Blogs: Hosted vs. Off-Site
-
What is the latest opinion on whether to have a blog hosting on your primary domain or on an outside domain (either Wordpress or just another URL).
In the past we have done the former and it's been a great source of fresh content and organic traffic. Wonder if there is good argument now for not having it on the domain. With this new site we're working on it logistically would be more challenging given their tech resources, plus they already have thousands of pages.
-
The challenge is we are speaking in general terms. It would help if you shared a lot more specifics.
Generally speaking, if the blog content was directly related to my domain, I would want the blog to be on the main domain. If I had corvettes.com and I wanted to add a blog discussing corvettes, I would choose something like corvettes.com/blog.
If I had corvettes.com and I wanted to add a blog discussing cars in general, I may wish to separate the blog from my core site by using a subdomain. There will certainly be some relevant opportunities between the blog and the main site.
If I wanted to create a blog to discuss unrelated matters, then I would pursue a different url altogether.
-
Great inputs. Turns out this client has some roadblocks with load balance systems, so it won't be easily feasible to have site.com/blog
Options are blog.site.com or a completely different domain. Since inbound links won't be worth much to the primary domain (if the blog is on a sub) I'm pondering having on an external domain and branded differently. Any more thoughts?
-
Just a additional thought. We use both, for different topics. Our on domain Blog will focus on one theme. and we can wonder around a bit on the word press hosted blog.
-
It really depends on the content of your blog. I have seen a few blogs from various companies that we have worked with that have blogs that have a lot of content that is not related the rest of their site. Because the content is not related we have seen how the blog is bringing in the wrong kind of traffic when it starts to rank for keywords that are unrelated to the main site. Also, all of this unrelated content could hurt the site by causing the search engines to miscategorize the main purpose of the site.
A added bonus of having an external blog is that you can create quality external links to your site from your blog.
All that being said, generally I suggest that companies have their site under their own domain like www.mysite.com/blog
-
For an individual who does not have a website and is a casual blogger, then using an established domain offers the advantage of a stronger domain authority. In any other case, I prefer using your primary domain.
You want to control your traffic. There are a few nightmare stories where the blog host, such as blogger, closed the URL of a user. In each case the user lost years of value they built up. This reason alone would lead me to always using my primary domain.
Additionally, a key reason for providing a blog is to generate site traffic. If you offer high quality content in your blog, then you want visitors linking to your site, and not wordpress.
-
I would suggest that it would be beneficial to have the blog on your own domain unless there is a very valid reason not to. By bringing the blog under your own roof, you're adding fresh content regularly and should the content be linked to or tweeted/ shared, you're domain will get the love.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
When to re-write and redirect a blog url?
What are best practices for rewriting (and then redirecting) blog URLs? I refresh old blog posts on our blog every month and many of them have URLs that are too long or could be improved. However, many of them also already get decent organic traffic and I don't want to lose traffic due to a URL redirect. Are there any best practices or "rules" I can follow when deciding whether to re-write and redirect blog URLs?
Content Development | | Emily.R.Monrovia
Thanks!0 -
Is it ok to have two blogs for my website?
Hi Pep's The blog for my website is integrated, but does not have a URL that matches the text. The company I use for my site say that it can't be changed. Basically it displays numbers instead of text in the url. So I thought, what about starting another blog as well as the original. Would this have any effects on my SEO, negative or positive? Any advice greatly appreciated! 🙂
Content Development | | MissThumann1 -
Using different sections from all over your site to compile a blog post, bad idea or ok to do?
I have a large site that sells various products, I have been on a kick creating new content relating to the many aspects of upkeep with these products after purchase, I wanted to create a blog post combining all the info for the group of products, but will be reusing some of the FAQs and even tips, since I'm more or less relocating the info. Since this blog post is using many different sources on our site, using a rel=canonical isn't possible. Is there anything I should watch out for, Will rewording / phrasing here and there be enough or should I steer clear of this as a whole?
Content Development | | Deacyde0 -
Duplicate page title on blog
Is this something I should b concerned about? I get about 6 posts per page with unique titles - however the title per page is not unique. Is this important?
Content Development | | MartinSpence460 -
Duplicate Page Content WordPress blog with categories?
Just got a crawl report back from SEOmoz and it gives me lots of errors for "duplicate page content". Upon investigating, I notice this is because my WP blog is setup into categories so the home page is almost identical to one of the category pages. None of my actually posts are the same but the category pages have some overlap since the same post could show up in two or more categories. Is this a problem or can I just ignore this error? Any thing I should be doing differently? Thanks!
Content Development | | frankthetank20 -
How many blog posts per page are enough?
Any thoughts on how many blog posts per page are enough for SEO? Assume about 800-900 words per post.
Content Development | | casper4340 -
Index.html vs. default.html
Hi, I have a website that is about 7 years old. I had been using index.html as the home page. When I redesigned my site about 3 months ago I changed it to default.html. The old index.html page was still on my server. I just realized my mistake. All of my links to the home page lead to the new default.html. However, people are still landing on the old index.html. I have change the old index.html to the new design but that means i have 2 "home" pages out there. Should i delete one? Should I leave them both there but use the canonical tag for one so it is not considered duplicate content? What is best for my rankings?
Content Development | | bhsiao0 -
Connecting facebook and twitter to your wordpress blog?
Does anyone know a good plugin for connecting facebook and twitter to your wordpress blog? I’d like it so when i make a new post on my blog it automatically displays on my facebook/twitter
Content Development | | christinarule0