Multiple Blogs or a single blog | AreWeConnected.com

Recently I spoke at Richard Robbins Achieve in Toronto. While we couldn’t get to all the questions during the event we promised to answer them all. The following is just one of many…

Question:

Should we have multiple blogs or focus all content in one blog?

Assuming the focus is somewhat related, a single blog would probably be best.

To better refine and sort you have two options – using Categories or Tags. While they work similar, I’ll suggest and show you how to use Categories.

Categories. If you are using WordPress as your blogging platform you can easily setup different categories for each topic.

If your blog posts are categorized, WordPress can create a dynamic page or pages of all posts in that category. For instance, this post was categorized under WordPress. If I wanted to show all my posts on WordPress, simply go to http://areweconnected.com/category/wordpress/

Want to see all my posts on Facebook Pages? Here they are http://areweconnected.com/category/facebook-pages/

You don’t have to remember the URL for that. There’s a dropdown box on my sidebar that shows the various topics. It’s called “Topics”. It’s the exact same as “Categories”, I just renamed it because studies have shown that readers will delve deeper into topics – go figure.

BONUS: Want a little more SEO Juice?

If you look at the permalink structure that I have set up a particular post is not AreWeConnected.com/post1234, instead I have my permalinks setup so that the category of each post is in the title.

That means if my categories are “keywords” (which they are) I’ll have all my keywords in the title! That’s great for SEO!

How could this work for a Real Estate Blog? Here’s a few suggestions for Categories.

Real Estate News
Market Reports
Community News
How about a category for each city, neighborhood, or subdivision in your farm?

A single post can be in multiple categories as well. If you seem to write about a topic more than once – you might want to create a category for it.

photo credit: dehub

With all that said, what if you have a real estate blog and want to blog about your favorite true passion, collecting old AOL installation CD’s? In that case, maybe it might be best to have multiple blogs. The same goes for items like Sex, Politics and Religion. While we can’t truly separate who we are from the image we want to project sometimes it’s better to at least put a little space between the two.

A moment on Tags. Tags work just like Categories except that there isn’t as many cool tools for adding them to the sidebar. There is a Tag Cloud and variations but for so many a category is the right way to go. That said, I’ll often times use both. I’m doing that here in this series. If I wanted to show you all the posts in the series I’m calling in a single tag that I’ve added to each series post http://areweconnected.com/tag/richard-robbins/

Where to Use Keywords in Corporate Blog Posts (toprankblog.com)
Tips for Re-Organizing Categories in WordPress (savvyblogging.net)

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Mike Mueller

Mike builds the custom Apps that create the Tabs that make Custom Facebook Pages special. He builds Discount WordPress Blogs and shoots commercial high def video. He's an avid hockey fan, rides a motorcycle (a really fast one), loves strong beer and good red wine.

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http://210consulting.com/ Jeremy Blanton

Categories are powerful and should not be overlooked. That’s for sure!

Mike Mueller

Jeremy – If you had to choose between using Categories or Tags which would you use and why?
http://AreWeConnected.com mikemueller

If you had to choose between Tags or Categories – which would you chose and why?

http://210consulting.com/ Jeremy Blanton

Categories. They carry much more SEO juice in my opinion and are cleaner on
a sidebar.

http://thekencook.com Ken Cook

I use the “General Topic” model. Your example is real estate and community related. If, like many of my clients and I do, the topics are greatly varied we do use multiple blogs.

For example I have my WordPress services blog which is about all things WordPress (and social media), I have my personal mortgage blog which is all about mortgages in Georgia, I have my political blog which is about hot air, I have a blog about stargazing and astro-physics, and another about quantuum physics and quantuum mechanics. Recently I have added one about philanthropy. Some are connected through the blogroll and others are completely isolated.

Your example about an old CD collection is a perfect example of when I split from categories to blogs.

http://AreWeConnected.com mikemueller

Ken -
Instead of AOL CD’s I was going to use Dark Matter as my example (really).
But I couldn’t find a good picture of it for the post (not really)

: )