Is there any SEO benefit to having your content (blogs etc.) in the same web app as your SAAS product?
Hey Hive Mind,
For trying to grow a business SEO can be very important which typically means using a CMS for blog articles etc.
However the needs of a CMS and your SAAS product might differ technically.
In my case I like using nuxt.js with netlify as I get blazing fast performance.
However for my app it would be better to use Vue Ionic since it gives me apps in both app stores for free plus the web app.
Because they are both Vue based I tried getting them to work together but there are too many incompatible package versions and structure.
So my options are.....
a) Use Ionic and use a SPA for content
b) Use nuxt.js but (probably) just make it a PWA rather than put on app stores
c) Use two separate apps on different urls; one for SAAS app and the other for CMS ( i.e. app.myproject.com and blog.myproject.com )
Technically C is easiest but I'm concerned about
a) Consistent look and feel
b) Impact on user experience as they switch between apps
c) If I'm losing out on some kind of SEO benefit from having them on the same URL.
Thanks in advance
Is content on app.myproject.com public facing or private/behind authentication? If latter, then there is no really SEO benefit to combining your app with your blog.
Also, this is debatable but I think the consensus is that it's better to have your blog on a subfolder (myproject.com/blog) rather than subdomain (blog.myproject.com)
So in your shoes, I would recommend Vue Ionic on app.myproject.com, and I would do Nuxt for both the marketing site (myproject.com) and blog (myproject.com/blog).
FWIW, I've chosen for my app to do (b) using Gatsby for a single platform for both the PWA at myproject.com/app and also for marketing site + blog (static sites). I'm very anti app store, so I have absolutely no intention of creating an iOS or Android app, and my app functionality will work perfectly fine as a PWA.
yeah I hate app stores too which is why I've mostly gone PWA but I'm not sure how well users really understand PWA and might be expecting there to be an app or something?
app.myproject.com would be behind some authentication because it wouldn't really be useful unless somebody logs in so I see what you mean about it not having any use to put them under the same subdomain.
Re: pwa vs app store, I think it just depends on your specific app, your customer needs, etc. My app is mostly desktop use with some mobile usage so I think pwa is fine in that case.
I solved these problems. I hated adding a blog to my application code. So I built this with a design using AWS s3 as the CMS. I have two templates in the code. (1) The blog page. (2) the blog article page. The content is stored as a txt file in S3. With html inside. And of course the images. In my database I store the AWS urls to the files. Now I have mydomain.com/blog/(page title). In my admin page a I have a article creater, using a rich text WYSIWYG editor. There I can create and edit the content. For search I use a tag cloud. The page title becomes the url.
Hi Alex,
There is nothing wrong SEO-wise to have both your app and blog on the same url. Infact this is a good practice.
So when you say "good practice" do you mean its nice from a technical point of view or does it actually give an SEO benefit and if so how?
Thanks
If the blog is in the same domain url as the main site, the blog posts will be considered fresh content for the site itself which adds seo benefit.
Usually C is the best option.
Also be prepared to move from nuxt.js to something that is easier to use for marketing team if you grow to that scale.
I was thinking of using a headless CMS like storyblok, cosmicjs , contentful etc. That way a developer can do the UI while the content and marketing people can still make edits to sites/add new pages etc.
Do headless CMS give you access to create new pages that aren't based on a template ?
nope, but most times I don't think you'd want non-technical users making pages that don't have templates.
Thanks, i think that is why landing page builders are still so popular.