How to add a blog to a website

01Choose by how your site is built

02Subfolder, subdomain or another platform?

Where the blog lives affects whether it helps your main site. A subfolder (yoursite.com/blog) keeps everything on one site, so links to posts and the authority they earn build up your domain as a whole. A subdomain (blog.yoursite.com) can work, but search engines may treat it more like a separate site. A post on another platform's domain mostly benefits that platform. Developers on Hacker News have described running WordPress under a Next.js site's /blog path precisely to keep one domain.

03Setting up a blog on a custom site

1. 1Decide who writesDevelopers can write Markdown in the repository; non-developers need a CMS with an editor.
2. 2Pick the sourceMarkdown files for a few posts a month; a headless CMS for a team.
3. 3Create templatesA post page and an index page, with title, date, author and reading time.
4. 4Add the essentialsUnique titles and descriptions, an RSS feed, a sitemap entry for each post, and structured data.
5. 5Link from the main siteA navigation item and links from relevant pages.

04What makes a blog worth having

A blog helps when its posts answer questions your customers search for and link to the pages where you sell. Google's guidance on helpful content asks whether content is written for people first and demonstrates real experience. A handful of genuinely useful posts outperforms dozens of thin ones.

Plan topics from real questions: what customers ask before buying, what they struggle with after. SEO for a new website and how long does SEO take? set realistic expectations for when a blog starts bringing visitors.

• Answer one real question per post, completely.
• Link each post to a relevant product or service page.
• Publish on a schedule you can sustain.
• Update old posts when facts change.

05What every blog post page needs

Whatever system you use, each post page should carry the same essentials: a clear title as the main heading, a publish date and an updated date when you revise it, an author with a short bio, readable typography with comfortable line length, images with alt text, links to related posts and to the page where you sell, and a way to subscribe or contact you. Behind the scenes, add a unique meta title and description, Article structured data, and include each post in your sitemap and RSS feed so search engines and readers find new posts quickly.

06Common blog mistakes

Starting enthusiastically and stopping after three posts, hosting the blog off-domain, writing about the company instead of the reader's problems, and publishing posts with no internal links all waste effort. So does copying what large media sites do; a small business blog wins with specific, expert answers, not volume. What pages does a small business website need? covers where a blog fits among the other pages.