Off-site company blog linking to company site or blog incorporated into the company site?
-
Kind of a SEO newbie, so be gentle. I'm a beginner content strategist at a small design firm. Currently, I'm working with a client on a website redesign. Their current website is a single page dud with a page authority of 5. The client has a word press blog with a solid URL name, a domain authority of 100 and page authority of 30. My question is this: would it be better for my client from an SEO perspective to:
- Re-skin their existing blog and link to the new company website with it, hopefully passing on some of its "Google Juice,"or...
- Create a new blog on their new website (and maybe do a 301 redirect from the old blog)?
- Or are there better options that I'm not thinking of?
Thanks for whatever help you can give a newbie. I just want to take good care of my client.
-
Thanks very much to all you for your thoughts. Very helpful indeed.
-
This is a great response an I love the advice about "over-thinking". Well said. Move on.
There are a great deal of wordpress self hosting options and themes out there should you chose to stay with wordpress. We chose Genesis from Studiopress and have been very satisfied. But there are many other great choices.
Best!
-
I would put the blog on the domain of the company.
Since the blog is on Wordpress.com, I would just move it even if it has little traffic. The PA 30 is generic wordpress.com blog PA. Nothing really important with that. Keeps things simple and you'll have more freedom. Overthinking this will just make things harder and since you are new, itll just make your learning curve longer.
Tell them what to do, don't give them options and hope they aren't sentimental for a wordpress.com blog. Move on and market their site. Boom!
-
If your clients DA is 100, it's probably hosted on a Wordpress subdomain (http://clientblog.wordpress.com/), right?
I would incorporate that blog into their existing site on their domain and work with WP to redirect if at all possible. In terms of theory, this is pretty easy to think about. Simply ask yourself (or your client)...
"If a potential customer is taking the time to read this piece of content you took X minutes/hours/days to write, where would you prefer they read it? On Wordpress.com, where they can easily find content on the same subject from 1000s of other writers? Or on your site, where they can learn more about only YOU and YOUR business?"
If they can't wrap their head around the virtual aspects of Wordpress.com vs. their own domain, give them a real world analogy.
- Compare Wordpress.com to them having a pop-up stand at a tradeshow for anything and everything available for sale in the world, then
- Compare their own domain to their physical brick and mortar store.
Where would they rather the potential customer engage with their brand? I think we can all come to an agreement on what the right choice is for that one.
I'm not saying it's a BAD IDEA to have a blog on Wordpress.com, but the content they write should probably be generalized about their industry and offer links back to their services where applicable. Their company-centric news and top content for generating traffic via SEO/inbound marketing should be hosted on their own domain.
Hope this helps.
-
We went through the same thought process and decided to self host a wordpress site and dump the wordpress.com (in our case) blog. There are many advantages of having the blog on your own site. You will be increasing the number of pages and adding fresh content. Google likes that and you can compete for more keywords. Also creating content in your blog that other people will link to because it is high quality will get you links naturally. I don't think it can be overstated as to how important this can be for SEO.
I can't really speak to whether or not the 301 is a good idea. In our case it wasn't possible anyway.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Has anyone had problems with Wordpress plugins on their blog causing payment issues on the main site?
Looking to migrate a subdomain Wordpress site onto the main domain, but the payment system breaks based on one or more of the plugins used on the blog having been linked with spammy activity in the past. Need to isolate the plugin and remove before migrating or it'll break the site! Has anyone had any similar issues with some of the following plugins? Akismet Wordfence Security Subscribe2 Timber Backup Buddy
Technical SEO | | Amelia.Coleby0 -
Links disappeared
Hi, I am a wedding photographer based in Liverpool. I have been trying to do my own SEO for the last 6 months. I have been hovering around the top of page two for the main search terms for the past few years. I used an SEO company before christmas who got a lot of spammy links which resulted in my site dropping to page 4 of the SERPS. With the help of this forum I managed to locate them and disavow those links, and have tried to do it myself. I have managed to gain a few "featured weddings" on national wedding blogs and wrote a few articles for another wedding blog and also some forum comments. I have also got a few links for example from a wedding band in exchange for some photographs. I have got onto page 1 about 4 times, the best result was at position 6 on page 1 but every time I have slowly dropped out again. I have methodically (once a month) checked for any of the spammy links and updated the disavow list. My competitors have at best old forum comments and the like and on checking their websites with open site explorer are not actively link building at all. I have just checked my Webmaster tools and google is only recognising 51 links. (none of my good wedding blog links are there) I have an external links csv from the 28th June with 602 links on it. I changed my website around May of this year but it is still on the same domain name www.dwliverpoolphotography.co.uk. Can anybody help? Best wishes. David.
Technical SEO | | WallerD0 -
No follow links from ban sites
Hello boys and girls. I'm auditing my link profile and came across links pointing to my sites, from a ban site (site: domain.com gives back no result).yet the links are no follow. should i try to remove them all? i know no follow should be enough, yet my links are set in a bad neighborhood. what would you recommend??
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Are Tags in Blogs good?
Hi Is adding tags into Blogs a good idea? Does it help with SEO at all? For example blog/?tag=/Invoicing-Software Will that help us get ranked for Invoicing Software? Regards Andrew
Technical SEO | | Studio330 -
Explain me the SEO impact when a website has more internal link compared to less internal links
A website that I am working on has more than 200 internal links (Its because of the design and various kind of service that we offer). I want to know its SEO impact. I also want to know the SEO impact when a website has less internal links compared to more internal links
Technical SEO | | BoniSatani0 -
Would removing or making non relevant links no follow boost a site?
Hi, I have just been checking out the backlinks for a prospective new client. It appears they have a number of links that are totally irrelevant to their nature of business and I was wondering if they would improve in the rankings etc if I removed them or made them no follow instead? Or would I simply just be throwing away crucial link juice? Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | Benjamin3790 -
No crawl code for pages of helpful links vs. no follow code on each link?
Our college website has many "owners" who want pages of "helpful links" resulting in a large number of outbound links. If we add code to the pages to prevent them from being crawled, will that be just as effective as making every individual link no follow?
Technical SEO | | LAJN0 -
SEO LINKS
New to S.E.O. so excuse my naivety. I have made lots of new links some of them paid for e.g. Best of the Web but I don’t see any change in the latest competitive link analysis. Some of the links we have been accepted for just do not show. Also the keywords we are trying to promote the most have disappeared off the radar for over 2 weeks now. I think we have followed the optimization suggestions correctly. Please could you enlighten me. Regards Paul www.curtainpolesemporium.co.uk
Technical SEO | | CPE0