I currently have a website without a blog and was thinking of bolting wordpress onto it to get a blog in action. Speaking to a few friends I have a mixed bag!!! some say it will be okay and others say I am best starting fresh with a new wordpress theme altogether.
I know Wordpress is SEO friendly but im looking into the time frame which I do not have!
Any feedback appreciated
Hi GK Safety,
Either option a) integrating a blog into your current site and b) starting with WordPress. It is arguable which one will take longer as they both have so many variables involved.
Do your customers feel that your current website is lacking? Have you spoke to any of them to ask?
If you already have established search engine rankings for a number of pages on your existing site, you don’t want to loose these so this part has to handled carefully if you decide to update the site using WordPress.
If selecting a pre-made template then Wordpress can be very easy to use and will not necessarily take more time then integrating a blog into your current site. However finding a template you like can take a considerable amount of time and then you have to do a little research to understand why one template (with its’ implemented features) is better (functionally) than another.
If you have any unique functionality on your existing site then it is unlikely to get that unique functionality working ‘out of the box’ in WordPress.
IMHO WordPress has a cludgy way of handling extending the PHP landscape, so If you like using OOP with PHP pretty much throw that logic away.
If you switch to WordPress it will make it easier overtime to refresh you site’s look but keep the existing content.
To the positive WordPress has excellent documentation, so if you need to learn something you can not only find a gazillion articles on the Web but also good information from WordPress too.
Regards,
Steve
First let me say that I agree with ServerStorm. Before you make your decision, consider how a blog will help your site, if it will at all.
Probably not an option for you, but I have three blogs (well sort of, one is down right now) in WP and I’m making plans to move all of them to ModX Revo. There, you can design things the way you want without worrying about plug-in this and widget-that. You can easily bring your site template in so that your blog looks like a part of your plan instead of an after thought.
Of course, they use PHP as a back-end, but it is almost totally a back end and doesn’t interfere with what you want to do in the front end. The only thing is that you would need some time to examine it because there is a pretty steep learning curve, but once you are over the hump, it’s the best thing around. Their documentation isn’t as comprehensive as WP’s but they do have a very active and helpful community as well.
It is possible to build a WordPress section for your site that looks identical (or nearly identical) in its layout to the rest of your site. All you need to do to be able to achieve that is to start with one of the template themes that is designed to be used as the basis for creating your own theme and then build a child theme on that which replicates how the rest of your site looks.
The SitePoint book “Wicked WordPress Themes” has a lot of information on how to do this.
I would build out a wordpress site that looks similar to the one you have now. Look at all the wordpress templates available, i am sure you can find one that resembles your current site. Then I would take all your current content and put it on the new wordpress site using the same domain and make sure all URLs are exactly the same… wordpress has plugins to help you with that. Then just build out a new section/blog part of wordpress. Wordpress can act both as a blog (originally intended for that) and a CMS setup so it will act like your old site. Hope you understand what I am saying.
Wordpress is probably the easiest way to get a great looking blog up and going in no time. The learning curve is very small and the number of themes(free and paid) and plugins are extensive. Wordpress just makes it easy and saves you a lot of time to focus on other things. The only big downside is it’s mysql only(the team said they aren’t going to support other databases out of fear of a speed penalty, though there’s a 3rd part postgresql plugin that works sort of) and the fact wordpress isn’t known for security. I recommend you give wordpress a try though and consider buying one of those themes that allow you make your own theme easy, for the ultimate in professionalism(though free ones are fine too).
You truly can’t go wrong with having a blog to drive traffic. However, you can make it more efficient by making sure your blog’s theme BRANDS your overall site and provides enough opportunities for readers of your blog to explore the rest of your site. Use your blog as a traffic magnet and use your site’s structure and text as filters that weed out and push qualified users to the end user behaviors you are looking for (sales or lead collection or upsell ad clicks)
wordpress with a blog is probably your only chance to survive if you want to be seen. keep your blog regularly updated
When it comes to creating blogs, wordpress, IMO, is definitely the best one to use as it is particularly designed for blogging.
If you’d incorporate your blog within your main site/domain, it would definitely increase your chance of getting to the top of google as it loves content/information. It’s like a form of on-page seo where you’d be able to add keywords within your site. Plus, your readers can directly locate your blog if it’s within your site altogether. If your purpose is to mainly provide additional information to your readers, I say you go with this.
However, if your purpose is to provide information and at the same time get backlinks to your main site, you can create an entirely different wordpress blog website, add contents, and link them to your main site.
Keeping an updated, consistent and relevant blog may help improve your business. Your blog can be a place for your clients or customers to give you feedback, suggestions or comments on your products. Also, although you can keep the same theme with your blog as your website, there is no harm in exploring other options. Good luck on your endeavors! 
In my opinion if you have exiting website and already regularly and trusted by google by indexing your website content then better to use the same domain just intall your wordpress blog to a new directory of your domain and just create a tab or button where visitor can easily find your blogs
if you domain is domain.com then install it to doman.com/blog directory create the sitemap accordingly submit it do your routine of increasing your domain name including your blog on it.
IF you start a new domain name it’s a pain and more job to do. Do not depend the growth of you site by using the SEO wordpress plugins.
I hope that helps.
Yes, buying a new domain will again require activities to be started right from the scrap then along with doing SEO for your website you may have to work hard to bring your domain of blog up in the ranking an it will waste much of your time, it is better to have a sub domain blog under your website domain blog.site.com or site.com/blog it may do for you, but if your website is ranking really good in SERP I suggest you not to go for the blog then because it may affect ranking of your website as well.
As the question was asked four months ago, and the member has never returned, I think we can safely close this thread.