The debate over the value of an onsite blog vs. an offsite blog rages on. Blogging takes a lot of time for creative writing and finding of topics. Sometimes it's just easier to hire a company to do the blogging for you and not worry about it, and that's a good option as long as you do it right.I've seen plenty of data over the past 3 years that shows how beneficial it is for jewelers to have a blog directly on their website rather than a completely different domain name. Here are my latest measurements on this topic...
When you have a blog on a different domain name you need to convince your readers to click a link before they can visit your actual jewelry store website.
Here's how visitors act when they click from the offsite blog to a jewelry store's primary website:
Average bounce rate: 62%
Average time on site: 54 seconds
Average pages per visitor: 2.81
Here's how visitors act when they are reading your blog on your primary jewelry website then click elsewhere on the site:
Average bounce rate: 26.7%
Average time on site: 4 minutes 50 seconds
Average pages per visitor: 6.63
Both of the above sets of numbers are a 2-step measurement. They both measure the actions of a person after they have already read the blog page.
The visitors from the on-site blogs seem to be a lot more likely to stay longer and engage more. These measurements do not take into account the design of the websites or the content of the blogs but I feel that they at least support the idea that onsite blogs are better.
As a reminder, the numbers presented here are measured from my own sources across many jewelry specific websites.
When time comes for you to finally consider blogging as a method of inbound marketing hopefully you will consider this information here and add that blog to your website rather than an offsite domain.
