within the BANS side of your site. This is good because it helps search engines ‘find’ the pages you link to from your blog. It is best to link deeply within your BANS pages when you do this, to help these deep links get indexed. In other words, don’t link to a top category page; link to a sub-sub-sub-sub category page.
- New blog posts ping search engines (ping = tells) whenever new posts are listed. This means whenever your blog post is published, search engines are told there is a new post so they can come and index the new post. You don’t have to do anything more than publish new posts to have search engines coming to your site.
Certainly there are more reasons to add blogging to niche stores but these are the main reasons I could think of this morning. I’d love to know any additional reasons you can think of.
Rochelle
The Power Of WordPress – My main site had been up for a year or so, an HTML site PR-0. Two weeks ago I ripped it out and put in WordPress. I have not done much with it as I’m working on some BANS-WP sites. Sometime in the past few days my PR went to PR-2. That’s the power of WordPress!
PS My BANS-WP sites also got ranked!
Thanks for the link! I think that we’re going to see a LOT more of this (BANS and Wordpress sites) throughout the rest of the year. BANS as been kind of misrepresented as a cash cow anyway, integrating with Wordpress is just a way to turn it into more of a legitimate site.
JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakess last blog post..How to Sell eBooks or any Digital Content
I really like the idea of combining both BANSand Wordpress. It will be the best option for all BANS users. Especially when you combine the monetising of a BANS site and the search engine friendliness of a Wordpress Blog. I use Wordpress almost exclusively on all my sites and will welcome any reseach done on the integration of BANS and Wordpress.
Australian Cash Loanss last blog post..Get Ahead with Bad Credit Cash Advance Loans
You’re preaching to the choir on this one. The one thing I’m not sure about is what you mean by “sub-sub-sub-sub category page.” Are you talking about the BANS store pages for this? Can you give an example of what you mean?
Alices last blog post..Hiring a Professional Writer for SEO Content
Dear Rochelle
I dont know the exact meaning of Point 7. would you mind illustrating once more. Thanks a lot !
Alex
I definitely prefer to have a blog with my BANS. I only have a couple that are combined right now but I am getting there a little at a time.
I love plugins and probably go way overboard with them.
I do like WP Affiliate Pro plugin for pointing from the blog side of my site to the BANS end of things.
James Manns last blog post..Google PageRank Update is in Progress
Hi Alex,
I think what Rochelle means is that if you have a site selling widgets, they could be categorised by size, ie. small, medium, large, huge, etc. Then within each size, they could be sub-categorised by colour, ie. red, blue, green, silver, etc. Then within colour they could be sub-categorised by type, ie. shiny, furry, round, square etc.
The sub-categories could perhaps go even further, that would depend on the niche.
Now suppose you made a blog post about large red furry widgets, you would want to link to the relevant store page on your BANS site http://www.mywidgets.com/Large.....ry-widgets rather than a link to your home page.
Please feel free to correct me Rochelle if I’ve misunderstood you.
Cheers,
Mick
Mistermicksters last blog post..Ronaldinho for Man City?
To Alice and Alex,
I’ll try to explain #7 better. Let’s say your site is eBay, but instead of having all the categories that eBay really has, let’s say the site is only about Business Equipment. A top level category page for this site would be ‘Office,’ a subcategory would be ‘Office’ / ‘Office Supplies,’ a sub-subcategory would be ‘Office’ / ‘Office Supplies’ / ‘Bulk Blank Media,’ a sub-sub-subcategory would be ‘Office’ / ‘Office Supplies’ / ‘Bulk Blank Media’ / ‘DVD & CD Jewel Packaging,’ a sub-sub-sub-subcategory would be ‘Office’ / ‘Office Supplies’ / ‘Bulk Blank Media’ / ‘DVD & CD Jewel Packaging’ / ‘Jewel Cases,’ as seen at http://business.listings.ebay......ngItemList.
In other words, it would be linking deep within a parent category. It seems that the upper level pages get indexed before the really deep ones do, and this will help get those deeper categories indexed.
Does that help?
Rochelle
That’s it exactly.
Rochelle
Rochelle and Mick – that’s perfect, just what I was looking for. Do you need to put some content on that sub-sub-sub landing site to make it worth indexing?? To be honest, with a couple of dozen BANS sites running that I’m adding WP blogs to, and the work I put into the top category pages, most of my sub-sub pages only have an h1 header. Is that good enough, or do I need to juice those pages up a little??? (ARRRGHHHH!)
Alice
Alices last blog post..Hiring a Professional Writer for SEO Content
Another question: what do you blog about in sites that are boring, home-appliance kinds of sites? I have several of these, but to be honest I’m at a loss to think about how to blog these. For example a BANS site on whole-house furnaces. Not too exciting, although important if you need to replace yours. There’s only so much you can blog about after you’ve covered the basics about how they work, some pro/con stuff on whole-house vs. zone, some brand-specific stuff etc.
But there’s not a lot of fresh blogging potential with products likes these – even people in the market for one aren’t going to come back and read the blog after they bought one!
I’m sure my sites would benefit if I transferred my BANS content into blog format, but doing updates would be a killer…
BLOG Entry 1: got the Herky 5 billion BTU whole house heater installed today. Yippee!
BLOG Entry 2: Nice and toasty, except the fan blows us around like we’re in a clothes dryer.
BLOG Entry 3: Thinking of putting up clothes line so we can use all that hot air and not use the dryer
BLOG Entry 4: We can windsurf in the living room! No need to spend money on expensive vacations
Alices last blog post..Hiring a Professional Writer for SEO Content
I’m in the same situation as you. Ideally, yes, you would do more than an H1 header on every page. Realistically, what I plan on doing is spending time on sites I intend to keep (aka renew once their URL expiration date rolls around) and do this on those sites. Otherwise, I’m not going to waste my time on sites that I know I’m not keeping.
Hope this helps,
Rochelle
You’ve got me laughing so hard on this one that my cat almost jumped off my lap!
This is a good question. What I’d do (and will, as some of my sites are similar to the one you described) is this:
- Blog about specific models (one post per model) with brief descriptions about them (you can get info from manufacturers sites).
- Blog about comparing one model to another. You might go to Amazon.com and look up a model. See what they compare it to (Amazon usually has links that say, “What people actually bought after viewing this item,” or “Other items like this”) and get a general feel for the differences, then blog about them.
- Blog about things people may not know about a specific model (again, go to Amazon.com, or even epinions.com, and read through the comments; people will state things that users may not know about that are really handy to know).
- Go to Google, input a model name/product name/keyword, and see look at the results. Check out what other sites have to say about these things to get ideas about what to blog about.
- Blog about what can be done with the appliances. If the appliances are in the kitchen then add recipes that can be made with the appliance. If the appliance is a tool, blog about what can be made with the tool. And so on.
Your blog posts don’t have to be long. A few paragraphs may be all you need.
Rochelle
@Alice – Rochelle is right…blog about the models, the features, the manufacturer, the cost differences, what other people write about in their reviews, installation experiences, etc…
JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakess last blog post..How to Sell eBooks or any Digital Content
Dear Mick & Rochelle
Really thanks for your illustration. Now, I get the point.
Have a good day !
Alex
Rochelle,
thanks for the great blogging tips and ideas to write about. Like Alice the thought of blogging about certain topics is enough to put cold chill up my spine it’s so boring. But blogging does seem to work. In my blog post today I share how 13 blog posts over the course of 90 days has brought in 218 unique visitors to one of my BANS blogs in the month of July strictly from search engines. Not a heck of a lot but neither is 13 blog posts in 90 days.
Mark
I mentioned this article in my most recent post on the recent EPN ACRU changes. I think that adding a blog may well become critical to the success of a BANS site in the very near future.
So far as creating articles, you don’t have to be too creative or long winded. You can simply add a related YouTube video and a paragraph and that will work. You can also take snips from news articles and the like. Many people have observed recently that these kind of clip articles don’t typical draw a duplicate content filter.
Frank Cs last blog post..EPN ACRU Changes and You
Thank you for the link in your post. You have good information on your blog.
Rochelle
interesting post and discussion… but I think everybody missing a point. If you want to ADD blog to BANS store, why do you NEED BANS at all? just get phpBay wordpress plugin and u are done.
Maxs last blog post..5 Biggest Mistakes You Should Avoid When Starting Online Business
Good question, Max. I have used both (BANS and phpBay Pro) with blogs and will soon write about this. Both have strengths and weaknesses, so it becomes a matter of what you want.
Rochelle
thanks Rochelle, I also thought about writing BANS/phpBay comparison, but will probably end up with opinion biased towards phpBay. I do think it’s better than BANS. Drop me a message when you publish your post and I’ll include a link to it on my blog.
@Max and @Rochelle -
I don’t know why people use PHPBayPro – they just raised the price to $79. You can get BayRSS for $37 and it does absolutely EVERYTHING PHPBayPro does and more.
It allows you to add Amazon items AND eBay auctions and it also has a revenue sharing feature you can use if you have guest authors posting (giving them incentive to submit articles).
This plugin is new to me, but I really like how you are using it. I will have to check it out.
Does it allow you to geotarget countries for the auction results? That is one aspect of phpBay Pro that I like.
Rochelle
@Rochelle – yes, you can geotarget countries with the BayRSS eBay Wordpress plugin.
JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakess last blog post..BANS re-launch is now Live – so Now What?!
BayRSS does not display items in column (my preferred way to list eBay products) and url re-write could be better. phpBay Pro also comes with sidebar widget. Up until 2 weeks ago phpBay Pro price was $49.
Hi
At present I’m building a couple of WP/BANS sites with WP at the root and BANS store in a sub-folder. But I have 4x BANS sites that earn good money, are indexed AND ranking Page 1 Positions 1, 2 & 4 per site on Google US, Google UK & Yahoo, so I don’t want to break them or ruin the indexing or ranking.
Anyone know how I can add WP to these sites but in a blog sub-folder, so that it won’t affect indexing or ranking. For these I just want to add a blog facility & am happy with the BANS templates that are already being used?
I had the same issue, where several of my BANS only sites were doing well and I didn’t want to move them off the root just to install WP. You can create your WP folder at the same time you install WP if you use Fantastico at Hostgator. Right under the spot where you tell it what domain to put it in, there’s a box for you to specify the name of the folder to put WP in.
If you don’t use Hostgator, just create a folder called /blog in your main directory, then tell WP during installation to put the files there.
I have sites both ways, and have to say that sometimes leaving the BANS site alone is the best thing to do. Adding the blog makes it so much easier to add content though, and I think it accomplishes the same thing. Especially if you use one of Mark’s wrap-around templates, then its really easy.
Thanks Alice
I am quite happy being able to install WP into a sub-folder (probably titled ‘blog’ or something) but how do you link the two together so that the root (in this instance BANS) pulls in the content (WP posts)
at the same time maintaining the look, feel and useability of the designated theme (in this instance the BANS template currently selected)?
@Steve,
Well, you’ve just hit the rub that we’ve all been talking about on the BANS forum and especially Mark Hansen’s blog…
The problem, before Mark came to the rescue and put together some templates, was that there was NO integration between the BANS and wp sides. But Mark came up with some awesome templates including some free ones that we could use that did that for us. Check them out at:
http: //www.thenichestorebuilder .com/build-a-niche-store-bans-templates
Remove the spaces for the link to work – I think code doesn’t appear in posts if its intact. There are some other folks on the BANS forum who have done similar.
The latest buzz, which I wanted from the get-go, is a script that would let me convert ANY of the zillions of WP themes into an instant BANS/WP hybrid. Right now each theme has to be hand-coded to make the integration work, so no one’s volunteering to do this. If you’re skilled at programming you could probably do it, but most of us know nothing about it.
To be honest, I don’t know that it really matters if you have a BANS and a blog totally integrated, or if you just have the two linked. It certainly looks nicer to have an integrated site, but I’ve got BANS sites that just have the blog in a sub-folder. They’re too new to really tell if page ranks will be different one way versus the other.