I was doing SEO as a consultant and was recently hired by this firm full time to manage the site as well as improve their online visibility. The problem that I'm running into is that the site was built with very little SEO in mind. I continue to work with the original developer to make programming changes as well as layout and design changes. I don’t have the amount of control I would like to have because I don’t have the programming background required to make all the changes myself. So I would like to do what is best for the site with the least amount of help required from the design firm.

I would like to create an area for our customers to read articles or news about our industry and our company. Essentially, turning our landing pages into article hubs.

Would creating an article area using the LSI method be a good route to go?

Or should I institute some kind of blog format so that customers can comment on stories or articles? From what I've seen, blogs seem to be more effective than forums.

What got me thinking was if we were to go the LSI route (w/o a comment section, just posted articles) and then we decide to go to a blog format, would it be detrimental to our rankings? Is it easy to "recycle" previously posted/linked-to articles within the blog? Is it difficult to integrate a blog into an existing site?

I would appreciate any feedback you can provide or resources you can point me towards.

Thank you